wimpel69: THE CONCERTO COLLECTION flac (work in progress)

Note: New uploads will be made "along the way",
so you’ll have to browse through the thread to pick up all the releases.
Suggestions for other discs/works or requests are are welcome as PM’s. Enjoy!

Note: The later uploads are also available in FLAC(lossless), but only
by PM request and only for a limited time. Those marked with "FLAC Link expired" are still availble
in mp3, but requests for those in FLAC will not get a reply!

If you can’t see covers/photos, then it will be because you guys exhausted the bandwidth
with my free image server.

A word about the upload server: Everybody can use MEGA. Preferred browsers are Firefox 22+
with a plugin the site asks you to install when you first open it), or CHROME 28.0+.
Also, reportedly, a software called jdownloader works flawlessy with MEGA links!

Beginning with upload No.28, I’ve also been posting mp3 versions of each album. Predictably, the depositfiles links
went down quickly, so I switched to MEGA for those, too.

If you experience any problems with MEGA in Firefox (which sometimes occur after an update of the browser), try and
(re-)install the MEGA plugin for Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/de/firefox/addon/meganz/ – It always does the trick for me! 🙂

Have fun – and please click on "LIKE" if you downloaded
and enjoyed a release.

Last October I started a thread on classical "program music", which you can find here:
Thread 121898

I did this for a number of reasons. First off, this is primarily a film music board, and film music is an extension, if you will,
or continuation, of 19th century program music (Franz Liszt, Richard Wagner, Richard Strauss – the lot). There are differences,
e.g. that a Liszt tone poem didn’t have to conform to a specific scene or to a very specific duration (say, like 2 minutes 46 seconds),
or that a musical score may be drowned out by dialogue, or a myriad of noises and special effects – but these differences are minor –
at least musically, as countless examples provided by outstanding film composers over the decades have shown. Jerry Goldsmith,
one of the great 20th century film composers, said: "The fact that certain composers have been able to create first-class music
within the medium of film proves that film music can be as good as the composer is gifted." He was right. And Goldsmith, as well
as Bernard Herrmann and a few others, will no doubt be recognized by future generations of more open-minded classical scholars
as having been among the most important composers of the 20th century. The vast majority of film composers though will be
recognized for what they always were: hacks.

Also, 95% of all film music composed over the past 110 years are total crap, whereas even weaker examples of "autonomous"
classical music are at least listenable. Most film music was never meant to be heard independently, a convenient truth that
helped mask the total lack of talent or craftsmanship of many a film composer. Composing music is a craft(!), which has to be
studied, and even a man with few or no original ideas will be able to create, a sufficiently acceptable piece of music once
he has learned, again, the craft. This is true of both classical and film composers. Unfortunately, film music history is littered
with inferior people who never bothered to learn the craft, and have no original ideas either. Or, which IMHO is worse, may
have the craft but dumb it down to please stupid film producers, as well as stupid, or musically uneducated, audiences.

Film music has its roots in classical music. There may have been trends and fashions over the years that have
blurred that tradition, but time and again, background film music has returned to its roots. And it always will.
This is why I think it’s important for any fan of film music to know the heritage, and the continuing tradition of fine concert
music that exists today. Hans Zimmer’s simplistic, Rock-based orchestral/synthetic drones may be "state of the (non)art"
today, but they won’t last. You can fool all the people some of the time, and you may even fool some people all of the time,
but you can’t fool all the people all of the time. Lincoln said that, AFAIR. John Carpenter’s "scores" for his 1970s/80s horror
films are another example of non-music that works in the films, but is an embarrassment of sorts when listened to outside
of the movies. A certain pedal-point may tingle your midriff (if that’s the term) – that doesn’t make it good music. To be
brutally honest, it doesn’t even make it music.

In this thread, I’m going to post a selection of recordings of classical "concertante works"
– which means, pieces composed for a solo instrument (or couple of instruments) and
symphony orchestra.

Please note:

I have started a "Desert Island Discs" thread for everyone who loves classical music to post/upload their 5 favorite albums:

Thread 136063

Formats can be lossy (192kHz or better) or lossless. I’m hoping for a healthy response …

No.1

The first release features Aaron Copland’s Violin Concerto. Wait a minute! Aaron Copland
did not compose a violin concerto. That’s right. It’s an arrangement of this composer’s
Violin Sonata, with orchestra, provided by other hands. Coupled here with actual
violin concertos by Samuel Barber and David Stock.

Music by Samuel Barber, David Stock and Aaron Copland
Played by the Sinfonia Varsovia and Sinfonia da Camera
With Andr???s Card???nes (violin)
Conducted by Ian Hobson

"After a successful and well-regarded recording of the Brahms and Mendelssohn violin concertos,
violinist Andr???s C???rdenes returns, this time on the Albany Records label, for a selection of American
compositions for violin and orchestra. C???rdenes brings the same synthesis of detailed, precision
playing and robust, warm musical interpretation to this album. The Sinfonia Varsovia is again
C???rdenes’ orchestra of choice, again led by conductor Ian Hobson, and this time delivers an
even more solid, vigorous performance than before. Gorgeous solos from the woodwinds in
the Barber concerto and strong, percussive rhythmicity in the David Stock concerto prove
that Sinfonia Varsovia can indeed hold its own. Also on the program is the Copland violin
sonata, arranged and published for violin and chamber orchestra by Gerald Elias during
Copland’s lifetime; this composition is accompanied by the Sinfonia de Camera. C???rdenes’
playing is impressive throughout for its beauty of tone in both lyrical and rhythmic sections
of the concertos. His vibrato, particularly in the slow movements of the Barber and Copland,
is completely satisfying and almost comforting. The only possible let down is C???rdenes’ tempo
selection in the "perpetual motion" movements of both the Barber and Stock concertos. With
such an abundant technique from which to draw, these movements are surprisingly slow and
safe, and the orchestra seems to only be tentatively keeping up with Barber’s Presto even at
the slower tempo. Still, C???rdenes playing is so enjoyable, clean, and well-thought-out that
this album is still sure to be enjoyed."
All Music

Source: Albany Records (my rip!)
Format: FLAC, DDD Stereo
File Size: 294 MB

Download Link (re-up): https://mega.nz/#!rRY2CSDA!jforGwLnOk9AaqpUmrI_JJ0UP8OGQ9-avX3lqjw79TM
/>

Enjoy! Don’t share! Buy the original! 🙂

*Ahem*

Definitely looking forward to this thread, thank you very much!

No.2

Alfredo Casella (1883-1947) was an outstanding if uneven composer who led several of his
contemporaries — Respighi, Malipiero, Pizzetti, and others — in a struggle to modernize Italian music.
His interests as a composer and as an author of articles on music were highly cosmopolitan, as may
be gathered from his early enthusiasms for Debussy, the Russian nationalists, Strauss, Bart???k, and
Schoenberg. Yet Casella was also intensely inspired by Italian culture, both its folkways and its
Futurism movement. The early works, particularly his first two symphonies (1905 and 1909), were
extremely modernistic for their time; that is, they were influenced by Richard Strauss and Gustav
Mahler (Casella even transcribed the latter’s Seventh Symphony for piano, four hands). But Casella
eventually settled into an energetic, spiky neo-Classicism owing much to Stravinsky and something
to Ravel. This more personal style became evident with his 1924 ballet La Giara. Ironically, Casella
is now remembered less for his original works than for a couple of brilliant pastiches of earlier
composers’ pieces: Scarlattiana for piano and orchestra, and the vibrant Paganiniana for orchestra.

Extremely prolific, highly uneven, and tremendously influential, Gian Francesco Malipiero (1882-1973)
came to be regarded — even by other Italian composers — as the most original musical mind of his day and
place. His music fused modern techniques with the stylistic qualities of early Italian music. Malipiero initially
produced works that, although often harmonically dense and oddly structured, reflect the spirit of
seventeenth and eighteenth century Venetian music. His compositions are characteristically contrapuntal,
with some dissonance resulting from the counterpoint. What is usually judged to be his best music bases
its tonality on free use of diatonic material, although Malipiero employed chromaticism more aggressively
in his old age.

Music by Alfredo Casella & Gian Francesco Malipiero
Played by the Prague Symphony Orchestra
With Andr??? Gertler (violin)
Conducted by Vaclav Smetacek

"What a lovely bit of buried treasure this disc turns out to be! It???s always nice to hear Andr??? Gertler, a fine
violinist with a distinguished discography, and the uniqueness of the repertoire makes this first-time-on-
CD reissue doubly welcome. Malipiero???s concerto is a Stravinskian, neo-classical essay whose propulsive
rhythms and sometimes spiky harmonies always seem ready to blossom into lyricism. The finale, with its
quiet ending, is particularly poetic. Casella???s concerto is a bigger work, more obviously indebted to the
Romantic virtuoso tradition, with a higher level of obvious passion and color. Why it???s so neglected, like
virtually everything by this excellent composer, is a mystery, but at least we have this excellent
performance to keep the flame alive until the rest of the world catches on. Gertler???s estimable musicianship
receives reliable and sympathetic support from Smet???cek and the orchestra, and Supraphon???s sonics
fall gratefully on the ear. A very pleasant surprise."
David Hurwitz, Classics Today

Source: Supraphon CD (my rip!)
Format: FLAC, ADD Stereo
File Size: 252 MB

Download Link: https://mega.co.nz/#!lYZSiR4J!Vhq9iFaoTqEslRkxJP5okX91a_ZS3bLzADU_8CD iNnM

Enjoy! Don’t share! Buy the original! 🙂

American composer Robert Kyr (*1952) has written twelve symphonies (so far),
three chamber symphonies, three violin concerti, and numerous works for vocal ensemble
of all types, both unaccompanied and accompanied, including many large-scale works
for which he wrote or co-wrote the text.

This recording presents a trilogy of violin concerti with titles beginning, "On the Nature of…".
The concerti explore the archetypal themes of Love (No.1), Harmony (No.2), and
Peace (No.3). "In each work, the violin soloist is an adventurer who sets out on a journey of
discovery that is filled with challenges and surprises. The music of each concerto is a spiritual landscape
that encompasses an array of thoughts and feelings ranging from the lyricism of the reflective music
in the first concerto, to the boisterous energy of the finale of the second, to the balance of musical
elements at the end of the third." So speaketh the composer.

Of the three neo-romantic concertos, the middle one, cast for violin, Balinese gamelan ensemble and
symphony orchestra, is probably the most intriguing.

Music Composed by Robert Kyr
Played by the Third Angle New Music Ensemble & Pacific Rim Gamelan
With Denise Huizenga & Ron Blessinger (violin)
Conducted by Robert Kyr & Jeffrey Peyton

"Oregon composer Robert Kyr is a new name to me, but this group of three violin concertos,
written with a canny combination of virtuoso display and genial accessibility, left me impressed, excited
and often touched. Kyr’s harmonic language is largely tonal, and he is often concerned with setting up
musical conflicts that get ironed out; the results could easily sound namby-pamby if the rhythmic profile
were not so sharp, or his instrumental palette so varied. Instead, Kyr weaves together appealing melodic
strands with avuncular ease, and he keeps the soloist nimbly at the fore. Each concerto has its own
distinctive flavor — one is a series of variations on a Southern hymn tune, one a pan-Asian celebration
with a Balinese gamelan and one a schematic but dramatic treatise on conflict resolution.
The soloists, Denise Huizenga and Ron Blessinger, are simply first-rate."
San Francisco Chronicle

Source: New Albion CD (my rip!)
Format: FLAC, DDD Stereo
File Size: 328 MB

Download Link: https://mega.co.nz/#!SwB1lAwZ!Xl2wCx86ByWy_0Vw47OP-RFp2ettVp4knPuKrZWtg54

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Israeli composer Boris Pigovat (b.1953, Odessa, USSR) studied at the Gnessin Music Institute (Academia of Music)
in Moscow. Between 1978 and 1990 he lived in Tadjikistan. In 1988 he won the special distinction diploma at
the International Composers Competition in Budapest for his composition "Musica dolorosa No.2". Pigovat immigrated
to Israel in 1990. In 1995 he got the Prize of ACUM (Israeli ASCAP) for his composition Requiem "The Holocaust",
which, in spite of its title, is actually a Viola Concerto. In 2000 he got the prize of Prime Minister of State of Israel.
Many of his works have been performed throughout the world. His composition "Massada" was performed at ISCM
"World music days 2000" festival in Luxembourg and at WASBE 2003 CONFERENCE in Jonkoping (Sweden).
The world premiere of Requiem "The Holocaust" for Viola & Symphony Orchestra took place at the Memorial
evening dedicated to the Babi Yar tragedy (Kiev, 2.10.2001, soloist – Rainer Moog).

Music Composed by Boris Pigovat
Played by the Vector Wellington Orchestra
With Donald Maurice (viola)
Conducted by Marc Taddei

"The music is harrowing and tense, and very Russian in sound. Echoes of contemporary composers such
as Denisov, Kanchelli and Gubaidulina can be heard, as well as the inexorable thread of Shostakovich in the Dies Irae,
but the voice of the composer remains highly individual. Balancing the violence, anger and tension is the conciliatory
beauty of the Lux Eterna that rounds out a work of deeply felt power."
The Dominion Post

Source: Atoll CD (my rip!)
Format: FLAC, DDD Stereo
File Size: 274 MB (incl. cover, booklet)

Download Link: https://mega.co.nz/#!DxIFjRzR!M9BcrBhX2COvB5AVcPQPD1lf7DsuAKUG6ZSodkt 6mPY

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Charles Camilleri (7 September 1931 ??? 3 January 2009) is acknowledged as having been
one of Malta’s most important composers. Camilleri was born in Ħamrun and, as a teenager, had
already composed a number of works based on folk music and legends of his native Malta. At the age
of eighteen, he abandoned a career in law for that of music. He had already, at only fourteen,
experienced the fact that some of his marches played at local feasts. In 1948 he went to London
for a Promenade concert at the Royal Albert Hall. Two years later, in Australia he realised his
ambition of being totally devoted to music, first as a student and later as a teacher. He
subsequently visited Japan, Hong Kong and Korea.

