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ALL LIFE LONG

IDEOLOGIC ORGAN

$15.70 Feb 09, 2024

Kali Malone's anticipated new album "All Life Long" is a collection of music for pipe organ, choir, and brass quintet composed by Kali Malone, 2020 - 2023. Choral music performed by Macadam Ensemble and conducted by Etienne Ferschaud at Chapelle Notre-Dame-de-L'Immaculee-Conception in Nantes. Brass quintet music performed by Anima Brass at The Bunker Studio in New York City. Organ music performed by Kali Malone and Stephen O'Malley on the historical meantone tempered pipe organs at Eglise Saint-Francois in Lausanne, Orgelpark in Amsterdam, and Malmo Konstmuseum in Sweden. Kali Malone composes with a rare clarity of vision. Her music is patient and focused, built on a foundation of evolving harmonic cycles that draw out latent emotional resonances. Time is a crucial factor: letting go of expectations of duration and breadth offers a chance to find a space of reflection and contemplation. In her hands, experimental reinterpretations of centuries-old polyphonic compositional methods become portals to new ways of perceiving sound, structure, and introspection. Though awe-inspiring in scope, the most remarkable thing about Malone's music is the intimacy stirred by the close listening it encourages. Malone's new album All Life Long, created between 2020 - 2023, presents her first compositions for organ since 2019's breakthrough album The Sacrificial Code alongside interrelated pieces for voice and brass performed by Macadam Ensemble and Anima Brass. Over the course of twelve pieces, harmonic themes and patterns recur, presented in altered forms and for varied instrumentation. They emerge and reemerge like echoes of their former selves, making the familiar uncanny. Propelled by lungs and breath rather than bellows and oscillators, Malone's compositions for choir and brass take on expressive qualities that complicate the austerity that has defined her work, introducing lyricism and the beauty of human fallibility into music that has been driven by mechanical processes. At the same time, the works for organ, performed by Malone with additional accompaniment by Stephen O'Malley on four different organs dating from the 15th to 17th centuries, underscore the mighty, spectral power that those rigorous operations can achieve. All Life Long simmers in an ever-shifting tension between repetition and variation. The pieces for brass, organ, and voice are alternated asymmetrically, providing nearly continuous timbral fluctuation across it's 78-minute runtime even as thematic material reiterates. Each composition's internal framework of fractal pattern permutations has the paradoxical effect of creating anticipated keystone moments of dramatic reverie and lulling the listener into believing in an illusory endlessness. On an even more granular level, the historical meantone tuning systems of each organ used, and the variable intonation of brass and voice, provide further points of emotional excavation within the harmony. The titular composition "All Life Long" appears twice on the album, first as an extended canon for organ and again in the final quarter, compactly arranged for voice. In the latter, Malone pairs the music with "The Crying Water" by Arthur Symons, a poem steeped in language of mourning and eternity. For organ, "All Life Long" moves with a patient stateliness, the drama concentrated in moments when shifting tonalities generate and release dissonance and ecstasy. For voice, each word is saturated with feeling, the singers swooping gracefully downward to capture the melancholy of the narrator's relationship to the timeless tears of the sea. "Passage Through The Spheres," the album's opening piece, contains lyrics in Italian pulled from Giorgio Agamban's essay In Praise of Profanation. In it, Agamban defines profanation as, in part, the act of bringing back to communal, secular use that which has been segregated to the realm of the sacred, a process Malone enacts each time she performs on church organs. This is not music of praise, or of spiritual revelation, but it is an artistic enactment of translating the indescribable. It carries the gravity of liturgical chant, and it's fixation on the infinite, but draws it's weight from the earthly realm of human experience. A music that draws the listener into the present moment where they can discover themselves within the interwoven musical patterns that can come to resemble the passage of days, weeks, years, a lifetime.

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ALL LIFE LONG
IDEOLOGIC ORGAN Feb 2024
CD
$15.70

Sing, Ye Heavens - Hymns For All Times / Cambridge Singers

Collegium Records

$18.99 Aug 29, 2000

This recording arguably contains the best representation of the Anglican hymn tradition that's possible to include on one 76-minute CD. Yes, there are hundreds of other candidates--a couple of my favorites are "missing"--but for anyone who knows and loves this vast and varied repertoire that's carried congregations and individual souls through centuries of life's trials and triumphs, prayers and celebrations, private moments and public sharing, these 21 selections will please the ear and stir countless emotions. The list is too long to mention all the hymns here, but among them are "O God, our help in ages past", "The King of love my Shepherd is", "When I survey the wondrous Cross", "A mighty fortress is our God", "Christ the Lord is risen today", "Be thou my vision", "Morning has broken", "Amazing grace", "Christ is made the sure Foundation", and my all-time favorite, "Love Divine, all loves excelling". A pleasant surprise is a hymn with words and music by John Rutter himself. Titled "Eternal God", it was composed in 1999 "with the aim of augmenting the meager stock of hymns that make mention of music . . . as gifts of God." It's a beauty, and it should easily find a home in the standard repertoire. In familiar Rutter programming fashion, the hymns are grouped in categories, such as "Hymns from the Psalms", "Invocations", "Passiontide and Easter", "Folk Hymns", and "Evening Hymns". There are several chants--"Pange lingua", "Veni Creator Spiritus", and "Let all mortal flesh keep silence"--and the arrangements by Rutter are imaginative and appropriate to each hymn's message and musical character. Some are a cappella, some use harp, others are accompanied by brass and/or organ, timpani, and percussion. Rutter's acclaimed Cambridge Singers are in top form and the acoustics of the Church of St. Alban the Martyr, Holborn, are generously responsive. Sing ye heavens, indeed. This is heavenly singing--and heavenly music. --David Vernier, ClassicsToday.com

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Sing, Ye Heavens - Hymns For All Times / Cambridge Singers
Collegium Records Aug 2000
CD
$18.99

BACH: GOLDBERG VARIATIONS

ERATO

$17.49 Jan 14, 2022

David Fray adds a landmark of the solo keyboard repertoire to his Bach discography: the Goldberg Variations. "The Goldberg Variations are a real test," he says. "They are the work of a lifetime, perhaps a work about life itself... a kind of rite of passage, a journey. Every element of human life is in them... When you play the theme again after the 30 variations, in it's original purity, it is as if you're at the end of your life, looking back over everything that has happened in the last hour-and-a-half. Few works give such a sense of eternity".

