Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Born in Havana in 1954, the Miami-based Orlando Jacinto Garcia studied with Morton Feldman and has inherited some of Feldman's concerns. His music likewise evolves gradually over slow-moving spans of time- here and there with an echo of West Coast minimalism. Like the still surface of the sea, the works on this album (three of them concertante pieces for virtuoso soloists) mirror the unhurried movement of natural phenomena. They often feature textures of considerable delicacy- and occasionally hint at larger forces behind the apparent stasis. This album presents some of his most recent choral compositions, in recordings conducted by the composer. Violinist Jennifer Choi is a frequent collaborator with composers, and has premiered solo and chamber works written for her by several well-known contemporary composers. Pianist Cristina Valdes is known for presenting innovative concerts with repertoire ranging from Bach to Xenakis. Fernando Dominguez, clarinet, is the leading exponent of the contemporary repertoire for clarinet in Mexico.

Classical Music

Robert Kahn, born in Mannheim in 1865, was one of the oldest Jewish composers to have to flee Hitler – he left Germany in 1938 and settled in Kent, England, where he died in 1951. He produced a large body of attractive chamber music, expertly crafted and basically Brahmsian in style. His three violin sonatas, written over a twenty-year-period at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th c., reveal a lyrical composer in the Romantic mainstream but capable of considerable formal inventiveness. This is the first recording of these highly attractive works.

Classical Music

• This is the second Toccata Classics recording of music by Philip Spratley, born in Nottinghamshire in 1942. • Cargoes, of which this recording was also the first performance, is dedicated to Dmitry Vasiliev and his orchestra in gratitude. • This is the second release to emerge from the association of Toccata Classics and Dmitry Vasiliev and the Siberian Symphony Orchestra in Omsk.

William Humphreys Dayas (1864-1903) boasted an impressive career. He studied with Liszt, was the leading professor of piano at the Royal Manchester College of Music, and composed two major organ sonatas. His organ sonatas, which are passionate pieces reminiscent of the works of Liszt, have remained widely unknown until now. Dr. Jan Lehtola performs these pieces beautifully. He has appeared with a number of ensembles, including the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Tapiola Sinfonietta, Tampere Philharmonic, and the St. Michael Strings. He has recorded over 30 albums.

This disc of orchestral music by Edinburgh composer Charles O’Brian (1882-1968) contains two expansive concert overtures, and two charming miniatures from O’Brian’s early compositional days. Already released on Toccata Classics are O’Brian’s complete works for piano on two CD’s, as well as the first of what will be three discs of his complete orchestral music. The Liepaja Symphony Orchestra is the oldest symphonic ensemble in the Baltic states. The ensemble boasts the title of National Orchestra of Latvia.

Schumann's 'Album fur das Jugend,' Op. 68, of 1848 appears to be a collection of simple teaching pieces for children. But it's unassuming exterior hides a wealth of interconnected references: to Bach and to William Blake (whose 'Songs of Innocence and Experience' it shadows), and to the life of the Romantic artist as reflected in nature and the passage of the seasons. Anssi Karttunen's transcription for string trio brings a textural subtlety that enhances the unsuspected layers of meaning in Schumann's modest miniatures. The Zebra Trio consists of the Austrian violinist Ernst Kovacic, Canadian violist Steven Dann and Finnish cellist Anssi Karttunen, each bringing a vast experience in chamber music, in different styles and in working with living composers to the world of the string trio. The Zebra Trio has always mixed familiar masterpieces with new works and transcriptions, combining all of these in creative ways in the ir concerts.

Renaissance polyphony is generally held to be stately, calm, reassuring. But this programme of Palestrina’s six-part Missa sine nomine, complemented by five of his motets and three by Marc'Antonio Ingegneri (c. 1535/36–92), was recorded after the Choir of Girton College, Cambridge, had undertaken a tour of Israel and Palestine. There the music and its texts (‘How can we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?’) took on an extraordinary poignancy, with the dispossession and desperation of thousands of years ago animating the restrained dignity of Palestrina’s counterpoint with an unexpectedly topical intensity. The Girton College Chapel Choir has gained an impressive reputation as one of the most distinguished mixed-voice choirs at the University of Cambridge. As an international prize-winning ensemble comprising around 26 students, it has built its reputation through regular choral services in Girton College Chapel and frequent performances in parish churches and cathedrals across the UK. Choir members are all undergraduate or graduate students at Cambridge University.

Heinz Tiessen (1887-1971) was one of the most prominent composers of the Weimar Republic, but his career was abruptly halted during WWII as his music was deemed "undesirable" by the Nazi Party. Tiessen's compositions never re-emerged from that cultural embargo and largely sank into obscurity until now. The American born, Berlin based pianist Matthew Rubinstein is a fine ambassador for this overlooked composer's piano works which include Eine Natur Trilogie, a three-part symphonic poem for piano.

Carl Loewe (1796-1869) Is Remembered Today Chiefly As a Composer of Ballads. Yet There Is a Considerable Body of Piano Music That Is Strikingly Innovative in Content, Expression and Harmony. A Major Figure in Ushering in the Romantic Era His Works Contain the Germs of Ideas Later Taken Up By Composers Such As Wagner and Liszt. This Is the First of a Series of Recordings Done in Conjunction with Westdeutscher Rundfunk in Cologne. Linda Nicholson Is One of the Foremost Keyboard Players Specializing in the Performance of Baroque, Classical and Early Romantic Music on Instruments of the Period.

Classical Music