He moved from his early influences by Maltese folk music to a musical form "in which nothing is
fixed and his compositions evolve from themselves with a sense of fluency and inevitability".
He composed over 100 works for orchestra, chamber ensemble, voice and solo instruments.
The three Piano Concertos featured here provide ample evidence of his stylistic
development, from the romantic Concerto No.1 to the spikier, modernistic third (and final).

Music Composed by Charles Camilleri
Played by the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra
With Andr??? de Groote (piano)
Conducted by Michael Laus

"The Maltese composer Charles Camilleri was at first drawn to improvisation and nationalism. There
was for example a Malta Suite in 1946. It was a visit to London in 1951 that began a pilgrimage
through music which has taken him around the world.

The folksy tonal joyous first movement of the First Concerto includes a recurring tarantella which
is to return in the flighty tambourine-punctuated finale. There is a brooding nobility about the
crystalline second movement with its mildly oriental flavour. The whole effect can perhaps be
compared with the Malcolm Williamson Piano Concertos 2 and 3. Fifteen years later and the single
movement Second Concerto has taken on an angular serious Bart???kian edge mixed with voices
from North Africa. The accents now are forthright, uncompromising and modernistic whether
in pugnacious mode or querulous and thoughtful. The single movement Third Piano Concerto was
written at the request of Tikhon Krennikhov. The result is provocative, again angular and
sometimes truculently dissonant. The engaging accessible manner of the first concerto has been
left far behind. It is perhaps a good match for Camilleri’s concern to portray the terror of man’s
downfall in the face of his own misdeeds and an awareness of the need for redemptive meditative
concentration. In this work the composer shows a clear influence from Olivier Messiaen (5:43,
17:38) in both flight and repose.

Three stimulating piano concertos the last two of which are as dissonant as the
first is melodic-tonal."
Musicweb International

Source: Unicorn Kanchana CD (my rip!)
Format: FLAC, DDD Stereo
File Size: 237 MB

Download Link: https://mega.co.nz/#!upg00YqB!EXjiW2X3sMxEs5L–7GS3FklWfVpifp7VOeiXvJXptI

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Three "Spanish-tinged" guitar concertos on a well-filled CD (indeed: 80:21min),
two of which are among the most popular: Joaqu???n Rodrigo’s inevitable Concierto
de Aranjuez and Manuel Ponce’s Concierto del Sur – the latter being possibly
the best concerto with orchestra ever written for this problematic solo instrument.

Ant???n Garcia Abril nicely shaded is a conservative contemporary composer
in Madrid whose classical works (he also wrote a lot of film and television music, like
Monsignor Quixote, a suite of which I uploaded before) are all in a safe, neo-Romantic
idiom with folk elements – conventional, but polished and well-crafted melodically. Such is
certainly the case with his Concierto Aguediano, and the fans of either (or both)
of the other two works on the disc should lap it up.

Music by Joaqu???n Rodrigo, Manuel Ponce & Ant???n Garcia Abril
Played by the ORT (Orchestra della Toscana)
With Edoardo Catemario (guitar)
Conducted by Enrique B???tiz

"Guitarist Edoardo Catemario offers absolutely lovely tone at all dynamic levels,
and that makes the opening crescendo of the Concierto de Aranjuez, or the harp-like
strumming in the same work???s famous Adagio, remarkably sensual. He???s also very well balanced
against the orchestra, sounding neither too forward nor artificially placed in his own acoustic.
There are many excellent versions of both the Rodrigo and Ponce???s Concierto del Sur, these
among them, but the Concierto Aguediano by Anton Garcia Abril is both the largest work here
(31 minutes) and a real find that no lover of Spanish guitar music can afford to miss???certainly
worth the price of the disc. Clearly written in the spirit of Rodrigo, the piece is at once more
ambitious and more colorful, and Catemario obviously has a terrific time with it. Enrique B???tiz
conducts with his customary energy and the orchestra responds accordingly. This fine
collection deserves very serious consideration."
David Hurwitz, Classics Today

Source: Arts CD (my rip!)
Format: FLAC, DDD Stereo
File Size: 316 MB

Download Link: https://mega.co.nz/#!Tl4SFahK!B2lZnEigFHJN6nY93R-GC1BkEh1T6S99RZXj_8K7BLc

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A trio of American works for flute and orchestra, two of them world premieres at the time.

Ellen Taaffe Zwilich has been one of the most successful US composers, male or female, of the past few decades.
Her Concerto for Flute and Orchestra of 1989 is a predominantly lyrical work, and typical of her style on the
brink between tonality and atonality.

Walter Piston’s neo-classical Flute Concerto was composed in 1971, towards the end of this distinguished
composer’s career. It is lively and clean-cut, and doesn’t feel old-fashioned in the least.

Halil (1981) is a 15-minute concertante work of Leonard Bernstein’s that belongs to his Jewish-themed pieces.
Flutist Doriot Anthony Dwyer worked with Bernstein in the course of her career, so she would know how
it has to go. Typically solid support from James Sedares and the LSO.

Dwyer was a pioneer – the first female flutist to hold a chair with one of America’s big-5 orchestras. You can even
find a monograph thesis on her career online, entitled "First Flute", here:

http://etd.lsu.edu/docs/available/etd-11132007-163128/unrestricted/Kean_dis.pdf (PDF).

Music by Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, Walter Piston & Leonard Bernstein
Played by the London Symphony Orchestra
With Doriot Anthony Dwyer (flute)
Conducted by James Sedares

"Each of these American works for flute and orchestra is distinguished by an ease of communication
and a sense of immediate accessibility. This is not to suggest that the pieces are either patronizing
or unrelated to contemporary esthetic/compositional issues. On the contrary, these concertos are all
definitely of this century, but linked to the experiences and expectations of many listeners. In addition,
one must note that each of the concertos has been associated with the name of Doriot Anthony Dwyer,
the distinguished former principal flutist of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, who performs them on this CD.

Ellen Taaffe Zwilich has received many honors and distinctions. Two of these are frequently mentioned:
that she was the first woman to receive the doctorate in composition from Juilliard, and that she was the
first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize in Music. (Interestingly, Doriot Anthony Dwyer has a similar singular
honor–the distinction of being the first woman to hold a principal chair in a major American orchestra.)
Zwilich’s 1989 flute concerto is the most recent of the three works on this disc; appropriately, it sounds
the most up-to-date, with its inventive wash of shifting textures, its suspension of tonality for extended
stretches, and the biting articulation of brass and formidable percussion. It is worth noting that there is
no flute in Zwilich’s orchestra; her focus, rather, is on warm colors in the middle registers, with special
emphasis given to oboes and English horn, trombones, and harp. This scoring touch allows the solo flute
to speak and project in all its registers, from high, penetrating tones to low, quiet breathy ones. The
concerto is cast in the traditional three movements: a slow introduction leading to a driving allegro,
followed by a lyric, contemplative middle movement of great warmth, and then a rousing, lively finale.

Walter Piston’s flute concerto, like Zwilich’s, was composed specifically for Dwyer and the Boston
Symphony Orchestra. Piston, originally from Maine, studied in France with Nadia Boulanger during the
1920s and then carried her Stravinskian approach back to New England. During his over three decades
of teaching at Harvard (from 1926 to 1960), Piston made the greater Boston area a major neoclassic
stronghold, and created an impressive body of work (mostly instrumental music in the larger absolute
genres). Although this 1971 concerto is notated as a single uninterrupted movement, one can still
hear a traditional three-part subdivision within that framework. The final allegro, rhythmically
angular and timbrally bright, is especially commanding.

The third composer represented on this disc, Leonard Bernstein, had equally strong ties not only to
Harvard–where, as an undergraduate, he worked with Piston–but, like Piston, to the Boston Symphony
as well. (Serge Koussevitzky, music director of the BSO, was one of Bernstein’s important early mentors.)
And again like Piston, he made a great impact as a "teacher," and through media that stretched beyond
the classroom. Where Piston was universally known for his many textbooks on a variety of subjects,
Bernstein reached out to an even larger audience through his Young People’s Concerts and television
lecture-demo programs.

Bernstein’s Halil is scored for solo flute, string orchestra, and percussion. The composer has referred
to it as a "nocturne," and it does project a strongly meditative, ruminating quality–entirely appropriate
for a work conceived as a memorial to a young Israeli flutist who had died during military action at the
Sinai–and premiered in Israel under Bernstein’s direction. (Its later American premiere took place with
the BSO and Ms. Dwyer as soloist.)

During the course of its single extended movement, Halil traverses a wide range of tempo and mood swings.
Bernstein’s program notes emphasize the choice of pitch material, and the slow progression from a
twelve-tone opening to a diatonic conclusion. In fact, though, an odd tonal ambiguity pervades the
entire fabric: whether avowedly serial or tonal, the language is always triadic, sharply dissonant, and
largely nonfunctional.

Dwyer, Sedares, and the LSO are, happily, quite sensitive to such issues of stylistic difference.
As a result, these three recorded pieces–incorporating modernist gestures within a familiar inviting
context, but each in a different way–create a very attractive balance."
Elliott Schwartz, American Music

Source: Koch International CD (my rip!)
Format: FLAC, DDD Stereo
File Size: 189 MB (incl. covers, booklet, EAC LOG)

Download Link: https://mega.co.nz/#!2lwiUSCD!ZKOdgDpfYhtyxYUPtZfVzEsB7vUkjyJzK6dy_v6 Gerc

Enjoy! Don’t share! Buy the original! 🙂

This is a colorful collection of 20th century works for marimba or vibraphone
solo or with orchestra, written by composers as diverse as Darius Milhaud, Paul Creston,
Iannis Xenakis, Siegfried Fink, David Maslanka and others. Peter Sadlo
is the outstanding percussionist in these fine, diverting pieces.

Music by Darius Milhaud, Paul Creston, Iannis Xenakis,
Siegfried Fink & David Maslanka
Played by the Bamberger Symphoniker & HR Radio Orchestra
With Peter Sadlo (percussion)
Conducted by Wolfgang R???gner & Hans Peter Frank

"A hit with the public and critics alike, Peter Sadlo???s extraordinary musical intuition and
virtuosity have made him an internationally sought after artist. Peter Sadlo studied at the
Konservatorium in Nuremberg and at the Musikhochschule in Wurzburg with Siegfried Fink.
He has won numerous first prizes throughout his career including the first-ever percussion
awards at both the Concours International Gen???ve (1982) and at the Internationaler
Musikwettbewerb der ARD in Munich (1985). At age 20, Peter Sadlo became solo timpanist at the
Munich Philharmonic, a position he held for 15 years and during which time his style was
greatly influenced by his collaboration with Sergiu Celibidache. Starting in 1998 he began to
concentrate exclusively on his career as a soloist and ensemble leader. Additionally, Peter Sadlo
is Professor of Percussion at the Hochschule f???r Musik und Theater in Munich and at the
University ???Mozarteum??? in Salzburg. He holds a Doctorate in Musicology from the University of
Bucharest and an Honorary Doctorate from the Staatliche Musikakademie in Sofia.

Composers such as Luciano Berio, Minas Borboudakis, Ferran Cruixent, Moritz Eggert, Harald
Genzmer, Sofia Gubaidulina, Hans Werner Henze oder Bertold Hummel have collaborated with
Peter Sadlo or have written pieces for him."

Source: Koch Schwann CD (my rip!)
Format: FLAC, DDD Stereo
File Size: 265 MB

Download Link: https://mega.co.nz/#!X5Y2jBgK!BtOUy3tq2zwNWCa_Q1SlmXqBzzQYmI2fUQ0yww6 SMMY

Enjoy! Don’t share! Buy the original! 🙂

The composition date given in the headnote is slightly misleading: yes, B???la Bart???k produced
the Concerto for Two Pianos, Percussion and Orchestra effort in 1940, but it is an arrangement
of the 1937 Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion. While for some time the chamber version may
have been the preferred one, especially among critics, the orchestral rendition eventually became the
more popular choice in concert halls and the recording studio.

The concerto is cast in three movements, the first lasting around 13 or 14 minutes, about the length
of the other two combined. The first movement opens mysteriously (Assai lento), the pianos introducing
the cryptic, terse main theme, or motif. As the music builds via intervallic accumulation, there are
explosions from the percussion, and after an imaginative march-like episode on the pianos the tempo
changes to Allegro molto. The colors brighten here and a brilliant, rhythmic theme, growing from the
opening motif, is given by the pianos, later to be played colorfully by the xylophone. A second theme
of less-aggressive character appears, and there follows an imaginative and complex development section.
In the latter part of the first movement a brilliant fugue is given, wherein the piano writing is quite
virtuosic, hands going in opposite directions on the keyboards, notes filling the air with tension and
momentum. A dramatic coda, itself roiling in tension, closes the movement with emphatic resolution.

The second movement is an elegy whose mesmerizing music, marked Lento ma non troppo, recalls the
middle movement of the composer’s Piano Concerto No. 1 (1926), also a percussion-laden affair. The
middle section here breaks from the elegiac mood of the opening and closing with agitated music, offering
fine contrast to the nostalgic main theme.

The third movement is a rondo, marked Allegro non troppo, that features two quite memorable themes.
The first has an arched contour, rising and descending jovially on the keyboard, while the next one is
presented emphatically by the xylophone, sounding humorous and intentionally stiff in its march-like
manner. There is a brilliant but terse development of the main theme in a fugato episode, and the work
ends with a subdued coda. This concerto has attained a measure of popularity, but still remains largely
on the fringes of the repertory, owing in part to the two-piano scoring. Relatively few virtuosos from
any period devote their time to such works.

Music Composed by B???la Bart???k
Played by the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra
With Katia & Marielle Lab???que (pianos)
And Sylvio Gualda & Jean-Pierre Drouet (percussion)
Conducted by Simon Rattle

"The French pianists, Katia & Marielle Lab???que, are daughters of Ada Cecchi, a
former student of Marguerite Long. They spent a childhood filled with music. Both
of them studied with their mother and at the Paris Conservatoire.

