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Dedication - The Clarinet Chamber Music of Ruth Gipps / Tippett Quartet
SOMM Recordings · Oct 2021CD$20.99 -
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Beyond - Music by American & Icelandic Composers / Los Angeles Percussion Quartet
Sono Luminus · Jun 2017CD + Blu-Ray$23.99 -
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Four Compositions (Wesleyan) 2013 / Anthony Braxton, Roland Dahinden, Hildegard Kleeb
Animal Music · Apr 2024CD$64.99 -
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Aufschnaiter, Fischer, Reuter & Richter: Baroque Music in Prague / Klikar
Animal Music · May 2023CD$32.99
Mácha: Hymnus
Navona
CD
$16.99
Jul 13, 2018
On Hymnus, the world renowned Jitro Czech Girls Choir under the direction of Jiri Skopal once again delivers refined, dazzling interpretations of the music that is so much a part of Czech culture. The album, which is the Choir's third release on Navona Records, includes 24 selections that range from Moravian and Silesian folk songs on which the Choir interprets the subtle call and response between bucolic lovers, to a series of compositions inspired by Latin proverbs on which intricate, multidimensional vocals underscore the significance of a simple word or phrase. While the album's tracks are assembled under specific groupings - Silesian Yodel Songs, The Replies of Silesian Songs, Moravian Folk Songs, and Proverbia - this merely delineates the source material. The unifying impact of the Choir's exquisitely crafted vocals elevates this album far above what might otherwise be an ethnomusicological exercise. For the most part, the choir performs without any instrumental accompaniment, save for several Moravian folk songs, on which a solo piano provides an additional layer of intricacy, and for the album's closing track, Hymnus. Combining the stirring instrumentation of kettledrum and organ with the Choir's uplifting vocals, Hymnus translates the positive, humanistic vision of John Amos Comenius, the 17th century educator, philosopher and theologian, into what serves as a superb melodious conclusion of this impressive recording. The Jitro Czech Girls Choir is a complex institution with a membership of around 350 young singers ranging between five and 19 years of age. Since being founded 35 years ago, the Choir has been lauded internationally for it's tonal brilliance, superb intonation, and distinctive rich blend of sound and energetic vitality. It is considered as one of the best children's choirs anywhere in the world, receiving multiple awards and medals.
Kishino: Irisation
Wergo
CD
$18.99
Jun 06, 2014
This portrait CD provides insight into the sensitive and exciting sound aesthetics of the composer Malika Kishino. Nature and beauty constitute the main points of reference of her oeuvre. Japanese culture and it's aesthetics leave a mark on Kishino's music, yet it is futile to look for anything reminiscent of the traditional music of her home country. Nature, especially optical and visual phenomena or physical states, are an inspiration for the structure and character of her works which she herself describes as "sound organisms". "Rayons Crépusculaires", for example, refers to a radial light phenomenon that shows particularly in the spatial arrangement of this composition. Three groups of musicians stand facing loudspeakers which reverberate the sounds modified by live electronics back into the room. The work which was recorded specifically for this CD is a "complex acoustic event which not only sets the space in motion but also sharpens one's hearing with regard to special tonal qualities" (Michael Struck-Schloen). Meanwhile the currents of the water and it's changing states of matter are the starting points for "Sensitive Chaos". This examination becomes more or less audible in the form of dripping sounds which later turn into more flowing structures. Another topic is the menace to nature: Kishino dedicated the choral piece "Prayer / Inori" to the memory of the catastrophe of Fukushima.
FIRST OF EVERYTHING
DEUTSCHE GRAMMOPHON
CD
$16.60
Sep 12, 2025
Eunike Tanzil - "The First of Everything". Deutsche Grammophon proudly presents: Eunike Tanzil 'The First of Everything.' The LA-based Indonesian composer-pianist-producer's debut album reflects the versatility, sense of freedom and spirit of adventure that are all part of Tanzil's modern take on orchestral music. "There's a story behind each track, and all the tracks are based on personal experiences, specifically first experiences - the key moments in my life that shaped me into who I am today," - Eunike Tanzil.
United States Army Field Band Jazz Ambassadors: The Legacy o
Altissimo
CD
$18.99
Jun 26, 2012
This album is the second in a series of recordings honoring the lives and music of individuals who have made significant contributions to big band jazz and to music education. The Legacy of Hank Levy honors a man who made his life's work the composition and teaching of a specifically American musical genre, jazz. Levy's arrangements consistently employed unusual time signatures and harmonies. He served as an arranger for Stan Kenton and the Don Ellis Orchestra, as well as founder and long-time director of Towson University's Jazz Program. Honoring the memory and innumerable musical contributions of Hank Levy, this album is both inspiring and captivating.
