This recording is a modern portrait of the music that Swedish clavier-players might have carried to the organ in the latter half of the 1700s. Since hardly any Swedish music of the time was written exclusively for the organ, we must rely on historical sources for a sense of the possibilities. The selection offered here is largely a work of reconstruction, and except for the short movement by Roman, none of this repertoire has been recorded before, at least in this form for organ. Jonas Lundblad is an organist and musicologist. He studied church music in Malmö, Lübeck and Piteå, specializing in organ interpretation. A prolific freelance career performing both as an organ soloist and with choirs and orchestras has taken him to countries across Europe. When choosing repertoire, he looks mainly to the Romantic era and to new music, and enjoys delving into the sources to discover unknown or forgotten works. While a student for Hans-Ola Ericsson, he performed the complete works of Olivier Messiaen. Since then, the music and mental landscape of Messiaen have remained one his central influences.

This is the second volume in the EP series ‘The Library’. The idea behind this series is to explore both the history, and the new horizons, of The King’s Singers close-harmony repertoire. Close-harmony is the part of their work for which they are best known, and their library of thousands of arrangements is one they’re determined to explore, maintain and develop. The track -listing is designed to celebrate some old favorites from the library alongside brand new arrangements and adaptations, created especially for these recordings, which may perhaps become ‘old favorites’ of the future. Volume 2 was recorded in the beautiful surroundings of Snape Maltings, Suffolk (UK) - a place most famous for its association with Benjamin Britten - and it proved to be a relaxing and inspiring place to work for two beautiful wintry days. The King’s Singers were founded on 1 May 1968 by six choral scholars who had recently graduated from King’s College Cambridge. Their vocal line-up was (by chance) two countertenors, a tenor, two baritones and a bass, and the group has never wavered from this formation since.

This new release features works for solo piano by female composers from the nineteenth to the twenty-first centuries, performed by Anna Shelest. Hailed by The New York Times as a pianist of “a fiery sensibility and warm touch,” Anna Shelest is an international award-winning pianist who has thrilled audiences throughout the world. An “effective collaborator” (The New York Times), Anna made her orchestral debut at the age of twelve with the Kharkiv Symphony Orchestra, playing Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 1. Since then she has been a soloist with some of the world’s finest orchestras, including the Montreal Symphony, Cincinnati Symphony, St. Petersburg Philharmonic, and Estonian National Symphony, among others. Born in Ukraine, she received her early music education at Kharkiv Special Music School. Since graduating from The Juilliard School with a Masters Degree in the class of Jerome Lowenthal, Anna has made her home in New York City with her husband and two sons.

Les Kapsber’girls, an ensemble of four singers and instrumentalists directed by the lutenist Albane Imbs, has already released its debut album (Che fai tù?, released on Muso) which received several awards. The group now joins Alpha for several recordings, starting with Vous avez dit Brunettes? – ‘brunettes’ being the name of the chansons that lovers crooned in each others’ ears by the Bassin d’Apollon or among the groves of the Petit Trianon at Versailles Palace, undeniably light in character yet powerfully authentic. Seventeenth-century France was home to a host of artists whose talent served the nobility and the bourgeoisie, who were extremely partial to these airs. Performing them as vocal solos or duets with lute or viol, Les Kapsber’girls bring back to life, more than three centuries later, these works published by Ballard & Fils, printers to the Sun King, alongside such little-known composers as Julie Pinel and Giuseppe Saggione.

Ever since that first angelic night, Christmas has been celebrated in song. In the baroque period, many composers such as Charpentier have composed original masterpieces based on simple folk tunes. Here in a special double album edition are baroque carols from the choir of La Maîtrise de Radio France, with Les Musiciens de Saint Julien, as well as the best-known French Christmas carols (Les anges dans nos campagnes, Venez divin messie...) from the Maîtrises of Radio France and Notre-Dame de Paris. The two internationally renowned children’s choirs combine to celebrate the Nativity and share with us these timeless songs.

