dealer information service: no. 350 march 2021 …

MARCH 2021 HIGHLIGHTS

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DEALER INFORMATION SERVICE: NO. 350

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About this Release

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Gabriel Fauré, Francis Poulenc, Claude Debussy, Igor Stravinsky, Maurice Ravel

French Duets

Steven Osborne, Paul Lewis

CDA68329 £9.00 1 CD 05/03/21 HYPERION RECORDS

A bewitching programme of music often associated with childhood, including favourites by Fauré, Ravel and Debussy; works which amply reward the care lavished on them by Paul Lewis and Steven Osborne in these exquisite accounts.

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Highlight of the Month

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About this Release


György Ligeti The 18 Études

Danny Driver


Ligeti’s vertiginous studies are breathtaking: extraordinary explorations of the modern piano which test the instrument (and its player) to the limit.

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About this Release


Francisco Guerrero Magnificat, Lamentations & Canciones

El León de Oro, Peter Phillips, Marco Antonio Garcia de Paz


Francisco Guerrero is still insufficiently well known by comparison to his great contemporary and compatriot Victoria. El León de Oro here affirms his rightful place in the history of the Golden Age of Spanish polyphony.

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About this Release


Nicolò Paganini, Fritz Kreisler, John Corigliano, Carlo Boccadoro, Gioachino Rossini, Alfred Schnittke, Karol Szymanowski

Il Cannone: Francesca Dego plays Paganini’s Violin

Francesca Dego, Francesca Leonardi

CHAN 20223 £9.00 1 CD 26/02/21 CHANDOS RECORDS

Paganini’s violin, the legendary ‘il Cannone’, made by Giuseppe Guarneri del Gesù in 1743, is one of the most important musical instruments in the history of Western music. Paganini was the greatest virtuoso of his time, acclaimed throughout Europe and an inspiration to performers and composers alike. On his death, he bequeathed ‘il Cannone’ to his home city of Genoa, where it is permanently housed under high security in the Town Hall. It has been heard on record just a handful of times. Francesca Dego was given the honour of recording with it after the success of her first performance on the instrument, in October 2019, when she was invited to play Paganini’s First Violin Concerto at the Paganini Celebratory Concert at Teatro Carlo Felice, in Genoa. Francesca Dego comments: ‘I feel so privileged to be able to share the soul of ‘il Cannone’ in a new recording. I remember thinki ng long and hard about the ideal programme and carefully selecting a series of works paying homage to Paganini. The ‘Cannon’ has pretty much only ever been used to record music by Paganini, so the idea of its celebrated tone teaming up with composers who idolised the Italian virtuoso throughout history is really exciting to me!’

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About this Release


Jules Massenet, Ambroise Thomas, François-Adrien Boieldieu, Daniel-François-Esprit Auber, Léo Delibes

French Music for the Stage

Estonian National Symphony Orchestra, Neeme Järvi


For their latest album, Neeme Järvi and his Estonian National Symphony Orchestra present a delightful programme of lesser-known stage music from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The Overtures by Thomas, Auber and Boieldieu were all composed for works staged at the Opéra-Comique in Paris, and are wonderful examples of the period. The ‘Scène du bal’ and ‘Vieille Chanson’ from Le Roi s’amuse were written by Delibes in 1882 as incidental music for Victor Hugo’s play, first performed in 1832 but banned after the first performance because it was deemed to be an attack on the reigning monarch, Louis Philippe. The play, which went on to form the basis of the libretto for Verdi’s Rigoletto, was eventually revived with some success, with Delibes’s score an important factor. Massenet’s one-act ballet Espada dates from 1908, and is the most recent – and most substantial – work on the album. Set in Spain, the work clearly owes more than one idea to Bizet’s Carmen (‘The Card Game’ and ‘March of the Toreadors’ for example), but musically and orchestrally it is pure Massenet.

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About this Release


Franz Joseph Haydn Piano Sonatas, Vol. 9

Jean-Efflam Bavouzet


Following his acclaimed recording of Beethoven’s concertos with the Swedish Chamber Orchestra, Jean-Efflam Bavouzet returns to his exploration of Haydn’s sonatas, described by the magazine Gramophone as ‘a major modern recording landmark in the Haydn discography’. As in previous instalments, Bavouzet has programmed sonatas from Haydn’s early, middle, and late periods, giving added interest to the recital. Sonatas Nos 10 and 2, dating from the 1750s and ’60s respectively, share the key of C major, but differ in form. The short No. 2 was almost certainly written for pupils whilst Haydn was working as a teacher. No. 10 is more ambitious and extensive. Sonatas Nos 41 and 44 date from the early 1770s and show some influence from C.P.E. Bach and the Sturm und Drang movement. More virtuosic than the earlier sonatas, in these the trademark humour of Haydn is also more evident. Sonatas Nos 52 and 53 were composed a decade later and are conspicuously more demanding, technically and musically. As in the case of the previous volumes, this album was recorded at Potton Hall in Suffolk, on a Yamaha CFX Concert Grand Piano.

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About this Release


A Musical Zoo Ashley Riches, Joseph Middleton


A Musical Zoo with Ashley Riches and Joseph Middleton is a veritable tour de force, featuring compositions spanning nearly 160 years, from Schubert’s ‘The Trout’ to Shostakovich’s ‘Once there lived a cockroach’, and four languages (German, French, Russian, and English). A strong representation of the German Lieder tradition (Schubert, Schumann, Wolf, Brahms, and Richard Strauss) is balanced by the French mélodie (Fauré, Ravel) and English lyricism (Ireland, Howells). We humans seem to have an endless fascination with the animal kingdom, and animals have proved an inspiration for artists, composers and writers alike. This recital demonstrates what a rich seam this has proved for a diverse range of composers. Ashley Riches comments: ‘The text [of a song] may outline to us what we see. But the flutterings of Schubert’s Birds, the flicking antennae of Shostakovich’s Cockroach, the rush of notes with which Ravel’s Peacock spreads its tail – these are movements and energies accessible to music alone.’

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Reynaldo Hahn, Gabriel Fauré, Camille Saint-Saëns, Henri Duparc, Augusta Holmès, César Franck

Music from Proust’s Salons

Steven Isserlis, Connie Shih

BIS2522 £9.00 1 HYBRID SACD 05/03/21 BIS

With this programme of music for cello and piano, Steven Isserlis and Connie Shih transport us to the world immortalized in Marcel Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu – the Parisian high society and its glittering salons. For the composers of the time these provided a perfect platform for the introduction of new works, performed by the finest musicians in France for a sympathetic, educated and rich (!) audience. And for the music-loving Proust they offered countless opportunities to meet the composers that he so admired (and others that he possibly admired slightly less…) The first of these to make his appearance in the programme is no one less than Proust’s one-time lover and lifelong friend, Reynaldo Hahn, with a brief set of Variations chantantes on a theme from a baroque opera. He is followed by Gabriel Fauré, whose music Proust gushed about in a letter to the composer: ‘I could write a book more than 300 pages long about it.’ Proust was less expansive about Saint-Saëns’ music even if he admired him as a pianist, but the composer’s First Cello Sonata is nevertheless the centrepiece of the programme, before Henri Duparc and Augusta Holmès make their appearance. These were both students of César Franck, whose iconic Violin Sonata in A major (here in the version for cello) closes this programme of ‘salon music’ – in the best possible sense of the term.

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About this Release


Joseph Haydn String Quartets, Op. 76 Nos. 4-6

Chiaroscuro Quartet


The String Quartets, Op. 76 are among the most renowned of Joseph Haydn’s sets of quartets, and carry the stamp of their maker: No other set of eighteenth-century string quartets is so diverse, or so unconcerned with the norms of the time. In the words of Haydn’s friend and contemporary Charles Burney ‘they are full of invention, fire, good taste and new effects’ – a striking description considering that Haydn had reached the respectable age of 64 when he composed the set. On a previous disc, the Chiaroscuro Quartet has recorded the first half of Op. 76, including No. 3, the celebrated ‘Emperor’ quartet. The release has won great acclaim, with the critic in Gramophone writing: ‘The Chiaroscuros’ account of the remaining three Op 76 quartets can’t come soon enough.’ Well, here it is – a disc which like its predecessor spans a wealth of moods and atmospheres: from the magical sunrise of the opening of 76/4 to the manic minuet and boisterous finale of 76/6, a movement without a tune worth the name but utterly engrossing even so. The Chiaroscuro Quartet was formed in 2005 by the violinists Alina Ibragimova (Russia) and Pablo Hernán Benedí (Spain), the Swedish violist Emilie Hörnlund and cellist Claire Thirion from France. Performing music of the Classical period on gut strings this highly international ensemble has a unique sound – described in The Observer as ‘a shock to the ears of the best kind’.

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Gustav Mahler Symphony No. 10

Minnesota Orchestra, Osmo Vänskä


Left unfinished at the death of the composer, Gustav Mahler’s Tenth Symphony has exerted an enormous fascination on musicologists as well as musicians – a kind of Holy Grail of 20th-century music. Recognized as an intensely personal work, it was initially consigned to respectful oblivion, but over the years, Alma Mahler, the composer’s widow, released more and more of Mahler’s sketches for publication, and gradually it became clear that he had in fact bequeathed an entire five-movement symphony in short score (i.e. written on three or four staves). Of this, nearly half had reached the stage of a draft orchestration, while the rest contained indications of the intended instrumentation. Over the years a number of different completions or performing versions of ‘the Tenth’ have seen the light of day. One of the most often performed and recorded of these is that by Deryck Cooke. Cooke himself insisted that his edition was not a ‘completion’ of the work, but rather a functional presentation of the materials as Mahler left them. Cooke’s performing version of the symphony is the one that Osmo Vänskä has chosen to use for the seventh instalment in his and the Minnesota Orchestra’s Mahler series, a cycle characterized by an unusual transparency and clarity of sound as well as musical conception.

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Christian Sinding, Wilhelm Stenhammar, Jean Sibelius, Carl Nielsen, Einojuhani Rautavaara, Edvard Grieg

Nordic Rhapsody

Johan Dalene, Christian Ihle Hadland


Only 20 years old, Johan Dalene has already been hailed as ‘a musician of special sensibilities’ (Gramophone) in possession of ‘a rare fire’ (Diapason), and his début disc, with the concertos of Tchaikovsky and Barber, was described as ‘one of the finest violin débuts of the last decade’ in the BBC Music Magazine. For his second album, the Swedish violinist has chosen repertoire closer to home, with works by six Nordic composers. This is music that lies equally well under the hands of his partner, the Norwegian pianist Christian Ihle Hadland, and together the two offer a programme full of contrasts, and yet with a certain consistent sensibility. Nordic Rhapsody is bookended by two Norwegian composers, Christian Sinding and Edvard Grieg. What is interesting is that even though Sinding’s Suite ‘in the old style’ was composed some 25 years after Grieg’s Sonata No. 1, it is the latter work that is most forward-looking. Here the composer introduces elements of his national style, which in turn would contribute to the development of ‘a Nordic style’.

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John Adams, Harrison Birtwistle, Aaron Copland, Sofia Gubaidulina, Paul Hindemith, Helmut Lachenmann, Karol Szymanowski

Variations - Clare Hammond, piano

Clare Hammond


For her fifth release on BIS Clare Hammond has constructed an adventurous programme of twentieth and twenty-first-century variations for piano. From the imposing Chaconne by Sofia Gubaidulina, to the tender grief of Paul Hindemith’s variations or Aaron Copland’s bold and uncompromising proclamation, the disc presents a fresh perspective on the genre. Hammond opens with Karol Szymanowski’s Variations on a Polish Theme from 1904, a virtuosic and intensely Romantic outpouring that contrasts strikingly with the wit and irreverence of Helmut Lachenmann’s set on a theme by Schubert. The most recent works in the programme are Harrison Birtwistle’s mercurial elegy and its polar opposite I Still Play, a lyrical waltz composed in 2017 by John Adams. Described as ‘a star interpreter of contemporary music’ (The Observer), Clare Hammond has developed a reputation for imaginative concert programming. As she herself admits in her liner notes, variation form may on the surface appear to be both limiting and limited, but the works she presents here transcend the form in myriad creative, and at times daring, ways.

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Johann Sebastian Bach, Sergei Rachmaninov

Ottorino Respighi: Transcriptions of Bach & Rachmaninov

Orchestre Philharmonique Royal de Liège, John Neschling


The success of Ottorino Respighi’s ‘Roman Trilogy’ brought the composer international fame as an outstanding orchestrator. One side effect of this are the orchestral transcriptions gathered on this album: all made in 1929-30 and commissioned by eminent conductors such as Arturo Toscanini and Serge Koussevitzky for their American orchestras. Respighi’s wide-ranging musical tastes included an interest in early music which probably contributed to him taking on the task of transcribing organ works by Bach – or creating ‘orchestral interpretations’, as he himself called the results. Among the Bach works are the celebrated Passacaglia in C minor – which Stokowski had orchestrated just a few years earlier – as well as the Prelude and Fugue in D major. Both are given the full treatment by Respighi, with orchestral forces including strings, triple woodwind, bass clarinet, contrabassoon, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani and piano four hands for the Prelude and Fugue. The score for the Passacaglia asks for even greater forces (including an organ); Respighi compared Bach’s original to ‘a cathedral built exclusively of sound’ – a description equally valid for his own arrangement. With the present album, l’Orchestre Philharmonique Royal de Liège and John Neschling bring us the fifth instalment in a series that has been called ‘the finest-ever survey of the composer’s orchestral output undertaken by a single conductor’ (BBC Music Magazine).

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Sergei Rachmaninov Symphonies and Orchestral Music

Singapore Symphony Orchestra, Lan Shui


Sergei Rachmaninov was one of the twentieth century’s outstanding pianists, but the large body of purely orchestral music he composed is no less an expression of his musical character. His great strength was that he managed to preserve intact a vision he had discovered very early in life. This contemporary of Schoenberg, Scriabin, Ravel and Ives was unconcerned with musical fashions and had no wish to be a pioneer. Instead, and over a period of half a century he refined and deepened a language which derived naturally from his late-nineteenth-century Russian background. With this four-disc box set, the Singapore Symphony Orchestra and Lan Shui present a comprehensive collection of Rachmaninov’s music for orchestra – from the Scherzo in D minor, his first surviving piece for orchestra, completed just before his fifteenth birthday to the canonical works: the Symphonies and the Symphonic Dances. The recordings were made between 2008 and 2015, with the three symphonies (previously released on separate discs) described as ‘eine formidable Gesamteinspielung’ on the website Pizzicato. But there is much more to Rachmaninov’s orchestral music besides the symphonies, and this box offers the listener opportunity to explore the young composer’s fascination with Gypsy themes (in the excerpts from the opera Aleko and Capriccio bohémien) as well as his lifelong preoccupation with death, in the form of the four notes of the Dies irae plainchant motif.