These non-conformist pianists boast a repertory from the eclectic to the unexpected.
From the onset, they dedicated themselves to the contemporary scene, including
the work of composers such as Pierre Boulez, Luciano Berio, Ligeti and Messiaen.
Their repertoire includes a broad range of seemingly contradictory material, in which
they move comfortably from J.S. Bach, Johannes Brahms, Franz Liszt, Mozart, Igor
Stravinsky, Gershwin, Leonard Bernstein, Takemitsu, and Lutoslawsky to the young
contemporary composers.

Their first recording for Philips, of Gershwin???s Rhapsody in Blue, received a Gold Disc
immediately after its release. Since then Katia & Marielle Lab???que have made numerous
recordings for Philips, Sony and EMI. The aspiration to build a bridge crossing all aspects
of contemporary creation has led them to form their own label, KML Recordings, and
they are forming a creative alliance with newly launched Onyx classics label through
which their records will be distributed. Transgressing conventions and boundaries, KML
Recordings brings together the unexpected in meaningful and artistic ways, constantly
associating sounds and images. Their vision goes beyond classical music to look at new
territories where rock, electronic, contemporary, improvisation and video have their say.
The first releases in 2007 comprise an all-Ravel programme , including a new version of
Bolero (from the composer himself) with added Basque percussion, a CD of I. Stravinsky
and Debussy with a DVD directed by Tal Rosner, and a recording of Mozart and Schubert."

Source: EMI CD (my rip!)
Format: FLAC, DDD Stereo
File Size: 167 MB (incl. covers, booklet)

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This is a lively collection of Chinese concertos for recorder and orchestra,
played by the leading international soloist, Michala Petri. The album features
works by composers who are well known in the West (like Bright Sheng and
Chen Yi, who both live and work in the US) as well as two relative unknowns,
Tang Jian-Ping and Ma Shui-Long.

Music by Tang Jian-Ping, Bright Sheng, Ma Shui-Long & Chen Yi
Played by the Copenhagen Philharmonic Orchestra
With Michala Petri (recorder)
Conducted by Lan Shui

"The contents of this album are less unusual than the proclaimed Chinese recorder
concertos concept. Only one of the four works, Chen Yi’s The Ancient Chinese Beauty,
is originally written for recorders; the others are arranged from music for Chinese flutes
(or, in the case of Bright Sheng’s Flute Moon, Western piccolo). Sheng and Chen Yi are
partly Western-trained, and their pieces arose in an American context. This said, veteran
recorder virtuosa Michala Petri, recording in her home country of Denmark with the
Copenhagen Philharmonic under Chinese-Singaporean conductor Lan Shui, delivers a bravura
performance here. Chen Yi writes difficult registral jumps for Petri, but elsewhere, as in the
low oscillations of the finale of Tang Jianping’s Fei Ge (Flying Song), one gets the feeling
that Petri has pushed the recorder into new tonguings as she imitates the Chinese dizi
bamboo flute. The presence of the Tang Jianping work points to another of the album’s
strengths: its diverse program. There is a work in the Chinese style familiar to listeners
of the Mao Zedong era; Bang di concerto composer Ma Shui-Long is Taiwanese, but as
the excellent booklet notes (in English and Chinese, but not Danish) indicate, the official
Taiwanese style of that time, intended to provide a counterweight to the Yellow River
Concerto being promoted by the mainland government, ended up being similar to it in
many ways, because official styles are official styles. This concerto, originally written
for the bang di small membrane flute, marked the beginnings of his move away from
this style. The biggest find is the Tang Jianping piece, an eventful, kaleidoscopic piece
drawing on a variety of Chinese folk traditions and expertly handling the Western
orchestra (it was originally composed for a Chinese ensemble but arranged by the
composer). The program is truly a "Chinese fugue in four voices," as the booklet
proclaims, and mention should be made of the unusually elaborate and nicely edited
booklet, complete with Chinese seals. A strong outing from Denmark’s new
OUR Recordings label."
All Music

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Don Gillis (1912-1978) was a mid-century American composer whose work
was steeped in a populist vein and shot through with the inspiration of his beloved,
native land of Texas. Naturally, Gillis’ unabashed populism did not endear him to the
academic community, who viewed him as a throwback to the days of radio; a style of
composition considered fundamentally dead by 1970, the date of the Rhapsody for
Trumpet and Orchestra included on this fine Albany disc, Don Gillis: Encore Concerto.
It features the Sinfonia Varsovia conducted by Ian Hobson, who also appears as
the soloist in the title work, which served as Gillis’ first piano concerto of two. Overall, this collection
embodies some of the finest elements in Gillis’ orchestral output; its centerpiece, Short Overture to
an Unwritten Opera (1945) is certainly one of his finest creations; bright, addicting, and even
featuring a surprise quotation from Ary Barroso’s pop tune "Brasil."

The three concerted works are all strong showings for Gillis and solid contributions to the repertoire
of their respective instruments. The Encore Concerto (1956), played winningly and in a
slightly tongue-in-cheek fashion by Hobson, is sort of like a "Concerto in F-lite" with jazzy syncopations,
a middle movement blues, and a dash of humor, playing out against an orchestral backdrop that represents
a sort of tug of war between the cosmopolitan and Texas. Some connection to Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue
can also be detected in Gillis’ Rhapsody for Trumpet and Orchestra (1970), which is a really nice piece
for the trumpet and filled with jazz licks. However, the Rhapsody for Harp and Orchestra (1953)
represents a change of pace; it is diaphanous, atmospheric, and while Gillis’ Texas roots are still cutting
in on the background, that element never completely takes over.

Music Composed by Don Gillis
Played by the Sinfonia Varsovia
With Anna Sikorsek-Olek (harp), Krysztof Bednarczyk (trumpet)
Conducted by Ian Hobson

"Here is yet another winning collection of orchestral music by Don Gillis, courtesy of Albany,
Ian Hobson, and the Sinfonia Varsovia. The outstanding discoveries here are the two rhapsodies
for harp and for trumpet. The former mingles French influences (one of its main themes sounds
amazingly like Poulenc) with pure, Copland-esque Americana. The mixture is striking, to say the
least, kind of like hot dogs with truffles, but once you get used to it you realize that what we
have here is a major addition to the slender repertoire for harp and orchestra. The Trumpet
Rhapsody was written for Doc Severinsen, no less, though alas he never played it on The Tonight
Show. Both the instrument and the setting are tailor-made for Gillis’ patented brand of symphonic
pop/jazz, and both rhapsodies receive outstanding performances by Anna Sikorzak-Olek,
Krzysztof Bednarczyk, and the Sinfonia Varsovia.

Twinkletoes originally was to be part of a larger ballet project, but Gillis abandoned it and
parceled out the music already written. Like the Short Overture it’s a zippy chip off the
master’s workbench. The Encore Concerto–so-called because of its brevity, but at 18 minutes
it’s not really that short–already has been recorded by Albany. Hobson’s playing is fluid and
elegant, while the orchestra (as usual) offers warm and easy-going accompaniments."
Classics Today

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Marius Constant was born Feb. 7, 1925, in Bucharest, and traveled to Paris in the mid-1940s,
where he studied composition with Nadia Boulanger, Olivier Messiaen and Arthur Honegger, and
conducting with Jean Fournet. His first significant symphonic work, 24 Preludes for Orchestra, was
premiered by Leonard Bernstein and the French National Orchestra in 1959. He wrote a series of ballets,
including Cyrano de Bergerac (1960), Paradise Lost (1967, which Rudolf Nureyev danced in London)
and Candide (1970, with mime Marcel Marceau in Hamburg, Germany).

Constant composed "Etrange No. 3," the now-familiar series of repeated four-note phrases on electric
guitar, and "Milieu No. 2," the odd pattern of guitar notes, bongo drums, brass and flutes, that together
became the Twilight Zone theme. They were originally part of a series of offbeat, unusually orchestrated
pieces that CBS music director Lud Gluskin had commissioned from the Paris composer in the late 1950s for the
network’s music library.

The present album features four instrumental concertos, one of them for barrel organ. The style
is typical of post-1950 avantgarde, with many interesting, original orchestral colours.

Music Composed by Marius Constant
Played by the Orchestre Symphonique et Lyrique de Nancy
With Jean-Jacques Justafre (horn), Pierre Charial (barrel organ)
And Claude Delangle (saxophone) & Michel Becquet (trombone)
Conducted by J???r???me Kaltenbach

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File Size: 283 MB

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As a composer, George Dyson (1883-1964) was almost too talented for his own good. He was sufficiently
gifted to write music in a unique style that was also accessible, uplifting, and memorable; but he was also a
teacher and administrator, an author, and he devoted much of his time to those activities. Dyson was born in
Halifax in 1883 to a working-class family.

During his Army service in WWI, Dyson authored a manual on the use of the hand grenade (!) that became standard
issue. He was appointed a professor at the Royal College of Music in 1921 and began teaching at Winchester
College three years later. It was during this period that Dyson separated himself from the mainstream of English
music; a passionate believer in the notion that music had to move forward, he felt that the Brahms-influenced
music of Sir Edward Elgar, the folk song-inspired works of Ralph Vaughan Williams, and the Celtic romanticism of
Sir Arnold Bax were all remnants of an era that had passed.

In 1938, Dyson assumed the job of director of the Royal College of Music; a knighthood followed in 1942 and
he remained at the RCM for another decade. He continued composing new music in that curious style,
modern yet tonal and melodic – of which the three concertos featured here (Concerto Leggiero,
Concerto da Camera, Concerto da Chiesa) are characteristic examples.

Music Composed by George Dyson
Played by the City of London Sinfonia
With Eric Parkin (piano)
Conducted by Richard Hickox

"The English pianist, Eric Parkin, studied at Trinity College of Music in London, firstly as an Opera Scholar,
and was then awarded a Degree Scholarship. His teachers were the distinguished Anglo-French pianist
Frank Laffitte and Professor George Oldroyd. Two other distinguished teachers were also to cross his
path at this period. Charles Kennedy Scott, the conductor of the legendary Oriana Madrigal Society,
and Henry Ceehl with whom he studied composition for a year.

Eric Parkin made his debut in London in 1948. A turning point was the start of a long career in radio
followed shortly afterwards by his meeting with composer John Ireland. A Prom debut with Malcolm
Sargent and the BBC Symphony Orchestra in J. Ireland’s Piano Concerto brought him before a wider
audience. Over the years he has appeared with many of the leading British orchestras, building a
repertoire of over 70 works.

Eric Parkin’s musical sympathies are wide, ranging from J.S. Bach through the Classical and Romantic
repertoire to much 20th century repertoire. He has a great affection for French and American music
and is increasingly recording this. A number of English composers have either written for him or asked
for first performances, including Geoffrey Bush, Peter Dickinson, David Gow, Kenneth Leighton
and Richard Stoker.

Eric Parkin taught piano at the Bulmershe College (now part of the the University of Reading,
Berkshire). Margaret Willis, who was his pupil there for 3 years (1971-1974), said: “I recall him
as being my Personal Tutor at College in Reading. He was kind and sensitive to others needs
greatly appreciated by us all.”

Eric Parkin has recorded many albums for Chandos, including 4 volumes of Arnold Bax’s piano
music, the complete piano works of Samuel Barber, 3 volumes of piano music of Billy Mayerl,
3 volumes of John Ireland’s piano music as well as his Piano Concerto with the London
Philharmonic Orchestra and Bryden Thomson, a double album of solo piano works by J. Ireland,
his friends and pupils, 3 volumes of piano music of Francis Poulenc, piano music of Albert
Roussel, and many more."

Source: Chandos CD (my rip!)
Format: FLAC, DDD Stereo
File Size: 306 MB (incl. cover, booklet)

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James Wilson (1922-2005) was born in London and came to live in Ireland in the late 1940s.
He was professor of composition in the Royal Irish Academy of Music and was also for many years
a course director of the Ennis/IMRO Composition Summer School. His extensive output has been
performed and broadcast throughout Ireland, the UK and Scandinavia and includes seven operas,
twelve concertos as well as numerous vocal, chamber and instrumental works.

Says James Wilson: "Music is the nearest thing that we know to magic: its powers have still to
be understood. In my own work, I seek for clarity and economy and, above all, for the
quality of lyricism." All these qualities are evident in the two fine concertos recorded here,
the violin concerto Pearl and Unicorn and the viola concerto Menorah.

Music Composed by James Wilson
Played by the RT??? National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland
With Constantin Zanidache (viola) & Alan Smale (violin)
Conducted by Colman Pearce

"In this age of ecumenism, it is not surprising to find a composition titled Menorah by a
musician named James Wilson in a series devoted to Irish composers… .like Max Bruch’s Kol Nidrei,
[Menorah] pays homage to the Jewish spirit.

"Menorah is the composer’s tribute to the children who perished in the Holocaust. It is a deeply
moving, heartfelt, even heartbreaking composition. Strong and stirring, it pits the viola’s elegiac
voice against deep and dark orchestral forces. The solo instrument, superbly handled by Constantin
Zanidache, in turn pleads, laments , reflects, and despairs; the orchestra rarely heeds. The
tension between the two forces is often gripping. This is indeed music that is deeply felt and
moving and finally heroic.

"Concertino runs for a little over 13 minutes and is neatly sandwiched between the viola and
violin concertos. Composed in only one movement, it uses the orchestra mainly in groupings and
sections rather than en masse. Lighter in substance than the preceding work and not as
romantically inclined as the one that follows, it grows progressively lighter in sound and substance
as it goes, and conveys its feelings and its message with a minimum of melody and by relying
on various orchestral timbers.