As we reflect on Johann Sebastian Bach and his sons, we are all too likely to overlook the fact that there were six sons from two marriages who “inclined towards Music”. True, Maria Barbara’s third son Johann Gottfried Bernhard, born in Weimar in 1715, more or less disappeared from view in 1737, and it is plain that Anna Magdalena’s first son Gottfried Heinrich, born in 1724, was mentally handicapped: “A great Genius, which however was never developed,” wrote his half-brother Carl Philipp Emanuel in the family chronicle. For thirty years, making and writing music, he had been the musical front-runner in Saxony and Thuringia: the vanguard was located wherever he was, in his hands and at his writing-desk. Increasingly, twenty-year-olds and a few late starters in their thirties were coming on to the market and showing Bach a new way forward: the galant style, spreading north from Naples ever since 1715, and the flamboyant, ever more richly ornamented music of the late Baroque, constantly threatening to break down under the weight of emblematic connotation and religious symbolism, in contrast to that simpler form, written by mortals for mortals, distinguished by its slow, easily comprehensible harmony and its truly singable melodies in what was at most an expanded two-part structure.

The production with Reinhold Friedrich, Eriko Takezawa and Alisa Kratzer unites original works for trumpet and piano as well as arrangements for this instrumentation. One can only share Friedrich's regret that despite numerous, sometimes even exposed orchestral solos, there are no virtuoso solo concertos for trumpet by these composers. Reinhold Friedrich, a prolific performer on major stages around the world, is a professor of trumpet at Karlsruhe, a sought-after lecturer for master classes, honorary professor at the Royal Academy of Music in London, Escuela Superior de Musica Reina Sofia in Madrid and also in Hiroshima. Many of his recordings were awarded international prizes and got high press acclaim. Together with the versatile pianist Eriko Takezawa they form a perfectly harmonized duo whose repertoire reaches from Teleman over Gershwin to works by Sir Peter Maxwell Davies.

The first-ever complete LP collection of Ignaz Friedman’s recordings has been much sought after by collectors and admired by critics since its original LP release in 1985. Newly remastered for its first modern release, this set celebrates the artistry of a uniquely gifted musician. The ‘Moonlight’ Sonata, Chopin mazurkas and Songs without Words of Mendelssohn are classics of the gramophone, which now speak to a new generation of listeners more clearly than ever before.

Though born in the USA, Aline van Barentzen (1897-1981) became the youngest student to be accepted by the Paris Conservatoire, aged nine, and went on to win a premier prix aged just twelve. She was to base herself in Paris for the rest of her life, later teaching at her alma mater where her pupils included Jean-Philippe Collard and Cyprien Katsaris. A supreme virtuoso, as can be heard in her Brahms Paganini variations, she worked with many contemporary composers, making this premiere recording of Falla’s Nights in the Gardens of Spain and also recording the complete Prole do bebê of Villa-Lobos, the second book, which she premiered, was dedicated to her.

It was the conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler who first gave Gottlob Frick the nickname "Der schwärzeste Bass". This accolade has been picked up time and again, gone through various manifestations, and become a sort of trademark of the German bass Gottlob Frick. That said, the attribute "black" is often applied to define the vocal range of a basso profundo's ability to produce sonorous deep notes. However, the definition of "black bass" means far more than that: it applies primarily to the deep, dark timbre, the rich and sonorous sound and the lasting flexibility of the voice even in the deep registers, paired with strength, momentum, natural resonance and abundant expression in the entire vocal range. "If you have ever heard the timbre of Gottlob Frick's voice, you will never forget it," as the German singing expert Jürgen Kesting accurately observed in his standard reference work "Die großen Sänger". Gottlob Frick is seen rightly therefore as the incarnation of the black bass. He is a German bass who, thanks to the many sound recordings he left us documenting his sonorous, unusually beautiful and fluently melodic singing, enjoys a popularity to this day that is probably unparalleled in this vocal register. One of the reasons the internationally renowned critic John B. Steane advanced to justify his inclusion of Gottlob Frick in his list of 100 most important singers in "Opera Now" is encapsulated in this fitting characterisation: "When it comes to the Wagnerian basso profundo, the only name in recent times that matters" – by which he means the 1940s to 1980s – "is that of Gottlob Frick: a tower of strength in the strongest ensemble and one of the greatest basses of all time. His voice is steady despite its powerful capacity, supple and splendid. Frick's two-and-a-half-octave bass is remarkably well trained and remains constant through its entire spectrum. He has a strong sense of rhythm and he can sing both legato and staccato in exemplary manner, without depriving his listeners of that rich timbre of his."