Konstantin: Reverie / Verter, Lloyd Webber, Sun
Naxos
CD
$9.99
$19.99
Save 50%
Mar 08, 2019
This collection of recent works by Tamara Konstantin brings together short piano and chamber pieces, all of which share her inclination towards miniature forms, flowing melodies and unpretentious charm. Many of these are inspired by the beautiful countryside and coastline of Konstantin’s Dorset home, evoking an elegiac wistfulness peculiar to English pastoral music. Others reflect moods or emotions both universal and specific, such as the powerful Third Piano Sonata dedicated to the suffering experienced by the members of Konstantin’s family who were exiled to Siberia by Stalin, and the evocative and lyrical Love Ballad.
Dedication - The Clarinet Chamber Music of Ruth Gipps / Tippett Quartet
SOMM Recordings
CD
$20.99
Oct 01, 2021
| SOMM Recordings celebrates the centenary of the birth of Ruth Gipps with Dedication, featuring five premiere recordings of chamber works inspired by her clarinetist-husband, Robert Baker, most of which were recently broadcast on BBC Radio 3’s Composer of the Week. Based on a Scottish legend, the early The Kelpie of Corrievreckan (Op.5b) is an evocative miniature for clarinet and piano revelling in Gipps’ facility for locating a human dimension within a tragic fantasy; the Op.23 E-flat Rhapsody for clarinet and string quartet described by Robert Matthew- Walker in his informative booklet notes adroitly placing Gipps’ music within the wider context of her career and personal life, as “a fluent, masterfully eloquent composition”. The Op.51 Prelude for Bass Clarinet is a heartfelt soliloquy with a series of dance-like variations at its heart. Two substantial works include the Quintet for Oboe, Clarinet and String Trio, Op.16 – a completion exercise for Gipps’ degree course at Durham University boasting an imaginative intertwining of the individual voices, and the Cobbett Prize-winning Clarinet Sonata composed at a single sitting. “I heard it in my mind and wrote it down as fast as I could scribble”, Gipps later recalled. Making their debuts on SOMM, clarinettist Peter Cigleris, oboist Gareth Hulse and pianist Duncan Honeybourne are joined by the Tippett Quartet, whose coupling of music by William Alwyn and Doreen Carwithen (SOMMCD 0194) was admired by The Strad for its “radiant insight and affection... beguiling lustre and allure”. SOMM’s coupling of Gipps’ Piano Concerto with works by Dora Bright (SOMMCD 273) was universally acclaimed, International Piano declaring it “a treat for fans of English music... unmissable”, MusicWeb International haiing it as “simply outstanding... really impressive”, with BBC Music Magazine remarking that Gipps’ Concerto “seizes one immediately with her distinctive personality and voice”. |
Beyond - Music by American & Icelandic Composers / Los Angeles Percussion Quartet
Sono Luminus
CD + Blu-Ray
$23.99
Jun 16, 2017
There are more languages spoken in Los Angeles than in any other city in the world. It’s a transitive city. Most residents have come here to contribute to its cultural identity and have ended up calling it “home”. Los Angeles is a city where every industry, creative or otherwise, is fueled by the pursuit of personal creative dreaming. It’s clear then how the Los Angeles Percussion Quartet (LAPQ) created a community of composers and made them all local to the group’s music making and to Los Angeles itself, regardless of each composer’s city of origin.
Is it language that makes someone at home in a given place? If so, the compositional languages of Anna Thorvaldsdottir, Christopher Cerrone, Ellen Reid, Daníel Bjarnasson, and Andrew McIntosh appear as interwoven and complex as Los Angeles itself. Their music similarly courses with chiming repetition, spectral near-silence, and the wearing away of time on objects so barely touched that they appear, in moments, as fragile as paper. These composers from two drastically different continents are brought together by LAPQ, despite their differences in origin, under one banner: friendship. For years LAPQ has been known for its skill in both championing and cataloging works by West Coast composers, with a specific focus on Los Angeles. With Beyond they explore the deep knowing that comes from making work with old friends. And broadly, the project signals a move for the Los Angeles contemporary music scene, a scene burgeoning out with global significance, and overflowing with artists actively seeking to create community. Beyond is a remarkable epic in which space and time are stretched on and on, over and past the horizon.
