This is a hybrid Super Audio CD playable on both regular and Super Audio CD players.

REVIEW:

There’s a very serious talent at work in this music by Stacy Garrop. Silver Dagger is a folk-song setting for piano trio, along similar lines to Vaughan Williams’ Five Variants of Dives and Lazarus, and it’s extremely beautiful and quite fetchingly composed for the three instruments. In Eleanor’s Words is a cycle of six songs drawn from the newspaper columns of Eleanor Roosevelt. The concept is a good one: Roosevelt’s prose often approaches poetry, and her unfailing intelligence makes for texts that are worth reading on their own, and for which Garrop has found a similarly conversational musical style that fits them perfectly. The music is attractive and approachable, but not facile. There’s a version for chamber orchestra that I would dearly love to hear, but it would be difficult to imagine a more affectingly sung performance than that by mezzo Buffy Baggott—and Kuang-Hao Huang accompanies beautifully.

Gaia is an ambitious string quartet in five movements lasting about 34 minutes...I loathed Garrop’s Second Quartet “Demons and Angels”, and this one strikes me as far more appealing and successful. The sonics are just great...this disc makes an excellent case for exploring more of Garrop’s music.

-- ClassicsToday (David Hurwitz)

Bernstein Conducts Berlioz

n Christian symbolism, the rose is closely associated with the Mystery of the Nativity, and therefore with both Jesus Christ and Mary. The idea of the perfect flower, springing forth from a thorny stem, has - like the Nativity itself - captured the imagination of poets and musicians throughout the ages and from all stations of life. With this original and wide-ranging Christmas collection, Grete Pedersen - the artistic director of the Norwegian Soloists' Choir - has created what might be compared to a rosary, combining 12th-century hymns by Hildegard of Bingen with a carol by the Danish 20th-century composer Per Nørgård, as well as traditional Christmas psalms, in many cases sung to Norwegian folk tunes following age-old usages. Grete Pedersen and the choir have reached a wide international audience through four previous discs on BIS, ranging from collections of Grieg, or of Brahms and Schubert, to the folk-inspired White Night and, most recently, Refractions: the unexpected combination of three 20th-century giants - Berg, Webern and Messiaen - with their Norwegian contemporary Fartein Valen. On the present disc, the team is once again joined by the singer Berit Opheim and the violinist Gjermund Larsen - both with a background in folk music - as well as by Rolf Lislevand, internationally acclaimed lutenist, and the highly respected jazz bassist Bjørn Kjellemyr.

"• A rich programs of Renaissance airs by Jehan Chardavoine, Clément Janequin, Pierre Certon, and more • ‘Chansonnettes’ were end-of-concert encore works played by Doulce Mémoire and Denis Raisin-Dadre • This celebratory disc salutes the 25th anniversary of the Doulce Mémoire"

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Already well known to opera audiences worldwide, Swedish soprano Camilla Tilling is also a dedicated and acclaimed recitalist, as noted by reactions in the Sunday Times and Gramophone, among other publications, to her two previous BIS releases with pianist Paul Rivinius that feature songs by Richard Strauss and Franz Schubert. This new, third BIS disc of songs by Edvard Grieg, Jean Sibelius and Wilhelm Stenhammar takes its title from Stenhammar’s I skogen (In the forest), with many of the selected songs either played out in or depicting natural settings, in a manner familiar to Nordic composers.

These orchestral songs by the English composer Michael Csanyi-Wills - best known for his film music - all deal with the subject of loss. In Three Sogns: Budapest, 1944 Csanyi-Wills uses documentation from his own family history to shadow the fat of Hungary's Jews under the Nazis. One of them, "The Last Letter", sets a text written by his great-grandmother before she disappeared. Mortality is an omnipresent theme in A.E. Houseman's Shropshire Lad poems: Csanyi-Wills sets six songs, three for baritone and three for tenor. Elegy for Our Time sets an anguished lament by Jessica d'Este, sparked by death of her granddaughter in a car crash. Csanyi-Wills responds to the stimulus of these dark texts with music that is hauntingly lyrical and elegiac.