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Arvo Pärt Miserere Chor des Bayerischen Rundfunks, Muenchner Rundfunkorchester, oenm, oesterreichisches ensemble fuer neue musik, Uta Jungwirth, Stanko Madić, Alexander Fickel, Anna-Maria Palii, Benno Schachtner, Andrew Lepri Meyer, Moon Yung Oh, Thomas Hamberger, Howard Arman

900527 £9.00 1 CD 05/03/21 BR KLASSIK

On the occasion of the 85th birthday of Arvo Pärt (September 2020) and the 75th anniversary of the Bavarian Radio Chorus (May 2021). The Estonian composer Arvo Pärt, born in 1935, has succeeded in bringing sacred music back to a broader audience, and away from the confines of the church service, more than almost any other contemporary composer. The meditative character of his works, and his return to the simplest and most basic musical forms, convey moments of intense spirituality. Before his emigration from the Soviet Union, Pärt had already invented what he termed the tintinnabuli style of composition (from the Latin word for a bell). He produced an early and important example of this expressive style in 1977 with his “Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten”, scored for string orchestra and bell. It is also a key feature of the choral and instrumental works presented by BR-KLASSIK on this new CD: five works for choir as well as two for instrumental ensemble, covering all of the composer’s creative epochs between 1986 and 2019. Alongside shorter acappella choral works such as “Tribute to Caesar” (1997), “Which Was the Son of...” (2000), “The Deer’s Cry” (2007) and “Ja ma kuulsin hääle... (And I heard a voice)” (2017), the highlight of this album – almost 30 minutes in length and with its absolutely spectacular sound effects – is the “Miserere” for soli, mixed voices, ensemble and organ (1989/1992).

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Ferdinand Ries Complete Chamber Music for Flute & Strings, Vol. 3

Ardinghello Ensemble

555378-2 £9.00 1 CD 05/03/21 CPO

Ferdinand Ries presents himself as a master of chamber music with the three extraordinarily imaginatively composed works on Vol. 3 of our edition of his complete works for flute and strings. On the one hand he is firmly rooted in the tradition of his great classical models. On the other hand he takes the step to a poetic musical worldview that by no means corresponded to the mainstream between 1815 and 1830. Some time before Novalis had written: “The world must be romanticized.” Along with two more flute quartets designed very much in the classical style but also already displaying newer musical expressive forms, his only, highly emotional Flute Quintet op. 107 is heard here, a work composed by Ries in London in 1818. As in the great majority of flute quintets, it is scored with two violas, which results in a practically orchestral sound picture. The composer makes manifold use of the option of setting the stringed instruments in opposition to the flute. Nevertheless, the flute is treated as the equal partner of the stringed instruments, which all take part in the changing functions of solo and accompaniment. Here too the Ardinghellos offer “dialoguing that is finely heard out, trim playing with a minimum of vibrato, and the most careful, delightful phrasing” klassik-heute of Vol. 3 in March 2019).

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Max BruchLieder

Rafael Fingerlos, Sascha El Mouissi, Benjamin Herzl, Cornelia Zink, Magdalena Rüker, Bernhard Berchtold

555422-2 £6.90 1 CD 05/03/21 CPO

The first piece composed by Max Bruch during his child prodigy years was a song, and the Five Songs op. 97 number among the last creations with which he closed the files on his long artist’s life shortly after World War I. This fact alone would suffice to make us understand the great value attached to song – whether of vocal or instrumental nature – in the oeuvre of this lifelong Romanticist. From the peppy male chorus to the full-length colossal oratorio, from the Loreley to the immortal cantilenas of his Violin Concerto No.1, Scottish Fantasy, and Kol Nidrei, he sang out his songs to his heart’s content while revealing lyrical qualities that come to light in special measure in his collections of solo songs distributed over the entire course of his career – a fact underscored by the Austrian baritone and his piano partner Sascha El Mouissi on this new and so far absolutely unique anthology. Along with delightful tidbits from all of Bruch’s compositional periods, we are presenting the five songs from Paul Heyse’s novella Siechentrost for One to Four Voice Parts, Violin, and Piano op. 54. Max Bruch’s musical setting produced not only an original piece of chamber music but also an intimate look at his self-understanding and his goals. Behind their creator’s blustery façade there was also a man of tender, vulnerable character!

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Paul Hindemith Mainzer Umzug and Symphonic Metamorphosis

Marie-Christine Haase, Alexander Spemann, Michael Dahmen, Landesjugendchor Rheinland-Pfalz, Philharmonisches Staatsorchester Mainz, Hermann Bäumer

555257-2 £9.00 1 CD 05/03/21 CPO

On 23 June 1962, in the Mainz City Theater, Paul Hindemith conducted the premiere of a commissioned work that he had composed together with the writer and dramatist Carl Zuckmayer for the two thousandth anniversary of the former Roman castellum ‘Mogontiacum.’ In their Mainzer Umzug the two authors had the city’s extraordinarily long history, from the Celts to current times, march before the mind’s eye of the public, whose members were delightfully amused by the explanations given by the commentators in dialect and at the end applauded all the participants with tremendous ovations. Despite this success, the Mainzer Umzug has continued to the present day to be a rarity in the catalogue of Hindemith’s works. After two repeat performances in Vienna and Berlin, it disappeared into the publisher’s archive until the conductor Hermann Bäumer again brought it into public view one and a half years ago. This General Music Director of the Mainz State Theater introduces his most recent cpo release with this practically forgotten parade, continues with the popular Symphonic Metamorphoses of Themes by Carl Maria von Weber and the prelude to the Requiem When Lilacs Last in the Door-Yard Bloom’d, and rounds things off with a stylistically genuine bonus that is an absolute must: the Narrhalla-Marsch with which the military musician Georg Karl Zulehner, one of the founding fathers of the Mainz Carnival Society (MCV), created the ‘theme song’ for all female and male Carnival revelers.

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Johann Wilhelm Hertel Cello & Organ Concertos

Bettina Messerschmidt, Merseburger Hofmusik, Michael Schönheit

555203-2 £9.00 1 CD 05/03/21 CPO

Since only a very few compositions from Johann Wilhelm Hertel’s complete oeuvre were printed during his lifetime, the dissemination of his music was very limited and restricted. The rediscovery of this master’s two cello concertos in the early 1990s already represented a great enrichment of the repertoire of violoncello concertos from the age of Empfindsamkeit and the style galant around 1750. Bettina Messerschmidt became acquainted with Hertel’s music at the beginning of her career as a Baroque cellist and enthusiastically welcomed the warmth, power, and melodiousness of his compositions right from the very start. In the concertos she often develops a dialogue between the cello and the strings through contrasting expression of an intensity recalling the cello concertos written by Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach around the same time. Along with two symphonies by Hertel, his only organ concerto, in all probability composed during 1756-57, is heard on our new releases. Here too the organ shines in dancy movements with fiery figurations.

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Friedrich Ernst Fesca String Quartets, Vol. 2

Amaryllis Quartet

777483-2 £25.00 4 CD 05/03/21 CPO

Since Friedrich Ernst Fesca, the father of Alexander Fesca, had received an excellent education as a violinist, it is not surprising that his masterfully elaborated string quartets contributed significantly to the establishment of his outstanding reputation as a composer. Until 1818 he published a total of twelve quartets, and two others followed in 1819 and then again in 1824-25. For a decade Fesca was one of the most-reviewed quartet composers, and it is documented that he was one of the most performed such composers for an even longer period of time. On Vol. 2 the quality and originality of his string quartets again are revealed above all in the balance with which he combines mellow harmony, contrapuntal expertise, and formally integrated virtuosity. The eight quartets are interpreted by the Amaryllis Quartet, which at the very latest since its triumph with the finalists’ prize at the Premio Paolo Borciani in Reggio Emilia in 2011 has numbered among the leading string quartets of its generation. Pearls for friends of chamber music who delight in discovery!

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Vasilije Mokranjac Selected Piano Works

Vladimir Gligorić

555221-2 £6.90 1 CD 05/03/21 CPO

Vasilije Mokranjac numbers among the most important Serbian composers of the second half of the twentieth century. In his initial works he clearly had late Romanticism and Impressionism as his models and enriched them with folkloristic elements. With time he experienced a stylistic development that led to a moderated form of modern expression – and so it also was in his piano compositions. The combination of ambitions as a composer and as a pianist marked his first period during the 1950s, a decade characterized by folkloristic influence. After the expressionistic supercharging that was the hallmark of his second compositional period, his music took a completely different turn during the 1970s: this third and last period of Mokranjac’s full compositional maturity witnessed his return to the piano and culminated in some of the most complicated works ever written for this instrument. The folkloristic elements typical of his early compositions as well as the forms of expressionistic tension from his second compositional period are lacking in these piano pieces. Lyrical expression is now what predominates. It also seemed as if the mystical, highly meditative, and increasingly sonorous pieces of this last period had a communicative agenda: with them their creator wanted to convey his reconciliation with the world – when then, out of a deeply hidden sense of mounting existential anxiety, he took his own life on 27 May 1984.

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Andreas Romberg Der Messias

Veronika Winter, Markus Schäfer, Ekkehard Abele, Bernhard Scheffel, Immo Schröder, Rheinische Kantorei, Das Kleine Konzert, Hermann Max

777328-2 £5.25 1 CD 05/03/21 CPO

Andreas Romberg numbers among music history’s forgotten composers. He was celebrated as a violin virtuoso and a composer, but this did not keep him from falling through the safety net into historiographical obscurity with its often-unjust judgments. We are recording his symphonies over time in the hope that he will receive more attention as a composer. Bonn, Hamburg, and Gotha were his career stations. In 1793, while still in Bonn, he wrote his Messiah, and in 1800 he also performed it in Hamburg, his new place of work. He without doubt regarded it as his favorite and main work, and over the years he repeatedly revised it. The rerelease of our first recording of this moving and impressive work is truly a thrilling rediscovery. klassik-heute.com in April 2008: “Some marvelously atmospheric delights that do not fade away after a single hearing – of which I have been happy to convince myself in what so far have been three complete ‘sessions.’

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Daniel Jones Symphonies Nos. 3 & 5

BBC Welsh Symphony Orchestra, Bryden Thomson

SRCD390 £8.70 1 CD 05/03/21 LYRITA

The Third Symphony was written between March and May 1951 and played by the BBC Welsh Symphony Orchestra under the composer in a studio performance broadcast on 26 June 1952. It was first performed in public at the Cheltenham Festival on 9 July 1956 by the London Philharmonic Orchestra under Sir Adrian Boult. In the same year, the third movement was used as an examination piece for conductors at the Royal National Eisteddfod. The Third Symphony is terse and closely argued. Reviewing the concert premiere at the 1956 Cheltenham Festival, the New York Times critic described it as ‘a work of stubborn force’. In his review of the same event, Kenneth Loveland hailed the score as ‘logically and boldly written’, observing that it conveyed ‘an idea of strength in composition, and an acute understanding of the capacity and projecting qualities of the individual instruments, and choirs of instruments’.

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Johannes Brahms Violin Sonatas

Hagai Shaham, Arnon Erez

NI8106 £8.70 1 CD 05/03/21 NIMBUS RECORDS

Johannes Brahms (1833-97) was uncompromisingly self-critical about his musical achievements and was only too aware of the long shadow of Ludwig van Beethoven over his creative output. He had composed his Scherzo in C minor in 1853 for a violin sonata collaboration with Robert Schumann and Albert Dietrich, but he had discarded four sonatas for piano and violin before he was sufficiently happy to allow a work in that genre, his Sonata No.1 in G major Op.78 (1878-9), to be published. About seven years elapsed before Brahms returned to the violin sonata genre. He composed his Sonata No.2 in A major Op.100 in 1886 during the first of three summer sojourns in the village of Hofstetten in the Swiss mountains where the Aare flows into Lake Thun. In a remarkable burst of holiday energy, he also wrote his Second Cello Sonata Op.99 and Third Piano Trio Op.101 there, as well as some of his Third Violin Sonata Op.108. Two of Brahms’s songs to poems by Klaus Groth, the highly wrought ‘Komm bald’ (‘Come soon’) (Op.97 no.5; 1885) and ‘Wie Melodien zieht es mir leise durch den Sinn’ (‘Like melodies it floweth, soft thro’ my spirit calls’) (Op.105 no.1; 1886) are featured in motivic guise in the two principal themes of the first movement of this sonata. Brahms’ Sonata No.3 in D minor Op.108 was composed between 1886 and 1888 and dedicated to the conductor and pianist Hans von Bülow, who was a champion of Brahms’ oeuvre.

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Gabriel Fauré, Maurice Ravel

Violin Sonatas & Other Works

Hagai Shaham, Arnon Erez

NI8107 £8.70 1 CD 05/03/21 NIMBUS RECORDS

Publisher Julien Hamelle snapped up Fauré’s Berceuse following it’s first performance in February 1880. Its success was no flash in the pan either: it sold over 700 copies in the first year and became probably Fauré’s most frequently transcribed piece. Fauré’s Violin Sonata No. 1 claims to be regarded his first masterpiece. He began it in the summer of 1875, shortly after his 30th birthday, and finished it the following year and it was first performed in Paris in January 1877 by the violinist Marie Tayau, with Fauré playing the piano part. Today this work has such a firm place in the repertory, it’s hard to imagine how bold and adventurous it must have seemed at that time. In 1897 Ravel began a Violin Sonata, but got no further than the first movement. Ravel’s single movement, in sonata form, juxtaposes modal writing, as at the opening, with more chromatic harmonies, including two passages of downward sliding chords that sound like Delius. The joins may not always be totally convincing, but there is no mistaking Ravel’s way with a lyrical idea. Ravel’s Berceuse, dedicated to his friend Roland-Manuel’s son, born the previous 20 June, has an unassuming grace worthy of its dedicatee, and its contrasts, as in the early Sonata movement, are largely between modal and chromatic harmonies. The score is marked ‘semplice’ and the violin is muted throughout, as in Fauré’s own Berceuse.

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Alexey Stanchinsky Piano Works

Peter Jablonski

ODE 1383-2 £9.00 1 CD 05/03/21 ONDINE

Pianist Peter Jablonski’s second album on Ondine features a large selection of piano works by Alexey Stanchinsky (1888–1914), one of the most talented Russian composers of the early 20th Century. Stanchinsky was not only a talent but a genuine innovator who despite of his early death had a profound influence on the generation of composers to follow. Peter Jablonski is the perfect interpreter to these magnificent gems.

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Jurgis Karnavičius String Quartets Nos. 1 & 2

Vilnius String Quartet

ODE 1351-2 £9.00 1 CD 05/03/21 ONDINE

This new release by the Vilnius String Quartet presents two exciting gems in 20th century chamber music: the first two String Quartets by Lithuanian composer Jurgis Karnavičius (1884–1941) as world premiere recordings.

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Philip Glass, Johann Sebastian Bach Glass-Bach Dresden

Mark Steinbach

OMM0150 £9.00 1 CD 26/03/21 ORANGE MOUNTAIN

Orange Mountain Music is proud to announced the release of GLASS BACH DRESDEN by organist Mark Steinbach. The new album is performed on the renowned 1755 Silbermann Organ, one of the most famous organs in all of Europe, which is located at the Cathedral of St.Trinitas in Dresden Germany. Steinbach presents this new album which ties together the music of two composers, Philip Glass and J.S. Bach, separated by centuries yet inextricably linked on a musical level. While it’s a rare treat to hear Bach on an instrument very much of his time, it’s also a special gift to hear modern music on such a prestigious instrument. However, in a much more immediate way, the existence of this organ at all is nothing short of a miracle.

