This release is Alarm Will Sound’s fifth full-length project with Cantaloupe Music, and precurses several performances throughout 2016. The six tracks on this album feature incidental variations on compositions by The Beatles, Charles Wuorinen, Edgard Varese, and more. Best described as postmodern classical music, this genre-bending ensemble doesn’t fail to entertain as they push the outer limits of the canon with this adventurous project. -----

REVIEWS:

The 23 members of Alarm Will Sound perform the provocative pieces playfully, inviting all sides of the modernism debate to lighten up and listen. Each work composed for the ensemble is easily digestible, running under seven minutes. Wolfgang Rihm’s Will Sound delivers in trickily spaced bursts, mostly centered around a sinewy saxophone line. The ensemble’s percussionists are in particularly fine form, rattling and skipping through unintuitive and complex rhythms.

– NPR

The comic portrait of screaming human faces on the album's cover poses a rhetorical question: Do we honestly still need to act scared by this modernist stuff? Over the course of their set, the Alarm Will Sound players and conductor Alan Pierson respond to this prompt by delivering pure modern-classical fun. The six pieces they’ve chosen speak different structural languages, though each one shares a desire to bring across a sense of wildness that is exuberant at heart.

– Pitchfork

The Croatian region of Dalmatia has many musical treasures that have long been overlooked. Resting on the boundary of Roman Catholic and Byzantine worlds, the music here features rare pieces recovered from Latin manuscripts, and polyphonic Glagolitic chants. Dialogos performs these works, conducted by Katarina Livljanic.

Unfortunately, the works of Johann Heinrich Rolle are somewhat obscure, and rarely recorded. This new release is the premiere recording of Rolle’s St. Matthew Passion. Composed in 1748, the orchestration is set to text of Martin Luther’s Gospel of St. Matthew translation. The work is performed here by Ensemble Triagonale.

Known for his outstanding orchestral works, Jon Leifs draws inspiration from the naturally occurring phenomena of his native Iceland. This disc contains all thirty-two of the composer’s solo songs. Tenor Finnur Bjarnason is joined by pianist Orn Magnusson for this album.

The compositions on this album are all set to texts by female Jewish poets. All of the poets featured in these works were either in the Holocaust, or fled just before the Holocaust to avoid Nazi oppression. These vocal works feature Nanette McGuiness.

Known across Europe as “The Saxon,” Johann Adolph Hasse was extraordinarily popular as an operatic composer. Written for private performance in aristocratic palaces, his chamber cantatas gained him fame among the most wealthy and powerful, and are featured on this new recording. Early- music ensemble Hof-Musici specializes in period instrumentation and performance of Baroque music.

Featuring songs by Schumann and Schubert, this new release creates an ethereal, dream-like program. Korean pianist William Younhas been called “a true poet” with “masterful technique.” Multi-award winning soprano Isabelle Catherine Vilmar joins Youn for these recordings.

This new release is the sixth volume in a series profiling the work of Augusta Read Thomas. Called “a true virtuoso composer” by The New Yorker, Augusta Read Thomas is a member of The American Academy of Arts and Letters and Academy of Arts and Sciences, and she has become one of the most recognized figures of American music. Performers on this album include the Parker Quartet, Third Coast Percussion, Spektral Quartet, violinist Nathan Giem, Aurora Orchestra, Nathan Cole, and Clair Booth.

Classical Music

This new release features music that paints an interesting picture of the musical life of Prague during the reign of Charles IV (1316-1378). During the reign of Charles IV, Prague blossomed into its beauty. The art, music, and architecture that it acquired during this time is evident, and the King was exceptionally supportive of the city’s cultural and spiritual life. The track list is divided into seven sections, each painting a picture of the music of Charles’ time through different lenses of the king’s day to day life: Charles and France, Charles and Relics, Charles and the University, Charles and Courtly Love, Charles and Slavic Liturgy, and Charles and the Worship of Saints. Performers on this album include the Schola Gregoriana Pragensis, soprano Hana Blazikova, and Jakub Kydlicek and Monika Reslerova on recorders.

Andrew Parrott and his Taverner Choir & Players turn to music of their namesake alongside works by his contemporaneous King Henry VIII, an exceptionally musical monarch, and two composers of the previous generation, William Cornysh and Hugh Ashton. With Taverner’s Western Wind mass as its corner-stone, this recording takes its lead from the unashamedly secular character of that work and ventures beyond the chapel door to explore the parallel world of courtly vernacular song and instrumental music.