The Handel Album is the Aulos Ensemble's fifth in a series of critically acclaimed releases for Centaur Records, which include a collection of Christmas music, as well as albums dedicated to Rameau, Telemann and the Bach family. Soprano Dominique Labelle, whose voice has been called "angelic," "silvery," and "vibrant", is noted for her probing explorations of the repertoire from the Baroque to new music. This selection of Handel's masterful operatic arias and other vocal excerpts is interspersed with individual movements from his instrumental Trio Sonata and Concerto masterpieces.

A complete edition of all Gaspare Spontini’s vocal chamber-music pieces currently known is presented here for the first time. These pieces were composed for all sorts of purposes and performed in the circles of private drawing rooms. This recording, which is the outcome of an extensive, meticulous work on the sources, includes the collections, the independent tunes and, in the appendixes, the modified or translated pieces, the drafts and sketches, and the original contemporary arrangements.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Berlioz Rottrerdam PO/Nezet-Seguin,Antonacci Symphonie fantastique; Cleopatre

Not much is known about the English composer John Sheppard. When he was born, and where he grew up, is lost to history but most scholars place his birth at somewhere between 1515 and 1520. This places him in one of the most turbulent periods in English church history, something that can be heard on this disc in the wide stylistic range he used in order to adapt to the quickly changing politics of the day. The sophisticated six part texture of Gaude, gaude, gaude Maria suggests the influence of Queen Mary who encouraged elaborate sacred composition. It is one of Sheppard’s most thrilling and ambitious works. On the other hand, Christ rising again reflects Thomas Cranmer’s insistence on musical simplicity but demonstrates the genius with which Sheppard explores the limits of expressive power with only the most restricted means. The works are performed by the Choir of St John’s College, Cambridge under the directorship of Andrew Nethsingha. One of the finest men and boys choirs in the world, it is known and loved by millions from its recordings, broadcasts, and concert tours. The choir has been a cornerstone of the great English choral tradition since the 1670s and is recognized for its distinctive, rich, and expressive sound.

Review:

This is a very nice disc: beautifully sung; a well-balanced recording in both stereo and a warmly inclusive surround sound, and with a rich selection of John Sheppard’s superb music. What on earth could there be to complain about?

Styles of choral singing differ, and long may this remain. The comparisons I’ve tended to admire most in this music have been of the purer, reduced-vibrato angelic type. This is all a matter of taste, and I can easily become used to the St John’s College sound in these works, though with plenty of vibrato in the singing the word ‘fruity’ constantly springs to mind. I’m not anti-vibrato as such, but these works have such a refinement of counterpoint and polyphony that I find it hard to come to terms with a technical approach which clouds such marvels.

All that said, this is a very fine program, and if you like the general choral sound then there are good musical experiences to be had. Simpler works such as the four-part In pace, in idipsum dormiam create nice moods, but there was no point in this album that my world stopped turning and I was left speechless with the wonder of it all - and I know this can all too easily happen to me with John Sheppard’s music.

– MusicWeb International (Dominy Clements)

American Originals is the latest release from the Cincinnati Pops conducted by John Morris Russell and features iconic American songs interpreted by a diverse array of acclaimed musical collaborators including Rosanne Cash, Dom Flemons, Over the Rhine, Joe Henry, Aoife O'Donovan and the Comet Bluegrass All-Stars. The first-ever Cincinnati Pops album to be recorded live in concert, American Originals breathes new life into the first chapter of the Great American Songbook and the music of Stephen Foster. The 94th Cincinnati Pops album includes inspiring new renditions of My Old Kentucky Home, O Susannah, Camptown Races, Aura Lee, Slumber My Darling, Hard Times, and Beautiful Dreamer, among other classic tunes. According to The Cincinnati Enquirer, The fresh arrangements and unique talents who performed them set each in a new light.