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BACH: GOLDBERG VARIATIONS
ERATO Jan 2022
CD
$17.49

Bridges To Infinity - Works by Enjott Schneider

Solo Musica

$20.99 Apr 18, 2025

The view into "infinity" gives freedom! Man lives in his narrow temporal space and, with his mind focussed only on the supposedly 'real' sensory world, grasps only the outside of his being: he loses himself in the multiplicity of things. A feeling for the cosmic interconnectedness of all beings has been lost. In the prison of materialism, man cannot free himself from such polarity - that is why he is ruled by strife, war, egoism, lust for power and possessiveness. The three musical works on this CD offer a glimpse into the liberating infinity beyond things: In THE BIRDS, the world of birds is evoked - even according to principles of mystical alchemy - which are evolutionarily related to dinosaurs and have always been associated with deities, divination and boundless celestial freedom. In FATAL HARMONIES, the deadly harmonies of the Renaissance composer Carlo Gesualdo, the exaggerated disruption of a contradictory existence is presented, death and negative energies are diametrically opposed to bold genius - extreme light begets extreme shadow in polarity. THE BELLS traces the archetype of bells, whose sound has been waking people up for thousands of years, leading them to transcendence and infinity. With the end of material thinking, of earthly persistence in polarity, judgement and comparison, PEACE could come - because in the face of eternity and infinity, good-evil or mine-his have lost all meaning. This is why the theme of 'peace' takes centre stage twice on this CD - in the concluding 'Dona nobis Pacem' and in the middle movement 'The Swan - The White' of the violin concerto, because this is based on the peace hymn 'El Can't des Ocells' (Song of the Birds) by the Catalan cellist and humanist Pablo Casal, which he played as an encore to every concert throughout his life.

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Bridges To Infinity - Works by Enjott Schneider
Solo Musica Apr 2025
CD
$20.99

Donizetti: Pia De' Tolomei / Arrivabeni, Ciofi, Et Al

Dynamic

DVD

$36.99 Jan 01, 2011

All Regions | NTSC | Dolby Digital 5.1, DTS, PCM Stereo 2.0 | Colour | 16:9 | 137 min.

In recent years not only music festivals but also important opera theatres have turned their attention towards the neglected masterpieces of the lyrical repertoire. Thus also Venice’s Teatro La Fenice, in a commendable effort, staged this Pia de’ Tolomei by Donizetti, with some of the best singers available today for this type of repertoire. Initial response to this opera, which was performed for the first time in 1837, was ambiguous, so much so that Donizetti re-worked it as many as three times. The version here recorded is that of the critical edition recently published by Ricordi, with the tragic finale originally conceived by the composer. The listener will undoubtedly wonder, once more, at Donizetti’s wealth of melodic inspiration, especially when it comes to the character of Pia, wonderfully interpreted, here, by Patrizia Ciofi. Subtitles in 7 languages.

First DVD recording
First recording of the new critical edition

R E V I E W:

A work far better than its reputation, an attractive production, splendid singing and acting.

Donizetti composed Pia de’ Tolomei during the summer and autumn of 1836 in Naples, where he was living at the time. In December he set out for Venice, where the premiere was planned for February the next year at the Teatro La Fenice He travelled via Livorno and Genoa but when he arrived in Genoa he was met by the news that the theatre had been destroyed by fire on the night of 12/13 December. He realized that there was a great risk that the premiere would be jeopardized. However the production was moved to Teatro Apollo and the premiere took place on 18 February 1837 as planned. Fanny Persiani, who had been the first Lucia di Lammermoor a couple of years earlier, took the title role. The opera was not an immediate success and Donizetti reworked it twice. The second time was for Naples in 1838, where the censors enforced important changes and a happy ending. The present production is based on the critical edition published by Ricordi, where the original tragic finale is restored.

History often repeats itself and on 29 January 1996 Teatro La Fenice was again destroyed by fire. After seven years of intense reconstruction work a Phoenix arose from the ashes. Its inauguration took place on 14 December 2003, almost to the day 167 years after that first disaster. When Pia de’ Tolomei was scheduled less than 1½ years later the performances were carried through without mishap and the result can be seen and heard on this wholly attractive set of DVDs.

“Why is it attractive? I’ve read that this is one the worst of Donizetti’s operas.” I can hear more than one jaded opera-freak’s distrustful grumble. Yes, I have read that too and I wasn’t all that hopeful when I started viewing. Things began badly by mistake I started playing the second disc first and ended up hopelessly at sea. “What has happened before and why don’t we know that?” was my reaction. I shouldn’t blame Dynamic but since the disc I put in my player was in its usual place on the right-hand side of the opened box and to the left was the booklet, I didn’t even notice the admittedly very large 2 on the label. Unfortunately disc 1 was obscured by the booklet. However, when starting from the beginning, I found the plot and layout fully comprehensible – which is not always the case with these more obscure operatic byways. The origin of the story is to be found in a few lines in Dante’s Divina Commedia and according to some scholars they refer to events in the poet’s own time, taking place in 1297. A poem on the subject had been published in 1822 and in April 1836 a play by Giacinto Bianco was staged in Naples. Donizetti must have known it and been inspired by it. His librettist Salvadore Cammarano was no mean author – no one can deny the dramatic qualities of Lucia di Lammermoor. This drama unfolds with few digressions from the main story in what is certainly a clear-cut libretto.

The plot goes along these lines: Ghino is in love with Pia but she is married to Nello, his cousin, and turns him down. In revenge he informs Nello that Pia is going to have a secret meeting with a lover. Her visitor is however her brother Rodrigo, who has just escaped from captivity. Rodrigo manages to escape Nello’s guards but Pia refuses to tell her husband who the visitor was and is condemned to imprisonment for life in his castle. Ghino visits her there and promises to set her free if she becomes his. She tells him who the visitor was and Ghino decides to tell Nello the truth. On his way he is attacked and mortally wounded. He manages to tell Nello about Pia’s innocence and Nello rushes to the castle to save her, since he has ordered Ubaldo to poison her. He arrives too late but before she dies Pia reconciles her brother to her husband. OK, this may not be a masterpiece of a story or a libretto but there are standard works that are not one iota better.