“The project is inspired by the moment before the realization of something that drastically changes your life, the moment of just being, existing in the moment. That moment in time is free and full, mindfulness-ish and unaffected by misery, sorrow, regret, shame, anxiety and depression. In my mind it is bright and has a sense of nostalgia. The title also refers to a daily tradition on Icelandic radio Ra´s 1, where a song, “last song before the news” would be played just before the news hour at noon. The song would typically be an Icelandic one, sometimes a lullaby, a love song or an ode to scary and gorgeous nature. Or an Icelandic traditional, sometimes an Italian canzone or a Scandinavian sorrow. Jo´runn Viðar’s piece Icelandic Suite sums up all these elements, a piece written for the 2000 years anniversary of inhabitation in Iceland in 1974. The lightness and the longing are with us throughout the program except in the title piece of mine, Last Song before the News, where apocalyptic visions are awfully obvious and take over early on. The album is dedicated to my father, Sveinbjorn Rafnsson, whose lightness and passion for music, poetry and history along with his sense of humor has been a lifeline to many people.” (Una Sveinbjarnardottir)

REVIEW:

The chief attraction of this disc is to be found in the program. There is so much interesting music for the adventurous listener to discover that I can recommend this CD on those grounds. The performances of those works are more engaging.

-- Fanfare

This survey is the sequel to comparably comprehensive Brilliant Classics collections of 20th-century guitar preludes and sonatas. The sonatinas included take their place as part of a long process of study conducted by Cristiano Porqueddu over the past few years. The high percentage of world premiere recordings - more than half of the entire tracklist - should give a good idea of how the research was conducted: as with the two previous releases, space has been given to those works that rarely appear either in concert or on record, in order to give voice to a considerable amount of excellent music almost completely ignored. Porqueddu made a longlist of over 60 sonatinas by 20th-century and by living composers, before narrowing down the final choice to the 17 performed here. Before Porqueddu, of course, there was the pioneer of modern guitar performance a century ago, Andres Segovia, who commissioned and inspired countless composers to write for him. One of those was the English composer Cyril Scott, and while Segovia expressed some misgivings about the result – ‘I’m not head over heels about it’, he wrote to his friend Manuel Ponce – the three-movement Sonatina makes a fine test of any guitarist’s musicianship and effectively inhabits the Spanish guitar tradition with its mysterious slow introduction and hypnotic central, Flamenco-style slow movement. The sonatinas by Mark Delpriora, Carlos Surinach and Albert Harris are no less compressed in expression, using the sonatina form to pack ideas into ten minutes that would occupy half an hour in the hands of lesser composers. The seven works of Angelo Gilardino are more expansive, though full of character, testifying to the unique relationship between composer and performer: Porqueddu himself. The pieces by Alberto Franco and Franco Cavallone were also composed with Porqueddu in mind, while the Sonatina Lirica by Segovia’s English pupil John Duarte is a hidden gem. ‘a most compelling collection from five composers, none of whom were guitarists… coruscating variety, fine recorded sound and lovingly shaped playing.’ (MusicWeb International). ‘Porqueddu’s work is once more of excellent quality and shows how he is able to create individual interpretations of contemporary repertoire.’ (Seicorde).

Prague has always been regarded as one of the most beautiful cities in the world. The name 'Cor Europae' (Heart of Europe) probably dates from the country's early history, in the thirteenth century, when the Kingdom of Bohemia stretched from the Baltic to the Mediterranean. This was a period of great prosperity, especially under King Wenceslaus II Premyslid, and culminated with the reign of Charles IV, who was both King of Bohemia and Holy Roman Emperor. Despite the fact that Bohemia was the centre of Europe and benefited from the presence of many scholars (more especially after the foundation of the university in 1348), the local culture also preserved an older tradition there. This can be seen in the beautiful repertory for the Advent and Christmas period that have survived in the sources of Prague Cathedral and the Benedictine abbey of Prague Castle. These sources make it possible to reconstruct the liturgy of the Feast of the Nativity as it was celebrated there, with organa and tropes in the tradition of twelfth-century music, at a time when the new Ars Nova style was flourishing elsewhere in Europe. It is this music that the wonderful voices of the Tiburtina Ensemble bring to life for us.