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Louis-Claude Daquin, François Couperin, Jean-Philippe Rameau, Akira Nishimura, Ludwig van Beethoven, Claude Debussy, Leoš Janáček

Four Elements, Vol. 3: Wind

Yu Kosuge

ORC100159 £9.00 1 CD 05/03/21 ORCHID CLASSICS

Acclaimed Japanese pianist Yu Kosuge unveils Wind, the third in her series of four Orchid Classics albums related to the four elements (Water, Fire, Wind, Earth). Kosuge’s inspiration for these releases stems from her relationship with the music of Beethoven, who was drawn to Greek legends. This led Kosuge to the Greek concept of the four elements as the basis of these albums. Beethoven is one of a varied selection of composers featured on Wind; Yu Kosuge performs his blustery Piano Sonata Op. 31, No. 2, known as ‘The Tempest’. There are evocative pieces from the French Baroque, by Couperin, Rameau and Daquin, and from the world of French Impressionism with three of Debussy’s fleet-footed Préludes. The release is completed with a piece by contemporary Japanese composer Akira Nishimura, and the atmospheric In the Mists by Janáček. “Apart from technical perfection, which is not that unusual today, she possesses a stunning palette of expression and an exquisite and pearly touch.” Piano News

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Ángel Villoldo, Mariano Mores, Astor Piazzoll, Daniel Binelli, Horacio Salgán, Aníbal Troilo, Julián Plaza, Anselmo Aieta, Matos Rodríguez

Tango in the Night

Binelli-Ferman Duo, Daniel Binelli, Polly Ferman, Leanne Nicholls, City Chamber Orchestra of Hong Kong, Germán Augusto Gutiérrez, Germán Augusto Gutiérrez

ORC100160 £9.00 1 CD 19/03/21 ORCHID CLASSICS

Tango in the Night celebrates the centenary year of Daniel Binelli’s mentor Astor Piazzolla, with an album that spans more than a century of music, tracing tango from its origins in Latin America to its position as an international artform. It opens with Ángel Villoldo’s rousing El Choclo, which took Argentina by storm in 1903, and includes such landmarks as Piazzolla’s jazz-influenced Libertango and Fracanapa, La Cumparsita by Uruguayan pianist and composer Matos Rodríguez, and Daniel Binelli’s haunting title track, written in 2008 and used recently in the soundtrack to Gabriel Bologna’s comedy Tango Shalom. Other album highlights include the yearning Tanguera by Mariano Mores, Piazzolla’s Oblivión, with Leanne Nicholls as oboe soloist, and Binelli’s Tango de los Cuadros, composed in 1998 in homage to another hero of tango, Osvaldo Pugliese.

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Ludwig van Beethoven Leonore (1805)

Gwyneth Jones, James King, Theo Adam, Gerd Nienstedt, Rofraud Hansmann, Werner Hollweg, Eberhard Waechter, ORF Chor, Singverein der Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Wien, ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, Carl Melles

C200052 £12.38 2 CD 05/03/21 ORFEO

This version of the three-act Leonore (1805) was recorded during a concert performance in the Grand Hall of the Vienna Musikverein on December 14th, 1970. Starring as Fidelio/Leonore and Florestan were Gwyneth Jones and James King, who were incomparable in these roles at the time. The rest of the cast also include outstanding singers of the age, above all Theo Adam as Pizarro, Gerd Nienstedt as Rocco, Rotraud Hansmann as Marzelline, Werner Hollweg as Jaquino and Eberhard Waechter as Don Fernando. At the beginning, there is the Leonore Overture No. 2, thrillingly performed by the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Carl Melles.

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Joseph Haydn, Niccolò Jommelli Missa Cellensis; Te Deum; Mass in D Major

Lucia Popp, Doris Soffel, Horst Laubenthal, Kurt Moll, Chor des Bayerischen Rundfunks, Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, Judy Berry, Marta Bećaková, John La Pierre, Nikolaus Meer, Prager Kammerchor, Virtuosi di Praga, Rafael Kubelík, Hilary Griffiths MP2101 £7.29 2 CD 05/03/21 ORFEO

Known as St Cecilia Mass, Haydn’s fifth Missa is the longest and most complex setting of the Latin Mass text. Rich in elaborate contrapuntal interweaving and with a duration of more than one hour, it reveals Haydn the opera composer. The present recording of a concert, performed in 1982 in the Ottobeuren Basilica with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and Choir under the baton of Rafael Kubelik, is still considered a reference recording of the work. Niccolò Jommelli’s Mass in D major and his Te Deum were both written during his time at Charles Eugene’s Württemberg court, where he is said to have held the highest paid musician post in Europe. The Württemberg court loved French music and at the same time the virtuoso Mannheim school. These, together with Jommelli’s Italian roots, also shaped the composer’s stylistically diverse sacred oeuvre. The Te Deum with a brief length of not even a quarter of an hour, was frequently played even up until the early 19th century.

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Gabriel Fauré Works for Violin & Piano

Jane Gordon, Jan Rautio

RES10275 £9.00 1 CD 05/03/21 RESONUS CLASSICS

Bridging the end of Romanticism and the beginnings of Modernism, Gabriel Fauré is considered to be one of the most important French composers of the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. His music is a testament to the seismic changes that he lived through, undoubtedly reflected in his distinctive writing.This collection of Fauré’s works for violin and piano are performed on period instruments: an 1890s Érard piano and a violin by Guaneri, recreating the composer’s sound world. Duo Jane Gordon (violin) and Jan Rautio (piano) here celebrate their significant milestone of two decades of musical partnership, having collaborated together on hundreds of artistic projects.

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Jimmy Van Heusen The Songs of Jimmy Van Heusen - Swinging On A Star (His 52 Finest 1933-1962)

Various Artists

RTS4381 £6.40 2 CD 05/03/21 RETROSPECTIVE

Swinging On A Star presents the most comprehensive survey available: 52 selected gems, from Jimmy Van Heusen’s (1913-1990) early Cotton Club days (There’s A House In Harlem For Sale, 1933) to his final Oscar winner: Call Me Irresponsible, 1962. In between are so many huge hits, such as Imagination (immortalised by Ella Fitzgerald), Polka Dots And Moonbeams, Like Someone In Love, But Beautiful, It Could Happen To You, Darn That Dream and our title number, Swinging On A Star –all of which have over a hundred different recordings currently listed. In each case here the original artist or noted interpreter has been chosen. Bing Crosby was Jimmy’s greatest champion and the ‘Old Groaner’ contributes 14 songs, including several duets with the likes of Judy Garland and Rosemary Clooney. Seven songs started life in the ‘Road’ series of films, although one of them (But Beautiful) is sung here by Van Heusen’s other top mouthpiece, Frank Sinatra, who also sings ten others, including Nancy With The Laughing Face, written for his young daughter, and the Oscar-winners All The Way and High Hopes.

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Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Piano Sonatas, Vol. 4

Peter Donohoe

SOMMCD 0629 £7.29 1 CD 19/03/21 SOMM RECORDINGS

Volume 4 of Peter Donohoe’s acclaimed survey of Mozart’s Piano Sonatas on SOMM Recordings focuses on the composer’s adoption of the newly emerging pianoforte and his bold exploitation of its more sophisticated voicing. Sonatas Nos.1 in C major (K279) and 5 in G major (K283) were composed as a set of six “difficult”sonatas by the 18-year-old prodigy in 1774. Containing hints of the mature genius to come, the Scarlatti-accented outer movements of the First Sonata frame a seductively perfumed, sensuously realised central passage of precocious sophistication. Sonata No.5 moves from grace to complexity to echo CPE Bach before ending in a breathless, left-hand accented contradanse celebrating the growing freedom and fluidity of Mozart’s piano writing. More emotionally conflicted, Sonata No.12 in F major (K332) was composed in the wake of Mozart’s failed search for employment in Paris, his mother’s death and a moment of spiritual despair. Two miniatures complete the volume: the mysterious and engrossing late Minuet in D major (K355) and the austere and searching Allegro in G minor (K312). Christopher Morley returns as author of the series’ authoritative and illuminating booklet notes.

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Howard Ferguson, Rebecca Clarke, Elizabeth Maconchy, Gerald Finzi, Phyllis Tate

Dreams Melting

James Geer, Ronald Woodley

SOMMCD 0630 £7.29 1 CD 19/03/21 SOMM RECORDINGS

SOMM RECORDINGS is pleased to announce Dreams Melting, a revealing survey of British songs from the early 20th century by tenor James Geer and pianist Ronald Woodley. At the recital’s heart are two substantial cycles. Setting seven poems by Thomas Hardy, Gerald Finzi’s Till Earth Outwears provides an intimate and movingly melancholic commentary in what Ronald Woodley describes in his extensive and informative booklet notes as a “male perspective on life, love and loss”. Rarely recorded, Howard Ferguson’s five-part treatment of Denton Welch’s poems, Discovery, typifies “the subtlety of the relationship between late romanticism, modernism and the inherited idioms of ‘Britishness’ that composers of Ferguson’s generation inevitably grew up with”. Its second song, ‘Dreams Melting’, provides the recital’s title. Three songs make their first appearance on disc. Elizabeth Maconchy’s setting of John Donne’s passionate but tortured A Hymn to God the Father boasts a searching vocal line underpinned by tellingly interrogative piano. Phyllis Tate’s The Falcon is a sparse but powerful setting of an anonymous medieval text while her variegated treatment of William Blake’s poem Cradle Song is reminiscent of a Bartók folksong arrangement.

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Daníel Bjarnason, Veronique Vaka, Haukur Tómasson, Þuríður Jónsdóttir, Magnús Blöndal Jóhannsson

Occurrence: ISO Project, Vol. 3

Iceland Symphony Orchestra, Pekka Kuusisto, Mario Caroli, Daníel Bjarnason

DSL-92243 £12.25 2 BLU-RAY AUDIO AND BONUS CD 19/03/21 SONO LUMINUS

Occurrence is the third, and at least for now the last, in a hugely illuminating series devoted to works by contemporary Icelandic composers, as performed by Iceland’s 70-year-old national orchestra. Speaking for myself – and surely for many others, as well – the series has been a milestone project, one that any conscientious collector of symphonic music simply must have on the shelf. Across three CDs now, Sono Luminus has capitalized shrewdly on swelling global interest in the music of Daníel Bjarnason and Anna Thorvaldsdottir, using their works as a means by which to introduce seven more composers with original, substantial voices.

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María Huld Markan Sigfúsdóttir Kom vinur - two choral works

Schola Cantorum, Hörður Áskelsson

SLE-70019 £5.55 1 CD 19/03/21 SONO LUMINUS

Kom vinur was composed in 2017 for the Skálholt Summer Concerts in Iceland when I was the composer in residency at the festival. A year later Maríuljóð was created. Both works are composed to poems by the Icelandic poet Vilborg Dagbjartsdóttir. The poems are the absolute core of the pieces; when composing them, I felt like excavating existing music from the text, unravelling hidden sounds from the words. Kom vinur has a somber undertone, a sense of loneliness and longing for sharing light and thoughts with a friend in the dark winter night. In Maríuljóð the tender view is through the eyes of a child observing subtle changes in nature and the seasons as well as asking the mother questions about the image of the Holy Mother.” - María Huld Markan Sigfúsdóttir

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Franz Schubert, Johannes Brahms, Maurice Ravel, Robert Schumann

Lars Sellergren plays Schubert, Schumann, Brahms, Ravel - Vol. 6

Lars Sellergren

CDA1851 £12.15 2 CD 05/03/21 STERLING RECORDS

The Swedish pianist Lars Sellergren (1927–2008) studied with Olof Wibergh in Stockholm 1946–1952 and Bruno Seidlhofer in Vienna 1952–1954. In 1952 he received the Jenny Lind Award and also made his début as a pianist. He was an experienced piano pedagogue, teaching at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm from 1963 to 1993, becoming a titular professor in 1982. With violinist Leo Berlin and cellist Åke Olofsson he founded the Stockholm Trio (1957–1986). From 1950 to 1967 he gave regular concerts including a very large number of radio and TV broadcasts. He was active in musicians’ professional organizations and in politics, among them as a member of the Stockholm County Council and on the board of Rikskonserter [the Swedish Concert Institute]. He took up broadcasting again in 1975 and returned to the concert platform. Lars Sellergren made his last radio recording in 1999 (Bach’s Das Wohltemperierte Klavier), and in 2007 he held a Master class at the Örebro University College of Music entitled “Med musiken i centrum – om pianospelets hemligheter” [“Centred on the music – about the secrets of piano playing”].

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Johann Sebastian Bach St. Matthew Passion

Isabel Schicketanz, Marie Henriette Reinhold, Patrick Grahl, Benedikt Kristjánsson, Peter Harvey, Krećimir Stražanac, Gaechinger Cantorey, Hans-Christoph Rademann

ACC30535 £17.00 2 CD 19/03/21 ACCENTUS MUSIC

The St. Matthew Passion by Johann Sebastian Bach is one of the greatest works in the history of music. Whenever I study this epochal composition, I always ask myself the question: How can a work of music, which is performed each year in thousands of performances, has been scientifically and artistically interpreted for decades, and worshiped for centuries, remain a new, contemporary, and at the same time universal and supreme idea?It can be achieved if that which is defined as established and comprehensive, and appears or is accepted as unshakeable, is set in motion without capping the connections to the work itself and its musical- historical, intellectual and theological foundations.” says Hans-Christoph Rademann about one of the monumental sacred works of music history. In November 2020, Rademann and the Gaechinger Cantorey ensemble and chorus, together with an extraordinary group of soloists, set out to lend a new and fresh perspective to Bach’s timeless masterpiece of raging choirs, intimate chorales, and emotionally charged arias, which, with its drama and pictorial quality, allows the listener to experience the well-known Passion story again and again as something completely new and unheard-of.

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Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven Septets

Soloists of the Lucerne Festival Orchestra

ACC30536 £12.00 1 CD 19/03/21 ACCENTUS MUSIC

How did Ludwig van Beethoven become a great symphonist? A milestone on his way there is marked by the Septet, which he composed in 1799, on the threshold of a new century, for this large-scale chamber work, with its mixed instrumentation of winds and strings, already assembles an orchestra “en miniature”. At the same time, however, Beethoven thus founded a new genre of ensemble music, which was to be followed by numerous composers from Franz Schubert to Johannes Brahms and Jean Françaix with nonets, octets, sextets or quintets. Beethoven’s radiant and entertaining septet combines logic with catchiness and offers a spiritual musical conversation. And it is in this discipline that the soloists of the Lucerne Festival Orchestra, who are dedicated to making music in friendship, are masters. They also prove this in the Nannerl Septet, which Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart probably created in 1776 for the name day of his sister Maria Anna: artfully playful music of the best festive and champagne mood. Recorded live at the Concert Hall of KKL Lucerne, August 2020

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Sergio Fiorentino: Live in Germany 1993 Sergio Fiorentino

APR_6034 £9.00 2 CD 05/03/21 APR

Sergio Fiorentino’s career began auspiciously with successes both in competition and on the world’s stages, including a Carnegie Hall debut in 1953, but a plane crash in 1954 affected him badly and momentum was lost. He recorded prolifically for British budget labels in the late 1950s and 1960s, but his concert profile was never fully to recover. Fiorentino’s 1993 German concerts marked a return to the stage two decades after the pianist’s disillusionment with the performer’s life had led him to concentrate on teaching. These resulting live recordings, which revealed a pianist in the grand romantic tradition, were to astound the critics and relaunched Fiorentino’s career in the studio and on stage for a few glorious years, until his death in 1998.