Secondly the music is fully worthy of the drama. Rarely in Donizetti’s operas is everything perfect. This was his 61st opera in twenty years – if we include often far-reaching revisions of some works. There was little time for him to go back and tidy up details. In most of his works he tends to lapse into clichés. That said, it is remarkable how often he avoids the temptation; how frequently he finds new expressions, new structures. In Pia de’ Tolomei he has long abandoned the recitative-aria-recitative pattern and builds long, continuous scenes – not seamless as later Verdi but still pointing forward to his brilliant successor. He is stuck in the aria-cabaletta pattern, rather along the same lines as middle period Verdi. In addition he far too often builds the cabalettas and other numbers on the almost mechanical rum-ti-tum rhythm with which we are also well acquainted from early and middle Verdi. But it really doesn’t matter as long as it is captivating – and very often with Donizetti it is. The opening chorus of act 2 – the first thing I heard in my reverse-order listening – is one stirring example. Rodrigo, a trouser role, has a rousing cabaletta in the dungeon scene in act 1 and in the same act there is a fine cabaletta duet for tenor and baritone that should be a splendid recital item. More original are Pia’s big solos which make her a close relative to the likewise ill-fated Lucia di Lammermoor. Technically this role requires the same amount of florid singing and sensitive pianissimo singing and it should be an attractive role for any good lyric-dramatic soprano. The leading tenor also has a couple of vocally and dramatically attractive arias. Then there is a beautiful duet for Pia and her brother Rodrigo – for soprano and mezzo-soprano – accompanied by plucked strings.

Thirdly the production is visually pleasing. The sets are of the modern-minimalist kind, with strict geometrical constructions and evocative lighting. Sometimes screens with texts are inserted. The costumes are timelessly-historical, if you can accept the contradiction in terms. The soldiers’ armoury could be anything from late 13th century to the Thirty Years’ War while Pia’s nightdress could be from the latest issue of Vogue. The grouping of the soldiers in the mass-scenes is also decorative though hardly based on dramatic necessity.

Fourthly the singing and acting of the principals is uniformly at the highest level. It has been a long time since I saw a DVD production with such high quality singing even from the comprimarios. Patrizia Ciofi’s Pia is ravishingly sung, deeply felt and convincingly acted. She seems in a state of mental disturbance from the very outset - an innocent victim. Technically speaking she is brilliant with fluent coloratura and the gift of delicate embellishments. Dario Schmunck is a lyrical and ardent Ghino – a singer I eagerly look forward to hearing again. His acting may be rather reticent but is still efficient. Andrew Schroeder is a powerful and dramatic Nello and sings with glowing tone. Laura Polverelli’s Rodrigo is also a character not to be taken lightly. In the smaller parts Carlo Cigni, sporting a magnificent basso cantante, is surely predestined for a grand career. The chorus have a lot to do, especially the male soldiery. They are vivid and powerful but not always the most homogenous of ensembles. The orchestra play well and Paolo Arrivabeni is obviously deeply inspired by this long neglected score.

Is it a forgotten masterpiece? Maybe not but it is far better than some works regularly performed and should not be returned to the archives for the eternal sleep. If it is, the Teatro La Fenice forces have seen to it that it will not be totally forgotten and opera lovers with a taste for the unusual should hasten to acquire this set. Technically this set is fully worthy of the occasion. There is a good booklet and subtitles are available in seven languages.

A work that is far better than its reputation, in an attractive production with splendid singing and acting. Should be snapped up by all opera lovers with a feeling for the unusual.

-- Göran Forsling, MusicWeb International

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Donizetti: Pia De' Tolomei / Arrivabeni, Ciofi, Et Al
Dynamic Jan 2011
DVD
$36.99

Bock liest Bruckner Iil

Gramola Records

$24.99 Jun 20, 2025

Following the first in the Bock reads Bruckner series, which has already been released on CD and was dedicated to the composer's self-image and the Upper Austrian period of his life, and the second evening, which has also already been released, which showed the eternal bachelor as a suitor and shed light on his relationship with the 'fair sex', this is now the third recording of a total of five readings with music. Based on letters and diary entries, this time with distributed roles (Wolfgang Bock, Thomas Thieme), it deals with Anton Bruckner's almost unbridled admiration for Richard Wagner, which - of course - was only met by the latter to a limited extent, the encounters between the two composers, who were so fundamentally different, and Bruckner's regular 'pilgrimages' to Bayreuth. Musically, a little-known aspect of Wagner's oeuvre comes into focus: selected songs and piano pieces make it possible to get to know the great music dramatist as a creator of small-scale chamber music works (Daniel Linton-France, piano; Elisabeth Wimmer, soprano).

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Bock liest Bruckner Iil
Gramola Records Jun 2025
CD
$24.99

LE POETE DU PIANO

ERATO

$18.99 Nov 06, 2020

Recording is as necessary to me as the air I breathe. One withdraws from the world for a brief while - an eternity -, examines a piece of music and is cross-examined by it in turn, then gives evidence before the microphones. It's as if I've played out my life through my recordings, each one representing a significant, if not seminal, stage in my development as an artist. Thirty years of recording. A discography built from stones of many different, and sometimes clashing, colours, but a discography with a broad and solid structure, a kind of self-portrait. If a good half of this set is taken from Alexandre Tharaud's published discography, the rest is made up by hitherto unreleased music. Some did not make it on to the album they were originally intended for, while others were recorded for fun at studio sessions over the years. When you're recording," the pianist explains, "you're always looking for the perfect take, where everything flows perfectly. But the pressure of the microphone doesn't help... So sometimes, recording a piece unplanned allows you to rediscover that spontaneity".

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LE POETE DU PIANO
ERATO Nov 2020
CD
$18.99

DE PROFUNDIS

ORCHID CLASSICS

$16.50 Mar 27, 2026

At the heart of this new album from renowned British pianist Charles Owen stand two towering masterpieces: Liszt's Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen and Franck's Prelude, Choral et Fugue - works that chart spiritual journeys through grief, doubt and despair toward radiant, redemptive hope. Each embodies the essence of de Profundis - a rising from the depths, a cry of the soul yearning for transcendence. Liszt and Franck, so different in temperament yet united by deep mutual admiration and shared faith, drew profound inspiration from their Catholic spirituality. Where Liszt's unbridled Romanticism blazes with drama and color, Franck's introspection glows with quiet devotion; both speak to the indomitable human spirit. Balancing such intensity are Liszt's visions of nature in the Deux Legendes and Les jeux d'eaux a la Villa d'Este: birdsong, flowing water, and the shimmer of divine light. His piano writing moves from the lightest suspension of sound to thunderous resonance, creating musical landscapes of awe and serenity. Charles Owen brings this immensely personal recording to life with luminous clarity and poetic insight, revealing music of both earthly struggle and eternal hope.