In this album Mauricio Arias-Esguerra offers a kaleidoscopic view of recent Colombian piano music, highlighting its striking stylistic variety. Germán Darío Pérez sees a traditional dance through a jazzy lens, and Blas Emilio Atehortúa takes a post-serial approach in his Preludio, Variaciones y Presto Alucinante. The influence of progressive rock music can be heard in Gustavo Parra´s Pavec Lingus, as can Jaime León´s love of US American music in his Made in U.S.A. preludes; and there is techno and angst in Ian Frederick´s Suite Catrina. Arias-Esguerra’s own contributions are highly contrasted, with lyricism in his Arizona Mirage and rhythmic drive in his Toccata Bachkovsky. 

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This portrait of Colombian pianomusic offers a glimpse into a richseam of music-making rarelymined. Arias-esguerra showcasesa variety of styles and influences,from composers living andpassed. His own Arizona Mirageis a highlight.

- BBC Magazine

The decades around 1600 bore witness to the flourishing of a remarkable musical tradition: the art of diminution, in which simple melodies were given exquisitely virtuosic embellishments, effectively creating new works. One such creation, Francesco Rognoni’s ornamentation of Palestrina’s Io son ferito, was captioned ‘con arte e maestria’ – with art and mastery – referring to the consummate craftsmanship displayed in its invention and performance. Giving new life to this tradition was the inspiration for this unique programme: alongside iconic works from the diminution canon, Monteverdi String Band members Oliver Webber and Steven Devine present newly ornamented versions of a selection of sixteenth- and early-seventeenth-century works.

The Herald Records Doowop Collection 1953-63 - It's a feast of classic doowop from a label which was at the heart of the genre.n. Che Herald label was founded in 1950 by Fred Mendelsohn, formerly with Savoy, and he was soon joined by Al Silver, who owned the pressing plant that made the label's records. Silver had an ear for R&B and doowop, and built Herald into a creative hub for R&B recording and most particularly becoming renowned for it's output of doowop recordings by a string of different groups during the late '50s and into the 1960s. Most notable among those groups were The Nutmegs, The Turbans, The Mello Kings and Maurice Williams & The Zodiacs, who all had hits on the label. This great-value 89-track 3-CD set brings together most of the label's releases by artists whose work falls broadly into the category of doowop, although this is obviously not a definition which can be slavishly or precisely applied. It features the A & B sides of most of the Herald releases by the groups named above, plus The Embers, The Five Willows, The Sonnets, The Cashmeres, The Rocketeers, The Thrillers, The Sunbeams, The Mint Juleps, Little Butchie Saunders, The Four Js, The Desires, The Loungers, The Vocalaires, The Concords and The Premiers. It features the Maurice Williams & The Zodiacs' R&B No. 1 'Stay', and their other hits 'I Remember' and 'Come Along', The Nutmegs' hits 'Story Untold' and 'Ship Of Love', The Turbans' No. 3 'When You Dance' and the Mello-Kings' 'Tonite, Tonite'. It's a feast of classic doowop from a label which was at the heart of the genre.

Time Flies is an album of sixteen contemporary solo harpsichord works. All of these works have been composed within the last twenty years. Harpsichordist Elaine Funaro is “regarded as one of the leading performers of new music for harpsichord” (Classical Music: The Essential Listening Companion). She is a popular presence at contemporary and early music festivals around the world, and was the first, now past, president of the newly merged Historical Keyboard Society of North America, and is currently the Artistic Director of Aliénor, the American-based international competition for new harpsichord music. Elaine Funaro performs on a custom-made contemporary harpsichord, the Kingston Opus #333, which is decorated throughout by original artwork from North Carolina artist Lisa Creed.