Bjarnasson’s “Qui Tollis" spans an incredible arc, emerging from the contemplative space of the works around it, brimming with the bashes and tumbles of bass drums, and then seemingly too early, vanishes again into a lull and rhythmic groan. With “Fear-Release,” Reid takes us into a world of metallic voices, as if we’re listening to a rubbed piece of crystal from inside the gem itself. It’s rare that a piece of music seems to truly sonically shine, and Reid’s piece accomplishes this brilliance early and often. Thorvaldsdottir’s “Aura” is the wind, the sand in the wind, and the wind chime hanging from the wood on the old falling-apart porch all at once. It speaks multitudes, and miraculously all upon the quiet edge of audibility.
The expanse of McIntosh’s “I Hold the Lion’s Paw” is that of a twelve-hundred page novel, in which each page has less than a half dozen words. Its sprawl is scrolled out like a web in air, as the quartet communicates effortlessly with one another across a cavern of distance. In one moment they sit still in space, another they rattle endlessly like the earth; they arrive where we are, simply putting musical puzzle pieces together. With “Memory Palace,” Cerrone creates rooms of sound, each drenched in a subtle hue. In the rooms of this ever-expanding house we find ourselves drinking different air, buzzing with pop, hiss, and click, and lingering with a guitarist who could be inside the guitar itself.
REVIEW:
Beyond excels in every sphere: this well-chosen programme brims with fine music and impassioned musicianship, all presented in sound that will delight audiophiles, percussionistas and music lovers everywhere.
-- MusicWeb International
Popper: High School For Cello Playing, Op. 73 / Dmitry Yablonksky
Naxos
CD
$29.99
Jan 27, 2009
The Bohemian cellist and pedagogue David Popper (1843-1913) wrote prolifically and quite effectively for his instrument. His magnum opus, the High School of Cello Playing Op. 73, is a collection of 40 solo etudes that add up to a veritable bible of Romantic cello technique. Although the pieces are designed for students to overcome specific challenges contained in solo and orchestral repertoire, they are more inventive and melodically attractive than their didactic aims suggest. I'd go so far as to say that you can listen to the studies in large stretches, or even all 40 in a single sitting, without getting bored. Perhaps this is as much due to the cellist as the composer.
Dmitry Yablonsky commands the technique and taste to play the Popper etudes like music rather than mere exercises. Listen to his elegant, unflappable handling of No. 7's perpetual motion writing in all registers. Notice how easily he dispatches No. 13's cruelly exposed octaves and double notes. Also note the veiled beauty Yablonsky brings to No. 28's high-lying passagework, and the perfect poise with which he articulates No. 37's relentless mordents. These are but a few examples that attest to Yablonsky's mastery. Given that Martin Rummel's pioneering boxed set devoted to Popper's complete etudes is not easy to locate and is relatively expensive, Yablonsky and Naxos pretty much have the field to themselves. Highly recommended.
--Jed Distler, ClassicsToday.com
Dmitry Yablonsky commands the technique and taste to play the Popper etudes like music rather than mere exercises. Listen to his elegant, unflappable handling of No. 7's perpetual motion writing in all registers. Notice how easily he dispatches No. 13's cruelly exposed octaves and double notes. Also note the veiled beauty Yablonsky brings to No. 28's high-lying passagework, and the perfect poise with which he articulates No. 37's relentless mordents. These are but a few examples that attest to Yablonsky's mastery. Given that Martin Rummel's pioneering boxed set devoted to Popper's complete etudes is not easy to locate and is relatively expensive, Yablonsky and Naxos pretty much have the field to themselves. Highly recommended.
--Jed Distler, ClassicsToday.com
Escapades
SteepleChase
CD
$22.99
May 10, 2009
For pianist/leader Harold Danko, the trio with Formanek on bass and Hirshfield on drums has been an essential vehicle for his resonant expression for the past several years.
Thomas Conrad of JazzTimes comments on Danko trio’s release Times Remembered SCCD 31612, “For someone in the market for a jazz-piano recording, there are few safer investments than a Harold Danko album …. Every Danko recording I’ve ever heard has had clarity and depth and a specific reason to exist.”
Mahler: Symphony No. 5
SWR
CD
$9.99
Apr 12, 2019
This is a new installment in the new series "SWR Century Classics." The recording gives testimony of Norrington's specific "Stuttgart Sound" and contains one of the best-known symphonies by Gustav Mahler. This is a re-release of a SWR bestseller, and is published on the occasion of Sir Roger Norrington's 85th birthday. Sir Roger Norrington was born in Oxford, and comes from a musical University family. He was a talented boy soprano, studying the violin from the age of ten and singing from the age of seventeen. He read English Literature at Cambridge University, and spent several years as an amateur violinist, tenor singer, and conductor, before attending the Royal College of Music as a postgraduate student of conducting, studying with Sir Adrian Boult. Norrington's work on scores, orchestral sound and size, seating and playing style has had a growing effect on the perception of 18th- and 19th- century orchestral music. He is in great demand as a guest conductor for symphony orchestras worldwide, working regularly with orchestras in Berlin, Vienna, Leipzig, Salzburg, Amsterdam, Paris, New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles and London. He is Chief Conductor of the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra and of the Camerata Salzburg, and is closely associated with the Orchestra of the Age of the Enlightenment (which has taken over the work of the London Classical Players) and with the Philharmonia.
