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Here & Elsewhere / Roger W. Sherman
Roger Sherman is the President of The Gothic Catalog, where he has been producer and recording/mastering engineer for hundreds of recordings. He is now Associate Organist, Emeritus of St. Mark’s after more than 30 years of service to the Cathedral. He is also Artistic Director, Emeritus of the Orcas Choral Society. Since 1993, he has been the host of the popular radio program The Organ Loft, broadcast throughout the Pacific Northwest. As a recording artist he has been featured on both the Loft and reZound labels. On this release, featuring works by Bohm, Bach, Sweelinck, Purcell, and more, he performs on the organs of Saint Mark’s Cathedral, Seattle, Pacific Lutheran University, Tacoma, and San Giorgio Maggiore, Venice.
THEN AND THERE HERE AND NOW
HERE
Here/After
THEN & AGAIN HERE & NOW
Between Here and Nowhere
HERE
VETTER: Wo? (Where) - Hier! (Here!) / Darum?! (Therefore?!)
CHRISTMAS TIME IS HERE
Between Here and Nowhere
Here and Now
Saxophonist Sigurdur Flosason writes: Music is the universal language of mankind is a frequently cited quote by the 19th century American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Well, if thats the case, jazz is certainly my favorite dialect. The spontaneity and collaborative nature of jazz makes it ideal for swiftly building bridges between groups of musicians and audiences alike. Nothing is as musically exciting and refreshing as a newly forged relationship of outstanding jazz performers and composers, especially when brought together in the close comfort and proximity of ones living room. This was to be the beginning of what has now developed into a well-brewed and mature unity of musicians that have since then performed at jazz festivals in both Luxembourg and Reykjavik and have now recently recorded this outstanding album, featuring compositions from all four members. The compositions on this album provide a good framework for the musical dialogue. Ranging from melodic ballads such as Flosasons Father of Light and Reis Thank you letter, the folkish melody and melancholy of Demuths Dante and Reis Tundra, to Flosasons more calculated and intellectually infused Counting sheep and Forty-nine, over to Herrs mystic and haunting Moonglow.
Over Here! / The Andrews Sisters
The Big Band: Joseph Klein (leader); Ruben Rivera (cello); Carmen Mastren (guitar/banjo); Jimmy Sedlar, Bob Millikan, Jay Brower, Charles Sullivan (trumpets); Harry DiVito, Merv Gold, Jack Gale, Vincent Forchetti, (trombones); Bernie Berger, Harvey Estrin, Michael Schuster, Sol Schlinger (saxophones); Mike Cavin (clarinet); Clay Fullum (piano, accordion); Hal Schaefer (piano); Doc Soloman (bass, Teddy Sommer (drums); Warren Hard (percussion).
Recorded at CBS 30th Street Studio, New York, March 31, 1974.
All songs composed by Richard M. Sherman and Robert B. Sherman.
HERE SWINGS THE JUDGE
Here's Love / Original Broadway Cast
Recorded at Columbia Records 30th Street Studio, New York on October 6, 1963. Includes liner notes and a plot synopsis by Didier C. Deutsch in English, German, French and Italian.
All songs written by Meredith Willson.
HERE'S LOVE opened at the Shubert Theatre, New York on October 3, 1963 and ran 338 performances, closing on July 25, 1964.
HERE SWINGS THE JUDGE
Here I Stand / iSing Silicon Valley
Here I Stand is the confident debut album of iSing Silicon Valley, the international-award-winning girls’ choir based in Silicon Valley, California. Here I Stand celebrates iSing’s focus on the power of girls to change the world as they raise their 200+ voices in remembrance, in strength, and in the pure, shared delight of coming together to sing. The album opens with a transcendent performance of the treble-voice version of ?riks Ešenvalds’ soaring, dreamlike work for solo voice and chorus, Only in Sleep. The pro-gram includes some of the stunning works commissioned by iSing during its first six seasons, with themes ranging from social justice, to individual growth and collective power. Among these: Never Shall I Forget, Adam Schoenberg’s haunting setting for treble voices, string quartet and percussion of excerpts from Elie Wiesel’s Holocaust memoir Night; Daniel Elder’s arrangements for iSing of his powerful commentary on gun violence, 365, and of In Your Light, his musical setting one of Rumi’s most ecstatic poems. Given first life on the concert stage and on this recording by iSing’s bright young singers, these commissions and commissioned arrangements make exciting, relevant additions to the repertoire for treble voices, here given definitive, top-notch renditions. The album artwork also includes original illustrations by a young choir alumna; together the package puts girls’ inspiring talents center stage in heartwarming fashion. Listeners, prepare to be moved by the breadth of performance of iSing girls: The musical finesse and the stunning vocal blend of iSing’s elite choirs; the clarity of expression of the soloists; and — on the later tracks of the album — the lovely ensemble sound of younger iSing girls ranging in age from 7 to 12.