"Actually, the last work, the violin concerto, is the most melodic and the most charming. The longest
in time (just under 27 minutes) and quite romantic in content, it was written for and dedicated
to the soloist who performs it here. The title comes from a poem by George Peele and is used by
the composer as a spring-board for a fanciful, intricate display of color and humor, with smaller
forces than in the two preceding works. Alan Smale is the leader of the National Symphony of
Ireland. Both he and conductor Colman Pearce do a superb job. The orchestra plays splendidly,
and the recorded sound is rich as well as crystal-clear. Let’s hope we will hear more of James
Wilson’s music in the near future."
American Record Guide

Source: Marco Polo CD (my rip!)
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File Size: 232 MB (incl. cover, booklet)

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Luis Enr???quez Bacalov was born in Buenos Aires on March 30, 1933. He his best known as an Argentine composer
of film scores for Spaghetti Western films, most notably Django. In his life time he has recieved two Academy Award
nominations, and he the award in 1996 for the "Original Score" to the movie Il Postino (the theme of which is included
here, too). Some believe his best work was created during the years he collaborated with Italian progressive rock bands
New Trolls, Osanna and Il Rovescio della Medaglia. Many know his work through the soundtrack Summertime Killer and
the song Motorcycle Circus which was used in Kill Bill Vol.1.

Bacalov’s Triple Concerto is scored for the unusual combination of piano, soprano, bandon???on and orchestra,
the presence of the latter instrument is probably the reason it is coupled here with Astor Piazzolla’s Tres Movimientos
and Oblivion. The style is a mix of neo-classical elements, Bart???k-ian percussiveness and some latin inflection.

Music Composed by Luis Enr???quez Bacalov & Astor Piazzolla
Played by the Santa Barbara Symphony Orchestra
With Luis Enr???quez Bacalov (piano), Junajo Mosalini (bandone???n) & Virginia Tola (soprano)
Conducted by Gis???le Ben-Dor

"This CD is the record of a memorable event in Santa Barbara, California, that makes the disc
stand out from the steady flow of tango-based albums. It features two world premiere recordings
of the pair of major works here. In 2004 the music director of the Santa Barbara Symphony, Gisele
Ben-Dor, organized the Tango and Malambo Festival, a ten-day celebration which included early
and recent Latin American music, dance, films and other events.

Luis Bacalov is known for his film scores for both South American and European films. His Triple
Concerto combines Piazzolla’s bandoneon and Bacalov’s piano plus a soprano who sings in the
second and fourth movements of the work. The second movement text honors the greatest
tango singer, Carlos Gardel, while the fourth speaks of nostalgia for the Buenos Aires of old.

The Three Movements was the only work for bandoneon and large orchestra composed by the
young Piazzolla. Igor Markevitch conducted the premiere performance of the symphonic movements
in 1953. It is a purely abstract symphonic work. Although some of the audience didn’t like the
low-class bandoneons in it, there was hearty applause as well. It was on the strength of this
performance and the body of “classical” work Piazzolla had done thus far that he traveled to
Paris to study with Nadia Boulanger, who set him on his way creating the Nuevo Tango style.
The album is rounded out with one of the most striking and popular melodies from each
composer: Piazzolla’s Oblivion and Bacalov’s theme from the Italian film Il Postino."
Audaud Com

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File Size: 244 MB (incl. cover, booklet)

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David Heath ("D.C. Heath") began writing music in 1975, basing his music harmonically
and rhythmically on the music of John Coltrane and Miles Davis.

He is now regarded as one of Britains most controversial musical figures, referred to by the Glasgow Herald
as "the UK’s most outrageous yet accessible contemporary composer" whilst the Gramophone recently wrote
"Heath has developed a voice and style…………that has developed into a genre of its own" .

Heath’s early pieces written between 1975 and 1982 "Out of the Cool" "Rumania" "Fight the Lion" and ‘Coltrane"
are all modern jazz based, and have been played and recorded worldwide.In the 1980’s he began to incorporate
rock and studio techniques into his compositions, and by the 1990’s after settling in Scotland, his music had
become influenced by Celtic and natural sound.

From 1993 – 1996 Heath was Composer in Residence with the BT Scottish Ensemble and was profiled by
BBC2 TV during 1994 in a programme entitled Inspiration. His orchestral works within that period were
The Four Elements, The Celtic, The Connemara and The Rage, the latter being premiered in Scotland
during the Spring of 1996. His violin concerto The Celtic was recorded by Clio Gould as
was The Four Elements with percussionist Kirk Richardson. In 1997, Heath arranged,
orchestrated and conducted The Scottish Chamber Orchestra with Aly Bain and Karen Mathieson in
Phil Cunningham’s Celtic Orchestral extravaganza The Highlands And Islands Suite, a performance
which opened the Glasgow Celtic Connection Festival.

Music Composed by Dave Heath
Played by the BT Scottish Ensemble
With Clio Gould (violin), Kirk Richardson (percussion) & Dave Heath (flute)
Conducted by Clio Gould

"I recently reviewed a related Dave Heath anthology on Black Box. The Violin Concerto
is the only overlap between the two discs. Otherwise the repertoire coverage is complementary.
The Concerto goes with even more visceral ???lan in the hands of the English Chamber Orchestra
(Black Box, Ittai Shapira) but by contrast the sound is less transparent in the hands of Black Bo
x than on this Linn disc. The Linn also has the advantage of being performed by its dedicatee,
Clio Gould. It is nice in the ???Cooper??? finale to hear the ecstatic delirium of music surely reminiscing
around the bell-like finale of Ravel’s Ma M???re l’Oye.

Taking impressions in broad swathes I would say that the Black Box disc presents the instantly
approachable Heath. The Linn takes him in more uncompromising mode; not that Heath is ever
prickly in any 1970s avant-garde sense.

After much listening to the two discs you can identify various traits that together help make a
Heath score as personal as one by Vaughan Williams or Martinů. His music is always clear speaking.
He does not hide in dense thickets of texture. He embraces sentiment but always steers away from
the brink of sentimentality. He is sympathetic to Celtic culture (witness his enthusiasms for
Capercaillie and Aly Bain). He has a liking for the continuous slip-sliding oscillation of violins as found
in Penderecki’s Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima and in Alan Hovhaness’s overture Fra Angelico.
He holds memory up to the light of emotion and distils nostalgia from it. There is sorrow in the wings
of his music as well as a rhythmic impetus. Sorrow is in the ascendant.

His Celtic Air was written in memory of family friend and fellow flautist Catharine Russell who died
of leukaemia in 1993 while the extraordinary and unsettling Requiem on Black Box relates to the
death of five year old Paul Medrington in a tragic accident. His string writing taps into the same
purity we find in The Lark Ascending. His melodic invention, and sometimes his rhythmic patterns,
take sustenance from Bart???k.

He takes risks as we hear in the wind-chime noises at the end of The Celtic Air and the fire
engine sirens (UK style) at the start of the Fire movement of The Four Elements.

Thanks are due to Glasgow City Council who grant aided this recording. Let us hope that the
City Fathers are far-sighted enough to support other revivals. Have they heard of Eric Chisholm’s
turbulent pair of 1930s symphonies (Chisholm did so much to place Glasgow on the international
cultural map during the 1920s and 1930s). They could also profitably turn their funding support
towards Ronald Stevenson’s music – commissioning the completion of the great Ben Dorain epic
and recording the violin concerto and the cello concerto.

The Linn and Black Box discs complement each other perfectly. Once you have caught the
Heath ‘bug’ (not difficult) you will have to have both. The Linn is certainly most beautifully
recorded and executed."
Musicweb

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A highly individual composer, Ernest Bloch (1880-1959) did not pioneer any new style in music
but spoke with a distinctive voice into which he could assimilate folk influences, 12-tone technique, and
even coloristic quarter tones. In a stylistically atomized century his interests were universal, and his
music was both beloved by the public and inspirational for a younger and more academically oriented generation.

His father was the quintessential Swiss, a well-off manufacturer of watches and clocks, including cuckoo clocks.
Ernest had a diverse musical training that included advanced violin training, study of eurhythmics with
???mile Jacques-Dalcroze; he traveled from Switzerland to Belgium, Munich, and Paris in due course. Bloch
wrote prolifically in his student years but did not publish any of his works. He is not related to his contemporary
Ernest Bloch (1885-1977), a German philosopher interested in musical issues.

In 1916 he traveled to the U.S. as conductor for the Maud Allan dance company. The outfit went broke,
stranding him in Ohio. The composer was thus forced to remain in America, but he soon found success as a
composer, conductor, and music school administrator and teacher. In 1924 he took American citizenship. He
became director of the San Francisco Conservatory in 1925 and in 1927 won first prize in a contest sponsored
by Musical America with his composition America, an Epic Rhapsody.

He returned to Switzerland in 1930, and mostly lived there for the next decade. He composed and traveled
widely in Europe to conduct his works. The rise of Nazism in Germany and a desire to retain his U.S.
citizenship prompted a return to that country before World War II broke out. He settled at scenic Agate
Beach, OR, and was appointed a professor at the University of California in Berkeley, teaching summer
courses until he retired in 1952.

His rarely played, large-scale Violin Concerto is an impressive, impassioned work from his
"Herbrew-style" phase. The more popular, but much less ambitious, Ba’al Shem makes a perfect
coupling, and this very fine recording (probably the best available – there aren’t that many around,
and I think I got all of them) throws in two works by the conductor, Jos??? Sererbrier,
at no extra charge.

Music by Ernest Bloch & Jos??? Serebrier
Played by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
With Michael Guttman (violin)
Conducted by Jos??? Serebrier

"Michael Guttman is an eminent violin soloist, conductor and music director of festivals around the
world. At age ten, he became the youngest student ever to be admitted into the Brussels Royal
Conservatory of Music. Encouraged by his late mentor Isaac Stern, Guttman studied at the Juilliard
School in New York with Dorothy Delay, the Juilliard Quartet and Felix Galimir. Guttman has earned
critical acclaim from the New York Times for his ???incredible wealth of tone colors and his sound of
melting beauty???, and was described by the Jerusalem Post as the ???Chagall of violinists???. He has
performed in halls such as London???s Barbican Centre, New York???s Avery Fisher Hall, Paris???s Salle
Pleyel, Amsterdam???s Concertgebouw and Tokyo???s Bunko Kaikan. He collaborated with the late
conductor and composer Lukas Foss at the Music Festival of the Hamptons, a relationship which
initiated his conducting career."

Source: ASV CD (my rip!)
Format: FLAC, DDD Stereo
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Everybody complains about this or that provider. One man’s gift is another man’s poison.

Richard Harvey is a graduate of the Royal College of Music whose passion for musical instruments from all
around the world, old and new, has led him to work on an extraordinary range of composing projects – from
Hollywood movies to TV dramas and documentaries. As a performer, he was a founder of the ‘mediaeval rock’
band Gryphon and has been a long-time collaborator with John Williams, besides playing as a session man on
recordings for Paul McCartney, Kate Bush, Gerry Rafferty, Richard Thompson and many others.

Richard’s skills as multi-instrumentalist and conductor are often called upon for feature films, including
Disney’s The Lion King and several of the Harry Potter films. He was commissioned to write his first guitar
concerto, Concerto Antico (1995), for guitar virtuoso John Williams, and an ambitious cathedral
work and eco-musical, Plague and the Moonflower (1989), with artist and writer Ralph Steadman.

Steve Gray (1944-2008) was a pianist, composer, and arranger. Gray was born in Middlesbrough, England.
At ten, he began teaching himself to play the piano. He joined the Middlesbrough Junior Orchestra, at
first playing the bassoon, but later switching to the saxophone. The orchestra was directed by Ron
Aspery, who would go on to create the fusion group Back Door.

Gray joined John Williams’ band Sky in 1981, replacing Francis Monkman on keyboards. Following Sky’s
retirement in 1995, Steve Gray continued his career as a respected composer (which he had been
carrying out in parallel to his work with Sky). His compositions include two operas, a requiem mass
for jazz big band and choir, a guitar concerto and a piano concerto written for French jazz
pianist Martial Solal.

Music by Richard Harvey & Steve Gray
Played by the London Symphony Orchestra
With John Williams (guitar)
Conducted by Paul Daniel

"These 2 fairly new guitar concertos by Harvey and Gray were both composed especially for John Williams.
The Harvey Concerto Antico for guitar and small Orchestra is absolutely the best guitar concerto I’ve
have heard since Rodrigo’s "Fantasia para un gentilhombre". His style of composing renaissance elements
reminds me of a combination of Vaughan Williams, Copland and Stravinsky. He composed this concerto to
be as difficult as possible for John Williams and he plays up to the challenge with his amazing technique.
The last movement spans the entire range of the guitar and is truly breathtaking. Harvey’s concerto is a
wonderfully attractive piece that I played twice in a row which almost never happens. It is truly a dialog
between guitar and orchestra with much guitar presence. The Gray concerto is much different. It has
many jazz elements and rather boring solos for guitar and the orchestra plays most of the time. However
the writing for orchestra is very good, but one forgets that this is a guitar concerto. I did find the final
movement called "Jokes" to be interesting especially the last minute of the piece in which John Williams
plays a very interesting technique on the guitar that I have never heard before."
Amazon Reviewer

Source: Sony CD (my rip!)
Format: FLAC, DDD Stereo
File Size: 242 MB

Download Link: https://mega.co.nz/#!qoYVCKqA!J_3eyTG9C2OyvnrzxJX1zgMO0QBAaoMGxr4WrPl qHyI

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In recent years, Roberto Sierra’s colorful and rhythmic music has attracted a growing audience
both in North America and Europe. Acclaimed as one of Latin America’s most active contemporary
composers, Sierra came to prominence in 1987 when his first major orchestral composition, J???bilo,
premiered at Carnegie Hall with the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra.

Born in Puerto Rico, Sierra studied at the Conservatory of Music and the University of Puerto Rico.
Upon graduation, he travelled to Europe to further his training, first at the Royal College of Music and
the University of London, and later at the Institute for Sonology in Utrecht. Between 1979 and 1982,
he completed advanced work in composition at the Hochschule f???r Musik in Hamburg under the
renowned Gy???rgy Ligeti. In 1982, Sierra returned to Puerto Rico to occupy administrative posts as a
Director of the Cultural Activities Department at the University of Puerto Rico and as Chancellor of
the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music.