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Frédéric Chopin, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov

Piano Protagonists: Music for Piano & Orchestra

Orion Weiss, The Orchestra Now, Leon Botstein

BRIDGE 9547 £9.00 1 CD 12/03/21 BRIDGE RECORDS

This new studio recording contains three works for piano and orchestra that virtuoso pianist Orion Weiss and conductor Leon Botstein first performed in concert at the Bard Music Festival. Together, the three works span almost a century of musical Romanticism and are as different from one another as the generations they represent. In each piece, the virtuoso genre becomes a means by which the composer responds to a specific source of inspiration—in the first case (Korngold), a performer and family friend who had suffered a horrendous tragedy, in the second (Rimsky Korsakov), a venerated old master, and in the third (Chopin) a melody from a beloved opera.

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Poul Ruders Dream Catcher

Bjarke Mogensen, Odense Symfoniorkester, Scott Yoo, Sebastian Lang-Lessing


Bridge’s Poul Ruders Edition, Vol. 16, features the world premiere recording of a major new Ruders concerto, the seven movement “Sound and Simplicity” (2018), performed by Danish accordion virtuoso Bjarke Mogensen and the Odense Symfoniorkester, led by Sebastian Lang-Lessing. The album also includes Mogensen’s transcription of Ruders’s hypnotic “Dream Catcher” for solo accordion, and the re-issue of one of the Danish composer’s masterpieces- his Symphony No. 3, subtitled “Dream Catcher”. Ruders stands today among a handful of the world’s leading composers, with operas staged in Munich, London, Copenhagen, New York, Santa Fe, and Boston, and symphonic scores commissioned by the Berlin Philharmonic, the New York Philharmonic, and the BBC Symphony Orchestra.

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Necil Kazim Akses, Ferid Alnar, Ulvi Cemal Erkin, Cemal Resit Rey, Ahmet Adnan Saygun

To Anatolia: Selections from the Turkish Five

Beyza Yazgan


“To Anatolia” is Turkish/American pianist Beyza Yazgan’s passionately played collection of Turkish classical piano repertoire from a group of composers known as “The Turkish Five” (Cemal Resit Rey (1904-1985), Ferid Alnar (1906-1978), Ulvi Cemal Erkin (1906-1972), Adnan Saygun (1907-1991), and Necil Kazim Akses (1908-1999). The music was composed between 1931-1976 with most of the pieces inspired by Anatolian folksongs, stories, dances, dirges, and lullabies. Though the compositions were all written for piano, the colors and influences of eastern instruments are present throughout.

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Anton Schweitzer Die Auferstehung Christi; Missa Brevis Cantata

Thüringer Bach Collegium, Gernot Süßmuth

C5425 £15.00 2 CD 05/03/21 CAPRICCIO

There is little documentation about this now lesser-known, but once esteemed composer. Born in Coburg in 1735, Anton Schweitzer died in 1787 in Gotha, where he had settled following the Weimar Palace fire in 1774. Regrettably, relatively few of his manuscripts have survived. Some of the works recorded here (which comprise almost his entire existing church music) were preserved in several copies found recently in various archives in Thuringia. This recording presents colourful virtuoso music by an unjustly forgotten composer.

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Benno Ammann Missa ‘Defensor Pacis’ (World Premiere Recording, Vatikan 1947)

Basler Madrigalisten, Raphael Immoos

C5415 £9.00 1 CD 05/03/21 CAPRICCIO

Benno Ammann’s oeuvre reveals a number of influences, from impressionism to free tonality, yet he belongs to no stylistic school. The Swiss composer wrote Missa Defensor Pacis (Defender of the Faith Mass) in 1946 for the official canonisation at St Peter’s in Rome of Nicholas of Flue, patron saint of Switzerland. This prestigious commission, with its complex polyphony, countless variations and use of the cantus firmus technique, is one of the most important and extensive Masses by a Swiss composer for a cappella choir.

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Christoph Graupner Easter Cantatas

Sebastian Hübner, Johannes Hill, Jan Jerlitschka, Knabenchor ‘Capella Vocalis’, Pulchra Musica Baroque Orchestra, Christian Bonath

C5411 £9.00 1 CD 05/03/21 CAPRICCIO

Christoph Graupner was appointed court conductor at Darmstadt in 1711 and continued in the post for the rest of his life. His focus there moved to sacred vocal music, which explains his extraordinary output of 1,400-plus cantatas. In 1723 the Leipzig city magistrates were looking for a new cantor at the St Thomas School, and Graupner was their first choice. Graupner’s patron, however, would not release him from his contract, and so the authorities went on to hire J.S. Bach instead. Although Graupner was widely celebrated during his lifetime, he was soon forgotten after his death. As we rediscover more of his works, however, we can understand the esteem in which he was held by his contemporaries. This recording spans the liturgical arc from Maundy Thursday via Good Friday and Easter Sunday to Easter Monday, presenting one liturgical work for each festive day in a world premiere recording.

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Music from all Corners of the World Various Artists

CAP22071£9.00 1 CD 19/03/21 CAPRICE

Visca L’Amor: Catalan Art Songs of the 20th and 21st Centuries, features tenor Isaí Jess Muñoz and pianist Oksana Glouchko. The album focuses on the fascinating music and poetry of Catalunya—an area of northeastern Spain and southeastern France, whose language was long censored by the Franco dictatorship. This new recording represents one of the few explorations of the rich Catalan tradition, including six song cycles by Frederic Mompou, Eduard Toldrá, Joan Comellas, Ricard LaMotte de Grignon, Narcís Bonet, and a world premiere of a new work by Elisenda Fábregas. Tenor Isaí Jess Muñoz has collaborated with some of the world’s leading ensembles, including the Israel Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Verbier Festival (Switzerland), and the New York City Opera.

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Lukas Ligeti That Which Has Remained…That Which Will Emerge…

Barbara Kinga Majewska, Paweć Szamburski, Patryk Zakrocki, Mikołaj Pałosz, Wojtek Kurek, Lukas Ligeti

COL20452 £10.50 1 CD 26/03/21 COL LEGNO

Music as meta-memory: In 2015, when he was the artist-in-residence at Warsaw’s POLIN Museum, the internationally renowned percussionist and composer Lukas Ligeti created a unique document in words and sounds that is being presented on this disc. The history of Polish Jews, which is the POLIN museum’s mission to transport and convey, led Lukas Ligeti to contemplate his own (Hungarian-) Jewish background. He conducted numerous interviews with people between the ages of 20 and 98 to talk to them about Jewish life in Warsaw. All interview partners were also asked to sing songs. By way of a precise musical notation, these memories were fed to musicians via headphones in the form of speech, rhythm, and melodies. Those, in turn, were asked to respond intuitively to what they heard and continue the conversation by their, musical means. The result is a touching composition situated somewhere between performance art and concert.

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Paul Frick Hofknicks

Paul Frick, Gudrun Gut Ketan Bhatti, Daniel Brandt, Benjamin Tierney, Yosa Peit, H30H, Poller, Tom Rojo, Lance Gamble, Lance, Jan Brauer, KUF, J.R Plankton, Robert Defcon, Daito

COL16010 £20.00 2 LP (Vinyl) and 1 CD 05/03/21 COL LEGNO

Paul Frick’s new album “Hofknicks” is a kaleidoscopic dedication to the courtyard of his studio collective and to its fluid microcosm of people, animals, plants, stones and concrete. Everyday poetry in shifting states: the oasis is just a few footsteps away from the sirens of the main street. What started out as a remix album - it is one - of its predecessor ‚Second Yard Botanicals‘ from 2018, took a few more turns. 18 trusted artists contributed to the 14 reinterpretations, as close or far from the originals as they wished. Without exception they all went for ‘far‘. While the listener can detect threads of Dub, Bass, Techno, Ambient, Contemporary Classical etc. throughout ‘Hofknicks‘, there is a relating air of contemplation floating throughout the pieces. Soaked with Frick’s broad instrumentation and frequent use of field recordings, multiple perspectives are knitted together on this sonic trip full of mirrors and echoes.

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Giovanni Legrenzi Christmas Mass in St. Mark 1685

Cappella Marciana, Marco Gemmani

CNT2121 £7.29 1 CD 12/03/21 CONCERTO CLASSICS

After winning the ICMA (International Classical Music Awards) in the category Early Music with the CD “Willaert and the Flemish School at St. Mark’s”, Concerto Classics continues its collaboration with Cappella Marciana and presents this album. The CD / digital product contains the live recordings of the vocal works of Giovanni Legrenzi dedicated to the celebration of Holy Christmas, some of which are first world recordings. The music has been gathered in an ideal liturgical sequence of a Christmas Mass in St. Mark approximately in 1685.

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Johann Sebastian Bach, arr. Mieko MiyazakiGoldberg Variatons, arranged for Koto & Bass Koto

Mieko Miyazaki

CC 777.727 £7.29 1 CD 12/03/21 CONTINUO CLASSICS

Mieko Miyazaki makes us discover his version of the Goldberg Variations at KOTO! An artistic feat of a very high level by an exceptional performer. A fantastic CD which proves that Bach’s music is timeless and obviously multi-cultural. “While I was intensely practicing the koto to enter the Conservatory in Japan, I discovered, on my father’s recommendation, the recording of Goldberg Variations made by Glenn Gould in 1981. This album, which fascinated the whole world, had a considerable impact on the high school student that I was. Determined, despite the technical difficulties, to live the Goldberg Variations solo, in 2002 I started to transcribe the first variations. After what seemed to me to be an interminable process of research and testing, I completed, 15 years later, the transcription of the entire work. The great blind master Yatsuhashi Kengyo created the koto style that currently exists in Japan, a style that has been passed down from generation to generation from the 8th century onwards; The year 1685, marked by the death of Yatsuhashi, is also the year of birth of Johann Sebastian Bach. I have always felt something deep in this coincidence. ” Mieko Miyazaki

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Jose De Nebra, Sébastien Duron, Juan Hidalgo Ay Amor: Splendors of Spanish Baroque Music Eleonora Deveze, Musica Antiqua Mediterranea, Christian Mendoze


King of Spain from 1621 to 1665, Philippe IV made music and theatrical performances a real craze, and under his reign, Spain experienced the full development of its musical school. In the Baroque era, whether in the courtyard or in the city, Spanish music consisted mainly of dances and songs with a distinctly national flavor, although many Italian musicians were based in Spain, country rich in folk traditions. “Scholarly” music and popular music have mutually nourished each other, to produce clear, elegant, simple and accessible works, mixing folklore, traditions and refined art. The songs (tonos, villancicos, romances, canciones Spanish) are developing throughout Europe, and alongside delicately poetic or nostalgic intonations, we discover in Spain under the pen of musicians like Hidalgo or Durón almost theatrical accents. It was around this time that the typically Spanish genre of zarzuela flourished, which takes its name from the name of a hunting lodge of the Kings of Spain near Madrid. Mainly during the reign of Philip IV, this place was given sumptuous poetic and musical shows magnificently staged. Made up of an alternation of dialogues, choirs and verses generally derived from popular melodies, the zarzuela can, if one wishes, evoke the form of vaudeville or operetta.

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Igor Stravinsky, Sergei Prokoviev, Moritz Moskowski, Dimitri Shostakovich

Russian Sonatas for Violin & Piano

Gérard Poulet, Tamayo Ikeda, Misa Mamiya


Artist with an immense career as a soloist, a chamber musician, but also a teacher, Gérard Poulet never ceases to explore the most diverse sonic territories, from Bach to the music of the 20th century. Slavic composers hold a special place in its catalog. The five musicians gathered in this album present aesthetics far removed from each other. Between pieces of entertainment, distant memories of ballet, scents of classicism and romanticism, here is a journey through half a century of Russian music in the company of her two friends, Tamayo Ikeda and Misa Mamiya.

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Johann Valentin Meder, Antonio Caldara, Henry Dumont, Hector Joseph Fiocco, Georg Phillip Telemann, Antonio Vivaldi, Theodore Schwartzkopff

The Voyage from Darkness to Light: Baroque Sonatas and Cantatas

Charlotte Ruby, Isabelle Quellier,Jean-Pierre Nouhaud, Marie Nouhaud, Benoît Fallai


The Voyage from ‘Darkness to Light’ invites you to let yourself be transported to baroque land, through pieces of chamber music and sacred music. For this album we collaborate with the soprano, Charlotte Ruby, whose tone of voice and theatricality echo our interpretation. Obviously, this project has become an original proposal: to offer the public, through the concertante pieces that we perform, a dialogue with equivalent virtuosities and sensibilities between the human voice and the instrumental voices. The album is built around the theme of metamorphosis. Throughout the works, he takes us on a nocturnal journey: from lamentation to exaltation, from night to day towards a rebirth.

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Johann Sebastian Bach Goldberg Variations

Malcolm Archer

CR064 £9.00 1 CD 05/03/21 CONVIVIUM RECORDS

A new recording of Johann Sebastian Bach’s ‘Goldberg Variations’, performed by world-renowned musician, Malcom Archer on a harpsichord built by Alan Gotto.

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John Carbon Inner Voices

Warsaw National Philharmonic, Prague Radio Symphony, The Concordia Orchestra, Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra, Gerhardt Zimmerman, Robert Black, Vladimír Válek, Marin Alsop, Kirk Trevor

CR058 £12.00 2 CD 12/03/21 CONVIVIUM RECORDS

John Carbon’s vivid and engaging style is on full display in this collection of orchestral and chamber works. Carbon has long had a particularly affinity for the dramatic and expressive possibilities of concertos, and four of his significant works in that genre, played here by superb soloists, comprise the bulk of the album. The powerful symphony “Inner Voices” and the pictorial chamber suite “Ghost Town Sketches” round out this collection. - Carson Cooman

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Los Rurales Y Los Amigos de Buena Vista: OcotitiaLos Rurales CLL001 £9.00 1 CD 05/03/21 CUGATE CLASICOS LATINOS

The Mexican brass band LOS RURALES surprises with a joyous blend of Oaxacan music and Balkan brass, featuring Roberto Garcia and Jesús Aguaje Ramos of the Buenavista Social Club. Los Rurales are a Mexican band that consists of 5 Oaxacans and 1 Sinaloense who met years ago when they all studied in the Faculty of Music of the University of Veracruz. This is where the story of the sextet starts. Founded as a brass quintet with 2 trumpets, a horn, a tuba and a trombone and later adding a drummer/percussionist, they first played in small local bars, but thanks to their high stage presence and energetic blend of styles, the band was loved by the audiences and soon played outside their hometown and were catapulted onto great forums such as the opening of the exhibition “Around the world on 80 bicycles” plus festivals like Festival Otras Músicas de Oaxaca and El Festival Señor de Chalca in Chalco. As their name makes clear (Los Rurales translates as “those from the countryside”), the band is aware of the importance of the rural origins for all cultures in music. Their own Mexican roots keep that spirit alive in their repertoire that consists of songs, waltzes, tunes and occasional cover versions of earworms like What A Wonderful World and La Bamba. And yet the listener will find elements of Balkan brass which gives the music of Los Rurales a unique and characterful sound that proves a real delight for their ever-growing audience.

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Jasmin Seidl Repose

Jasmin Seidl

KNT001CD £9.00 1 CD 05/03/21 CUGATE CLASSICS KINTSUGI RECORDINGS

Very early in her childhood, Jasmin Seidl found her deep connection to music. At the beginning, a glockenspiel. Then came the piano lessons. A passion for the instrument developed and she immersed herself into the classic compositions of the past, followed by confrontations with jazz and free improv. A detachment from learned structures. Then, at one point, it did not go any further. After a long pause from the piano and a stint in a fold band, a love for simple melodies developed that did not shy away from subtle tensions. And then, the piano returned. A very personal approach in performance and compositions emerged and merged with an appreciation for score music.