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DE PROFUNDIS
ORCHID CLASSICS Mar 2026
CD
$16.50

Mix & Match

Campkin: I Saw Eternity

Convivium Records

$16.99 Sep 20, 2024

I composed I saw Eternity one evening in 2010, after reading Henry Vaughan's poem of the same name earlier that day. Since then, I have written four further works which reference musical themes of this piece. These are all brought together with Bright Apollo on this album, alongside some of my other choral music, to depict a journey from darkness to light. The Phoenix Consort have warm and resonant lower voices, whilst the upper voices soar majestically in higher notes. This is exactly the sound I had envisaged when writing this music. Alexander Campkin

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Campkin: I Saw Eternity
Convivium Records Sep 2024
CD
$16.99

In Heaven - Songs for a trip to space

Challenge Classics

$16.99 Jan 23, 2026

The third collaboration between mezzo-soprano Olivia Vermeulen and Jan Philip Schulze (piano/synthesizer), In Heaven follows their earlier themed albums Dirty Minds and Hello Darkness, albums which were highly rated and won, for instance, an Edison Award and a Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik. While the first two albums explored earthly themes of eroticism and mortality, this programme turns upward toward the heavens. The concept imagines a cosmic odyssey, blending art song, contemporary music, pop, and psychedelic classics into a voyage through utopian visions, distant planets, and the eternal human fascination with space. Interspersed with NASA sound recordings, the album situates the listener between heaven and earth, fantasy and reality, intoxication and transcendence. The repertoire is strikingly eclectic: David Bowie's Life on Mars opens with real Martian storm sounds, while George Crumb, Brahms, Schubert, and Wolf provide lyrical reflections on stars, dreams, and transcendence. The programme flows seamlessly into Augusta Holmès's exuberant drinking song Le vin, Rebecca Clarke's opium-tinged Lethe, and Grace Slick's psychedelic anthem White Rabbit. French and German masters like Saint-Saëns, Mahler, and Messiaen appear alongside Stockhausen's Tierkreis, Monty Python's satirical Galaxy Song, and Pink Martini's Una notte a Napoli. The album closes with Robert Schumann's radiant Abendlied, underscoring the dialogue between the infinite cosmos and human longing. Together, Vermeulen and Schulze create a soundscape that is at once virtuosic, witty, and deeply imaginative. Supported by percussion and bass in selected tracks, their performances draw on colour, theatricality, and stylistic versatility to transform familiar works into cosmic meditations. In Heaven ultimately reflects on humanity's dreams of escape, intoxication, and utopia while acknowledging the grounding reality of earthbound existence. The result is a kaleidoscopic journey-playful yet profound, rooted in classical artistry yet open to pop culture-that challenges boundaries and offers listeners a musical mission into space.

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In Heaven - Songs for a trip to space
Challenge Classics Jan 2026
CD
$16.99

Mix & Match

Peer Gynt

Naxos AudioVisual

DVD

$26.99 Oct 09, 2020

70 years after Det Norske Teatret first staged Peer Gynt, Erik Ulfsby and his excellent team have developed a new version, with the role of old Peer congenially filled by Toralv Maurstad. The play’s original chronology has been broken up and fragments of Peer’s life reordered – all observed by an aged spirit who is on the threshold to the other side. Maurstad’s acting is “overwhelmingly great. He carries the role of Peer Gynt on his 92-year-old shoulders. This is pure theatrical magic.” “A Peer Gynt for eternity.” (Aftenposten) “A masterly Maurstad. There is still a roguish rabble-rouser in his old Peer Gynt. Svein Tindberg as the button moulder is perfect casting.” (VG)

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Peer Gynt
Naxos AudioVisual Oct 2020
DVD
$26.99

Schoenberg: Violin Concerto, A Survivor From Warsaw, Etc / Craft, Schulte

Naxos

$19.99 Oct 28, 2008

A fascinating collection of music by one of the 20th century greats.

This latest instalment in the Naxos Robert Craft series contains a mixture of newly recorded items and one work, the Violin Concerto, that has already appeared on Koch Classics in 2000. Comprising largely music composed during the last ten years of Schoenberg’s life, the disc also reflects to a large extent the émigré composer’s preoccupation with his Jewish heritage as his life drew to a close.

The disc opens with the powerful Survivor from Warsaw, Schoenberg’s moving response to a Nazi atrocity in the Second World War. Schoenberg gave this a universal significance by playing down the Warsaw location and concentrating instead on the atrocity itself, an incident in which weak, elderly and starved Jews were systematically liquidated by the Nazi cohorts, and one that was repeated time and again throughout the war. This work had huge personal significance to the composer, as he wrote in 1948:

“Now, what the text of the Survivor means to me: it means at first a warning to all Jews, never to forget what has been done to us, never to forget that even people who did not do it themselves, agreed with them and many of them found it necessary to treat us this way. We should never forget this, even such things have not been done in the manner in which I describe in the Survivor. This does not matter. The main thing is, that I saw it in my imagination.”

If memory serves, Craft has recorded this before, with Simon Callow as narrator, but this is a new version with David Wilson-Johnson and the Philharmonia. While the choral and orchestral contribution make their mark under Craft’s watchful baton, I have heard performances of the narration which were more vividly re-enacted than that by Wilson-Johnson. In particular the delineation of the different episodes in the story and of its various characters, from the prisoners to the German sergeant, could have been more sharply defined. This is a work which demands commitment and involvement over accuracy to the score. However the final chorus makes an overwhelming effect. In the same 1948 letter Schoenberg wrote. “The Shema Jisroel at the end has a special meaning to me. I think, the Shema Jisroel is the ‘Glaubensbekenntnis,’ the confession of the Jew. It is our thinking of the one, eternal, God who is invisible, who forbids imitation, who forbids to make a picture and all these things, which you perhaps have realised when you read my Moses und Aron und Der biblische Weg [Moses and Aaron and the Biblical Way]. The miracle is, to me, that all these people who might have forgotten, for years, that they are Jews, suddenly facing death, remember who they are.”