WE'RE NEW AGAIN - A REIMAGINING BY MAKAYA MCCRAVEN
Birtwistle: Nenia, Fields Of Sorrow / Atherton, Manning, Hacker
Now that Lyrita appear to have reissued the majority of their own archive, it’s gratifying to see that they are turning their attention to some old Decca/British Council releases from the 1960s and 1970s that would otherwise be languishing in the vaults. The Decca Headline series contained some classic performances of then avant-garde works by contemporary composers; it featured works by international figures such as Messiaen, Lutoslawski and Henze in addition to home-grown talent such as Birtwistle, Bedford and Musgrave. The present CD is a straight reissue of HEAD 7 and contains three key works by Birtwistle from the late 1960s/early 1970s. It offers a useful snapshot of the composer’s style as he moved from the harsh expressionism of his early works (typified by the opera Punch and Judy) to his increasing fascination with the Orpheus legend, itself reflected in a softer-grained, relatively lyrical approach. On this CD The Fields of Sorrow and Nenia represent, broadly speaking, the latter approach; Verses for Ensembles contains elements of the more angular, rigorous Birtwistle.
Jane Manning joins the London Sinfonietta and Chorus for The Fields of Sorrow; word setting is unconventional, being divided across the forces, often syllabically. The performers are also distributed across the sound-stage, creating together with the bell-like sonorities a ghostly, disembodied effect. This effectively reflects the mediaeval poem which Birtwistle sets, depicting the journey of two souls through a gloomy forest in Hades.
By contrast with Verses for Ensembles we have what marks perhaps a culmination of his early, expressionist years. Hieratic brass and woodwind writing, contrasted with ebullient percussion, throw us immediately into a very different sound-world. The work encapsulates many characteristics of Birtwistle’s "early" period; his use of verse and refrain forms as a structural device, his fascination with procession or ritual, and a deployment of contrasting instrumental resources as a way of articulating the structure for the listener. The instrumentation is set into sharp relief by the composer’s spatial distribution of his forces on stage. Thus two woodwind groups sit to the left and right of the stage, with brass and percussion towards the rear. Birtwistle also requires players to move physically to key positions on stage at significant moments in the piece. The sounds themselves contrast harsh, aggressive brass and woodwind writing with softer passages. Verses for Ensembles is by no means an easy work to assimilate, but as ever with Birtwistle the music repays repeated study. The performance, by the forces for which it was written, is everything we could wish for. Perhaps one or two extra tracking points on the CD might have helped those unfamiliar with the music to find their bearings more clearly.
The final work on the CD, Nenia – The Death of Orpheus, was composed the year after Verses. The title refers to a Roman funeral dirge and the goddess invoked; Orpheus and Euridice are the subjects of the ritual. Birtwistle now groups his instrumental forces according to timbres, rather than the contrasting sounds he created in Verses. The instrumental music is dominated by the sound of bass clarinets. The structure of the piece, the instrumental forces, and the vocal style Birtwistle requires of his soloist - Jane Manning again - are immensely fluid, and immensely challenging, but at all times dictated by the text. Once again the performances are astonishing in their virtuosity.
As the composer in his early years moved from one set of preoccupations to another, reflected by a development in his actual compositional style, it’s misleading to suppose that each compositional phase is entirely self-contained, without reference to what came before or after. Birtwistle himself felt that each of his pieces consisted of "layers" reflecting both previous interests and pointing the way forward to future developments. On first hearing the extreme dissonance of Verses for Ensembles may appear to contrast sharply with the softer-grained approach of The Fields of Sorrow; but the composer’s spatial distribution of his forces in both works provides a stylistic link. Nenia, as we have seen, contains the preoccupations with ritual that characterised many of his earlier works. What comes across very clearly - and here I echo a word Paul Conway uses in his excellent booklet notes - is the composer’s stylistic integrity right across his output.
-- Ewan McCormick, MusicWeb International
Bach: St. Matthew Passion / Kozena, Padmore, Rattle
Sir Simon Rattle was in no doubt: the performance of the St. Matthew Passion which he realized together with the Berlin Philharmonic and the Rundfunkchor Berlin in 2010 was for him “the single most important thing we ever did here.” Critics around the world agreed. They praised the semi-staged “ritualization” by American star-director Peter Sellars, as well as the outstanding musical performances by the soloists, including Magdalena Kozená, Christian Gerhaher, Thomas Quasthoff, and Mark Padmore as the Evangelist. Now the performance is published as a hardcover linen edition with a comprehensive booklet and a voucher for the Berlin Philharmonic's Digital Concert Hall.