Stanley: Voluntaries, Op. 5, 6 & 7
Brilliant Classics
CD
$12.99
Nov 21, 2025
John Stanley was born in London on 17 January 1712. A precocious musician, by the age of nine he was playing the organ (probably as an occasional deputy) at All Hallows, Bread Street. When the titular organist there - the composer and harpsichordist William Babell, a former pupil of Handel - died on 23 September 1723, an eleven year-old Stanley was appointed in his place. At the age of 14 he was chosen as organist at St. Andrew's, Holborn and at the age of 17 became the youngest person ever to obtain the BMus degree from Oxford University. In 1734 he was appointed organist to the Society of the Inner Temple, a position he held until his death. As a musician whose primary responsibilities were liturgical, John Stanley was required to accompany the service music every Sunday, and also to improvise voluntaries at various points in the service. A voluntary was a piece improvised extemporaneously and, prior to the 19th century, in the Church of England there were two principal forms of voluntary. These were a First Voluntary - generally an introduction and a movement or two for solo stops such as the trumpet or cornet - placed between the psalms and the first lesson at Morning and Evening Prayer, and a Second Voluntary - generally an introduction and fugue - at the end of the service. John Stanley's primary responsibility in his sixty-three years as organist at these various churches, was to improvise a voluntary before the first lesson (comprising an introduction and an additional movement or two for the solo stops) and an introduction and fugue at the end of the service. Stanley's improvisations were reportedly so fine that on Sundays none other than Handel himself, who attended St. George's, Hanover Square, would sometimes leave church early and rush over to the Temple Church to hear Stanley's final voluntary. Most voluntaries were never written down as compositions, and very few voluntaries for organ were published in England before Stanley's Op.5 of 1748. But written-out voluntaries did serve two main purposes: first, they were often used for recital purposes, as for example when organists like Stanley played at the dedication of a new instrument; second, they were widely used as exercises for apprentices or organ students, or for church organists new to their roles. Some of the manuscript collections produced for this purpose have survived. One important collection of this kind is the so-called Southgate Manuscript, a collection of 64 voluntaries in the library of the Royal College of Organists in London. This seems to have been compiled around the year 1750 in order to instruct choristers of the Chapel Royal who were learning the organ. This manuscript contains several of the early organ works of John Stanley. - Recorded June 2024 in Rocca Massima, Italy - Booklet in English contains liner notes by Romeo Ciuffa, organ specification with stop list and a profile of the organist - John Stanley (1712-1786) was a prominent English composer, organist, and violinist of the 18th century. Blinded in an accident at the age of two, Stanley displayed prodigious musical talent from an early age. He studied under Maurice Greene and, by age 17, was appointed organist at All Hallows, Bread Street. He later held prestigious posts at the Temple Church and the Chapel Royal, where he succeeded William Boyce as Master of the King's Band of Musicians. - Among Stanley's most celebrated works are his three volumes of Organ Voluntaries, Op.5 through Op.7, published between 1748 and 1754. These voluntaries reflect both the elegance of the late Baroque style and a growing Classical influence. They were designed for performance during Anglican church services, typically as preludes, interludes, or postludes. The voluntaries are structured in multiple short movements and frequently feature contrasting textures, such as lyrical slow introductions followed by lively fugues or trumpet tunes. Stanley made imaginative use of the organ's stop combinations, often specifying solos for trumpet, cornet, or flute stops, adding variety and color. - Played by Pietro Delle Chiaie at the Inzoli-Bonizzi organ of the St Michael Archangel Church, Rocca Massima, Italy. He made a successful recording of the complete organ music by Carl Czerny for Brilliant Classics.