The Prelude to Genesis was written as part of the same commission from the composer and publisher Nathaniel Shilkret that resulted in Stravinsky’s miniature cantata Babel. Schoenberg’s was one of a series of works written to reflect various events in the Book of Genesis. Other music featured in this unusual project included Cain and Abel by Milhaud; The Flood by Castelnuovo-Tedesco and The Covenant by Ernst Toch. Bartok, Hindemith and Prokofiev were also approached but did not contribute in the event. Schoenberg’s Prelude, a twentieth-century “Representation of Chaos”, begins with fugal entries representing the moment of creation itself and includes a wordless chorus whose unaccompanied vocalise brings the piece to a rather unexpected conclusion. (See reviews of the complete composite work by Jonathan Woolf and Rob Barnett).

Dreimal Tausend Jahre and Psalm 130 are Schoenberg’s final works. Providing a further reminder of his Jewish faith, here the music represents a distillation of his life’s work. Passages of quasi-tonality alternate with angular 12-tone themes and sprechgesang. Excellent performances and recordings.

We move to New York briefly for the recording of Ode to Napoleon, in which David Wilson-Johnson is joined by the Fred Sherry Quartet and pianist Jeremy Denk. This setting of Byron, whose poem pulled no punches in its condemnation of the French emperor, also served as a pertinent condemnation of Hitler during the Second World War. Of his decision to compose the piece, Schoenberg wrote: “I knew it was the moral duty of intelligentsia to take a stand against tyranny.” First performed at Carnegie Hall by Mack Harrell and Rodzinski in an orchestral version which was later abandoned, Schoenberg attempted to ensure the dramatic values of the work were given full rein by notating precisely the rhythms and dynamic of the spoken text. The performance is first-rate.

Finally, to the main work on the disc, the 1936 Violin Concerto. On its original appearance Rolf Schulte’s coolly accurate performance of Schoenberg’s work was generally much admired, supported as it was by the analytical clarity of Craft’s conducting and the well-balanced sound. Accurate and involved in the opening movement, Schulte is affectionate in the central Andante grazioso, and he and Craft even manage to create genuine Brahmsian warmth as the movement progresses, followed by exuberance in the closing Alla Marcia. However Hilary Hahn’s recent performances and recording have added a new dimension to our understanding of this challenging piece. Hahn brings a warmth and romanticism to the concerto, and perhaps ultimately a sheer love of the music, which Shulte and Craft do not quite match. But it’s a close run thing, and some may prefer the cooler approach on this disc. Certainly in terms of sound there’s not much to choose between them.

A fascinating collection of music by one of the twentieth century greats, performed by one of his most eloquent advocates. Don’t miss it.

Ewan McCormick, MusicWeb International

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Schoenberg: Violin Concerto, A Survivor From Warsaw, Etc / Craft, Schulte
Naxos Oct 2008
CD
$19.99

Chaconne: Voices of Eternity

Analekta

$15.99 ~~$20.99~~ Save 25% Nov 06, 2015

In the 17th and 18th centuries, the chaconne was generally indistinguishable from the passacaglia, the two musical forms being so similar in nature. In both, the repetition of a single harmonic motif evoked a sense of time stretching far beyond the limits of our physical world, thus creating an illusion of eternity!

This recording collects some of the most beautiful examples from the literally hundreds of such pieces composed during the baroque period. Since the attempt to create the illusion of eternity in music was generally linked to the principle of melodic variations – whether it be variations on a theme or variations over a repeated harmonic motif – two famous examples of Folias composed by Falconiero and Vivaldi are also included.

Ensemble Caprice has made a habit of entering into dialog with composers of the past. For this recording, they have added several short vocal pieces written by the ensemble leader based on poems by the 17th century mystic Angelus Silesius. These brief verses in alexandrine meter are a perfect expression of the dichotomy experienced by the human being torn between life and death, between this world and the invisible world.

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Chaconne: Voices of Eternity
Analekta Nov 2015
CD
~~$20.99~~ $15.99

Ludford: Missa Inclina Cor Meum; Mason: Ave Fuit Prima Salus / Blue Heron

Blue Heron Renaissance Choir

$21.99 Oct 01, 2013

MASON Ave fuit prima salus. ANON Cunctipotens genitor. LUDFORD Missa Inclina cor meum • Scott Metcalfe, cond; Blue Heron • BLUE HERON 1004 (59:58 Text and Translation)

Philip Heseltine (better known his compositional pseudonym of Peter Warlock) once lamented that all the music of England’s Golden Age that still existed had been found, and that there was no more to uncover, or transcribe. But this was towards the end of his short life, while in deep depression. In the more than 80 years that have passed since that time, much additional music has been brought to light. Some of it, too, that was previously damaged to the point where performance was thought impossible, has been painstakingly reconstructed.

This is the case with a subset of the Peterhouse partbooks compiled in a relatively short time, probably in the early 1540s, following Henry VIII’s famous Dissolution of the Monasteries. The king’s death in 1547 led to a series of rulers and policies that set the nation careening across the religious spectrum, with various levels of tolerance towards such delights as sacred choral music. At some point, whether through neglect or deliberate sabotage, the tenor book vanished, and was never recovered. Portions of the treble book also went missing. What made this particular loss severe is that of the 72 pieces included in the Henrician group of partbooks, 39 are unica , while another 12 exist elsewhere only in incomplete versions.

The reconstruction of individual pieces has become the lifework of musicologist Nick Sandon. It’s his editions we hear on this album, with a new version of the missing tenor part in the Mass, and both treble and tenor in the antiphon. These are world premieres of both works in two respects, then—not only first recordings, but also part of a series of first performances since the mid-17th century, at the latest.

John Mason is by far the least-known of the composers on this release, and the only reason we know his music at all is because of four works in these partbooks. The Ave fuit prima salus isn’t based on a cantus firmus . Its interest lies in the brilliant yet subtle variations the composer works on each of his 17 verses that conclude with “Ave Maria.” Mason is a past master at varying textures through the number and color of active parts, but the emphasis tends for the most part towards the contemplative side of the emotional scale, as is appropriate. Sandon is quoted in the liner notes as finding the text “as undistinguished as literature as it is pedestrian in theology,” but it is all turned to gold by the composer.