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Jasmin Seidl Repose

Jasmin Seidl

KNT001LP £15.00 1 LP (Vinyl) 05/03/21 CUGATE CLASSICS KINTSUGI RECORDINGS

Very early in her childhood, Jasmin Seidl found her deep connection to music. At the beginning, a glockenspiel. Then came the piano lessons. A passion for the instrument developed and she immersed herself into the classic compositions of the past, followed by confrontations with jazz and free improv. A detachment from learned structures. Then, at one point, it did not go any further. After a long pause from the piano and a stint in a fold band, a love for simple melodies developed that did not shy away from subtle tensions. And then, the piano returned. A very personal approach in performance and compositions emerged and merged with an appreciation for score music.

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Peter Heise Drot og Marsk (King & Marshal), Tragic opera in four acts

Peter Lodahl, Johan Reuter, Sine Bundgaard, Gert Henning-Jensen, Sofie Elkjær Jensen, Morten Staugaard, Simon Duus, Mathias Monrad Møller, Teit Kanstrup, The Royal Danish Opera Chorus, The Royal Danish Orchestra, Michael Schønwandt

6.200006 £27.00 3 HYBRID SACD 05/03/21 DACAPO

This is a story about a struggle for power in old Denmark, and a magnificent opera about events which led to the murder of King Erik Clipping in 1286. To present this dramatic episode from Danish history, a power play rooted in love, jealousy and honour, Heise composed gripping music with a razor-sharp dramatic sense and great lyrical beauty. It is Danish romance at its most powerful and immediate.

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Peter Heise The Song Edition

Adam Riis, Aleksander Nohr, Astrid Nordstad, Bo Kristian Jensen, Bo Skovhus, Clara Cecilie Thomsen, David Danholt, Elsa Dreisig, Francine Vis, Jakob Bloch Jespersen, Jens Søndergaard, Johanne Højlund, Lars Møller, Mari Eriksmoen, Signe Asmussen Manuitt etc.

8.201101 £32.00 11 CD 05/03/21 DACAPO

Long regarded by Danish musicians as their secret treasure, the songs of Peter Heise perfectly represent the unique qualities and achievements of the Danish Golden Age. Though mostly not in direct contact with each other, these artists and writers shared a profound interest in exploring and understanding their personal life and experience, and left a body of introspective work which has had a huge impact on European culture. No longer a secret, these songs can now take their rightful place alongside the works of Hans Christian Andersen, Christen Købke, Søren Kierkegaard and so many others.

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Edvard Grieg, Johan Svendsen, Sunlief Rasmussen, Jean Sibelius, Wilhelm Stenhammar, Bo Holton

Nordic Songs and Romances for Violin

Helge Slaatto, Anne Mette Staehr

DACOCD 880 £8.40 1 CD 05/03/21 DANACORD

The songs on this CD are played in a version for violin and piano. With the exception of a few passages played an octave higher than the voice part, everything else is performed in accordance with the original score. To give the listener the opportunity to enjoy the almost symbiotic relationship between poems and music, the booklet offers all poems that Grieg and Sibelius use in their music. This may give an interesting insight into the creative musical process. Helge Slaatto (born 1952) was concertmaster of Odense Symphony Orchestra, Athelas Sinfonietta Copenhagen and Randers Chamber Orchestra. For 25 years he was professor at the Hochschule für Musik der Universität Münster, presently he teachers at MGK Copenhagen. He gave master classes throughout the world and his students won prizes at major international competitions. They were also awarded the special prize of Deutsche Schallplattenkritik.

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Louis Glass, P.S Rung-Keller, Herman Sandby, Hakon Børresen, Johannes Andersen, Rudolph Simonsen

The Launy Grøndahl Legacy, Vol. 5

The Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Launy Grøndahl

DACOCD 885 £8.40 2 CD 05/03/21 DANACORD

“Four symphonies and two suites by late-Romantic Danish composers and contemporaries of Carl Nielsen, led with passion and authority by Launy Grøndahl in studio recordings made in the twilight of his distinguished career. Noble Classical ideals and typically Danish energy mark out the Sinfonia Svastika of Louis Glass and Second Symphony by Rudolf Simonsen. The neoclassical elegance of P.S. Rung-Keller’s suite contrasts with the boisterous character of Johannes Andersen’s example. Hakon Børresen’s Second Symphony is a buoyant sea-scape, while Herman Sandby’s Fourth is coloured by the influence of Delius and Grainger. Volume 6 featuring the Kuhlau opera Lulu is in preparation for a April 2021.

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Charles Gounod, Camille Saint-Saëns, Dmitry Smolski, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, George Bizet, Modest Mussorgsky, Pietro Mascagni, Jules Massenet, Francesco Cilea

Poison D’Amour Oksana Volkova, Kaunas City Symphony Orchestra, Constantine Orbelian

DE 3584 £9.00 1 CD 19/03/21 DELOS

This richly rewarding album is Oksana Volkova’s first solo album on Delos, though she appeared alongside the late, great Dmitri Hvorostovsky in Delos’s GRAMMY®-nominated 2017 release of Verdi’s complete Rigoletto. Here she delivers powerful, passionate and ravishing performances of (mostly) well-known French, Italian, Russian and Belarusian arias for mezzo-soprano. The composers include Bizet, Thomas, Saint-Saëns, Gounod, Cilea, Massenet and Mascagni; Russian masters heard here are Rimsky-Korsakov, Mussorgsky and Tchaikovsky, alongside a rare treat: an arresting aria by Belarusian composer Dmitri Smolsky, whose music is almost completely unknown in the West. Glowing instrumental collaboration, as usual, comes courtesy of Maestro Constantine Orbelian, leading his trusty Kaunas City Symphony Orchestra.

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À Claude Benedetto Boccuzzi DIGR111 £10.00 1 CD 12/03/21 DIGRESSIONE MUSIC

À Claude stems from a profound admiration for Claude Debussy and his legacy, a composer who thanks to his intense aesthetic, formal and timbral research has been a fundamental pillar and turning point for the 20th century’s musical production. The pro-gramme aims to be a family reunion, an ancestral tree starting with Claude Debussy and branching out into all the subsequent generations: Olivier Messiaen continued Debussy’s research, merging it with his personal interest in colour and non-European cultures; the Japanese Toru Takemitsu who pays homage to Olivier Messiaen and his rich harmonies; the American George Crumb, whose work takes the piano towards unheard-of timbres and considers Claude Debussy his greatest teacher; the Roma-nian Diana Rotaru, who pays tribute to the two great masters with her Debumessquisse and finally Benedetto Boccuzzi attempting to condense this legacy in his short piano piece (quasi) Notturno.

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Reimagining Opera Dario Savino Doronzo, Pietro Gallo, Michel Godard

DIGR96 £10.00 1 CD 12/03/21 DIGRESSIONE MUSIC

Memory, research and modernity are the key elements that follow a unique path in terms of effects and sounds. Honouring the past in order to have a dialogue with the present is the ambitious goal of this duo. Dario Doronzo at the Soprano Flugelhorn and Pietro Gallo at the Piano propose a wide-ranging repertoire that finds its roots in the complex and elegant reinterpretation in a modern key of compositions and arias of the cultured sphere. A continuous dialogue, without ever dropping tension, between spaces, dynamics, virtuosities, colors, synergistically merging into a music of new breath that finds in the revisitation the fulcrum of its knowledge. Fil rouge is the theme of the “re-reading”, a stylistic and aesthetic figure suitable for joining two such different worlds as classical music and the more fluid modern Jazz.

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Reimagining Opera Dario Savino Doronzo, Pietro Gallo, Michel Godard

DIGR107 £22.00 1 LP (VINYL) 12/03/21 DIGRESSIONE MUSIC

Digression Music responds to the national and international echo of the debut album of the Duo Re-Imagine, positively reviewed by the most important music publications, with the launch of the Gold Vinyl (limited edition) of the homonymous album signed by Dario Doronzo at the Flugelhorn and Pietro Gallo at the Piano. The Duo proposes a wide-ranging repertoire that finds its roots in the complex and elegant reinterpretation in a modern key of compositions and arias of the cultured sphere. A continuous dialogue, without ever dropping tension, between spaces, dynamics, virtuosities, colors, synergistically merging into a music of new breath that finds in the revisitation the fulcrum of its knowledge. Fil rouge is the theme of the “re-reading”, a stylistic and aesthetic figure suitable for joining two such different worlds as classical music and the more fluid modern Jazz. “Disassemble” and “reassemble” works of a classic type with modifications and variations on a melodic, harmonic, timbric and rhythmic level leads the listener to fully savor the true value of Opere which, after about four hundred years, still move the mysterious strings of our soul.

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Franz Liszt, Frédéric Chopin, Carl Maria von Weber 1847: Liszt in Istanbul

Zeynep Ucbasaran

DDA25213 £7.95 1 CD 12/03/21 DIVINE ART

In 1847 Franz Liszt visited Istanbul (then Constantinople) and performed several recitals on an Erard piano specially shipped for him to play. He spent a month there and gave several concerts including two in the Sultan’s palace. He was fêted and praised highly; at that time the city was a hub of Western culture and a frequent destination of Italian and French opera companies, so Liszt’s operatic transcriptions found a receptive audience. Turkish-American pianist Zeynep Ucbasaran created a selection of works from Liszt’s program which were broadcast throughout Europe in 2011 and performed live to great acclaim. Now this recital is committed to a recording which celebrates not only great music but also what was Liszt’s final year as a virtuoso performer. Zeynep Ucbasaran began music studies in Istanbul at the age of four, then in Hungary and Germany before moving to the USA to obtain her degrees in Piano Performance. She has won multiple awards and performed in many parts of the world. She naturally has an affinity with the musical culture and heritage of her native Turkey.

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Johann Joseph Vilsmaÿr The Great Violins, Vol. 4

Peter Sheppard Skærved

ATH23210 £7.95 1 CD 12/03/21 DIVINE ART ATHENE

As well as being internationally recognised as a leading interpreter of music new and old, Peter Sheppard Skærved is the only violinist to have performed on the personal violins of Viotti, Paganini, Joachim, Kreisler and Ole Bull. In this new series, he plays music on these and many more instruments, many of which only he has access to. Probably the best known work of J.J. Vilsmaÿr, his set of six partitas (or partias) of 1715 are perfect and relatively early examples of the baroque dance suite, and have found more popularity than many other contemporary works for the solo violin. Peter plays a superb instrument labelled ‘Amati Brothers’ but in fact made by Girolamo (his brother had died by 1610) with the help of his son and successor Niccolò; it was probably one of the last violins on which Girolamo worked as he died in 1630. 1629 was the year in which the Great Plague swept through Italy; Nicolò found himself a lucky survivor and inheritor of the great Amati tradition. The spectacular instrument has a spruce front and single-piece maple back, with scroll and ribs in the early Cremona fashion. Skærved says that its extraordinary qualities (he has played it since 2013) have profoundly influenced his love for the violin and his understanding of what it can do. The violin is held in the collection of the Royal Academy of Music in London.

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Cyril Scott, Nicola LeFanu, Howard Skempton, Rebecca Clarke, Sadie Harrison, Tony Coe

For Clarinet and Strings

Gemini, Ian Mitchell

MSV28608 £7.95 1 CD 12/03/21 DIVINE ART METIER

Ian Mitchell is a leading performer on all members of the clarinet family and has made recordings with most of them. He has also led Gemini for many years, bringing the ensemble to the top of the tree especially in contemporary chamber music. This album of works for clarinet and strings arose from a prize in the 1993 Prudential Awards, which provided initial funding to record three major but neglected works, by Cyril Scott, Howard Skempton and Rebecca Clarke, together with more recent pieces by Sadie Harrison and Nicola LeFanu and jazz legend Tony Coe. This is not a clarinet feature disc however, but a program of fine works involving that instrument ‘in the mix’. Added to the album as a bonus is Skempton’s Gemini Dances which adds flute, piano and percussion. Gemini has a very strong following for both recordings and concerts, and since its formation in 1974 has developed a reputation for the highest levels of musicianship and immense support for contemporary composers.

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Alessandro Stradella Cantatas & Serenatas, Vol. 1

Alessandro Stradella Consort

CDS7893 £9.00 1 CD 19/03/21 DYNAMIC

Despite the many scandals in his life, Alessandro Stradella rose to a position of great eminence in Rome, where his music was consistently acclaimed. At a time when opera was often denigrated by the Papacy, Stradella’s cantatas and serenatas proved enormously successful, their form housing a succession of recitatives, arias and instrumental pieces. The theme is the pain of love, to which Stradella responds with a limitless variety of expression and virtuosity, whether in the soprano echo effects of Arsi già di una fiamma, the near-operatic breadth of Or ch’alla dea notturna or the structural perfection of Infinite son le pene.

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Graham Waterhouse Skylla und Charybdis: Graham Waterhouse - Chamber Music

Katharina Sellheim, David Fruehwirth, Namiko Fuse, Konstantin Sellheim, Graham Waterhouse

B108108 £7.29 1 CD 12/03/21 FARAO CLASSICS

Scylla and Charybdis - These are the two sea monsters from Greek mythology guarding each side of the Strait of Messina. Odysseus and his sailors navigated this notorious stretch of water they had to steer a middle path between the monsters to avoid coming too close to the shore and in doing so, risking losing their lives. “Choosing between Scylla and Charybdis is a metaphor which means “opting for the lesser of two evils”. The composer of today steers a similarly precarious path, facing questions such as: embracing or renouncing tradition; use of tonal centres or atonality; adhering to pre-conceived musical forms or use of narrative forms; allowing one instrument to dominate, or integrating them. In my mind the vision of the perilous and deadly Scylla and Charybdis mirrors these and other dilemmas facing composers, where possible danger may lie in store for those siding too closely with one extreme or the other.“ Graham Waterhouse The result is an impressive album: fast-paced and lyrical, melancholic and mysterious, festive and hymnal. Music, in short, that delights in reconciling opposites.

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Lili Boulanger, Ludwig van Beethoven, Malwina Sosnowski, Benyamin Nuss, Germaine Tailleferre, Masashi Hamauzu

Sakura: Spring! - Works by Beethoven, Boulanger, Hamauzu, Nuss and Tailleferre

Malwina Sosnowski, Benyamin Nuss

GEN21747 £9.00 1 CD 19/03/21 GENUIN CLASSICS

Works that pay homage to spring have been brought together by Malwina Sosnowski (violin) and Benyamin Nuss (piano) on their new GENUIN CD: departure, a new beginning, an exuberance of emotions. On it, the perspective shifts between Japan and Europe. Beethoven’s euphoric “Spring Sonata” is juxtaposed with rarely performed French repertoire by Germaine Tailleferre and Lili Boulanger, as well as a world premiere recording by Masashi Hamauzu and an elegy dedicated to the victims of Fukushima by Benyamin Nuss himself. The interpretative verve and freshness of the two internationally successful musicians match the richness of color and nuance found in the selected music.