Commissions include Concierto Caribe, commissioned by flutist Carol Wincenc and premiered
with the Rockford Symphony Orchestra (IL), and Im???genes, premiered by violinist Frank Peter
Zimmermann, guitarist Manuel Barrueco, and the Saarl???ndischer Rundfunk, Germany. We’ve Got
Rhythm, an orchestral piece for children’s concerts, has been programmed by the Chicago,
Pittsburgh, St. Louis, Milwaukee, and Fox Valley (WI) Symphonies. In December 1994, violinist
Andr???s C???rdenes and the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra under the direction of James DePriest
premiered Evocaciones — a violin concerto commissioned by a consortium including the
Pittsburgh and West Virginia Symphony Orchestras and the Utah Symphony.

The present album features three of his concertante works: the Flute Concerto Concierto Caribe,
Of Discoveries for 2 guitars and orchestra, and the Concierto Evocativo for horn. They
are in a modern but approachable idiom.

Music Composed by Roberto Sierra
Played by the St. Stephen’s Chamber Orchestra of Lithuania
With Bonita Boyd (flute) & Eric Ruske (horn)
And Joanne Castellani & Michael Andriaccio (guitars)
Conducted by Arie Lipsky

"…Concierto Evocativo…shows great imagination and artistry….Without relying on the
colors and textures of percussion, wind, or brass instruments and featuring a solo
instrument not usually counted among the ‘evocative,’ Sierra fashions music that is packed
with energy and interesting innovation….What is remarkable is the way he played the
texture of the horn and the strings against each other."
Milwaukee Journal

Source: Fleur de Son CD (my rip!)
Format: FLAC, DDD Stereo
File Size: 227 MB

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This recording brings together some wonderful concertos for orchestra and unusual instruments,
most of which are first recordings. The solo part of Jan Bach’s Steelpan Concerto was written
for soprano pan, a steel instrument that usually plays the primary part in the Caribbean steel bands.
The work was composed in 1994 for Liam Teague, a young musician from Trinidad whose musicianship
inspired the work. Morton Gould’s Concerto for Tap Dancer and Orchestra, written in 1952, brings
together Gould’s flare for Americana and his passion for dance. Inspired by the percussive quality of
the tap medium, Gould’s concerto is typically inventive in mixing musical tradition with modern American
culture. Leone’s Harp Concerto* was commissioned and premiered in 1994 by Concertante di Chicago
with Elizabeth Cifani as soloist. Like all his music, it is influenced by the popular music of Latin America
where he grew up. Ricardo Lorenz was born in Maracaibo, Venezuela in 1961 and is considered one
of the most prominent Venezuelan composers of his generation. Playing the maracas in Venezuela
has developed into a highly virtuosic art form that is considered by connoisseurs as one of the world’s
most sophisticated vernacular percussion techniques. One of these connoisseurs is Chicago’s Lyric
Opera percussionist Ed Harrison, for whom the concerto was composed. Harrison learned to play
the maracas in the typical Venezuelan style during his tenure as percussionist of the Orquesta
Filarmonica de Caracas.

*Not that the harp is such an "exotic" instrument, but this text is actually Albany Records’
marketing blurb. 😉

Music by Jan Bach, Morton Gould, Gustavo Leone and Ricardo Lorenz
Played by the Czech National Symphony Orchestra
With Liam Teague (steelpan), Jana Bouskova (harp), Ed Harrison (maracas)
And with Lane Alexander (tap dancer)
Conducted by Paul Freeman

"Capping a life full of achievements in all facets of music are Morton Gould’s 1995 Pulitzer
Prize for Stringmusic, commissioned by the National Symphony for the final season of
music director Mstislav Rostropovich, and his 1994 Kennedy Center Honor in recognition
of lifetime contributions to American culture. In 2005, Gould was posthumously awarded
a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.

Born in Richmond Hill, New York, on 10 December 1913, Gould was recognized early on
as a child prodigy with the ability to improvise and compose. At the age of six he had
his first composition published. He studied at the Institute of Musical Art (now the
Juilliard School), but his most important teachers were Abby Whiteside (piano) and
Vincent Jones (composition). During the Depression, Gould (still a teenager) found work
in New York’s vaudeville and movie theaters. When Radio City Music Hall opened, the
young Gould was its staff pianist. By the age of 21 he was conducting and arranging
a series of orchestral programs for WOR Mutual Radio. Gould attained national
prominence through his work in radio, as he appealed to a wide-ranging audience
with his combination of classical and popular programming. During the 1940s Gould
appeared on the "Cresta Blanca Carnival" program and "The Chrysler Hour" (CBS),
reaching an audience of millions.

Gould composed Broadway scores (Billion Dollar Baby, Arms and the Girl), film music
(Delightfully Dangerous, Cinerama Holiday, Windjammer), music for television
(Holocaust, the CBS documentary World War I), and ballet scores (Interplay, Fall River
Legend, and I’m Old Fashioned). Gould’s Audubon — unfinished when choreographer
George Balanchine died — became the orchestral Apple Waltzes.

His music was commissioned by symphony orchestras throughout the United States,
the Library of Congress, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the American
Ballet Theatre, and the New York City Ballet. Gould integrated jazz, blues, gospel,
country-and-western, and folk elements into compositions which bear Gould’s
unequalled mastery of orchestration and imaginative formal structures. These
instantly recognizable American sounds led to Gould’s receiving three commissions
for the US Bicentennial (including American Ballads, Symphony of Spirituals,
and Something to Do). "
G.Schirmer

Source: Albany Records CD (my rip!)
Format: FLAC, DDD Stereo
File Size: 351 MB (incl. cover, booklet)

Download Link: https://mega.co.nz/#!n0BixKQC!HzLU7GagBMVhZIWUhPVjVHy0iv8mQhzkc8JKfOl OukA

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Also, will you be including outstanding concertos from the Could-be-film-music thread? I once endeavored to find them myself, but 500 responses is a lot to thumb through, XD

Composed in 1919, Edward Elgar’s Cello Concerto has an elegiac quality as if the composer
is weeping for the late Victorian and Edwardian world, now swept away for ever – the time
when he was happy and successful. He chose the slow-fast-slow-fast Baroque sonata di chiesa
form and lavished all his skill on the music. The result is one of his most succinct creations, packing
a lifetime of experience into half an hour.

It was also Elgar’s last truly significant work. The death of his wife in 1920 broke his creative back, and
in the final decade and a half of his life he made more significant strides as a conductor. Lionel Tertis,
the leading violist of his time, had always wanted Elgar to compose a big, romantic concerto for him –
but when he realized that the composer was no longer able to produce anything on a larger scale, he
instead made his own viola arrangement of the Cello Concerto with Elgar’s consent. The "new"
Viola Concerto was premiered in 1930 in London. Five months before his death, Elgar himself
conducted Tertis in the work at the 1933 Three Choirs Festival.

Unlike the celo version, which has become of Elgar’s most beloved works, the Viola Concerto never quite
established itself in the repertoire, and this is only its second or third professional recording.

Another great violist, the Russian Yuri Bashmet, inspired Alfred Schnittke’s work: he met the composer at
a 1977 recording session and, Tertis-like, asked for a concerto. Schnittke agreed but did not complete it
until 1985. Ten days later he had a major stroke which left him partly paralysed, and he saw the Viola Concerto
as the end of his previous life, as if it had led up to his illness. For the concerto, he used a slow-fast-slow sequence
which Prokofiev had evolved in his First Violin Concerto, placing much of the weight on
the final slow movement. Walton had taken it for his Viola Concerto and Shostakovich for his Violin Sonata
and Viola Sonata – a particular influence on Schnittke’s concerto. In his scoring, Schnittke took a leaf out of
Hindemith’s book, omitting violins but compensating with batteries of woodwind, brass, and percussion,
including piano and harpsichord. This orchestra is used sparingly, making its full impact felt at only a few points.

Music by Edward Elgar (arr. Tertis) & Alfred Schnittke
Played by the Philharmonia Orchestra
With David Aaron Carpenter (viola)
Conducted by Christoph Eschenbach

"Why would you want to listen to a performance of Elgar’s Cello Concerto arranged for the viola?!
Ultimately, only you can answer that question, and I started this journey with a mixture of curiosity
and suspicion, only to be disarmed by a remarkable debut.

The arrangement first: it’s by the great British viola player Lionel Tertis, and Elgar approved, even
conducting Tertis’s performance. But I should say it’s based on Tertis’s version, as the soloist here,
23 year-old New Yorker David Aaron Carpenter has made a number of changes of his own: “More
attuned to what Elgar actually wrote,” he says.

I wasn’t expecting the breadth of the concerto’s opening to be as successfully captured, not just
in Carpenter’s plangent, vocal sound, but with the intimate warmth of the Philharmonia, and
Christoph Eschenbach’s effortless accompaniment. It doesn’t really feel as though it’s been stolen
and adapted from the bigger instrument, and even the pizzicato chords have a surprising resonance;
there are just one or two changes of register that are still startling, no matter how well Carpenter
and Tertis combine to avoid them.

So I made it, with pleasure, to the end of the Elgar, and if I hadn’t I might not have heard what
follows: an extraordinarily moving and self-assured account of the Viola Concerto by Alfred Schnittke.
Carpenter’s teacher, the Russian viola player Yuri Bashmet, commissioned it, and Schnittke finished in
1985 before succumbing just days later to the incapacitating stroke that was to paralyse his creativity
in his final years. The Viola Concerto builds on the Soviet legacies of Prokofiev and Shostakovich’s
concertos, while following Hindemith’s example in leaving the violins out of the orchestra, helping the
solo viola cut through the sometimes dense textures with its mixture of strength, sweetness, wistful
melancholy, bitter regret and violent anger.

If you’re unmoved by the hopeless beauty of the ending, then back to the Elgar with you, but it’s
the stunning conviction and searing performance of the Schnittke that’s going to keep me returning
to this one, a recording whose intimate focus on the soloist enhances his impact here. What a debut."
BBC Music

Source: Ondine CD (my rip!)
Format: FLAC, DDD Stereo
File Size: 274 MB (incl. cover, booklet)

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What is an Electronic Valve Instrument? The Electronic Valve Instrument is an electronic
musical wind instrument that is played similarly to a trumpet. Invented by Nyle Steiner in 1971,
it was designed to give the musician control of musical dynamics from breath pressure and the
ability to make a natural humanly generated vibrato, much like any wind instrument can do.

The EVI has played many featured musical lines in major movie soundtracks and in TV shows
such as No Way Out, Apocalypse Now, Dead Poets Society, Witness, Fatal Attraction, Gorillas in the Mist –
so, mostly Maurice Jarre scores. It shouldn’t be surprising then that this composer also
wrote a full-scale (20 minute) Concerto for EVI, which he premiered as part of a live BBC concert
that included selections from some of his classic film scores, such as Lawrence of Arabia, Witness,
Is Paris Burning?, Grand Prix, The Man Who Would Be King, The Tin Drum and The Year of Living
Dangerously. Like his film music, the concerto is often very percussive – a reminder that Jarre
himself was a trained percussionist before he became a composer.

Music Composed and Conducted by Maurice Jarre
Played by the BBC Concert Orchestra
With Nyle Steiner (elctronic valve instrument)

"Nyle originally conceived of the concept of a brass-style electronic synthesizer in the 1960s.
He began prototyping the concept in the early 1970s and in 1975 Nyle completed his first
playable electric valve instrument- the ‘Steiner Horn’. A woodwind version was developed
soon after.

"I developed my own transducer using whatever- I tried a lot of things out. A lot of the main
parts I had to build myself. The first one was just a switch. You blew and it turned on and
off – just like pressing a key. Later I built a proportional transducer."

His early instruments were individually hand made by Nyle Steiner himself. In the mid 1970s,
Nyle set up a small Salt Lake City Utah based synthesizer company named Steiner-Parker
with Dick Parker and a third partner. The company produced various analog synths as well
as the original Steiner EVI from approximately 1975 to 1980. In 1980, Nyle won the Linz
prize for his EVI. In designing the original EVI, Nyle comments "I found it was best to
design my own synthesizer. With MIDI and some of the more advanced designs, there are
some synthesizers that work pretty well with it without having to modify them, but it used
to be that I had to modify the synthesizers so much that I just gave up and designed my own."

Nyle Steiner EWI4000s PatchmanIn 1979 Steiner-Parker dissolved but Steiner continued on
making electronic music products and continuing to develop the EVI and EWI. The "solo"
Steiner company hooked up with Crumar at the end of the 1970s and Crumar marketed the
EVI for a while. Around this time, Nyle’s career was beginning to take some new turns. In
1979 he worked on the movie Apocalypse Now while commuting from Salt Lake City. He
demonstrated the EVI for the producers and they really liked the sound. Nyle soon after
moved to California and began to make a career for himself playing in the studios.
"Most of the film composers use EVI in one way or another – it’s really good as an
expressive melody instrument; the vibrato flexibility, the bending – it’s really easy to play that
way." Steiner’s EVI and EWI instruments have been used by world-class musicians including
Michael Brecker, Bob Mintzer, Jeff Kashiwa, Judd Miller, Joel Peskin, and many others."

Source: Milan CD (my rip!)
Format: FLAC, DDD Stereo
File Size: 323 MB

Download Link: https://mega.co.nz/#!NVhjDQYD!MzAiHxoOaXosBBMT_y0_i3cLdTReHZF-aLcvyoa2yl8

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Musical compartments mean nothing to David Amram (*1930), whose compositions and
activities have crossed fearlessly back and forth between the classical and jazz worlds, as well
as those of Latin jazz, folk, television, and film music. In addition to his rare (to jazz) specialty,
the French horn, Amram has also recorded on piano, recorder, Spanish guitar, and various
percussion instruments.

His long association with Latin music began in 1951 in D.C. when he played horn and percussion
in the Buddy Rowell Latin band while also serving as a classical horn player in the National Symphony
Orchestra. Stationed with the Seventh Army in Europe, Amram recorded with Lionel Hampton in
Paris in 1955, and then returned to New York later that year to join Charles Mingus’ Jazz Workshop,
performing with Mingus and Oscar Pettiford. Amram led a quartet with tenor saxophonist George
Barrow that made an album for Decca in 1957 and later played regularly at New York’s Five Spot
in 1963-1965. However, Amram’s career gravitated mostly over to the classical side after the 1950s,
producing orchestral and instrumental pieces.