MILICA DJORDJEVIC
Wergo
CD
$18.99
Jun 09, 2017
Milica Djordjevic’s compositions are musical explorations, meticulous observations and dissections. Seven such investigations of sound are presented by the Serbian composer on her portrait album in the series EDITION ZEITGENÖSSISCHE MUSIK. Primarily, Djordjevic focuses on an extreme and exhaustive exploration of the musical material. In the booklet Barbara Eckle points out Djordjevic’s specific approach: "She develops a material component further and further in an increasingly large, loud and dense wave, distorting it, perverting it, multiplying it, squeezing out of it everything it has to give – until it implodes. The rupture is sudden and abrupt, as if the plug of an electronic appliance were ripped from a wall socket." Also essential for Djordjevic’s work is an interdisciplinary perspective, which is based on a diversified aesthetic socialisation, influencing her music in different ways. Each compositional process finally creates musical figures, which, at the same time, affect psyche and ratio. All pieces have been especially recorded at Deutschlandfunk in Cologne by internationally well-known interpreters such as Arditti Quartet, Ensemble Musikfabrik and Teodoro Anzellotti.
Summary, Vol. 2 - Miklós Perényi
TACET Musikproduktion
SACD
$26.99
Jul 01, 2022
There are always musical child prodigies. Faster, more powerful, more perfect than previously imaginable. But there are also "senior prodigies". They reveal not only structure and time earned wisdom but also an inner sense of greatness. At the same time they talk about themselves and their lives, where they come from or where they are going, on the basis of pieces that they have often carried around with them since youth. About their dreams, which are also those of youth. "What would you most like to play?" I asked 74-year-old Miklós Perényi when we were thinking together about the program for this recording. The result was an unusual recital, volume 2 of the TACET series "Summary".
Questions of Eternity
OUR Recordings
CD
$21.99
Jun 05, 2026
At first glance, the choice of composers for this recording seems like an odd match: one cultivated a harsh, expressive musical language, while the other was a proponent of introspective soundscapes. One piece ends in an explosion, while the other offers us meditative contemplation. We also have an apparent clash of nationalities: Prokofiev was Russian, (b. Sontsivka, Ukraine) Silvestrov is Ukrainian, and conductor Dmitry Matvienko is Belarusian. But through art and music, we can always meet in dialogue and mutual understanding. What may first seem like madness has a clear logic. In Dmitry Matvienko's view, there are strong links between the two composers. Quoting Valentin Silvestrov's belief that "only melody makes music eternal," Matvienko explains why he chose Quiet Music for this recording. Despite very different musical languages, both composers were exceptional melodists who regarded melody as the foundation of all music, regardless of genre or 20thcentury avant-garde trends. Matvienko also sees both works as shaped by their historical realities. Prokofiev's symphony reflects the devastation of the post-war era and foreshadows future catastrophe, while Silvestrov's Quiet Music, written in 2002, predates but resonates deeply with later conflicts. Prokofiev could not have imagined the tragedy that would unfold decades after his death, yet history reveals the cyclical nature of evil. His work on Eisenstein's Ivan the Terrible exposed a ruler's destructive paranoia - an allusion Stalin recognized. Today, Matvienko argues, history repeats itself in new forms. Against this, Silvestrov's Quiet Music offers consolation: a place of refuge open to anyone, beyond nationality or religion, where sorrow can briefly be set aside. It was very important to Dmitry Matvienko to include this piece in this recording: "Silvestrov said in one of his interviews" - "I am so tired of the noise of this world ",- "I understand that and feel it very deeply. More and more often I walk at night and listen to his music; not in headphones, but inside. And it gives me peace. I want this piece to be therapy and solace for our listeners as well."
Matteo D'Amico: Le creature di Ade
Stradivarius
CD
$11.99
May 16, 2025
... The works collected here, written for different orchestral settings, with or without voice, offer a certainly not exhaustive but solid and truthful image of the specificity of the figure of Matteo D'Amico on the contemporary compositional horizon: the ability and will to weld thought to musical matter, gesture to form, sound to sense. In his vast catalogue, it is always possible to find this trail, transmitted with firm persuasion and happy results. Like an identifying mark, an author's scratch, an opening passage frequently recurs in his works that opens the curtain, only to then perhaps stop, look around, listen to the voices of his fellow travellers, and resume the journey: thus, immediately, in Le creature di Ade (The Creatures of Hades), a 'concert ouverture' composed in 2004 and dedicated to Daniele Gatti, who was it's first conductor. The title alludes to The Creatures of Prometheus, Beethoven's work written for a choreography by Salvatore Viganò. The darkness of Hades, the opening up of it's abysses, the terror induced in those who cross it, a sense of fearful waiting that allows a more encouraging trace to filter through, the reemergence of the anguished expectation: the exemplary journey of instrumental theatre precedes the final twist, marked by a lively rhythmic charge, which in it's sudden conclusion leaves one gasping for breath, while in the body of a classically structured orchestra the colours of the saxophone and the pressing variety of the percussion set emerge... Sandro Cappelletto