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Gaspar Cassadó, Igor Stravinsky, Zoltán Kodály, Alfred Schnittke, Max Reger

Continuum: Works by Cassadó, Stravinsky, Kodály, Schnittke and Reger

Michael Heupel, Mario Häring


The internationally sought-after cellist Michael Heupel and his pianist Mario Häring, who has also won several awards, enter into an exciting dialogue with the past. On their new GENUIN CD, they present works related to early music. Gaspar Cassado composes a sonata in the “old Spanish style,” and Igor Stravinsky sets off into the world of commedia dell’arte. Zoltán Kodály explores Johann Sebastian Bach, and Alfred Schnittke serves up sugar-sweet, baroque-inspired gems, holding up at times a miniature distorting mirror. A virtuosically played, inspiring collection that transcends the past and future.

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Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Antonio SalieriMozart - Salieri: Serenade KV 361 “Gran Partita”, Ouvertüre zu “La Grotta di Trofonio!, Armonia per un Tempio della Notte, Picciola Serenata

armonia ensemble


The armonia ensemble, made from the ranks of the Gewandhaus Orchestra and the MDR Symphony Orchestra wind sections, dishes up a veritable explosion of sound on their new GENUIN CD. At the heart of their exploration of Harmoniemusik, music for an ensemble of woodwinds, horns, and double bass, is Mozart’s “Gran Partita,” the opus ultimum of the genre. In addition, the elite wind players allow us to discover three works by Salieri, whose material was crafted just for them: An opera overture, an “Armonia per un tempio della notte,” and a “Piccola Serenata.” The armonia ensemble produces a dense, historically informed sound that beautifully showcases the splendor of these four extraordinary works.

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Ludwig van Beethoven, Gabriel Fauré, Charles Martin LoefflerConfluences - Flute, Cello and Piano: Works by Ludwig van Beethoven, Gabriel Fauré and Charles Martin Loeffler

Atsuko Koga, Georgiy Lomakov, Radosław Kurek


On their new GENUIN CD, the internationally award-winning flutist Atsuko Koga and her fellow musicians Georgiy Lomakov (cello) and Radoslaw Kurek (piano) bring together music by Ludwig van Beethoven, Gabriel Fauré, and Charles Martin Loeffler. The trio’s airy, free sound with its unusual combination of instruments is a perfect match for the three works, which represent the piano trio genre in completely different ways: Beethoven’s Gassenhauer Trio as an amusing and witty play on stereotypes of its time, Fauré’s late work as a detached and intimate meditation, and finally Loeffler’s misty impressionistic poems.

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Ragnar Söderlind, Jean-Louis Florentz, Imogen Holst, Johann Sebastian Bach, Eugene Ysaye, Violeta Vicci

Mirror Images

Violeta Vicci 98010 £9.00 1 CD 19/03/21 GRAMOLA

Violeta Vicci is a multifaceted, contemporary artist and musician. Of Catalan - Swiss descent, based in London, she feels comfortable genre-crossing from Classical to Improvisation, Ethno Avantgarde, Ambient, Multilayered Electronics, her influences ranging from traditional to pop. The original idea for the album stems from the reflection of elements between Bach’s E Major Partita and Ysaÿe’s second Solo Sonata. A journey not only through time, but to the most unusual of spaces. The album opens with world premiere recording of Ragnar Söderlind’s natural and mystical Elegie for solo violin, balanced out by the serene expression of the Vocalise for solo voice, seeped in orientalism, by Jean-Louis Florentz. Violeta Vicci isn’t just an accomplished violinist and singer, but plays the viola, present in both the folklore inspired world premiere recording Suite by British composer Imogen Holst, and the closing piece of the album, the Sarabande in C Minor by Bach. Between the compositions, are improvisations, some solo, some two voices intertwined as “overdubs”, acting as transitions and woven into the very fabric of the album. Violeta Vicci’s “Mirror Images” is one of the most surprising and contemporary Solo-Albums of our time. A concept album beyond intellectual reasoning, an album of all encompassing, spellbinding dramatic art.

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Franz Schubert, Philippe Racine Schubert’s Women

Klaudia Tandl, Gabriele Jacob, Niall Kinsella 99223 £9.00 1 CD 05/03/21 GRAMOLA

The Austrian mezzo-soprano Klaudia Tandl, acting legend Gabriele Jacoby and the Irish pianist Niall Kinsella present with “Schubert’s Women” Schubert songs and recitations by contemporary poets with a strong connection to women and the subject “love”. There are classics like Das Heidenröslein, Du liebst mich nicht, Des Mädchens Klage or Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt, but also lesser known songs like Luisens Antwort, Thekla or Gretchens Bitte. These are intertwined with poems by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Ludwig Rellstab, Friedrich Schiller, Ignaz Franz Castelli, and Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock, which Gabriele Jacoby stagesin a unique way.

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Joseph Mayseder, Leopold Jansa, Joseph Böhm, Georg Hellmesberger, Franz Grutsch, Jakob Dont

Viennese Violin School, Vol. 1

Raimund Lissy, Adela Frasineanu

99230 £9.00 1 CD 05/03/21 GRAMOLA

The violin duos and etudes on the present CD were composed between 1820 and 1869; the composers - Joseph Mayseder, Leopold Jansa, Joseph Böhm, Georg Hellmesberger, Franz Grutsch and Jakob Dont - were outstanding violinists who decisively impacted Viennese musical life. Raimund Lissy and Adela Frasineanu, members of the violin section of the Vienna Philharmonic, present typical teaching repertoire from the Vienna Violin School, which is directly based on practical experience, since all but one of the composers were much sought-after violin teachers themselves. The first edition of this upcoming series emphatically demonstrates that with all the virtuoso content and etude-like form, the musical and cantabile aspects do not have to be neglected.

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Sergei Prokofiev/arr. Heifetz, William Kroll, Riccardo Drigo/arr. Heifetz, George Gershwin/ arr. Heifetz, Manuel Maria Ponce/arr. Heifetz, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky/arr. Auer, Aram Katachaturian/ arr. Heifetz, Antoni Donchev, Maria Theresia V. Paradis/arr. Dushkin, Maurice Ravel/arr. Heifetz, Flausino do Vale/arr. Heifetz, Sabina Hank/arr. Duke Ellington, Gabriel Faure, Karl Goldmark

Heifetz Favourites: Transcriptions and more

Benjamin Schmid, Ariane Haering

99236 £9.00 1 CD 05/03/21 GRAMOLA

The American violinist of Romanian descent Jascha Heifetz is one of the greatest violin virtuosos of the past century. The Austrian violinist Benjamin Schmid takes the 120th anniversary of his birthday in 2021 as an opportunity for the release of an album in honor of this extraordinary musician. Together with his wife Ariane Haering at the piano, Schmid presents “Heifetz Favorites”, featuring Heifetz’s arrangements of works which he used to perform with great success in concerts. The album comprises countless audience hits which Heifetz arranged with virtuosity such as the Saber Dance by Khatschaturian, the Valse from Tchaikovsky’s String Serenade, Banjo and Fiddle by W. Kroll or Alt-Wien by Godowsky. Two pieces from Gershwin’s Porgy & Bess create a link to jazz, which is represented by Mish Mash by Romanian Antoni Donchev and two tracks by Austrian Sabina Hank inspired by Duke Ellington. Thus, this repertoire is entirely in the tradition of Heifetz, who always thought across genres and kept an eye on contemporary art.

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Raymond Hanson Complete Piano Works

Tonya Lemoh

GP860-61 £13.87 2 CD 12/03/21 GRAND PIANO

The piano works of the largely self-taught Australian composer Raymond Hanson are unparalleled in 20th-century Australian music. Ranging over four decades they exemplify an iconoclastic spirit whose spontaneous writing is accompanied by a visionary wit and dynamism. This premier complete collection of Hanson’s piano oeuvre includes the Piano Sonata, Op. 12 – one of his greatest works, full of restless motoric rhythms and reflective contrasts – and many world première recordings, all performed by the award-winning pianist Tonya Lemoh.

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Aram Il’yich Khachaturian Aram Il’yich Khachaturian: Recitatives and Fugues; Children’s Albums I and II

Charlene Farrugia

GP834 £9.00 1 CD 12/03/21 GRAND PIANO

Khachaturian was considered the ‘mouthpiece of the entire Soviet Orient’ and remains the most renowned of 20th-century Armenian composers. His unmistakable style came with an urge to invent new forms that reconciled Western practice with Eastern idiom. His ‘apprentice’ Fugues were revised and enriched with Recitatives that conjure the colourful voices of Khachaturian’s childhood in Tbilisi. Refreshingly original, amusing and provocative, the Children’s Albums belong to a tradition that reaches back to Bach, Schumann and Tchaikovsky.

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Pyotr Tchaikovsky, Sergei Rachmaninov Symphony No.4; Piano Concerto No. 2

Alexander Korsantia, Stuttgarter Philharmoniker, Dan Ettinger

HC20046£9.00 1 CD 05/03/21 HANSSLER CLASSIC

Tchaikovsky remarked of his 4th Symphony at the time: “It seems to me that this is my best work ever.” The Fourth Symphony was premiered in Moscow in February 1878. “My symphony is of course programmatic, but the programme is laid out in such a way that it is impossible to express it in words ... But is that not what a symphony, the most lyrical of all musical forms, should be?” On October 27, 1901, Rachmaninoffs Piano Concerto No. 2 was premiered with the composer at the piano. The work has been a favourite with audiences since that first performance, and in contrast with his other piano concertos, Rachmaninoff judged it to be so good that he made no alterations to it. Dan Ettinger is one of the leading international conductors of his generation. Since the start of the 2015/2016 season he has been Principal Conductor of the Stuttgart Philharmonic and General Music Director of the City of Stuttgart. From 2010 to 2015 Ettinger was Principal Conductor of the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra. He was Principal Conductor and Music Director of the Israel Symphony Orchestra from 2005. The Stuttgart Philharmonic was founded in September 1924 and gives guest concerts throughout Germany and abroad each year. Alexander Korsantia was born in Tiflis and is one of the leading pianists of our time. A “major artist” (Miami Herald) he has been praised for a “piano technique where difficulties simply do not exist” (Calgary Sun).

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Benjamin Britten Cello Suites

Jakob Spahn

HC20063 £9.00 1 CD 05/03/21 HANSSLER CLASSIC

“Gift Voucher: six Suites for Slava” - This note, scribbled on a paper napkin was a promise supposedly made in 1964 by Benjamin Britten to the cellist Mstislav “Slava” Rostropovich. It would appear that he wanted to compose for his friend a contemporary counterpart to Bach’s Solo Suites, which for any cellist are a sort of Old Testament in the cello repertoire. Britten took Baroque dance movements as a model and formed them into modern character pieces. Both from the point of view of form and tone, they exude a kinship and affinity with Johann Sebastian Bach. The fact that he actually only composed three suites was due to Britten’s poor health and his death not long afterwards. Jakob Spahn was born in Berlin. He attained his soloist’s diploma with distinction. He is a prizewinner of numerous nation al and international competitions. 2011 Jakob Spahn was appointed solo cellist with the Bavarian State Opera in Munich. He has recorded Penderecki’s First Cello Concerto and all of the works for solo cello for CD under the direction of the composer. In 2018 the Hanssler Classic label released a recording of Friedrich Gu Ida’s Cello Concerto and Tchaikovsky’s Rococo Variations. Jakob Spahn teaches as a professor at the NUrnberg College of Music and regularly gives master classes.

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Jan Håkan Åberg, Ola Gjeilo, Waldemar Åhlén, Mårten Jansson, Håkan Parkman, Jan Sandström, Knut Nystedt, Per Nørgård, Jørgen Jersild, Nils Lindberg, Jaakko Mäntyjärvi, Einojuhani Rautavaara

Nordic Choral Music

Jugend konzertchor der Chorakademie Dortmund, WDR Rundfunkchor, Felix Heitmann, Stefan Parkman


The cultures of Scandinavia have always exerted a huge fascination over people. Scandinavian music is often purported to possess a mystical and “typically Nordic” sound. In Scandinavian choral music developed a strong orientation towards folk music and folk songs. The important relationship between hum an beings and Nature - as a result of the strong influence in Scandinavia of the changing seasons on people’s every-day lives - along with fundamental questions about life and death were ever-present topics in those countries’ choral music. The human voice was deployed in far more diverse ways than ever before: Novel sounds and unusual scores were soon setting the tone and new standards on the Scandinavian choral scene began leading to a continual professionalisation that was to make waves across all of Europe. The Jugendkonzertchor der CHORAKADEMIE Dortmund under the direction of Felix Heitmann is the top-drawer ensemble of the youth section of Europe’s largest school for singing. The WDR Radio Choir is a professional ensemble comprising 43 singers, male and female. It is based at the WDR broadcasting centre in Cologne. Its profile is repertoire diversity in perfection and specialisation on innovative and demanding works, both in the unaccompanied and instrumental fields.

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Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Piano Sonatas, Vol. 3

Jean Muller


The C major Sonata K330 was written in Vienna in 1783 as the first of a set of three sonatas (K330-332) published in 1784 by Artaria in Vienna. For all its far from dramatic manner, Mozart succeeds in creating a remarkable sonata that is as popular today as ever. The Sonata K280 in F major takes us back to the time of Mozart’s stay in Munich in 177 4-177 5. In contrast to the K330 Sonata, this work is marked by sometimes extreme contrasts of tempo and mood. Mozart’s most tragic piano sonata is undoubtedly the A minor Sonata K310. It was written in 1778 in Paris when its composer was still deeply affected by the death of his mother Anna Maria Mozart. The “Sonata facile” KS45 is definitely not as easy as the title might lead one to believe. Written in 1788, this sonata is noteworthy for all its great (or greatest attainable) simplicity as an example of Mozart’s absolute mastery of the compositional art. Hailed as a “major talent” by Gramophone, Jean Muller has shown exceptional musical talent since his earliest childhood. More than a dozen first prizes at international piano competitions stand witness to the extraordinary impact of Jean Muller’s interpretations. He performed the complete cycles of Beethoven’s and Mozart’s piano sonatas in concert. He received outstanding reviews from the industry’s leading media. Since 2010 Jean Muller is professor for piano at the Conservatoire de la Ville de Luxembourg and since 2016 a Steinway Artist.

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Antonio Salieri, Ludwig van Beethoven Salieri & Beethoven in Dialogue

Heidelberger Sinfoniker, Tim Jouko Herrmann


”The pupil Beethoven was here!” - this sentence was written on a note in the house of Antonio Salieri, Kapellmeister to the Viennese court. The two musicians must first have met in the mid-1790s; Beethoven made his first appearance as a soloist in Vienna in March 1795 with a piano concerto of his own that Salieri conducted. He was already known as a virtuoso and instrumental composer, but had yet to make his mark in the prestigious genre of opera. Salieri for his part was Vie nna’s unchallenged authority on the subject and had been so for decades. Beethoven thanked Salieri for his generosity by dedicating his op. 12 Violin Sonatas to him and by composing a set of variations on a Duettino from Salieri’s opera Falstaff ossia Le tre burle. The Heidelberg Symphony Orchestra put its main emphasis is on the Viennese Classical era and the early German Romantics, alongside an intensive involvement with the works of the Mannheim School and the pre-Classical period. The orchestra’s interpretative style was essentially shaped in a course of historical performance practice with Nikolaus Harnoncourt and refined in rehearsal work with its former conductor Thomas Fey. Timo Jouko Herrmann is considered one of the few internationally acknowledged Salieri rese archers. His major musicological publications about Salieri are viewed as standard works on the life and work of the composer.