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REVIEW:

Andrew Parrott’s past recordings of Taverner count among his finest achievements, and time has not dulled his affinity for the music of his ensemble’s namesake. For this recital, he turns his attention to the secular music of Taverner’s contemporaries, interspersed among the movements of the Renaissance composer's Western Wynde Mass.

From a discographic standpoint, the instrumental numbers are very valuable, and dispatched with real flair. Finally, the sound recording successively juggles a wide range of distributions, from harpsichord to choir, with no apparent discontinuity.

– Gramophone

Cantus coagulatus

The Alla Turca fashion made its way into Turkish operas after the final siege of Vienna and the Turkish defeat. Since the early 17th century dozens of arias, operas, and instrumental works have been composed in this style. This project, Carneval Oriental, is inspired by these cultures, celebrating carnivals as it was most likely held in the 16th and 17th centuries. Images of caftans and turbans, Turkish drinks, and hookahs are brought to mind. The Pera Ensemble and L’arte del mondo teams up on this recording to bring us a quality performance of Baroque music from Italy and France laced with oriental spice.

Hungarian composer and virtuoso Franz Liszt gained renown across Europe in the early 19th century for his unmatched piano skills. By 1940 he was considered by many critics to be the greatest pianist of all time. Liszt was also a diverse composer, and made many contributions to the musical world, most notably the invention of the symphonic poem. He was also one of the most significant representatives of the New German School. The lieder of Franz Liszt are some of his most beloved works. On this recording, American tenor Daniel Weeks performs these compositions with magnificent insight. Pianist Naomi Oliphant beautifully accompanies.

Audience Prize-winner at BBC Cardiff Singer of the World (2013), accomplished young English tenor Ben Johnson lends his dulcet tones to a programme featuring a bouquet of ballads from the British Isles. This song form enjoyed extraordinary popularity in private homes throughout the Victorian, Edwardian and Modern eras, inspiring generations of talented composers – men and women – to marry words and music in a delightful variety of styles.

Presenting the major singers of today and the stars of tomorrow, the Rosenblatt Recitals are London's only world-class season of opera recitals.

Featuring performances from Grammy-winning soprano Susan Narucki with New York's acclaimed Talea Ensemble, Poems of Sheer Nothingness presents world premiere recordings of vocal music by American composer Aaron Helgeson, introducing two new works that combine ancient poetry with music of the here and now. The first, "Poems of sheer nothingness," presents a song cycle commissioned by Narucki based on the poetry of early French troubadours and sung in their original Occitan, a beautiful yet almost forgotten romance language now revived in five intimate chamber settings for soprano, flute, clarinet, violin, cello and piano. The second, "Notes on a page (of Sappho)," offers a musical reincarnation for soprano and eleven instruments of poetic fragments by provocative and erotic Greek poet Sappho in an English translation by Canadian poet Anne Carson. Both works feature archaic song texts whose once-florid music is now lost, leaving Helgeson's surreal and evocative sonic imagination and Narucki's subtly expressive voice to fill in the gaps made by the decay of time and memory. The result is a collection of vocal music that simultaneously once was, and could be again.

Here, the polyphonic segments of the selected Magnificat compositions are based not on monophonic models but on pre-existent compositions. Accordingly, here we have to do with parody works in which a procedure widespread in Masses is applied to the Magnificat. Forty of Lasso’s 101 Magnificat compositions are to be assigned to this type. These imitation Magnificats in no way involve a simple re-textualization of pre-existent works. At the beginning Lasso mostly rather precisely draws on his particular model, but then he quickly departs from it. In the Magnificat on Rore’s Da le belle contrade the beginning corresponds to the original, but soon thereafter it departs from it the textual passage in Deo salutari« is completely freely set. This procedure thus is somewhat similar to collage technique: the possibilities range from the use of whole passages to the re-layering of blocks, paraphrasing, quotations of individual voices, free continuation, and so on. The result may safely be termed a new creation on the basis of a pre-existent work. The sound developed by the Singphoniker may be described as cathedral and no less directly immediate. The great fullness of sound displayed by this six-man vocal ensemble never fails to amaze the listener« (FonoForum 2/13).

First Hand Records presents violinist Sasha Rozhdestvensky in the world premiere commercial recording of Shostakovich's unfinished Violin Sonata. This recording includes an extra 28 bars of a development section found in Shostakovich's original manuscript that does not appear in the published score, and is completed by an eleven-bar coda written by conductor Gennady Rozhdestvensky. The work is coupled with the Violin Sonata Op. 43. The program also contains world premiere commercial recordings of Shostakovich's Andantino from the String Quartet No.4, his piano duet arrangement of Stravinsky's Symphony of Psalms and his chamber transcription of Gaetano Braga's La Serenata.