TELL THE TRUTH
OA2
CD
$16.49
Feb 28, 2025
With his two acclaimed big band recordings, and quartet sessions with saxophonists Joel Frahm and Greg Osby, pianist/composer Ben Markley has been steadily building a significant discography since his 2008 OA2 debut. With his fellow artist's strengths in mind, Markley has always written specifically for the session, and "Tell the Truth" is no different. Composed to highlight the hard-swinging resumes of the rhythm section - with bassist Rodney Whitaker and drummer Kyle Swan - Markley pays tribute to the '60s Blue Note quintet sessions, but hands the usual trumpet role to guitarist Steve Kovalcheck, along with alto saxophonist Wil Swindler, running the front line. Deep grooves, sweet swing and dynamic interplay... This album is one of those sparkling, straight-ahead gems that can convert pop fans into jazz acolytes. - DOWNBEAT "Markley, his comping is exemplary, his solos as lyrical and logical as two of his role models, Cedar Walton and Bill Evans." All About Jazz
Honey from the Rock, Vol. 1 & 2
GIA
CD
$18.99
Nov 18, 2016
Honey from the Rock: Entrance and Communion Antiphons for the Church Year, includes 20 antiphons selected from the Missal that allow, by virtue of their texts, for broader application. Although Holland’s initial intent was to meet a specific need of the Black Catholic community, our hope is that these antiphon settings may be of use to the entire Catholic Church and the wider Christian community. The majority of the texts are taken from the Psalms. The settings vary in style and genre, including traditional and contemporary gospel, classical, praise & worship, reggae, jazz, R&B, and even a bit of funk. No matter your liturgical environment or faith tradition, we are sure you will find something in this collection that is suitable for your worshiping community.
David Moliner - Marimba
Accentus Music
CD
$27.99
Jul 11, 2025
With Marimba, David Moliner presents an extraordinary album that places this unique instrument and it's manifold colors and sounds at it's core. Moliner's masterful arrangements and two original works composed specifically for the instrument take listeners on a sonic journey through the centuries, combining both technical skill and creative expression. The album brings together works from various epochs and styles. Particularly notable is his arrangement of Johann Sebastian Bach's Cello Suites, which he transforms into new, polyphonic textures using his four Marimba mallets. Moliner successfully combines Bach's rhythmic pulse and musical complexity with the Marimba's unique tonal color. In addition to the Baroque works, the album also features pieces by Claude Debussy and Franz Schubert. Moliner brings a new dimension to Debussy's impressionistic Arabesques, allowing the Marimba to bloom in a delicate, almost pictorial soundscape. Schubert's romantic Impromptu, transcribed by Moliner for Marimba, unfolds in it's poetic beauty and gains expressive depth through the instrument's distinct timbre. Another highlight is the composition Jalak Suren by contemporary composer Alexander Liebermann, inspired by the bird songs of Indonesia. Moliner brings the subtle melodies and rhythmic structures of this music to life, allowing the Marimba to shine as a sensitive storyteller of a musical nature portrait. The album concludes with Moliner's own Marimba composition, making a powerful statement: the Marimba is not just an exotic instrument but a full-fledged member of the classical music scene, capable of interpreting the entire spectrum of the repertoire from Baroque to Modern. A must for lovers of sophisticated percussion and for all those who want to experience classical music in a new, captivating sonic dimension. Recorded at Kloster Lankwitz, Berlin October 2024
Schumacher: LUNA
Neue Meister
Vinyl
$26.99
Mar 25, 2022
Pascal Schumacher's new album LUNA is in complete contrast to his previous release, SOL. And it's not just the play with the contrasting album titles that already points to the different moods of brightness and darkness. Both releases also come from different creative viewpoints. While SOL held something of a spontaneous discovery as Schumacher embarked on his first solo endeavor with the vibraphone after years of playing with bands and ensembles, LUNA captures a more contemplative side of Schumacher's work, which again was more about composing for other musicians. Specifically for the Belgian post-classical ensemble Echo Collective, which gives the album it's many layers and textures. Despite the contrasts, SOL and LUNA don't become adversaries, quite the contrary. Their duality feels entirely complementary, the expression of natural musical evolution as day gently glides into the night.
The Fairytale Ballets
Opus Arte
DVD
$52.99
Nov 13, 2015
Designed to be the follow up to the best-selling 2012 'Ballets for Children' box set, Fairytale Ballets collects performances from the Paris Opera Ballet and Dutch National Ballet troupes of some of the most popular ballets in the repertory: Sleeping Beauty, Swan Lake, Cinderella and Coppélia. With a handsomely bound box and individual slipcases for each ballet featuring a specially-commissioned cover illustration from the artist that designs the covers for the top-selling Terry Pratchett fantasy novels. Intended to specifically appeal to the 10-16 age group, but all fans of these immortal ballets will find much to be compelled by with this budget priced box set.