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Pietro Mascagni Iris

Chor und Orchester der Berliner Operngruppe, Karine Babajanyan, Samuele Simoncini, Ernesto Petti, David Oištrek, Nina Clausen, Andrès Moreno García, Felix Krieger

OC991 £18.00 2 CD 19/03/21 OEHMS CLASSICS

This recording with the Choir and Orchestra of the Berliner Operngruppe under Felix Krieger is a live recording of the Berlin premiere of the original version from the Konzerthaus Berlin. The Berliner Operngruppe celebrated its 10th anniversary.

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Franz LisztPiano Works

Alfredo Perl, BBC Orchestra, Yakov Kreizberg

OC1900 £15.65 4 CD 19/03/21 OEHMS CLASSICS

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Cesar Franck, Richard Strauss Piano Works

Ekaterina Litvintseva, Nordwestdeutsche Philharmonie, Jonathan Bloxham

PH20060 £9.00 1 CD 05/03/21 PROFIL

Strauss’ Burleske contains, despite the classical sonata form, many original elements, such as the opening timpani solo that al ready embodies within it the thematic substance of the piece. The work is a very “exotic” waltz full of contrasts, exuberance, humour and charm. Franck’s Symphonic Variations are on the contrary, very formal. You im mediately sense the piousness of the person who composed this music, because it is sincere, honest and s ubstantively profound. Yet although Franck remained true to the classical format he still managed to create something new here in as much as he fused three traditions together: solo concerto, symphony and a series of variations. Alongside the two works for solo piano the two symphonic poems by Franck and Strauss are a magnificent addition to the concept of this album. Both works feature a lively musical approach to the s ubject. It’s worth noting too that all the compositions on this recording come from a relatively short period of time: the Burleske and the Variations were both written i n 1885, and there are only six years between Le chasseur maudit written in 1883 and Tod und Verklarung in 1889. Despite this short time span the works are stylistically very di f ferent, somewhat like the fates of the two composers whose paths never actually crossed.

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Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Pyotr Tchaikovsky, Jacques Offenbach, Daniel François Esprit Auber

Opera in German, Vol. 2

Rudolph Schock

PH20066 £25.00 10 CD 05/03/21 PROFIL

Till well into the 1960s it was common practice to perform operas in the language of the country where they were being performed. What now seems strange to us, with our reverence for the original, was taken for granted then. Whatever the language, the artistic value of the performance depends very much upon its exponents. The proof is in the five recordings that make up this box set. The cast lists read like a Who’s Who of contemporary vocalists. We can count ourselves lucky to have these audio documents - edited to the highest possible technical standards - at our disposal. Above all the recordings hangs the shining star of the great Rudolf Schock (1915-1986). Schock sang early on under the truly great conductors of his time such as Wilhelm Furtwangler, Georg Solti, Erich Leinsdorf, George Szell and Karl Bohm. He was one of the first German singers to be invited to London’s Royal Opera House Covent Garden, as was the case in the 1948/49 season. He concurrently and consistently expanded his repertoire in both directions, into operetta and into the works of the contemporary avant-garde.

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Sergei Rachmaninov Works for Piano

Irina Bogdanova

QTZ2138 £9.00 1 CD 05/03/21 QUARTZ

The piano remained at the heart of Rachmaninov’s life, both as composer and performer. Daisies (Margaritki) is the third of the Six Songs, Op. 38 of 1916 – the last group of songs written by Rachmaninov – and was later transcribed for piano by the composer in the early 1920s (the score is undated), Rachmaninov wrote his Polka de W R in March 1911. The initials in the title refer to the composer’s father, Wassily or Vassily Rachmaninov. Rachmaninov’s final original solo piano work was written in 1931: The Variations on a Theme of Corelli, Op. 42, dedicated to Kreisler. The theme is based on the famous ‘La Folia’ tune, an ancient and widespread melody used in numerous sets of variations; it was not composed by Corelli but was used by him in his Violin Sonata No. 12. The Six Moments Musicaux were composed as bread-winning music in 1896, their title inspired by Schubert’s Six Moments Musicaux of 1828.

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Franz Schubert, Philippe Racine String Quintets

Walter Grimmer, 3G Quartet

SM331 £9.00 1 CD 05/03/21 SOLO MUSICA

I have composed this Adagio for string quintet at the request of my friend Walter Grimmer; it should be played in concert before the great string quintet in C by Schubert. What a story! What kind of hillock have I created next to the Himalaya of chamber music? Well, I have written a type of music with which I have striven to stay true to my own self. And yet the piece begins with Schubert’s closing trills for the two cellos and repeatedly a C major chord pops up, mostly delicately, but just once entirely explicitly. And as a reference to the Adagio from the great Austrian, I’ve given the second cello some repeated pizzicati to play. And as a gift for my friend who gave me this commission: a short cadenza from the second cello, followed by a coda in which both violins repeat the opening pizzicati two octaves higher. And the piece ends with a long deep C note, which should serve to introduce the beginning of the Schubert. And now you enter into a totally different dimension...

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Hans Schäuble, Arthur Honegger, Peter Mieg, Frank Martin, Othmar Schoeck

Nachklang: Works by Hans Schäuble, Peter Mieg, Arthur Honegger, Frank Martin and Oethmar Schoek

Luca Bernard, Hans Adolfsen

SM341 £9.00 1 CD 05/03/21 SOLO MUSICA

This is a selection of Lieder by Swiss composers – to give a superficial description of the songs recorded for this album. Making such a selection involves making decisions. What is important? What is essential? Are the chosen songs gems or rarities? Do they exemplify the work of the respective composers? A selection can be both a winnowing-out and a compilation. Each of these actions applies to the Lieder presented here. The recordings (re)present debut or early works, and also rarely heard works by established composers. This album centres on the “Seven Winter Songs” op. 1 by Hans Schaeuble (1906-1988). The words and music of the Lieder have now appeared in print, and this premiere recording was made in consequence. The music edition of the Sieben Winterlieder Op. 1 is based on a calligraphic manuscript in the Zurich Central Library, which is clearly a fair copy illustrated by Schaeuble’s brother Erich. The singer Luca Bernard is a study prize winner of Migros Kulturprozent. From the 2019/20 season he became a member of the International Opera Studio at Zurich Opera House. At the Zurich University of the Arts, pianist Hans Adolfsen has a Lied class together with pianist and composer Daniel Fueter, whose encounters with music and literature have provided him with a new source of inspiration.

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Ludwig van Beethoven Piano Sonatas Nos. 7, 23 and 28

Jean-Nicolas Diatkine

SM344 £9.00 1 CD 05/03/21 SOLO MUSICA

Jean-Nicolas Diatkine comes from a family of recognised doctors and considers commitment to others to be the basis of his profession. It seemed impossible for him to do without this basic attitude in the exercise of his profession, which is why he always sees his artistic development as a return to the essential artistic values to which he has devoted himself over the last thirty years. At the same time, he makes the in-depth study and deeper understanding of the narrative of each composer an absolute priority and an indispensable step before any public performance of a work. Diatkine about Beethoven: Musician-performers might regard the need to introduce and explain the pieces they are about to play as an implicit admission of failure, acknowledging the fact that music might no longer speak for itself. Goethe’s irritated reaction to Schubert’s settings of his poems was of the same order, although in reverse perspective: according to him, music was already included in his poetry. And Beethoven (like Bach) created such a vast, structured world that it defies any attempt at literary explanation for it does not need any. The following presentation illustrates this paradox.

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Henri Marteau Henri Marteau: 24 Capricen op.25 for Violin and Piano, Vol. 5

Ingolf Turban and his students

SM348 £13.50 2 CD 12/03/21 SOLO MUSICA

If a composer writes 24 caprices for the violin, and if he himself is also a uniquely virtuoso violinist, then a comparison with the 24 caprices by Paganini is inevitable: Henri Marteau was not only appreciated and revered as one of the greatest violinists of his time, but his compositional work was lost in the background. He shared this fate with Niccolò Paganini, who was also experienced during his lifetime more as a “warlock” of the violin than as a serious composer and musician. So, if this comparison is almost inevitable, it must be mentioned that Paganini himself, with his main work published in 1820, also took up the example of other composers, such as the Etudes and Caprices of Rodolphe Kreutzer. The subtitle of Henri Marteau’s Caprices: “d’exécution transcendante” is also very revealing. Moreover, Marteau has his miniatures accompanied throughout by the piano, unlike Paganini, who uses the violin alone. The violin virtuoso Ingolf Turban considered his own violin class at the Hochschule München predestined for this first recording of all 24 of Marteau’s caprices. So together they dared to do the almost unbelievable: all twelve students in his class were involved in this mammoth task, the absolute peak of which, of course, lies in the very elaborate piano accompaniment. Here he engaged the pianist Tomoko Nishikawa, who confidently took on this mammoth task!

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Georges Auric, Louis Durey, Arthur Honegger, Erik Satie, Darius Milhaud, Francis Poulenc, Germaine Tailleferre

Les Six: Works by Auric, Durey, Honegger, Milhaud, Poulenc and Tailleferre

Franziska Heinzen, Benjamin Mead

SM357 £9.00 1 CD 12/03/21 SOLO MUSICA

Then as now, the music of “Les Six“ is a fascinating kaleidoscope of musical ideas and friendship; an idiosyncratic preciousness full of musical avant-garde, everyday melancholy, profound curiosities, virtuosity and passion that is in need of rediscovery. The collaborative work “L’Album des Six“ was created in 1920, to which each of the six composers Georges Auric, Louis Durey, Arthur Honegger, Darius Milhaud, Francis Poulenc and Germaine Tailleferre contributed a piece. Arranged alphabetically, the album summarises the composers through their connection with various aesthetic ideas, different personalities and lifelong friendship. 100 years later, the “L’Album des Six“ is expanded with corresponding song cycles from their oeuvres: In addition to well-known compositions by Francis Poulenc and Darius Milhaud, the first releases of the song cycles by Georges Auric (1940) and Louis Durey (1920) enrich the CD in a special way.

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Richard Wagner, Gustav Mahler Message of Love: Music by Wagner & Mahler arranged for String Quartet

Voyager Quartet

SM358 £9.00 1 CD 26/03/21 SOLO MUSICA

A string quartet by Richard Wagner or Gustav Mahler? Isn’t that what the music world has always wanted? The Voyager Quartet goes on a soul-searching tour. From “Villa Wahnfried”, sounding love letters, coded messages and secret messages are delivered, written by Richard Wagner and Gustav Mahler, addressed to their muses Alma and Mathilde. A psychogram in beguiling tones about the unspeakable in those days. Andreas Höricht, violist of the quartet, who received the highest international acclaim for his transcription of Schubert’s “Winterreise for String Quartet”, goes one step further. Wagner’s Wesendonck Lieder, Mahler’s Piano Quartet, movements and fragments from his 5th and 10th symphonies are “recomposed” for string quartet - the medium for spiritual messages.

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Marin Marais, Barbara Strozzi, Aidan O’Rourke, Kit Downes, Enzo Gragnaniello, Tarquinio Merula, Alex Mills, Stefano Landi

The Isolated Cellist

Clare O’Connell

5060192781052 £9.00 1 CD 12/03/21 STONE RECORDS

The Isolated Cellist is a collection of new music for solo and looped cello gathered, arranged and curated by cellist Clare O’Connell. Determined to do something worthwhile with the sudden expanse of time during the coronavirus pandemic and ensuing lockdown in the summer of 2020, cellist Clare O’Connell gave a series of concerts on her front doorstep, making new arrangements of music she loved relating to themes surrounding the pandemic, which she then recorded in her living room. The result is something of a spiritual journey, with the sounds of renaissance France and Italy interspersed with Scottish and Irish folk and at the heart Alex Mills’ newly commissioned “Hymn To Nikkal.

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Robert HP Platz Più di un sogno

Roberto Fabbriciani

STR37174 £10.00 1 CD 05/03/21 STRADIVARIUS

Robert HP Platz, composer and conductor, was born in Baden-Baden in 1951. He studied composition with Wolfgang Fortner and Karlheinz Stockhausen. Robert HP Platz sees his entire work as a global architecture in constant evolution. He has composed for music theater, orchestral works, ensemble music, chamber music, children’s music and solo pieces, often including electronic sounds. His friendship with visual artists and authors, his affinity for Italian and French culture, which goes back to his childhood, and his fascination for Japanese culture are further inspiration for his multi-faceted musical world. This CD is dedicated to his compositions for flute, written between 1993 and 2018, and presents an important facet of his artistic work, presenting different aspects of his poetics in the 11 tracks. These expressive pieces, composed with deep technical knowledge of the flute, form a special context in this compilation and thus present a unique musical language. The unifying factors are motivation, choice of instruments and the organization of tonal centers that form bridges from work to work.

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Johann Sebastian Bach, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Georg Friedrich Händel, Frank Martin

Fritz Wunderlich: Sacred Music

Fritz Wunderlich, Freiburger Bachchor, Südwestfunk-Orchester, Radio-Sinfonie-orchester Stuttgart, Philharmonischer Chor Stuttgart, Bach-Chor Stuttgart, Südfunk-Chor Stuttgart, Philharmonisches Orchester Freiburg, Theodor Egel, August Langenbeck, Heinz Mende, Hans Müller-Kray

SWR19095CD £21.00 7 CD 19/03/21 SWR CLASSIC

This box set presents Fritz Wunderlich as an interpreter of sacred music, an important and integral part of his profile. Fortunately, a number of his distinguished performances have been preserved, including the complete recording of Bach’s St John Passion, excerpts from the Christmas Oratorio, Handel’s Messiah, Mozart’s Requiem & Mass in C minor, and excerpts from Verdi’s Messa da Requiem. Despite his young age, Wunderlich seemed to have effortlessly mastered even the most virtuoso challenges and the way he used his famous ‘golden voice’ to master the challenging role of the evangelist in the St. John Passion is truly remarkable. The recording of Handel’s Messiah presented here was made on 21 March 1959. Wunderlich was the only tenor involved, also singing the arias. The live recording of Mozart’s Requiem (21 June 1958) features a stellar cast: apart from Wunderlich, soprano Agnes Giebel, alto Iva Malaniuk and bass Otto von Rohr also took part in the performance. Mozart didn’t finish his C Minor Mass KV 427. This live recording from 1957, however, includes the missing parts supplied by court music director Georg Alois Schmitt from Schwerin. He mostly used works or parts of works Mozart himself had written. However, there is one exception: for the Credo, Schmitt used the Crucifixus from Johann Ernst Eberlin’s Mass No.8.

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Heut’ Ist Der Schönste Tag - Tenorschlager der 1930er Jahre (Tenor Hits from the 1930s)

Martin Mitterrutzner, Deutsche Radio Philharmonie Saarbrücken Kaiserslautern, Christoph Poppen


This is a collection of well-known hits (Schlager) made famous by singers such as Joseph Schmidt, Richard Heuberger and Mischa Spoliansky, many of them composed for popular movies of the time. They have maintained their popularity over the years and are performed on this album by a young rising star from Austria, the tenor Martin Miterrutzner. He is accompanied by the Deutsche Radio Philharmonie under the baton of Christoph Poppen, who has already established his reputation with original and innovative repertoire and programmes.