This album features three of his concertante works: The Violin Concerto has a blues-y character, but
also has strong roots in Copland’s Americana. Honor Song for Sitting Bull is a cello concerto in five
sharply contrasting sections that make vivid use of Native American folk elements. In the concluding Bassoon
Concerto the jazz overtones are even closer to the surface.

Music Composed by David Amram
Played by the Manhattan Chamber Orchestra
With Charles Castleman (violin), Nathaniel Rosen (cello)
And Kenneth Pasmanick (bassoon)
Conducted by Richard Auldon Clark

"If you are at all familiar with David Amram, it will be with his contemporary classical
music from the 1960s and 70s. This compilation of works by Amram works very well,
and the pieces chosen for this recording compliment eachother nicely. Amram was
composer-in-residence for the New York Philharmonic in 1966-67 and he has continued
to impress and amaze audiences with his continual assimilation of musical cultures of
various countries and styles. He actively incorporate jazz and folk techniques in his
compositions and always creates a memorable piece.

This album, performed by the Manhattan Chamber Orchestra under the direction of
Richard Auldon Clark, showcases the violin, cello, and bassoon in concertos. Each soloist
plays with emotion and is backed up by an excellent sounding orchestra. The violin
concerto begins traditionally with an Allegro moderato, but uses Blues as the basis
for the second movement, and ends with a rousing Celtic Rondo, which is lively
and entertaining.

The Honor Song for Sitting Bull ranges from soft, delicate variations to loud and
energetic ones. Once again, soloist and ensemble are in top form and this piece
comes across as an emotional tribute to Sitting Bull. The concerto for bassoon is
some of the most inventive writing I have ever heard for the instrument. Each
movement portrays a different mood, the first being a conversation between
soloist and orchestra. The second movement is peaceful and meditative, and
the last is a faster and more spirited.

If you are looking for some contemporary classical music and have not heard
of David Amram, you should give this a listen."
Amazon Reviewer

Source: Newport CD (my rip!)
Format: FLAC, DDD Stereo
File Size: 219 MB

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Benjamin Frankel was born in 1906 and came to music following a year’s apprenticeship
to a London watchmaker. He studied with Victor Benham, an American pianist, in England and
Germany. He embarked on his career in 1923 playing violin and arranging for various bands
on London’s burgeoning jazz scene, all the while continuing his formal education at the
Guildhall School of Music. He later joined the BBC Dance Orchestra and became the assistant
to its leader, Henry Hall. He later became a musical arranger for the stage productions of No???l
Coward and Charles B. Cochrane and joined the British film industry as a conductor and arranger
in 1934. During World War II, he began writing for the concert hall, including chamber works
(Sonata for solo violin No. 1, Trio for clarinet, cello, and piano), a song cycle (The Aftermath),
and the overture May Day. Frankel principally functioned as a conductor in movies until the
mid-’40s, when he began composing regularly for the screen. Sometimes credited as Ben
Frankel, he started getting higher quality movies to score in the later ’40s.

The Violin Concerto, subtitled "In Memory of the Six Million", was composed in 1950-51 and
premiered by its dedicatee, Max Rostal, at the 1951 Festival of Britain. As the subtitle inidcates,
the concerto is dedicated to the Holocaust victims of WWII. The Viola Concerto of 1967 does not
have a programmatic connotation or dedication.

Music Composed by Benjamin Frankel
Played by the Queensland Symphony Orchestra
With Ulf Hoelscher (violin), Brett Dean (viola)
Conducted by Werner Andreas Albert

"CPO has already nailed its colours to the mast by embarking upon a cycle of Benjamin Frankel???s
symphonies, and the release of the Violin Concerto provides an important appendix to that project.
Commissioned for the Festival of Britain in 1951, it predates the First Symphony by seven years, and
also Frankel???s adoption of a personal form of 12-note technique. Long melodic lines, sung by the violin,
generate the dialectic of the concerto; its dedication to the victims of the Holocaust gives an
elegiac cast to the whole work, and the hint of Alban Berg???s own Violin Concerto that filters through
the last movement only sharpens its sense of loss and retrospection, which the soloist Ulf Hoelscher
crystallises exactly. Neither the Viola Concerto from 1967 nor the single-movement Serenata concertante
of seven years earlier has the same substance or stature, though both are beautifully wrought pieces,
and the effortless way in which Frankel elides the episodes of the Serenata shows how assured his
technique and his sense of musical proportioning were."
Andrew Clements

Source: CPO CD (my rip!)
Format: FLAC, DDD Stereo
File Size: 301 MB (incl. cover, booklet)

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Minoru Miki (三木 稔 Miki Minoru) (1930??? 2011) was a Japanese composer and artistic director, particularly
known for his promotional activities in favor of Japanese (as well as Chinese and Korean) traditional
instruments and some of their performers. His vast catalogue, where aforementioned traditional instruments
figure profusely either solo or in various types of ensemble with or without Western instruments, demonstrates
large stylistic and formal diversity. It includes operas and several types of stage music as well as orchestral,
concerto, chamber and solo music, and music for films. Miki was probably the second best known Japanese
composer overseas after Tōru Takemitsu. He was a pioneer in the composition of contemporary classical music
for large ensembles of traditional Japanese musical instruments. In 1964 he founded the Nihon Ongaku Shūdan
(Pro Musica Nipponia ensemble), also known as Ensemble Nipponia, for which he has composed extensively.

This album features one of the world’s top pipa players, Yang Jing, in Miki’s Pipa Concerto, a work written
for her in 1998, and in additional works for pipa and chamber combinations, Heian Music-Scope (2002-2003) and
East Arc (2001). It is a little surprising that it took seven years for Miki’s Pipa Concerto to get on disc, as it
is widely known already in the concert halls of the Pacific Rim. Jing has continued to play this concerto in her
personal appearances since this live recording was made in Tokyo at the premiere of Miki’s "Western Orchestra
Version"; there’s also an earlier version with traditional Asian instruments making up the accompaniment.

Miki’s scoring for Western orchestra is hardy, serious-minded, and concentrated in a manner that is reminiscent
of Hindemith or Copland, completely avoiding clich???s of "exoticism." The liner notes quote Chinese critic Duan
Wen as saying "this piece represents the highest music level of the pipa concerto genre."

Music Composed by Minoru Miki
Played by the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra
And the Yui Ensemble
With Yang Jing (pipa)
Conducted by Naoto Otomo

"Yang Jing has developed her distinctive musical character based on studies of the ancient
pieces of an ancient culture and the most contemporary music of the world. Her versatility
and virtuosity allow her to go beyond the limits of a traditional musician to perform many
different styles with different formations.

Ms. Yang studied pipa and composition at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music under pipa
professor Ye Xuran; Composition professor Hu Dengdiao and Chinese music theory professor
Lin Youren and pipa professor Lin Shicheng and under pipa professor Wang Fandi in Beijing.
Her studies with the Japanese composer Mr. Minoru Miki for several years inspired her
interpretation of contemporary music further.

On her concert tours throughout Asia, Europe and North America she performed in venues
like the Suntory Hall in Tokyo, the Carnegie Hall in New York, the Barbican Centre in London,
the Golden Hall in Vienna and the St. Louis Opera Theatre. Her pipa solo concert tours "Along
the Old Silk Road" contain various repertory has been continued hundreds times around the
world. 2000 Cities in Japan take her as a "honored citizen" and 1998 Village Concert Hall in
the UK named after her. "

Source: Camerata CD (my rip!)
Format: FLAC, DDD Stereo
File Size: 347 MB

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A composer whose gift for music ran in the family, Doreen Mary Carwithen began playing the
piano and violin at the delicate age of four before moving on to score 35 films. Born to a music-
teacher mother in Haddenham, Buckinghamshire, England, in 1922, the young prodigy utilized her
gift to bring happiness to a war-torn England before composing her own works at age 16 and
studying harmony at the Royal Academy. It was there that Carwithen would meet her future
husband and compose the enduring 1945 overture ODTAA (aka One Damn Thing After Another).
Two years later, the young female composer would be honored with a film music apprenticeship with
J. Arthur Rank, and in the following 15 years she made a lucrative living scoring movies. Increasingly
frustrated at the music industry’s lack of interest in female composers, the talented musician sadly
retired, and became Mary Alwyn, only coming back to her musical roots after the death of
her longtime husband, William Alwyn, in 1985. A severe stroke 14 years later rendered Carwithen
paralyzed, and in January of 2003, she died in Forncett St. Peter, Norfolk, England, at the age of 80.

The works on this album are characteristic of Carwithen’s youtful output, neo-classical and neo-romantic,
with transparent textures and attractive melodies. The Suffolk Suite is a delightful piece of British
Light Music.

Music Composed by Doreen Carwithen (Mary Alwyn)
Played by the London Symphony Orchestra
With Howard Shelley (piano)
Conducted by Richard Hickox

"Bursting from a cocoon of silence after as much as 50 years, the music of Doreen Carwithen spreads
its wings like a beautiful butterfly on this Chandos release. Like many women composers, her music was
ignored, by and large, at least in the concert world and Carwithen made her living writing music for over thirty
films before taking on, in the early 1960s, the job of amanuensis, secretary and, ultimately, wife of film
composer William Alwyn, whose concert music has also begun to have a life of its own. Known by her married
name, Mary Alwyn, she has spent much of her energy since his death in 1985 spreading the word about
her husband’s music and until this recording her own music has been kept very much in the background.

With lifelike sound which is a credit to Chandos and performances that have the breath of life in them
thanks to Hickox and the LSO, this recording contains the first piece of Carwithen’s ever to be played
in a major concert; it was premiered by Sir Adrian Boult and the London Philharmonic in 1947. The
bounding opening measures of the overture, ODTAA (‘One Damn Thing After Another’), inspired by
John Masefield’s novel, use a brash and breezy Waltonesque sound to bring us directly into the novel’s
sense of adventure. Later there is a quiet middle section that suggests the romance of the novel.
The overture ends with an orchestral fanfare that remoulds the opening motif.

The neoclassic piano concerto, the longest work at 29 minutes, is in three movements. The opening
Allegro assai opens with spirited virtuosic writing for both piano and orchestra and after an extended
cadenza broadens to a romantic treatment of both opening themes. The pensive second movement,
Lento, opens with a long lyrical theme played by solo violin which then becomes an extended duet
between violin and piano, over muted strings. At times the mood is rather like that of RVW’s
‘Lark Ascending’. The finale, Moderato e deciso ma con moto, has a striding opening theme that
then contrasts with the chittering moto perpetuo writing for the solo piano. It ends with a fugato
section that evolves into broadly chordal and incisively rhythmic writing that brings the concerto
to a rousing finish. Howard Shelley, as would be expected, acquits himself brilliantly in the difficult
piano part.

The overture, Bishop Rock, attempts to picture the lighthouse and surrounding sea, stormy or
gently lapping, of Bishop Rock, that furthest west of the Scilly Isles. The language is craggier,
as befits the subject, and may represent some change in Carwithen’s language some five
years on from the previous two pieces.

The Suffolk Suite, commissioned for the school orchestra at Framlingham College, uses tunes
from an earlier film about East Anglia. It was written with the capabilities of the boys involved.
One does not sense any ‘writing down’ here. The music is, however, somewhat more
conventionally organized and harmonized than the preceding music. There are four sections:
Prelude, Orford Ness, Suffolk Morris, and Framlingham Castle. Lovely tunes abound and the
morris dance is particularly infectious.

The disc, arranged in order of the music’s dates of composition, is also cleverly arranged so
that there is an extrovert beginning and ending, with rather craggier. reflective and astringent
inner ‘movements’, the Concerto and Bishop Rock.

It is certainly too brief an acquaintance for me to make any claims for Carwithen’s aspirations
to greatness, but she certainly has the goods. This is well-made, attractive, solid, engaging
music and I’m eager to hear more.

Bravo to those folks at Chandos for expanding our horizons."
Scott Morrison

Source: Chandos CD (my rip!)
Format: FLAC, DDD Stereo
File Size: 235 MB (incl. cover, booklet)

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Lou Harrison (1917-2003) was one of the most inventive and individual of American composers.
His music is noted for its pervasive integration of Native American and Asian musical influences and its
emphasis on melody and rhythm, often avoiding harmony altogether. He studied jazz piano, Gregorian
chant, and conducting while in high school. He took Henry Cowell’s course on "Music of the World’s Peoples,"
further studying counterpoint and composition with Cowell. He and John Cage both wrote percussion-
dominated music and found new percussion instruments in automobile junkyards and import shops; one
of their discoveries was the wonderful pitched ringing sound produced by brake drums. Harrison eventually
went to the University of California at Los Angeles to work with its dance department.
While there, he was a composition pupil of Arnold Schoenberg.

Harrison returned to the West coast in after a spell in N.Y. and a 1947 nervous breakdown in 1951 to
settle for life in Aptos, California and continued to write music sounding primarily "Pan-Pacific" in style,
often for unusual combinations of instruments. He first visited Asia in 1961 at a world music symposium,
afterward, he became interested in establishing gamelan orchestras in North America, and devised
an "American gamelan" made by his partner William Colvig from readily obtainable materials. He went
on to write hundreds of compositions, and his works are often recorded. Harrison developed a system
of musical organization based around melodic shapes he calls "melodicles" and analogous rhythmic
patterns ("rhythmicals") and durations ("icti controls"). Lou Harrison died in 2003 en route to an
Ohio festival dedicated to performances of his works.