For almost two thousand years people around the world have been gathering to celebrate the Christmas season. These celebrations are as varied as their countries of origin but share at least two common threads, the birth of Jesus and the desire to celebrate this event in music. Carols such as Silent Night, O Holy Night or Ave Maria are sung throughout the world and need little introduction. Many of the tracks on this disc are less known but great Christmas carols.

The Swedish baritone Peter Mattei has made a formidable reputation for himself performing at the most prestigious opera houses in the world: the Metropolitan, Teatro alla Scala and Covent Garden, to mention but a few. He first came to the attention of an international audience when Peter Brook selected him as his Don Giovanni, for an Aix-en-Provence production which was later filmed. Something of a 'director's opera singer', Mattei has also worked with Ingmar Bergman, Michael Haneke and Patrice Chereau, and regularly astounds audiences with his exceptional acting skills, coupled as they are with a voice of rare beauty. In the recording studio he is, however, a more rarely seen guest. On this his first and long-awaited disc of arias, he revels in the rich opportunities offered by the baritone literature, performing a selection of his favourite arias and roles. Lovelorn young men and cynical libertines, friends faithful unto death and innocent victims of oppression - all of these are brought to life as one of today's finest operatic baritones displays his entire range with the eminent support of the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra and Lawrence Renes on the podium

Classical Music

Classical Music

The Billy Collins Suite comprises intimate chamber settings for eleven Collins poems, some sung, others narrated. (Cedille)

In spite of the fact that Sibelius’ chamber music is far less well-known than his orchestral works, it forms a large and important part of his production. In terms of numbers of discs it makes up a fourth of the complete recorded edition being brought out on BIS. Already released are the complete quartets and piano trios [BIS-CD-1903/05] and the works for violin and piano [BIS-CD-1915/17]; the present set focuses on his chamber music for other instrumental combinations and includes a number of world première recordings and previously unreleased material. A substantial chapter is the music for cello (solo and with piano accompaniment), much of which was written for Sibelius’ brother Christian. It is here performed by Torleif Thedéen, with the support of Folke Gräsbeck on the piano. There are also a number of duos and trios for strings, including the brief Vattendroppar (Water Drops) for violin and cello pizzicato, which is often claimed to be Sibelius’ earliest surviving composition, dated to around 1875. Another, more sizeable, rarity is the music to the play Ödlan (The Lizard), scored for string ensemble. Composed in 1909, half way between the Third and Fourth Symphonies, it was once described by Sibelius as ‘one of the most exquisite works that I have written’. This volume also includes Sibelius only work for viola and piano (‘Rondo in D minor’), as well as the world première recordings of two pieces for solo kantele, the traditional Finnish plucked-string instrument which appears in the Kalevala, the Finnish national epos that served as such an inspiration to Sibelius. Another group of works with a specifically Finnish background, are the pieces for ‘torviseitsikko’, a particular combination of seven brass instruments and percussion. These are here performed by members of the eminent German ensemble brasspartout. A varied programme then on this ninth instalment of the acclaimed Sibelius Edition, about which a reviewer in Fanfare has already predicted that it ‘will certainly be considered a landmark in the history of recording’.

Mohammed Fairouz has rapidly become one of the most highly regarded composers of his generation, receiving wide acclaim for works such as Native Informant and his Symphony No. 4 "In the Shadow of No Towers". Setting texts from ancient times to World War II, the songs on this new album represent a decade of writing for the human voice. Refugee Blues addresses powerful social issues while sensual celebrations of being human and alive are explored in After the Revels. The theme of loss is also compellingly expressed in the intense, distilled narrative of No Orpheus, a portrait of departed family members, and Edgar Allan Poe's last completed poem, the hauntingly mournful Annabel Lee.

Surging with epic emotions, Royal Mezzo showcases mezzo-soprano Jennifer Larmore in symphonic portraits of commanding characters from legend, literature, and mythology. (Cedille)