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Dmitri ShostakovichSymphony No. 11 (The Year 1905)

SWR Sinfonieorchester, Eliahu Inbal


This is the first release from the recently formed SWR Symphonieorchester Stuttgart, and there was good reason for it to be a performance of a Shostakovich symphony. This live recording under the experienced baton of Eliahu Inbal shows the extraordinary level at which this orchestra is performing after only five years of existence! Shostakovich’s 11th Symphony focuses on the so-called St Petersburg Bloody Sunday which, according to the Julian calendar, took place on 9 January 1905. Following the format of a classical symphony, the work has four movements; these follow one another without a break, creating a continuous narrative flow. There’s no denying that the 11th Symphony is not a symphony in the classic sense but rather a symphonic poem or programme symphony. Shostakovich always needed an external subject for his compositions to express the central idea of his music. The SWR Symphonieorchester Stuttgart powerfully expresses the underlying ideas of the work with complete conviction.

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Franco Margola, Ottorino Respighi Cello Works

Jacopo Francini, Alessandro Deljavan, Giovanni Sollima, Paolo Longo

TC 910004 £9.00 1 CD 05/03/21 TACTUS

After the opera omnia for piano (tc.901380) and the concert and chamber production (tc.901390), the record production dedicated to Franco Margola continues with this cd including works for cello. A particularly interesting figure in the panorama of the musical history of the twentieth century, Margola is a direct descendant of that neoclassical movement to which the “generation of the Eighties” belonged, in which he was able to express his talent more fully and to which he remained faithful even after a period of dodecaphonic experimentations. The protagonists of this recording are Jacopo Francini on solo cello, accompanied by Alessandro Deljavan on piano and by the Orchestra of the Teatro Verdi in Trieste, directed by Paolo Longo, with the participation of Giovanni Sollima in the duets for two cellos. At the end of the cd, the famous adagio with variations by Ottorino Respighi, one of the most loved and performed pages of the cello repertoire, thanks to its great lyrical inspiration.

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Emilia Giuliani Complete Works for Guitar

Federica Artuso

TC 810790 £13.80 2 CD 05/03/21 TACTUS

The project of the musicologist Nicoletta Confalone and of the guitarist Federica Artuso is aimed at the discovery of Emilia Giuliani, illegitimate daughter of the famous Mauro Giuliani that, with his guitar and his compositions, conquered Vienna, the capital of 19th century music. Emilia lived her entire life in a continuous state of difficulty and discomfort, dying of typhus at the age of only thirtyseven. The adverse events of her life and her condition as a woman (considering that in her days it was almost impossible to express her talent as an artist) did not prevent her from reaping flattering successes from audiences and critics in the many European stages of her unfortunately short life: suffice for all the quotation of some Viennese critics who, after a concert she shared with Franz Liszt, exclaimed with admiration: “Every finger, one Liszt!”. In addition to her amazing skills as an instrumentalist, she was also appreciated for her music that she managed to publish with the major publishers of the time: Giovanni Ricordi in Milan and Artaria in Vienna. This double CD includes her complete work for guitar, for the first time on an historic instrument, a 1830 René Lacote.

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The organ tradition of Apulia-Naples from Renaissance to Baroque

Margherita Sciddurlo

TC 670004 £9.00 1 CD 05/03/21 TACTUS

This anthology presented by the organist Margherita Sciddurlo is performed on the precious historical instrument: the Petrus De’ Simone 1747 organ of the Church of San’Antonio in Mola di Bari, fully preserved and in excellent condition. The organ in question becomes the medium to reviving a cross-section of the Apulian organ tradition whose roots are deeply connected to themusical activity of the Kingdom of Naples since the 16th century, when thousands of young talents came to the capital to undertake musical studies that ensured them a secure career. Puglia turned out to be a privileged territory where one could later exercise the profession, sponsored by the numerous feudal lords or by churches, musical chapels and convents. From Rocco Rodio from Bari to Giovanni Paisiello from Taranto, through to Nicola Porpora and Niccolò Jommelli, famous allover Europe thanks to bright careers abroad. The collection presented by Margherita Sciddurlo represents a pleasant organ cameo which also includes some world premiere recordings.

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Maurizio Guernieri Chamber Works

Coro Euridice, LatinoBalcanica Ensemble

TC 960701 £9.00 1 CD 05/03/21 TACTUS

Maurizio Guernieri’s compositions are a part of an ongoing exploration of instrumental chambermusic, in this case focused chiefly on string instruments. The pieces can be divided into two main groups. The first one is Elementa (“elements” in Latin), meditations on the relationship between man and nature, and on the elements of nature, which, being often mismanaged by man, contribute to their own flourishing or decadence. Nature, which has always been called “mother”, turns out to be an “evil stepmother” when she returns to man what he has given her in an extreme attempt to re-establish a balance that has been lost. The second group consists of other pieces that are meditations on man and his inner life. As in the previous cd, Bicinium (tc 940091), the pieces can be listened to in a single musical succession, as if the disc were, to use a term of the past, a “concept album”.

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Vasily Kalafati Piano Music

Jeremy Thompson

TOCC 0093 £9.00 1 CD 05/03/21 TOCCATA CLASSICS

The name of Vasily Pavlovich Kalafati (1869–1942), born to Greek parents in the Crimea, has a toehold in the history books as one of Stravinsky’s teachers, but he was an accomplished composer in his own right. The early piano works recorded here show the influence of Rimsky-Korsakov (his teacher and friend) and other Russian-nationalist composers, but they also owe something to the examples of Chopin and Brahms, not least in their blend of passion and textural clarity. The vigour of these pieces stands in stark contrast to the ultimate fate of their composer: he starved to death during the Siege of Leningrad.

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Mieczysław Weinberg Complete Violin Sonatas, Vol. 3

Yuri Kalnits, Michael Csányi-Wills


If Mieczysław Weinberg had lived for another decade or so after his death in 1996, he would have seen his status change from obscure outlier to general acceptance as one of the major twentiethcentury composers. His violin works have likewise been recognised as major additions to the repertoire. Since Yuri Kalnits and Michael Csányi-Wills began what will be a four-volume survey of Weinberg’s music for violin and piano, other musicians have discovered and recorded many of these masterworks, but on its completion this cycle will still be the first to record all of Weinberg’s works for solo violin and violin and piano.

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John Worgan Complete Harpsichord Music

Julian Perkins, Timothy Roberts


The organist and harpsichordist John Worgan (1724–90) was one of the most highly respected musicians in the London of his day: Handel admired his playing, and Burney described him as ‘very masterly and learned’. All that survives of his harpsichord music are a ‘New Concerto’, an independent Allegro non tanto and two collections, one of six sonatas and the other of thirteen teaching pieces, but they encompass an eclectic variety of styles and a surprising range of emotions – proud, spirited, witty, impulsive, touching, vivacious – making Worgan sound something like an English Domenico Scarlatti.

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Derek B. Scott Orchestral Music

John Dew, Liepāja Symphony Orchestra, Paul Mann


Derek Scott, born in Birmingham in 1950, has an international reputation as a leading historian of the British music hall and other forms of light entertainment. But he is also an outstanding composer in his own right, his music treading a fine line between a very English whimsy and a profoundly felt and natural response to his (often Celtic) subject matter. These works reveal a master craftsman and natural tunesmith, who manages to unite good humour, unerring technique and deep feeling, in music of immediate appeal. Scott’s Airs and Dances is a real rarity: a concerto for the Highland bagpipe and orchestra (he plays the instrument himself), a memorable mix of his own melodies and pipe tunes collected on the Isle of Skye, off the west coast of Scotland.

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Franz Anton Hoffmeister Andreas Blau, Christoph Streuli, Ulrich Knörzer, David Riniker

TUD7207 £9.00 1 CD 12/03/21 TUDOR

Andreas Blau and his orchestral colleagues of the Berliner Philharmoniker are to be admired for discovering the treasure that is Anton Hoffmeister’s Flute Quartets, and they play them superbly well, while placing Hoffmeister’s output in close proximity to Mozart and Haydn, and in the vicinity of early Beethoven. The solo parts are evidently tailor-made for the flute, and their virtuoso passages seem modelled on cadenzas from Mozart piano concertos. Their musical sensitivity, evident enjoyment and great orchestral experience ensure the recordings do not just document the artistry of so-called minor masters, but are a valuable addition to our view of the brilliant epoch of Viennese classicism.

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Giovanni Lorenzo Gregori, Alessandro Stradella 10 Concerti grossi, Op. 2; Sonate; Sinfonie

Capriccio Barock Orchester, Dominik Kiefer

TUD7171 £9.00 1 CD 12/03/21 TUDOR

Giovanni Lorenzo Gregori (1663 – 1745), “Maestro di capella amenissimo, bravo sonatore di violino”, worked predominantly in his hometown of Lucca. His main work, 10 Concerti Opus 2, is an almost visionary achievement, in particular because he expressly called for a powerful orchestral sonority. Each Concerto has its own varied and multifaceted character. The solo passages of both violins are but short interludes. The accent is on the lively orchestral idiom and its many surprises; previously unheard of combina- tions of string instruments are as thrilling as the transparent and lively dialogues within the orchestra. Alessandro Stradella (1644–1682) was constantly involved in love affairs and other incidents: the last ended in his murder on the Piazza Bianchi in Genoa. This did not deter from the quality of his compositions. In many ways his works still appear modern, thanks to his gift for combining different orchestral timbres and volumes, and involving the players in inspiring exchanges and mutual imitations.

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OABD7285D £20.41 1 BLU-RAY

Charles-François Gounod Faust

Michael Fabiano, Erwin Schrott, Irina Lungu, Stéphane Degout, Vardui Abrahamyan, Carole Wilson, Germán E Alcántara, Orchestra & Chorus of the Royal Opera House, David McVicar (Director), Dan Ettinger

OA1330D £17.01 1 DVD 26/03/21 OPUS ARTE ROYAL OPERA HOUSE

Disillusioned with life, the aged philosopher Faust calls upon Satan to help him. The devil Méphistophélès appears and strikes a bargain with the philosopher: Faust can have youth and the love of the beautiful Marguerite, but only in exchange for his soul... Gounod’s masterpiece is given the grandest of Royal Opera stagings in David McVicar’s richly layered and theatrically exuberant production, with the drama moved to Second Empire Paris, spectacular sets and costumes, and extensive dance. Michael Fabiano as a seductively witty Faust, Erwin Schrott as a devilish Méphistophélès and Irina Lungu as a passionate Marguerite are joined by the Royal Opera Chorus and a cast of Royal Opera favourites. Dan Ettinger conducts the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House in Gounod’s gloriously tuneful score.

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Sergei Prokofiev Cinderella

Antoinette Sibley, Anthony Dowell, Frederick Ashton, Robert Helpmann, Leslie Edwards, Georgina Parkinson, Frank Freeman, Jonathan Kelly, Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Frederick Ashton (Director and Choreographer), John Lanchbery

OA1333D £10.20 1 DVD 26/03/21 OPUS ARTE ROYAL OPERA HOUSE

The much-loved story of Cinderella has captured hearts and minds for centuries and this historic colour recording from 1969, full of dreams and magic, shows why. Infused with the drama of Prokofiev’s luscious score, the tale of transformation provided creative inspiration for Frederick Ashton’s acclaimed first full-length ballet. His enchanting production stands as a showcase of choreographic mastery and features one of the Royal Ballet’s most celebrated partnerships with Antoinette Sibley as Cinderella and Anthony Dowell as the Prince. Ashton’s distinctive theatricality is also revealed in a touching and hilarious cameo as one of the Ugly Sisters opposite Robert Helpmann.

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756304 £20.41 1 BLU-RAY

Adolphe Adam, Cesare Pugni, Léo Delibes, Riccardo Drigo, Peter von Oldenburg

Le Corsaire

Nicoletta Manni, Martina Arduino, Timofej Andrijashenko, Marco Agostino, Antonino Sutera, Ballet Company and Orchestra of La Scala, Anna-Marie Holmes (choreography), Patrick Fournillier

756208 £17.01 1 DVD 19/03/21 C MAJOR ENTERTAINMENT TEATRO ALLA SCALA

With fairytale-like staging and a “Pas de deux” that made Rudolf Nureyev and Margot Fonteyn a legend and always awaited in the ballet galas, Le Corsaire is considered a choreographic milestone in the history of ballet. Le Corsaire debuted with enormous success at La Scala to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the legendary choreographer Marius Petipa. The choreographic version by Anna-Marie Holmes after Marius Petipa and Konstantin Sergeyev made it „great fun! Spinatelli has given the dancers ravishing costumes and the orchestra plays some of ballet’s biggest hits. La Scala’s ballet company in top form.” (Gramilano) “A majestic staging and an excellent Dance Corps.” (L´ape Musicale) “Impeccable” (Informadanza)

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57849 £20.41 1 BLU-RAY

Gaetano Donizetti Lucrezia Borgia

Orchestra Giovanile Luigi Cherubini, Coro del Teatro Municipale di Piacenza, Riccardo Frizza

37849 £20.41 2 DVD 19/03/21 DYNAMIC

Gaetano Donizetti’s Lucrezia Borgia is a dark and scandalous tale of murder and excess. Initially criticised for its audacious nature, the opera has since become appreciated as one of the great masterpieces of Italian bel canto repertoire with glorious arias and stirring choruses. Created using Roger Parker’s new critical edition and with acclaimed soprano Carmela Remigio in the title role, Andrea Bernard’s spectacular Donizetti Festival production is ‘gripping and intense at every moment… this production ranks among the best all year’ (operawire.com).

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Frida Kahlo Ali Ray

SEV210 £8.84 1 DVD 05/03/21 SEVENTH ART EXHIBITION ON SCREEN

Come on a journey through the life of one of the most prevalent female icons: Frida Kahlo. She was a prolific self-portraitist, using the canvas as a mirror through all stages of her turbulent and, at times, tragic life. Guided by interviews, commentary and Frida’s own words, Exhibition on Screen uncovers that this, however, was not a life defined by tragedy. Featuring key collections and interviews with world-renowned Kahlo curators, EXHIBITION ON SCREEN explores the extraordinary symbolism and themes in these personal canvases to seek a deeper understanding of the real Frida Kahlo. Displaying a treasure trove of colour and a feast of vibrancy on screen, this personal and intimate film offers privileged access to her works and highlights the source of her feverish creativity, her resilience and her unmatched lust for life, men, women, politics and her cultural heritage. We might think we already know Frida Kahlo – the image of floral crowns, big brows and folk style clothing have made her a muse to generations – but what lies beneath the surface of this intensely passionate woman?

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803804 £20.41 1 BLU-RAY

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Le nozze di Figaro

Bo Skovhus, Christine Schäfer, Mari Eriksmoen, Andrè Schuen, Elisabeth Kulman, Ildikó Raimondi, Peter Kálmán, Mauro Peter, Arnold SchoenbergChor, Concentus Musicus Wien, Nikolaus Harnoncourt

803708 £23.42 2 DVD 19/03/21 UNITEL EDITION THEATER AN DER WIEN

He was out to create something ‘unheard-of’,” observed conductor Nikolaus Harnoncourt beforehand. And true to form: What the conductor had to offer as he commenced his Mozart/Da Ponte cycle in the Theater an der Wien was something we “had never before heard like this” (Kurier). Nikolaus Harnoncourt, “master” of period performance practice, realized a project that had long been one of his dearest wishes: for the first time, he and his “original-sound orchestra” Concentus Musicus and his personal choice of singers were presenting the complete Mozart/Da Ponte cycle and harvesting the fruits of his Mozart research – an “enthusiastically acclaimed cycle!” (news.at). PART I - Le nozze di Figaro + Documentary: Nikolaus Harnoncourt - Between Obsession and Perfection Part I: Le nozze di Figaro.

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dealer information service: no. 350 march 2021 …

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