Feldman, Babbitt: Clarinet Quintets / Mark Lieb, Et Al
Innova Recordings
CD
$16.99
Jan 26, 2010
FELDMAN Clarinet and String Quartet. BABBITT Clarinet Quintet • Mark Lieb (cl); Phoenix Ensemble • INNOVA 746 (62:35)
By reputation, such ideologically distinct composers would seem to be an awkward pairing as discmates—Morton Feldman’s abstract expressionist-influenced, intuitive, repetitively detailed formal design versus Milton Babbitt’s mathematically abstracted, reason-induced, labyrinthine methodology—and yet the individual virtues of each seem to emphasize and illuminate the dramatic character of the other. The contrast between these two works is both revealing and satisfying.
Feldman’s Clarinet and String Quartet (1983) is constructed around repeated, subtly altered, and juxtaposed melodic and textural patterns; the music’s progress is like a stationary view of a single shape (the combined colors and often divided attacks of the clarinet and strings) until it is replaced by a new shape, so there is continual forward motion, but not conventional rhythmic momentum. The effect is not passive, but intently active—the melodic outline expands and contracts, as natural as breathing—circumscribing an emotional voice that is muted, but nevertheless capable of suggesting moments of sadness, inquisitiveness, mystery, and fascination.
Though linked together seamlessly, the patterns of Feldman’s compositional design are on display continuously, so the structure is transparently audible. On the other hand, Babbitt’s Quintet for Clarinet and String Quartet (1996) is swept along on an animated elaboration of melody, and the internal complexity of its form is of no concern. Details drive the music forward—twisting clarinet contours, contrapuntal string maneuvers, an unexpected sequence of pizzicato, sudden dynamic displacements, impulsive bursts of energy. The quintet’s extended linear development is in some ways reminiscent of Babbitt’s teacher, Roger Sessions, and what Sessions derived from Schoenberg, but given added oomph by the verve and scintillation of Babbitt’s wit.
Clarinetist Mark Lieb and his cohorts do a brilliant job in capturing the specific character of such radically different pieces of music. The Babbitt, by the way, receives its premiere recording—one wonders why such an exhilarating piece was neglected for so long. Highly recommended.
FANFARE: Art Lange
Those familiar with Morton Feldman’s music will know what to expect from his Clarinet Quintet: austere minimalist textures, rigorous logical structuring, detached but sonorous consonant chords, repeating but continually set off-kilter by asymmetric time signatures. They might be more surprised by the fact that there is room on the CD for another work, and that the work in question is by Milton Babbitt, a composer at the maximalist end of the American new music spectrum.
In fact, the pairing works very well. The Feldman work is far from ambient and requires the same kind of focused attention that listeners would expect to pay to Babbitt. The Feldman is process music to a degree, yet the processes are regularly subjected to human intervention. Motifs are introduced by, for example, scoring a bar of 5/4 as an accumulating chord, one instrument starting the bar, the next entering on the second beat, and so on until the final note is a chord made up of the motif. It’s a neat way of marrying harmony and melody, and it is far from the only textural device in the work, but all the others are of a similar level of simplicity. The clarinet stands out from the strings although less than you might expect: more of a guiding voice through the textures than a true soloist. Mark Lieb stresses the simplicity of the line in his clarinet playing. His stamina and evenness of tone are remarkable assets here. The work is currently available on two other commercial recordings, one in the Feldman Edition on the Mode label (Mode 119) with clarinettist Carol Robinson, the other on Metier with Roger Heaton (MSV 92082). This recording has the edge over both, thanks to the performance and the sound. Much of the music is at a very low dynamic, and the precision of the recording allows each of the detached, attenuated sounds to appear with the utmost clarity, and from a crystalline silence. Similarly, the disciplined precision of the string quartet is fully attuned to Feldman’s stern aesthetic. The few articulations that he indicates are never exaggerated to the point of disturbing his uneasy, but ultimately unbroken, continuum.
