Classical Music

Classical Music

The premiere of Mozart’s Quintet for piano and winds must have been a shock and at the same time a delight for the audience of the 18th century. The immense richness of colors and sounds were entirely unusual. Mozart had been searching for new challenges and was rewarded. After the premier on April 1st, 1784 Mozart has written to his father: "I myself consider it to be the best thing I have written in my life." Mozart celebrated one of the greatest triumphs of his career. For the first time the near-orchestral rich sonorities, the masterful harmony and the continuing and vigorous dialogue of the oboe, clarinet, horn and bassoon in relation to the piano was heard. Only thirteen years later Beethoven used the same unusual combination of instruments. His quintet for piano and winds was also premiered in Vienna on April 6, 1797. Both artists chose to compose for an entire unique and by that date unknown instrumentation and each had his own musical approach. Under the group name "Die Freitagsakademie" Katharina Suske gathered some of the finest international artists: Edoardo Torbianelli, Katharina Suske, Pierre-André Taillard, Olivier Darbellay and Lyndon Watt. These five musicians, each with their own unique character, blend together and reciprocally influence each other to create a single flowing sound body and impresses with their entirely new, dynamic interpretation. The unusual instrumentation is recorded in an exceptional way using just one special microphone to capture the beauty of this unique sound experience, the high art of the Wiener Klassik.

Classical Music

Cassandra Wilson's stunning third album, now available on vinyl! On Blue Skies, Cassandra moves into the arena of jazz standards with fluid ease, never failing to put her own stamp on these classic tunes. 180-gram vinyl, analogue recording, analogue remastered, folie-cutting. CD release topped Billboard's Jazz Album Chart at #1 back in 1988!

Uri Caine is one of the few artists at home in jazz clubs, vaudevilles, classical concert halls, and at the opera. This new CD, subtitled the "Shortlist," presents highlights from 1992- 2015.

On this musical voyage, the point of departure is a series of short pieces written and played by Guy Klucevsek for Annie Proulx's novel Accordion Crimes. The adventure continues with Teodoro Anzellotti playing selections from Johann Sebastian Bach's Goldberg Variations, and beyond!

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

The Munich-based French pianist Jean-Pierre Collot presents the piano works of Jean Barraqué, one of the most important composers of Serialism. This is a journey of discovery through Jean Barraqué's piano works, deeper and deeper through quasi-archaeological layers that bring us closer to the arcana of creation. The Sonate pour piano (1950/1952), masterpiece and experiment at the same time, here recorded for the first time in the definitive recast version, demands of us that we break all boundaries, as far as our conception of tempo, dynamics or agogic is concerned, that we create and explore new imaginary spaces. The deeper we go back in time, the more mysterious and gloomy the early pieces (1947-1949). All of these works are premiere recordings. The prelude to the third act of Tristan [Richard Wagner] — like a ghostly and fragile motto [of the young Barraqué] — throws on the whole program its pale, nebulous light. The Munich-based French pianist Jean-Pierre Collot presents the piano works of Jean Barraqué, one of the most important composers of Serialism.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

This film by Joan Grossman and Paul Rosdy features music by John Zorn. In the years 1938041 nearly 20,000 European Jewish refugees fled to Shanghai, China, where most would spend almost a decade in exile.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Learning by doing: In the eighties Stefan Winter volunteered for a record company to learn autodidactically the profession as music producer. At the time a demo tape of the young Steve Coleman arrived, nobody showed any interest. During Stefan Winter's first stay in New York City (1984) he jumped at the opportunity and offered Steve Coleman a record deal. This was the hour of birth of the debut recording with the core musicians of the later named "M-Base Collective" and at the same time of the label JMT (Jazz Music Today). Right after the first record Winter started working with Greg Osby, Cassandra Wilson, Robin Eubanks, Gary Thomas, Gery Allen and many others like Kelvin Bell, Kevin Bruce Harris, Marvin "Smitty" Smith and Terri Lyne Carrington. It is historical certainty that these works were recorded mainly in the eighties, but as a listener one can hardly believe it. Each album offers a new inspiring approach to making music which is still characteristic today. Listen to the "M-Base" not to rest on tradition, but to see these artists experience as a sound basis for the future. This compilation is the second release in the Winter & Winter Jubilee Edition, celebrating the labels' 30th anniversary.

Classical Music

Classical Music

 

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Three brothers named Zapico -- Aarón, Pablo, and Daniel -- are part of the early music group Forma Antiqua (or, Antiqva); they appear here by themselves in a program of "Iberian-Italian" Baroque dance music, a genre whose influence stretched as far north as mid-Germany. The listener who samples this disc and wonders whether Baroque keyboard pieces ever actually had this much oomph can be assured that the recording falls purely into the not-even-speculative realm of using musical scores purely as a stimulus for further creative activity; keyboard music was something of a realm unto itself in the 17th century, and the booming guitar-and-theorbo arrangements heard here are purely the invention of the players. Indeed, they offer no justification other than that of wanting to play the music together. This said, the disc has the considerable virtue of reminding the listener that all of the patterns -- the fandangos, ciaccona, giga, folía, and so on heard here -- that made their way into Baroque music as ground basses were originally dances. The accompaniments devised by the Zapicos perhaps go beyond the intensity Baroque audiences would have recognized as appropriate (or perhaps they don't). But they're a great deal of fun, and they go together with the exciting group of releases that's defining the secular repertory exemplified by such composers as Santiago de Murcia, a repertory whose echoes have come down to the present day in both old and new worlds. Not "authentic," but if you don't tap your feet to a piece like Murcia's Folías gallegas (track 12), you'd better check for a pulse. - James Manheim (AllMusic.com)