The Missa Inclina cor meum is the second of two by Ludford that come down to us solely from the Peterhouse partbooks. (The other, Missa Regnum mundi , was recorded on Blue Heron 1003, and reviewed in Fanfare 36:1.) As its cantus firmus is not associated with any specific feast day, Metcalfe has chosen not to include plainchant Propers. The custom of the day in England was to omit writing a through-composed Kyrie, and replace it with a plainsong-based textual trope—which is exactly what we get here with Cunctipotens genitor , instead of leaving a mass minus a movement as many recordings do: well done. Metcalfe points in particular to a passage in the Sanctus where the basses greatly augment the melody as the top voices “spin out melodies high above” as an example of “truly strange passages,” but in its entirety this mass is a boldly imaginative work of great melodic beauty and harmonic sensitivity.

What continues to set apart these recordings of Blue Heron from the majority of choirs recording similar repertoire is the use of expressive devices. To beauty of phrasing, and the careful blending of parts, Scott Metcalfe adds clarity of enunciation, flexible tempos, and both a general and part-related control of dynamics that never approaches stylistic anachronism. As a result, the music doesn’t float in a vacuum, but becomes the carrier when appropriate for an emotional current. When it is sung that with Mary “angels rejoice and archangels exult,” for example, the performance reasonably seconds the music, and the score blazes with the brightness of that eternal moment. There are many more instances of that, all to the good.

The sound is close and resonant, but absolutely clear, with none of the messy lack of focus that comes from cloudy, over-reverberant efforts. The quality of this series remains as high as ever, both for music and performance. Available from blueheronchoir.org and, needless to add, strongly recommended.

FANFARE: Barry Brenesal

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Ludford: Missa Inclina Cor Meum; Mason: Ave Fuit Prima Salus / Blue Heron
Blue Heron Renaissance Choir Oct 2013
CD
$21.99

BACH (Eternal)

Naxos

$13.99 Jan 27, 2009

This collection of classical favorites of Bach's work serves as a compilation of his famous works made available by Budapest Failoni Chamber Orchestra; Cologne Chamber Orchestra and Northern Chamber Orchestra accompanied by a host of renowned classical talent.

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BACH (Eternal)
Naxos Jan 2009
CD
$13.99

The Mendelssohn Legacy

Naïve

$19.99 Dec 19, 2025

The first instalment in an exploration of the German Romantic repertoire for piano trio, this double album recorded by the Trio Zadig, now on the naïve label, offers an utterly thrilling journey between darkness and light. It groups together the two essential Trios for violin, cello and piano (Op. 49 and Op. 66) by Felix Mendelssohn and the Op. 11 Trio, by Fanny, his immensely brilliant sister so beloved by her brother. In the Trio Zadig's hands, the sister's work, composed between 1846 and 1847, a few months before her premature death, impresses with the singular structural balance. Notably the Allegro molto vivace is a real pearl which alternates moments of subtle nostalgia with an elegant drama, among some tempestuous and thoughtful writing. Impossible not to be captivated, moreover, by the freshness of the Andante espressivo. Here the three players reveal a theme of majesty and tenderness, slightly reminiscent of Beethoven. The following Lied will remind us that the Mendelssohn household was nourished by J. S. Bach's protestant spirit. In truth, the same creative lifeblood flowed in the veins of both sister and brother. Having grown up in a household where one learned music like another language, Felix and Fanny were each other's first audiences, first critics, and eternal confidants. These exciting yet reflective performances by the Trio Zadig (violinist Miclen Laipang, cellist Marc Girard Garcia and pianist Guillaume Vincent) in the first place pay due respect to this common ground. From Felix's famous first Piano Trio, likewise in D minor, gushes in effect the same fundamental warmth, the same calm mastery, and the second Piano Trio, with it's subtly measured storms and it's gently restless flavour, recalls Fanny's contemporaneous work of 1845. In a nod to the culture of reciprocal inspiration which of course was at the heart of Mendelssohn's Berlin home, and which recalls their own life as rehearsing, travelling and performing chamber musicians, sharing almost everything together, the Trio Zadig completes it's programme with two of Felix's more intimate works; one taken from the second volume of the Lieder ohne Worte, transcribed for piano trio by Cyrille Lehn, and the other the Notturno from A Midsummer Night's Dream, in a rare nineteenth century transcription. And - surprise, surprise! - a mouth-watering encore, the extremely touching Trio composed by Felix at the age of eleven, a somewhat Haydn-like pastiche, and an utter marvel.

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The Mendelssohn Legacy
Naïve Dec 2025
CD
$19.99

Mix & Match

Árnason: Eilífur

PENTATONE

$19.99 Jun 18, 2021

Eilífur (Eternal) is Icelandic contemporary composer Viktor Orri Árnason’s solo debut and first PENTATONE album, on which the prospect of living forever is contemplated. Sparked by the realisation that medical advances will soon eradicate death by natural causes, Eilífur weaves together a lucid, near-future narrative via a combination of abstract Icelandic lyrics and adept musical storytelling. The scope and scale of Eilífur is reflected in the extremes of its sound, which moves seamlessly from intimate strings and sombre voices to grand orchestral gestures and vast drones. Eilífur explores what life will be like in the absence of death’s ticking clock. Staying clear of the morbidity that such themes may imply, Eilífur is above all a celebration of life as we know it, and an ode to the things that make it worth living. Viktor composed, produced and mixed the album at his Berlin studio over the course of two years. The studio was a hub of experimentation with a community of outstanding award-winning composers and musicians, including Jóhann Jóhannsson, Hildur Guðnadóttir, Dustin O'Halloran, Rutger Hoedemaekers, Gunnar Örn Tynes and Yair Elazar Glotman. Eilífur is a statement, a first glimpse of Viktor’s outstanding abilities as a composer, conductor, instrumentalist, producer and mixing engineer; an ambitious album which puts him in the spotlight after many years working behind the scenes.