A grand collection of the most popular operetta arias featuring the best of opera singers.

Dmitri Hvorostovsky's fourth release on Ondine features a program of rarely recorded sonnets by Dmitri Shostakovich and Franz Liszt. Hvorostovsky is accompanied by his longtime duo partner, the Estonian pianist Ivari Ilja. Shostakovich's sonnets, considered one of the achievements of contemporary Russian vocal music, were composed as his health worsened and are filled with ruminations on mortality. Liszt's sonnets are based on love poems by the Italian Renaissance writer Petrarch. Both Hvorostovsky and Ilja brin great empathy to these compositions, matching the contemplative nature of both with quietly powerful and confident performances.

REVIEW:

Hvorostovsky offers searching readings of Shostakovich's rugged, jagged songs which are full of resignation and bittersweet regret, of loss and separation. There are few things finer than Hvorostovsky in full flight and Liszt’s Petrarch Sonnets allow him the chance to open up the Italianate warmth in his baritone, with impassioned accounts, especially of Sonnet 47.

– Gramophone

The discography of trio of Guillaume de Chassy, Arnault Cuisinier and Thomas Savy treads a path that skirts and blends the edges of jazz improvisation and classical repertoire. With their second release, "Bridges" adds baritone opera star Laurent Naouri in an intriguing collection comprised of Hanns Eisler's Hollywood Songbook, composed in 1943 with texts by his Los Angeles companion-in-exile, Bertolt Brecht with songs filled with nostalgia and suggested a Hollywood far outside the limelight shot through with an expatriate's sorrow. Completing the collection are bold improvisations based on de Chassy's transcriptions of Sergei Prokofiev pieces with added texts by Russian poets including Pushkin, Lermontov, Tsvetaeva among others. Recorded with pristine results in the 13th century Noirlac Abbey.

Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra celebrates the genius of J.S. Bach with Best of German Baroque: J.S. Bach. This compilation includes tracks newly recorded in 2015, as well as music from the genre-defying, multi-media concert programs The Galileo Project and House of Dreams, recorded for Tafelmusik Media in 2009 and 2012. The album features instrumental versions of Sheep May Safely Graze and How Brightly Shines the Morning Star specially arranged by Alison Mackay. Also featured is Brandenburg Concerto no. 3 in G Major, and movements from the Sonata for 2 violins in G Major (after BWV 1039), and from the Concerto for 2 violins in D Minor with soloists Jeanne Lamon and Aisslinn Nosky. Best of German Baroque: J.S. Bach showcases the Tafelmusik Chamber Choir and soloists Ann Monoyios, soprano, and Colin Ainsworth, tenor, in selections from Bach's Gloria in excelsis Deo, BWV 191, originally released on CBC Records in 2007 in celebration of the Tafelmusik Chamber Choir's 25th anniversary season. Choir director Ivars Taurins helps the ensemble capture both with energetic thrusts and tight ensemble, while soloists Ann Monoyios and Colin Ainsworth are in sync in the duet on Gloria patri. - Gramophone Magazine

Judith Clurman conducts her acclaimed chorus, Essential Voices USA, in Holiday Harmonies: Sounds of Christmas, the ensemble’s third recording for Sono Luminus. This holiday disc includes premiere recordings of new vibrant arrangements of seasonal favorites and new works that were written for the disc by some of America’s finest composers. Mezzo Soprano Jamie Barton, Soprano Maureen McKay, Pianist Tedd Firth, and Harpist Stacey Shames are featured performers. Traditional repertoire includes: “Angels We Have Heard on High” (arr. David Chase), “O Holy Night” (arr. Ryan Nowlin), “Silent Night” (arr. Tedd Firth and Judith Clurman), “The Virgin’s Slumber Song” (Max Reger), and “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” (adaptation Judith Clurman). New works include: “Whispered and Revealed” (Nico Muhly), “Love Came Down” (Jennifer Higdon) and “Merry Christmas Wishing Well” (Gene and Lorraine Gilroy, arr. Michael Gilbertson).

The reputation of San Giovanni Battista, by far Alessandro Stradellas best-known and most recorded work by, has so far overshadowed the rest of his surviving oratorio output, amounting to a total of six works. Unlike the most representative masterwork, San Giovanni Crisostomo here released for the first time was conceived for more intimate resources and yet perfectly expresses the modernity of the oratorio genre as it appeared in the second half of the 17th century. Sacred and moral themes are combined with political, social, and sometimes erotic ones, and the subject, libretto, and music interact on multiple levels with surprising boldness and freedom.