Part of ARC Music’s ‘low price’ range, this album is specially designed to be accessible to the casual or novice world music listener; those who wish to experience the music of a certain part of the world, but perhaps aren’t ready to pay the regular price for standard or deluxe albums. The present release is an amiable, deliciously delicate and inspired album with mellow tones, smiling vocals, relaxed earthy, rich vibes and sauntering summer grooves, featuring Ceumar Brazil, Marta Gómez Colombia, Trio Pantango Argentina, Catarina Dos Santos Portugal, Patricia Salas Chile, AKA Trio Fusion and more.

When the ORFEO label was established in Munich 40 years ago, few would have predicted that the record company would develop into a firmly established player in the classical music market. One of the label’s priorities in the early years was vocal music, with opera rarities top of the list and, since the mid 1980s, the re-use of historic tape recordings. Big names featured on the label’s own productions, while ORFEO also developed into a talent factory for discovering and nurturing young artists. This Legendary Pianists 10-disc boxed set continues the series marking ORFEO’s 40th anniversary and features nine pianists in historical and modern recordings dating from the 1950s to the 2000s.

REVIEW:

This edition should be quite intriguing to collectors who surely will find a set of names quite different from what they might have chosen. It does not claim to be definitive; a collection, not the collection. There are ten CDs in the box featuring nine artists recorded live or recorded for broadcast, giving a sense of hearing an actual performance that contributes a heightened sense of you-are-there. Repertoire consists of mainly concertos from Bach to Brahms, via Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert and Schumann. Also, a handful of variations, etc. This is a most attractive collection of pure pleasure.

-- The Whole Note

But for Kempff at his most unbridled you need to hear 1956 WDR Cologne radio recordings of Beethoven’s Op 111 and Schumann’s Fantasie, where bass chords are augmented and the sense of uplift is so acute that you could as well be listening to Schnabel, Cortot, or Fischer live. The disc is one of 10 in Orfeo’s Legendary Pianists, which opens with the player Furtwängler described as ‘the troubadour of the piano’, Géza Anda, who fits that description like a glove in Beethoven’s First Concerto recorded in Munich under Rafael Kubelík, whereas Brahms’s Second Concerto with the same artists fans the flames with consistent intensity, the second movement especially. In the same collection, Gulda plays concertos by Beethoven and Schumann, a rather brittle-sounding Oleg Maisenberg is compelling in Schubert (including the Wanderer Fantasy), Konstantin Lifschitz brings a Gouldian tautness to the seven Bach keyboard concertos (greatly extending the cadenza in BWV1052’s finale), Carl Seemann is characteristically considered in Mozart’s Concertos K449 and 503, Gerhard Oppitz plays Brahms’s Third Sonata (the second movement being significantly broader than on his RCA recording) and we’re given the Third and Fifth Beethoven Concertos from the cycle that Rudolf Serkin and Kubelík recorded in 1977, a much-underrated set.

-- Gramophone

The cult and devotion to Mary have been among the greatest and most important sources of inspiration for all the arts in the history of humanity, and in the history of music they have given rise to a myriad of compositions that have spanned the centuries since the beginning of Christianity to the present day. Within this record the ensembles Vox Poetica and Nova Alta directed by the master Sabino Manzo offer to us some examples of the most significant Italian composers of the Renaissance and Baroque period, starting from the "divine" Claudio Monteverdi, a milestone in the history of music, up to Alessandro Scarlatti, a leading exponent of that Neapolitan school that in the eighteenth century exploded in all it's shining vitality, passing through Girolamo Frescobaldi, "monster organist" whose fame as a composer and keyboardist went across the Italian borders.

Vusa Mkhaya embodies the sound of the eclectic, pulsing, dusty streets of Tshabalala township in Zimbabwe’s Bulawayo. He captures the romanticism of the Southern African climes, his voice rich with the vibrations of a heritage that spans decades. Driven by an unquenchable thirst for sound, he has worked with a wide range of musicians and productions, amassing a hugely impressive body of work. Vusa has pushed the boundaries of world music, retaining a mind-bending, soul-searching, spiritually stirring sound that is inspired by life’s questions. It is in that depth he feeds, and is himself fed by the beauty of music. As part of the vocal trio Insingizi he has gained commercial and critical success since their 2004 debut album, Voices of Southern Africa / Spirit of Africa, which sold over 250,000 units in North America. His solo offerings The Spirit of Ubuntu (2006), Vocalism (2012) and now Umanyanyatha are emotive musical stories of love, heartbreak and everyday living; tales delivered in soulful, sometimes haunting, achingly beautiful pieces. Mkhaya gives life to the voice, and it is the voice that gives him life.