The works presented here, conducted by the late, great Paul Sacher, are entirely
characteristic of Harrison’s mature style. Concerto in Slendro (1961), one of the composer’s
most often performed works, may seem like it was Vietnamese or Indonesian folk music.
The Concerto is scored for violin, two tack pianos (a predecessor of the prepared piano), celesta,
and two percussionists who play an array of "junkyard percussion," including brake drums and
metal washtubs. The influence of the Balinese gamelan is explicit here: Harrison’s recreation
of a traditional gamelan ensemble is uncanny. The music is both exotic and comfortingly familiar,
as if these were melodies played to us when we were in out "ur-wombs," if you will.

Music Composed by Lou Harrison
Played by the Basel Percussion Ensemble
With Antonio Nunez (violin)
Conducted by Paul Sacher

"Paul Sacher studied musicology at the University of Basle with Karl Nef and Jacques Handschin
and conducting with Felix Weingartner. He formed the Basle Chamber Orchestra in 1926, to which
was added the Basle Chamber Choir in 1928; the purpose of both was to perform music from the
pre-Classical and modern epochs. In 1933 he became the director of the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis,
a teaching and research institute for early music which he founded in Basle. As a result of his
marriage the following year to Maja Hoffmann-Stehlin, a member of the Hoffmann-La Roche
pharmaceutical family, from this time on Sacher had access to funds which he used with great
wisdom to further the cause of contemporary music, frequently commissioning new works from
leading composers.

During World War II Sacher extended his activities with the founding in 1941 of the Collegium Musicum
Z???rich, which gave the first performance of Honegger???s Symphony No. 2 in 1942. He was elected
president of the Swiss Association of Musicians in 1946, and in 1954 the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis
merged with the Conservatory and the School of Music to form the Basle Academy of Music, which
Sacher led until his resignation in 1969. Here in 1960 he established a master-class in composition,
headed by Pierre Boulez. In 1973 he created the Paul Sacher Foundation, to preserve his unique
collection of scores of twentieth-century music. The Foundation acquired the complete archive of
Stravinsky in 1983, and has since become a centre for international research. As old age approached
Sacher scaled back his activities; the final concerts of the Basle Chamber Orchestra and Choir took
place in 1987 and of the Collegium Musicum Z???rich in 1992.

Sacher was an efficient if slightly reserved conductor, whose readings were nonetheless always
stylish. As a guest conductor he appeared at the Aix-en-Provence, Edinburgh, Glyndebourne and
Lucerne Festivals. His understanding of contemporary music was second to none, and the composers
from whom he commissioned new works included virtually all of the major names of his lifetime,
including Bart???k, Berio, Britten, Carter, Dutilleux, Henze, Hindemith, Krenek, Lutosławski, Martin,
Richard Strauss, Stravinsky and Tippett. His discography was not large and reflected his antipathy
to nineteenth-century music, concentrating instead on the music of eighteenth- and twentieth-
century composers."

http://i1084.photobucket.com/albums/j415/wimpel69/harrison_zps9f67b414.gif

Source: PAN Classics CD (my rip!)
Format: FLAC, DDD Stereo
File Size: 254 MB (incl. artwork, booklet)

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Sven Einar Englund was born at Ljugarn in Gotland, Sweden, on June 17, 1916; he
died June 27, 1999 in Visby, Sweden. He married twice: in 1941 to Meri Mirjam Gyllenb???gel
who died 1956 (they had one son and two daughters including the ballerina and choreographer
Sorella Englund) and in 1958 he married Maynie Sir???n – a singer – with whom he had one son.

Perhaps the most important Finnish symphonist since Jean Sibelius, Englund was a native
Swedish speaker who often felt that his career was sidelined from the mainstream of
Finnish music. He was 17 when he began studies at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki in 1933.
Already a considerable pianist, he continued his studies with Martti Paavola and Ernst Linko,
while studying composition with Bengt Carlson and Selim Palmgren.

In 1949 Englund was awarded a grant to study in the United States with Aaron Copland,
and also played jazz with Leonard Bernstein. It has been suggested that Englund’s study
with the American master consisted of discussions about music and composition, Copland
having realised that there was little he could teach the younger man.

Throughout the 1950s he produced a series of large-scale works including Sinuhe, a ballet
(1953) originally for piano though later orchestrated, and Odysseus (1959), written for
the Swedish dancer and choreographer Brigit Cullberg, a Cello Concerto (1954) and the
First Piano Concerto (1955), as well as film scores and incidental music. His score
for Erik Blomberg’s Valkoinen peura (The White Reindeer) which won a Jussi Award (the Finnish
Oscar), and his score for Max Frisch’s play The Great Wall of China (which you can find in
my program music thread) are particularly notable. The Second Piano Concerto was composed
in 1974.

Music Composed by Einar Englund
Played by the Tampere Philharmonic Orchestra
With Matti Raekkalio (piano)
Conducted by Eri Klas

"Matti Raekallio (born in Helsinki, 1954) is a Finnish pianist.

He has performed in Europe, the U.S. and Asia, having debuted at the Carnegie Recital Hall in 1980.
A professor at the Swedish Royal College of Music (1994-1995), Hochschule f???r Musik, Theater
und Medien Hannover (2005-2010) and the Sibelius Academy (1998-2008 ), Raekallio trained
Antti Siirala and Gergely Boganyi at the latter. He is a scholar on piano playing technique and
a former member of the Research Committee on Culture and Society of the Finnish Academy
of Science and Letters. He teaches at the Juilliard School since 2007, while giving master
classes in many countries.

Raekallio has recorded about 20 CDs, including Sergey Prokofiev’s complete Piano Sonatas
and Aarre Merikanto’s, Anton Rubinstein’s and Einar Englund’s Piano Concertos for Ondine."

http://i1084.photobucket.com/albums/j415/wimpel69/englund_zpsb6f097f3.gif

Source: Ondine CD (my rip!)
Formats: FLAC, DDD Stereo & mp3(320)
File Sizes: 226 MB / 122 MB

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Please note: From now on I’m going to upload an mp3 version of the posting to depositfiles, as some people
seem to be experiencing difficulties with MEGA (for me it works flawlessly, with different providers, too, and within different browsers!).
Since depositfiles has been deleting files much more quickly lately, let me emphasize that when the mp3 versions are gone, they’re
gone for good as far as I’m concerned.

Mostly known for his richly descriptive symphonic poems Fontane di Roma
(The Fountains of Rome) and Pini di Roma (The Pines of Rome), Ottorino Respighi was
a versatile composer who translated into music powerful visual experiences and feelings
of deep attachment to cherished places. Respighi’s symphonic works are praised primarily
for their exquisite orchestration, but these compositions also possess a charm which
transcends the merely picturesque. This charm is particularly evident in works inspired
by Medieval and Renaissance music, such as Ancient Airs and Dances for orchestra.

The Concerto Gregoriano featured in this upload is actually Respighi’s third concerto for
violin and orchestra, and it is a characteristic example of his love for Gregorian music. According
to the composer’s wife his fascination with this particular period style manifested itself in
almost all of his post-1920 works. The concerto boasts attractive and unusal themes, as
well as subtle and nicely shaded orchestral colors. Respighi was one of the finest orchestators
in late romantic/neo classical music. The Poema Autunnale is a shorter but no less supple
and attractive work, and has actually been much more popular in performances and recordings
than the Concerto Gregoriano.

Pierre Amoyal is one of the finest French violinists of the latter half of the 20th century,
and his reading of the Respighi concerto is the most satisfying in terms of sheer beauty and
flexibility of tone of the rather few available versions (the others, in decreasing order of merit,
are by Andrea Cappelletti, Lydia Mordkovitch, Jos??? Miguel Cueto and Takako Nishizaki).

Music Composed by Ottorino Respighi & Camille Saint-Saens
Played by the Orchestre National de France
With Pierre Amoyal (violin)
Conducted by Charles Dutoit

"The Gregorian theme was developed with Pierre Amoyal’s impressive playing of the lovely Concerto
Gregoriano’s last movement, ‘Allelujah’, with the French National Orchestra under Charles Dutoit.
I have always thought Dutoit’s conducting of Respighi among the very best, and this feeling
was reinforced by a quite stupendous performance of the Feste Romane with the excellent
Montreal Symphony Orchestra. Elsa suggested that the reason the Concerto Gregoriano was
coolly received at its first performance, in 1922, was that the soloist Mario Corti did not
understand the music, nor did the audience. Respighi himself thought it one of his best works."
Musicweb

Source: Decca CD (my rip!)
Format: FLAC, DDD Stereo – mp3(320)
File Sizes: 316 MB / 156 MB

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Geoffrey Burgon (1941-2010) was an English composer best known for his television scores, in
particular Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and Brideshead Revisited, and for several film scores,
including The Dogs of War and Robin Hood. He also achieved success for his stage, orchestral
and vocal works. Presented here are two late concertante works, the Viola (2008) and the Cello
Concerto (2007), as well as the orchestral song-cycle Merciless Beauty of 1997.

Burgon was born in the English village of Hambledon on July 15, 1941. In his teens, he taught himself to
play the trumpet, not least to satisfy his fascination with jazz. At 19 he enrolled at the Guildhall School
of Music in London. There he studied trumpet with Bernard Brown, but also took instruction in
composition from Peter Wishart. He learned the essentials of composing quickly: a Concerto for String
Orchestra dates to 1963 and his first large work, the ballet The Golden Fish, followed in 1964.
Gradually, he focused more attention on composition and began studying with composer Lennox Berkeley.
Burgon produced a large number of vocal works during this period, including Short Mass for chorus
(1965), Farewell Earth’s Bliss (1966), and 5 Sonnets of John Donne for vocal soloists and
chamber ensemble (1967), which earned him a Prince Pierre of Monaco Award in 1968.

Burgon forsook his trumpet career in 1971 and over the next several years turned out a spate of works
in various genres. His major breakthrough came, however, with a pair of vocal/choral works: Requiem
(1976) and The Fall of Lucifer (1977). His first major film scores, Monty Python’s Life of Brian and
Testament of Youth, as well as the hit television score Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, came in 1979.
Thereafter Burgon was in demand in both the television and motion picture industries. But he hardly
abandoned concert and stage music, writing numerous compositions, including Little Missenden Variations
for wind quartet (1984), the ballet The Trial of Prometheus (1988), and perhaps his most ambitious work,
the 1991 opera Hard Times. He extended the parameters of his already versatile style when he produced
the percussion concerto City Adventures in 1994 for Evelyn Glennie and the Piano Concerto in
1997 for Joanna MacGregor.

In the new century Burgon continued to produce music scores at a prolific pace, especially in the vocal
realm. Three Mysteries (2003), for soloists, chorus, and chamber orchestra and
Of flowers and emeralds sheen (2004), for a cappella chorus, have garnered further
laurels for the busy composer.

Music Composed by Geoffrey Burgon
Played by the City of London Sinfonia
With Philip Dukes (viola), Josephine Knight (cello)
And Sarah Connolly (mezzo-soprano)
Conducted by Rumon Gamba

"I suppose that it’s not surprising that a man best known by ‘Joe public’ as the composer
of television scores should be inspired by ‘film noir’ movies in the writing of a Cello
Concerto. As I listened images were, in an almost childlike way, easily conjured up.
That was before I read the revealing booklet notes by Anthony Burton. The first
movement has the cellist in a film “being hunted and pursued through the dark forest
on a rainy winter night” to quote the composer and Burton goes on to talk about the
“running semi-quavers”. In the second movement Burgon says the strings and harp
“provide a threatening forest”. Later the “hero” (the cellist) is joined by the “heroine”,
a solo violin, and “the pursued is finally released and enters into a lush ‘Hollywood’
heaven”. I hope however that this does not put you off. Despite all said above this is
not film music but a coherent symphonic score, magically orchestrated and logical.
Josephine Knight who advised the composer on some of the cello writing plays with
conviction and a wonderful tone and it’s hard to imagine a better rendition.

Geoffrey Burgon was a student at the ‘Guildhall School of Music’ first as a trumpeter
but also as a composer under Peter Wishart who died too young. Sadly, Wishart is
now a little known figure but he was a fine composer whom I remember myself being
a benign and yet strong influence at the RCM in the 1970s. Wishart stressed
compositional logic and integrity and allowed the pupil to discover his or her own
voice without inhibition.

Composers who enjoy writing concertos must have within them a sense of theatre
and drama and a good visual awareness. The Viola Concerto subtitled ‘Ghosts of
the Dance’ has just those traits. From the moment it starts you feel a strong
sense of early jazz. The booklet notes tell us that the composer thought that
the “caramel sound” of the viola “suggested an affinity with smooth American
dance music of the 1930s and ’40s.” To make this even clearer Burgon adds
pizzicato basses throughout, an alto saxophone and asks the trumpets to use
the multifarious jazz mutes available. The movements consist of three dances;
a picture is again painted of “a small-town dance hall in the depression” with a
“marathon dance competition in which the winners are the last couple standing”.
I was reminded of the dance scene in the 1970s film ‘Grease’ or even the ‘Dance
at the Gym’ from ‘West Side Story – not only the scene but the music also,
especially, the big-band sounds in the third movement. Sometimes there is even
a touch of a Stravinskian Russian ballet about the sound-world. The middle
movement the composer thinks of as a ‘Tango’. I don’t feel quite so positive
about its form and mood as for the outer ones. The work was written for Philip
Dukes and first played in the summer of 2009. What a fine player he is and what
a mellow and ‘caramel’ sound he produces. He blends with whatever the
orchestration throws at him.