REVIEW:

Viktor Orri Arnason has collaborated with other composers as a performer, producer, and arranger, notably with Hildur Gudnodottir on her 2019 Oscar-winning score to Joker. "Eilifur" is his first release as a composer. The music recalls his work with Gudnodottir (who is also credited as a producer here): atmospheric but with a cinematic immediacy. Though electronic sounds are rare, the production process is integral to the work itself. Edges are smoothed over and reverberation is amplified. The music itself is soothing and tender yet melancholy. Drones in the low strings give it an earthy expansiveness, from which melodies in the bass and contrabass clarinet bloom and grow. This will have its audience, though the production may be too distracting for many of our readers. I certainly enjoyed it. The notes are rather overbearing: "The album poses questions about the changing significance of time itself and the role that our eventual demise plays in the meaning we assign to our lifetimes." Though thought-provoking, this is superfluous—the music, like much that is composed today, speaks for itself more substantially than the unwieldy thesis statement that precedes it.

-- American Record Guide

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Árnason: Eilífur
PENTATONE Jun 2021
CD
$19.99

Smyth: Der Wald / Andrews, BBC SIngers, BBC Symphony Orchestra

Resonus Classics

$9.49 ~~$18.99~~ Save 50% Oct 20, 2023

For over 100 years the only opera by a woman to have been performed at the Metropolitan Opera, Der Wald is a taut, brooding drama where the simplicity of village life comes under threat from the uncontrollable desires unleashed by the darkness of the forest. Richly orchestrated, harmonically daring, and demanding a huge expressive range from the cast, the narrative drives relentlessly forward from wedding to tragedy in a single act, observed pitilessly by the eternal spirits of the forest. John Andrews conducts the BBC Singers, the BBC Symphony Orchestra and an international cast in the first ever recording of this work, using Smyth’s English version of the libretto.

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Smyth: Der Wald / Andrews, BBC SIngers, BBC Symphony Orchestra
Resonus Classics Oct 2023
CD
~~$18.99~~ $9.49

Janacek: From the House of the Dead / Young, Bavarian Radio Symphony [Blu-ray]

BelAir Classiques

Blu-Ray

$31.99 Feb 14, 2020

This Blu-ray Disc is only playable on Blu-ray Disc players and not compatible with standard DVD players.

Also available on standard DVD

Death is never far away in Leoš Janácek’s work: in The Cunning Little Vixen, the main character falls under the fire of a hunter, Katia Kabanova kills herself, Emilia Marty in The Makropulos Case has to deal with the hard consequences of eternal youth. From the House of the Dead makes no exception, especially since the composer knew he was living out his final days when he decided to adapt into an opera Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s eponymous novel, a literary work inspired by the time the novelist spent in a Siberian prison. This painful feeling of ineluctability pervades through his disillusioned and savage score, that recounts the hopeless life of the convicts of a Soviet concentration camp. In this place where life has already drawn out, in this no man’s land forsaken by civilization, Janácek portrays the anonymous and daily sufferings, the abuses, the corporal punishments, but also evokes fragments from the prisoners’ past, bringing them back to life for the duration of a game or of a story. Against this background that contrasts the empathic solidarity of simple men with the horrific brutality of the prison guards, stage director Frank Castorf - who created a memorable Ring Cycle in Bayreuth for the Wagner Bicentennial in 2013 - embraces the aesthetics of grotesque and absurd suggested by Janácek’s score, and chooses to crudely display, with stark realism, the physical and psychological violence at the heart of the opera. In the pit, conducting the house orchestra, Simone Young underlines the power plays and the overwhelming lyricism unleashed by Janácek’s music. As the main protagonists, Peter Rose, Charles Workman and Bo Skhovus, all familiar with Janácek’s subtleties, bring back to life these agonizing anti-heroic characters forsaken by God and men.

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Janacek: From the House of the Dead / Young, Bavarian Radio Symphony [Blu-ray]
BelAir Classiques Feb 2020
Blu-Ray
$31.99

Venables: Requiem, Op. 48 / Partington, Glouchester Cathedral Choir

SOMM Recordings

$20.99 Jul 31, 2020

SOMM Recordings is proud to announce the premiere recording of Ian Venables’ exquisite and moving Requiem with the Choir of Gloucester Cathedral conducted by the Cathedral’s of Music Adrian Partington and Assistant of Music Jonathan Hope playing the organ. Completed in 2018, the Requiem received its first performance in the imposing surroundings of Gloucester Cathedral, where this recording was made in 2019. Widely acclaimed for his songs and chamber music, the Requiem is Ian Venables’ most substantial choral work to date and is a compelling piece full of fine melodies and gorgeous harmonies. Adrian Partington describes the Requiem as “a significant addition to the choral repertoire. The music is eloquent, resourceful and exerts a strong emotional appeal”. Ian Venables comments: “Composing a Requiem is a daunting creative challenge because so many great settings have been written in the past. However, as a composer of songs, words are always crucially important to me and I found that the words of the Mass for the Dead came to appeal to me strongly. I felt an overwhelming desire to set them to music. I am delighted that Adrian Partington, his excellent choir and Jonathan Hope have brought my music so vividly to life.” The album also includes first recordings of Ivor Gurney’s God mastering me (arranged by Venables), John Joubert’s O eternal God and Venables’ O Sing Aloud to God alongside John Sander’s Dedication. SOMM’s long relationship with Ian Venables includes his chamber music (SOMMCD 0101), of which Gramophone declared: “Lovers of the 20th- century English music renaissance will derive much pleasure from this enterprising and rewarding SOMM anthology”.

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Venables: Requiem, Op. 48 / Partington, Glouchester Cathedral Choir
SOMM Recordings Jul 2020
CD
$20.99

Whitacre: The Pacific Has No Memory / Anne Akiko Meyers

Avie Records

$8.99 Jan 30, 2026

EVERYTHING CHANGED ON JANUARY 7, 2025 I never imagined we would evacuate our home in the Palisades-a place alive with laughter, music, and the joyful chaos of my husband, our two young daughters, and crazy rescue dog-never to return. So many dear friends lost everything: cherished family heirlooms, photographs, instruments, and music libraries that had taken a lifetime to build-all vanished in moments. That evening, from our hotel window, I watched the fires rage through the beautiful Santa Monica Mountains and sobbed, completely helpless. Yet from the ash and destruction, something profoundly beautiful emerged-much like the glowing fairy at the end of Fantasia, rising from Stravinsky's Firebird Suite. I commissioned Eric Whitacre to write a new work for violin and orchestra, and as the world changed, so did his composition. Little did I know that The Pacific Has No Memory would be born from these epic tragedies. This music has become salve for the soul-a warm, healing embrace for my broken heart. Tender and profound, it radiates love, hope, and renewal. I am eternally grateful to Eric Whitacre for creating this musical prayer and to the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra for breathing life into it together. This recording is dedicated to all who were affected by the Los Angeles fires, and to the brave first responders who risked everything to save lives. - Anne Akiko Meyers