Recordings of percussion from around the world – an exploration of countries by their instrumental heartbeat: the drum. With Iranian rhythms on the tombak, a rich variety of tones and textures from Egypt on durbuka, advanced rhythms of Nigerian Yoruba folk music, Japanese taiko, Indian tabla, improvisations from Morocco and more… A fascinating journey into international beats and the culture and stories that lie behind them. The booklet contains in-depth liner notes provided by the artists that showcase the instruments used, the meanings behind the songs, and the cultural significance around the chosen rhythms.

With the battle of Pavia in 1525 a long period of Spanish domination began for Milan. Under the reign of Charles V the arts and music flourished. Antonio de Cabezon travelled across Europe visiting Milan in 1584 and his lute music influenced the great European composers. Contrary to keyboard instruments, lute and vihuela already have a vast repertoire in print. The combination of a keyboard instrument with the vihuela is common in the sources of Spanish influence of this period, which often bear the indication "para tecla y vihuela." Evangelina Mascardi and Maurizio Croci, established soloists on the international early music scene, explore the affinities, the contrasts and, in the words of an enthusiastic chronicler of the time, the "unheard of imitations" that arise from the dialogue between the two instruments. Their research project, carried out at the Haute Ecole de Musique de Lausanne (HEMU) with the involvement of various international partners, has led to the discovery of new interpretations that offer to an immense repertoire of extremely high musical value, unique and fascinating perspectives.

Spirit connects far beyond cultural and religious boundaries. That is why here SINGER PUR seeks to link the spirit from different world religions, regions and cultures. May the spirit-filled music inspire and move you and waft you through the exotic and the familiar. The SINGER PUR discography consists of more than 25 albums, several of which have received awards: two of them "Le Choc de l'Ann�e" by the French music magazine "Le Monde de la Musique" and three more the ECHO Klassik Award in 2005, 2007 and 2011. Founded in 1991, the sextet is made up of former members of the Regensburger Domspatzen. Initially the group focused on jazz repertoire, but since 1994 the ensemble's focus has shifted to early and romantic music. The ensemble, however, has proven that they have no stylistic limitations, and their programmes include anything performable by voices.

SOMM Recordings pays tribute to the remarkable flourishing of British Violin Sonatas in the 20th century with a collection of music for violin and piano by six key figures of the modern chamber music renaissance in Britain. Making her debut on SOMM, violinist Clare Howick’s championing of this repertoire prompted iClassical to declare “the record-buying public owe [her] a debt of gratitude”. She is accompanied by pianist Simon Callaghan. From the middle of the century, and commissioned for Yehudi Menuhin, William Walton’s Violin Sonata is unique in the composer’s oeuvre with its almost constant sense of nervous uncertainty. Composed the same year (1948), Kenneth Leighton’s youthful First Violin Sonata is the product, as Robert Matthew-Walker comments in his authoritative booklet notes, of “a deep-thinking musician of whom everything he was to write, from his earliest compositions onwards, is genuinely felt and unaffectedly original”. William Alwyn’s beautifully proportioned Sonatina (1933) receives only its second appearance on album here. Composed the following year, Alan Rawsthorne’s Pierrette: Valse Caprice is best remembered from its quotation in the composer’s soundtrack for the 1947 film Uncle Silas. The contrasted Elegy and Toccata from Lennox Berkeley’s 1951 Op.33 reveal a master craftsman in miniature, while three pieces by Gordon Jacob – Little Dancer (1959), Caprice (1969) and Elegy (1972) – all make their first appearances on album here. Somm gratefully acknowledges the support of the William Alwyn Foundation, the Lennox Berkeley Society, the Delius Trust, the Rawsthorne Trust and the RVW Trust in making this recording.