"Sellars' surprisingly simple ideas draw us deeply into the drama and prove enormously moving." – NPR
"The female singers are very good – the soprano Camilla Tilling ethereal and the mezzo-soprano Magdalena Kozena impassioned – but the men are tremendous, including the pure-toned tenor Topi Lehtipuu. The bass-baritone Christian Gerhaher, singing from far above the other performers, is a resonant, otherworldly Jesus. Mr. Padmore is one of the major Evangelists of our time, and he is heartbreakingly eloquent here, less a biblical narrator than a guide through a dark night of the soul. And if it’s possible for this deeply moving recording to take on any more poignancy, it is probably the final major video release featuring Mr. Quasthoff." – The New York Times
2 DVDs [NTSC 16:9 / PCM Stereo • DTS 5.1]
Blu-ray Disc in high definition video [1080i Full HD 16:9 / 2.0 PCM Stereo • DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1]
Playing time - Concert: 195 mins • Bonus: 51 mins
Subtitles: English, German, French, Spanish, Japanese, Korean
Region: 0 (All region)
7- day pass to the BPO's Digital Concert Hall video streaming service
V 15: WELTE MIGNON MYSTERY (MA
Billie's Bounce
TIME OUTTAKES
Bruckner: Symphony No 7 / Tennstedt, Boston Symphony Orchestra
(1885 version, ed. L. Nowak)
Boston Symphony Orchestra
Klaus Tennstedt, conductor
Recorded live from the Symphony Hall, Boston, 5 November 1977
Picture format: NTSC 4:3
Sound format: Enhanced Mono
Region code: 0 (worldwide)
Menu language: English
Booklet notes: English, French, German
Running time: 66 mins
No. of DVDs: 1
R E V I E W:
A top-quality performance of Bruckner’s Seventh under a great conductor.
The welcome expansion of Klaus Tennstedt’s recorded legacy through the issue of live performances continues with this reading of Bruckner’s Seventh Symphony from Boston. This was a work that Tennstedt did not take into the recording studios though there is another live account, this time on CD, on the LPO Live label (LPO0030). That issue preserves a 1984 performance but I have not heard it.
It was with the Boston Symphony Orchestra that Tennstedt made his US debut in 1974, when one of the programmes he offered consisted of Bruckner’s Eighth Symphony. By all accounts that performance had the critics in raptures. It appears from the booklet note that when Tennstedt gave three performances of the Seventh three years later the critics, who attended the first of the performances, were a little less impressed, praising the conductor’s interpretation but finding fault with some of the playing; it was suggested that perhaps the performance was under-rehearsed. By the time the third performance came round – the one preserved here – it would seem that these little difficulties had been ironed out. There are one or two very minor slips but the overall standard of playing is extremely high and one has the definite impression that conductor and players are as one.
Oddly, the image on the cover of this CD is not taken from the performance we see. For this Boston concert Tennstedt eschewed a score and therefore had no need to wear spectacles. In fact the Tennstedt we see in this film is quite youthful-looking. The recording is presented in “Enhanced Mono” – I’m unsure what that means but the sound is perfectly satisfactory – so we don’t quite get the benefit of Tennstedt’s layout of the string section: the violins are massed on his left but the violas are to his right – where many conductors place the cellos – and the Boston cello section is seated to the right hand of the violas.
The reading is a very fine one. Tennstedt moulds the long, expansive cello melody at the start of the first movement with great care and evident feeling. As the movement unfolds he takes the second subject quite swiftly, though he’s not too hasty. This performance is one of those that remind us that Bruckner was a musical descendant of Schubert – and Tennstedt was a fine exponent of Schubert’s Ninth. The listener is left in no doubt that Tennstedt has the measure of the span and structure of this movement. That’s even more the case with his account of the solemn Adagio. This is a noble, burnished reading and though Tennstedt maintains a good objective stance there’s no doubt that he feels every phrase. He shapes the music splendidly and the Boston players respond to him with playing of distinction. The strings are wonderfully rich in tone, with just the right amount of weight, while the brass are sonorous. This is one of those performances where everything just feels right – and inevitable. The cymbal and triangle are included at the main climax.
Tennstedt ensures that the rhythms of the scherzo have real lift and spring while the lyrical trio is affectionately phrased. The finale is completely successful. Tennstedt mixes energy with expansive phrasing and the brass-dominated episodes are delivered with due majesty.
Tennstedt’s rendition of this symphony is deeply satisfying and it’s marvellous to have an example of him at work with one of the finest orchestras in the USA. We’re told that he worked regularly with the BSO until 1987 so I hope very much that ICA may be able to license more material, either audio or visual, from the orchestra’s archives. I found it fascinating to look at the BSO of thirty-five years ago and I noted with some surprise how few female musicians there were on the stage – possibly eight at most, including the orchestra’s celebrated principal flautist, Doriot Anthony Dwyer. Furthermore, at that time there don’t seem to have been too many young players in the BSO’s ranks. I bet things have changed quite a lot in the intervening period. The thing that really matters is that the Boston Symphony of 1977 vintage was a fine, seasoned ensemble and it’s a joy to hear them play under this great conductor.
The visual presentation is reliable and gives a good representation of the concert. One minor irritant, I found, was the director’s occasional propensity for split-screen shots, showing us, for example, the principal oboist in one half of the screen and the principal clarinettist in the other. Happily, this doesn’t occur too often and it may not bother other viewers. The key thing is that if you invest in this DVD you’ll acquire a top-quality performance of Bruckner’s Seventh under a great conductor.
-- John Quinn, MusicWeb International