Milton Babbitt’s Quintet for Clarinet and String Quartet is another extended single span of music: a paradoxical combination of expansive form and minutely detailed construction. But much about Milton Babbitt is paradoxical, not least the fact that his career at the cutting edge of serialist Modernism grew out of jazzy and folky roots. According to the liner-notes - and this was news to me - jazz and popular song have always been a part of the composer’s musical psyche. In his early days, he even wrote a Broadway musical entitled Fabulous Voyage. Less surprisingly, Broadway wasn’t interested. The Quintet dates from 1995-6, the far end of the composer’s career, but the jazzy rhythms on the clarinet are an important part of its musical identity. Alex Ross wrote of the work when he heard its premiere that it was ‘a delight to the senses, a fast flow of lovely chords and spry rhythms, a thing of sweetness and light.’ I’m not prepared to go quite that far, but the combination of lively rhythms and widely-spaced chordal textures gives the work a feeling of openness that is often absent from the composer’s more mathematical constructions. The counterpoint is very much in the serialist mould, with spaces in the texture appearing through the seemingly arbitrary and coincidental absences of notes in the individual parts.
If I were to describe the work as an indicator of the composer mellowing with age, it would be with the proviso that even Babbitt’s take on mellowness will seem violently aggressive to most listeners. But it is a rewarding listen, the composer’s ear for timbral and harmonic - or at least vertical - detail shines through in every bar. And there are surprises along the way, continually nudging the listener out of any sense of complacency at having fully digested a texture or contrapuntal construction. As with the Feldman, the formidable difficulties are expertly handled by the ensemble, which is fully attuned to Babbitt’s musical methods, and whose performance here is apparently endorsed by the composer. This is the first commercial recording of the work, and should serve as an excellent benchmark for future performers.
-- Gavin Dixon, MusicWeb International
Four Compositions (Wesleyan) 2013 / Anthony Braxton, Roland Dahinden, Hildegard Kleeb
Animal Music
CD
$64.99
Apr 19, 2024
In September 2023, PMP is proud to release Anthony Braxton's "Four Compositions (Wesleyan) 2013", a limited deluxe 4-CD box set documenting the one-time meeting of an all-star trio featuring the legendary saxophonist and composer alongside Roland Dahinden (trombone), and Hildegard Kleeb (piano). This is the first album of the new Czech label PMP. Art Lange describes the impetus for the session in the liner notes: The 4 CD set box Four Compositions (Wesleyan) 2013 is built on the latest evolutional stage of Anthony Braxton's lifelong conceptualization and personalization of notation called Falling River Music. Braxton's systematic approach balances methodology and mythology, utilizing a variety of graphic designs as symbolic and representational characterizations of his sound vision. The scores incorporate numerical and alphabetical equations, abstract diagrams, and sections of conventional notation, along with spontaneously conceived, painted gestures connected to a web-like pattern of shorthand. In this album, Braxton explores the concept of "aesthetic networking "by having three musicians play from different scores simultaneously, creating a unique blend of impressions. The collaborative efforts of Roland Dahinden (trombone) and Hildegard Kleeb (piano) bring an intimate awareness of Braxton's language types and transformational procedures, resulting in rotating voicings, morphing tonalities, and labyrinthine counterpoint. Braxton's characteristic reed colors and personal lyricism are also showcased, along with occasional electronic elements, to enhance the overall sonic experience.
Aufschnaiter, Fischer, Reuter & Richter: Baroque Music in Prague / Klikar
Animal Music
CD
$32.99
May 19, 2023
Recently discovered and to date unreleased recordings represent the last major project of Musica Antiqua Praha, which was during the fifteen years of its existence (1982–1997) the most eminent Czech early music ensemble focused above all on the performance of early and middle Baroque music. The album comprises compositions that were part of the archives of the Prague Order of the Knights of the Cross with the Red Star, recorded by Musica Antiqua in 1996 in a world premiere. The Order’s heritage includes more than three centuries of musical tradition, documented by a rarely preserved music archive. The album features music by four composers from the 17th and 18th century. Pavel Klikar, the founder and artistic director of Musica Antiqua Praha, is the major figure inextricably associated with the ensemble, whose inspirational leadership helped to create an important seedbed which brought forth a whole generation of early music performers. From among these recruited the founders and members of the new ensembles that originated in the Czech Republic during the 1990s, as well as number of foremost Czech vocalists, among them Anna Hlavenková, Irena Troupová, Magdalena Kožená and Michael Pospíšil. From the late 1980s, Musica Antiqua Praha was recognized as one of the top European ensembles specializing in historically-informed interpretation. It was recognized for its exceptionally broad repertoire and conceptual programmes, specific performance style and astonishing spiritual intensity. The ensemble was a regular guest at many prestigious festivals abroad (the UK, Belgium, Germany, France and Spain), where it met with great acclaim from audiences and critics alike. Musica Antiqua Praha released five albums during the 1990s. The release of this album thus symbolically reconfirms the lasting influence of this exceptional music ensemble that laid the basis of authentic interpretation of early music in modern Czechia.