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Whitacre: The Pacific Has No Memory / Anne Akiko Meyers
Avie Records Jan 2026
CD
$8.99

Mix & Match

Gesualdo: Dolcissima mia vita. Madrigali a cinque voci, Libro quinto (1611) / Herreweghe, Collegium Vocale Gent

PHI

$20.99 Sep 24, 2021

Philippe Herreweghe records his third disc devoted to a controversial figure in the world of music and art in general: Carlo Gesualdo, who had his wife murdered and is suspected of having his son smothered. This time Collegium Vocale Gent performs his fifth book of madrigals (1611), published two years before his death. A collection that even today contributes to the eternal debate: to what extent does art become impregnated with reality, and how can it be appreciated when it emanates from a mind living so close to horror? Here the bold dissonances and sometimes tortured expressiveness that can be perceived in his harmonic language offer food for thought. Can we speak of redemption through art for a murderous composer in the twilight of his life?

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Gesualdo: Dolcissima mia vita. Madrigali a cinque voci, Libro quinto (1611) / Herreweghe, Collegium Vocale Gent
PHI Sep 2021
CD
$20.99

Fantasia - Mozart on the Organ

Brilliant Classics

$9.99 ~~$12.99~~ Save 25% Feb 07, 2025

A unique take on Mozart's music from the organ loft. Mozart wrote sparingly for the solo organ - a relatively early collection of short Epistle Sonatas for liturgical use, and later on a few more individual pieces for a new mechanical organ. In neither case was he using the full extent of a large instrument as exploited by his Baroque predecessors. At the same time, Mozart himself was no stranger to the organ loft; he would have been regularly playing the instrument at St Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna had his plans come to fruition and he had lived long enough to attain the post of Director of Music there. Manuel Tomadin has imaginatively filled in this gap in the Mozart catalogue, as it were, with his own transcriptions of pieces particularly well suited to the soundworld of the organ. The A minor Sonata K310 shares a surging, Sturm und Drang sensibility with the two fantasias, in C minor and D minor. In turn this character lends itself to the Gothic grandeur of the 'king of instruments', when sensitively registered and nimbly executed. The coloristic possibilities of the organ, it's dynamic range and effects of perspective, are also put to dramatic use in bringing to life two of Mozart's opera overtures, from Cosi fan tutte and Die Zauberflote. Tomadin does not neglect the roots of Mozart's music in the Baroque, with a transcription of the rococo G major sonata K283 which he wrote at the age of 18, plus a much less familiar Preludio and Capriccio in C K394. In both of these pieces, Mozart was drawing on the legacy of CPE Bach, who had given him lessons as a child - a period to which Tomadin pays tribute with another rarity, one of the 'London Sketches' preserved in notebook form from the family's stay in the English capital. Tomadin has chosen an original and historically appropriate instrument for this fascinating exploration of Mozart on the organ, built in the late 1780s by the Montesanti firm for the parish church of Governolo in the province of Lombardy. The booklet includes a full specification of the organ, plus Tomadin's own introduction to the repertoire and his approach to it as a transcriber and performer. - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) had a profound connection with the church organ, an instrument that played a significant role in his musical development. As a child prodigy, Mozart was exposed to the organ in church settings, where he often performed. The organ's grandeur and complexity influenced his compositional style, particularly in his sacred music. - Although Mozart called it "The King of instruments" he wrote comparatively few works for the organ. Organist Manuel Tomadin professes his love for the composer and his considerable skill as an organist by transcribing several works for the organ: the overtures Cosi fan tutte and Die Zauberflote, two piano sonatas K 283 and 310, and several small keyboard works, perfectly suited for performance on the organ. - Played on a historical instrument: the 1788-1790 Andrea & Luigi Montesanti organ of the Parish Church of Governolo, Italy. - A feast of colours and timbres, celebrating the genius of Mozart's eternal music!

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Fantasia - Mozart on the Organ
Brilliant Classics Feb 2025
CD
~~$12.99~~ $9.99

CANTABILE PER ARCHI BOTSCHAFT

Wergo

$20.99 Sep 01, 1993

Peteris Vasks was born in Aizpute, Latvia, the son of a church minister. He studied the double bass and composition in Riga and Vilnius, among others with Valentius Utkins, and was a member of various symphony and chamber orchestras. He currently is a free-lance composer living in Riga. Among the works of Vasks, his compositions for string orchestra are of particular importance. With the help of several works scored for strings, the CD on hand imparts comprehensive knowledge of the development that Vasks has undergone since the last 70's. Vasks wrote in the introduction to his symphony "Stimmen" [Voices]: "At the end of 1990 I had begun to write the symphony. Then came January 1991. Blood was flowing in the streets of Latvia and Lithuania. Sleepless nights at the barricades. After all that, the new beginning was difficult. The symphony speaks of my essential, most meaningful themes. About life. About eternity. About conscience. I wrote it with love and faith."

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CANTABILE PER ARCHI BOTSCHAFT
Wergo Sep 1993
CD
$20.99

Danielpour: Talking to Aphrodite, Symphony for Strings & Kaddish, Rachlevsky, Russian String Orchestra

Naxos

$19.99 Jul 12, 2019

These three recordings cement the bond between the award-winning composer Richard Danielpour and the conductor Misha Rachlevsky, one of the composer’s most dedicated and perceptive interpreters. It was Rachlevsky who gave the American premiere of Symphony for Strings, a transcription of the Sixth String Quartet- a work saturated in farewells, complete with a hymn and variations. Talking to Aphrodite is the result of a collaboration between Danielpour and the writer Erica Jong, while Kaddish addresses the eternal issues of life, death and eventual peace.

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Danielpour: Talking to Aphrodite, Symphony for Strings & Kaddish, Rachlevsky, Russian String Orchestra
Naxos Jul 2019
CD
$19.99