Burgon has apparently made the writing of song-cycles quite a speciality although,
I am ashamed to say, this is the first time I have come across one. Again this
is obviously reflects an element of the dramatic and pictorial which obviously
appeals to the composer’s psyche. So as a bridge between the concertos
comes Merciless Beauty for mezzo-soprano and orchestra. Originally written
for counter-tenor, Burgon was apparently very pleased to have the clear and
delectable Sarah Connolly to contrast with James Bowman as the cycle’s first
performer. The orchestration is quite magical at times and Burgon adds a
soprano saxophone which is especially noticeable at times."
Musicweb International

Source: Chandos CD (my rip!)
Formats: FLAC, DDD Stereo, mp3(320)
File Sizes: 255 MB / 155 MB (incl. cover, booklet)

Download Link: https://mega.co.nz/#!zoBgUayB!RuAHGQupnEuc7B-euCxchnRttQJ63taTnp_G58TR57g
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Berthold Goldschmidt (1903-1993) was one of the many composers designated "degenerate" (entartet) by the
Nazi regime in Germany. Even if he had not been a Jew, it would certainly be difficult to find a composer
more different from their ideal, ultra-Romantic in sound as well as subject matter. Goldschmidt’s two famous
operas, Der Gewaltige Hahnrei (The Magnificent Cuckold) and Beatrice Cenci, are merciless in
their exposure of human frailty and cruelty, and his Marche militaire is an equally pitiless parody of military glory.
While often using discord, his works remain largely traditional in structure and style, usually featuring a vivid
energy of expression. During the Nazi terror, Goldschmidt had to flee Germany and settled in England permanently,
where he worked mainly as a conductor and teacher.

After the 1950s, he fell more or less out of public attention as a composer, largely due to the rise of atonality,
and he wrote relatively few pieces, concerti, and vocal works. In the 1980s, however, he came back to the
limelight, composing many new pieces, including the Third and Fourth string quartets, and witnessing revivals
of his stage works, including Beatrice Cenci in a 1988 concert performance. He was not a particularly prolific
composer and much of his early work was lost: He had left it with a friend in Germany for safe-keeping, but
the friend’s house was destroyed during the war.

Music Composed by Berthold Goldschmidt
Played by the Orchestre Symphonique de Montr???al, The Philharmonia Orchestra
And the Orchester der Komischen Oper Berlin
With Yo-Yo Ma (cello), Sabine Meyer (clarinet) & Chantal Juillet (violin)
Conducted by Charles Dutoit, Yakov Kreizberg & Berthold Goldschmidt

"All three of Goldschmidt’s concertos are collected here in this latest Entartete Musik offering.
Though the works themselves, composed in the Fifties but making some use of earlier ideas, came
long after he was banned by the Nazis, they fit very well in this survey of suppressed composers
and their music. Indeed, the Cello and Clarinet concertos inhabit a pastoral world far removed from
Goldschmidt’s earlier style, and show how he was struggling to be accepted by the British musical
establishment. The more objective language of his German period is still heard in the Violin Concerto,
which he had begun sketching before going into exile. It’s very good to have the Clarinet and Violin
concertos on record for the first time, especially since they are perhaps better than the cello work.
Still, Yo-Yo Ma is an expressive soloist in the Cello Concerto, and finds deep melancholy in the second
movement, something Goldschmidt surely composed looking backwards. Sabine Meyer plays dazzlingly
in the Clarinet Concerto and the Violin Concerto receives a loving performance from Chantal Juillet,
who has done much to champion it. With three orchestras and three conductors, including the late
composer himself, this disc is full of discoveries."
John Allison

Source: Decca CD (my rip!)
Formats: FLAC, DDD Stereo, mp3(320)
File Sizes: 306 MB / 155 MB

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Aram Khachaturian’s Piano Concerto was composed in 1936. It was his first work to bring him
recognition in the West, and it immediately entered the repertoire of many notable pianists.

The Piano Concerto was the first of three concertos Khachaturian wrote for the individual members of
a renowned Soviet piano trio that performed together from 1941 until 1963. The others were:
the Violin Concerto for David Oistrakh (1940); and the Cello Concerto for Sviatoslav Knushevitsky (1946).

The Piano Concerto was written for Lev Oborin, who premiered it in Moscow on 12 July 1937, with the
Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra under L. Shteinberg. The British premiere was on 13 April 1940, at the Queen’s Hall,
London, with pianist Moura Lympany (who was approached after Clifford Curzon had declined), conducted
by Alan Bush. It received its American debut on 14 March 1942, by Maro Ajemian at the Juilliard School
in New York, conducted by Albert Stoessel.[5]

The piece is in three movements: the first movement, Allegro ma non troppo e maestoso, makes extensive
use of the three-note theme of F, B-double-flat, and A-flat. The second movement, Andante con anima, is
one of the few major classical pieces to make use of a flexatone. The third movement, Allegro brillante,
caps the piece in an exciting manner.

The concerto was first recorded in 1946, by William Kapell with the Boston Symphony Orchestra under
Serge Koussevitzky. The recording became a jukebox favourite, and Kapell was so associated with the
work that he was often called "Khachaturian Kapell".

The Dance Suite for symphony orchestra was first performed in 1933. Fellow composer Dmitry Kabalevsky
wrote: "The first performance of this composition, which emitted sunlight, joy of life and spiritual power, was a
great success to the young composer, still a student, and he was immediately ranked among the top positions
of Soviet composers”. It was the first time the young composer showed his outstanding orchestral skills and
affinity for symphonic thinking. In the festive and elegant score of the Dance Suite the contours of bright
individual orchestral style of Khachaturian stood out clearly.

Music Composed by Aram Khachaturian
Played by the Armenian Philharmonic Orchestra
With Dora Serviarian-Kuhn (piano)
Conducted by Loris Tjeknavorian

"Dora Serviarian-Kuhn (born Beirut, Lebanon) is regarded as a leading interpreter of the
Khachaturian Piano Concerto, having played it throughout the world more than any other
living pianist. Serviarian-Kuhn has appeared with orchestras in the United States,
Asia, and Latin America.

Serviarian-Kuhn received her B.A. in Performance from the Eastman School of Music and
her M.A. in Piano from the University of Southern California. She created and is executive
producer of Khachaturian, a feature-length documentary film on the life and music of
Aram Khachaturian, which won the Best Documentary award at the 2003
Hollywood Film Festival.

Dora Serviarian-Kuhn’s performances include the National Philharmonic of Russia at
the Khachaturian Centennial Celebration at Carnegie Hall in New York City, the
Shanghai Symphony Orchestra, the China Philharmonic Orchestra in Beijing’s
Forbidden City Concert Hall, and the Boston Pops Orchestra.

She is married to Robert Lawrence Kuhn, a banker and the creator and host of the
PBS television series Closer to Truth."

Source: ASV CD (my rip!)
Format: FLAC, DDD Stereo, mp3(320)
File Sizes: 247 MB / 135 MB

Download Link: https://mega.co.nz/#!m9hh3CpQ!CGyrIF7IYIACA3eZQKvSsWpn43hWV_OjCL_OUCt fjB4
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American composer David Maslanka was born in New Bedford, Massachusetts in 1943.
He attended the Oberlin College Conservatory where he studied composition with Joseph Wood.
He spent a year at the Mozarteum in Salzburg, Austria, and did masters and doctoral study
in composition at Michigan State University where his principal teacher was H. Owen Reed.

Maslanka’s music for winds has become especially well known. Among his 40-plus works for wind
ensemble and band are Symphonies 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, and 9, 12 concertos, a Mass, and many concert
pieces. His wind chamber music includes four wind quintets, two saxophone quartets, and many
works for solo instrument and piano. In addition, he has written a variety of orchestral and
choral pieces.

The Concerto for Alto Saxophone and the Marimba Concerto are typical of his output for
wind ensemble/concert band. He is one of the few contemporary composer in the US whose
works very often get recorded more than once within just a few years (sometimes as often as three or
even four times, which is highly unusual), a testament to his strong and continued success with
audiences and musicians. He writes in a modern yet tonal, accessible idiom.

Music Composed by David Maslanka
Played by the University of Arizona Wind Ensemble
With Joseph Ludloff (alto sax) & Drew Lang (marimba)
Conducted by Gregg Hanson

"David Maslanka writes about his Saxophone Concerto: "This concerto turned out to be a
good deal longer than I would reasonably want. As I got into the composing, the ideas became
insistent: none of them would be left out!" About his Marimba Concerto, here is what
Mr. Maslanka has to say: "This concerto could easily be subtitled ‘rhapsody’ or ‘fantasy’
because of its meditative or free-flowing quality. It is easy to describe the overall shape ???
an extended slow to moderate opening section, an explosive fast section, a quiet closing section ???
but less easy to describe the internal working of the piece." Here the listener will have to use
his or her imagination. David Maslanka was born in New Bedford, MA. He attended the Oberlin
Conservatory, and studied for a year at the Mozarteum in Salzburg, Austria. He did master’s
and doctoral work in composition at Michigan State University with H. Owen Reed. He is now
a free-lance composer and lives in Missoula, Montana."

Source: Albany CD (my rip!)
Format: FLAC, DDD Stereo, mp3(320)
File Sizes: 230 MB / 141 MB

Download Link: https://mega.co.nz/#!a1hAGLZb!FZv2MRPBoLfYxp6lhmsC01GZsC17zuVZ69UKP7a mU5M
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Nino Rota, best known for his scores for the Godfather films as well as Italian classics
by Federico Fellini and other directors, also composed a good deal of abstract music. It’s never
less than well wrought, and the end of modernist tyranny has brought a substantial resurgence
of interest in it. Rota composed four piano concertos, and especially the two heard here grow
on you with repeated hearings and have been increasingly frequently performed and recorded.
The casual Rota fan would be justified in asking whether his concert music resembles his film
scores; the answer is: sometimes, and increasingly often as his career proceeded. The Piano
Concerto in E minor recorded here, composed in 1978, is subtitled "Piccolo mondo antico," but
many of its melodies could have come straight from one of Rota’s film scores. To be sure, these
were often written for films that depicted some kind of vanishing worlds, and his melodic genius
was tinged with nostalgia. But the appeal of the work lies not merely in its collection of melodies,
but also in Rota’s skill at fusing his brand of melodicism with concerto form. The space allotted
to the prime Godfather-type melody is the second subject of the two outer movements, which
fall into a loose sonata form; the opening bars of the slow movement are also very cinematic.
But in each case the material is artfully batted back and forth between piano and orchestra,
resulting in a texture that feels less like a traditional concerto than like an episodic film score,
yet balances piano and orchestra in consistently unexpected ways. The Piano Concerto in
C major, from 1960, has less of Rota’s characteristic voice, but it is likewise an entertaining
work. The derivation of the first movement from an artless, transparent melody at the beginning,
as well as the brassy tritone-based finale, both suggest the influence of Shostakovich.

Music Composed by Nino Rota
Played by the Tampere Philharmonic Orchestra
With Janne Mertanen (piano)
Conducted by Hannu Lintu

"The music of Nino Rota has been undergoing something of a resurgence in recent years, and
Rota’s compositions for the concert hall are now receiving as much attention as his many
wonderful film scores written for some of the most eminent directors of his time. These include,
most notably, Frederico Fellini, Luchino Visconti, Franco Zeffirelli and Francis Ford Coppola.

From an early age Rota began to write music in many and varied genres, and his prolific output
includes 10 operas, 23 stage works and ballets, 3 symphonies, 3 cello concertos, chamber music,
choral works and 4 piano concertos, two of which appear on this disc.

The ‘Piano Concerto in E minor’ subtitled ‘Piccolo mondo antico’ was written in 1978 in the
penultimate year of the composer’s life. It is a grandly romantic work brim full of soaring melodies
and though unquestionably nostalgic in style it never tips over into maudlin sentimentality.
Lovers of the concertos of Rachmaninov will surely be captivated by this piece, especially when
performed as brilliantly as here by Janne Mertanen ably supported by the Tampere Philharmonic
Orchestra under Hanno Lintu. Mertanen ensures that the grand gestures of the opening ‘Allegro
tranquillo’ are given their full weight, but the more reflective parts of this movement are also
quite magical, thanks to the lovely solo wind and horn playing from the orchestra. The slow
movement has a yearning, melancholic quality similar to that found in Scriabin’s Piano Concerto
while the predominantly energetic and cheerful finale brings this most attractive work to a
rousing conclusion.

Rota composed his C major Piano Concerto in 1959-60 and dedicated it to his friend the
pianist Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli who, as far as I am aware, never recorded it. Poulenc,
Ravel and Shostakovich are just three of the composers immediately brought to mind by this
delightful work which perfectly exemplifies the range of Rota’s fluent compositional talent.
This concerto opens with a theme of almost Mozartian simplicity and grace before it races
off with irrepressible energy and wit. The slow movement is a beguiling set of variations
while the almost unstoppable energy of the whimsical finale is crowned with a cadenza of
Lisztian brilliance. Once again Janne Mertanen gives an absolutely captivating performance
of this piece with dazzling playing throughout. The enthusiastic accompaniment of the
Tampere Philharmonic Orchestra is a match for the pianist’s breathtaking virtuosity.

Both these concertos deserve much wider exposure and, hopefully, this excellent
SACD should help this to be achieved. Highly recommended."
SACD NET

Source: Alba Classics CD (my rip!)
Formats: FLAC, DDD Stereo, mp3(320)
File Sizes: 216 MB / 134 MB

Download Link: https://mega.co.nz/#!6lh2hJTD!RwcZ4QSrpchXcRQXFHloTGUCyb0EduMiZg-tBGL1VlU
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It was only 60 years after his death in the W???lzburg concentration camp that Czech composer
Erwin Schulhoff began to be recognized. One of many composers whose works the Nazi
regime labeled as "Entartete Musik" (degenerate music), he was effectively silenced by the stark
political and social workings of fascism in the 1930s and 1940s. Schulhoff was indeed possessed
of radical ideas, both political and musical, and was a founding member of the Dresden-based
Werkstatt der Zeit (Workshop of the Time), but he is now known to be a composer of
remarkable variety and invention whose works spanned the aesthetic void between the late
romanticism of Max Reger and Scriabin and the experimental modernism of John Cage.

By 1923 Schulhoff had moved into a creative phase that was partly inspired by his exposure
(in Dresden via recordings) to American jazz. This new influence was incorporated into a
maturing synthesis of European trends, combined with a renewed interest in the music of
his native Czechoslovakia. During this time many of his works took on a straightforward,
almost Neo-classical sound that left the complexity of serialism behind.

The Piano Concerto uses far more Debussy (by way of Stravinsky’s Firebird) than jazz,
even the European dance-band music that passed for jazz just after the First World War.
The work inhabits dark emotional territory, with queasy, disturbing harmonies only occasionally
breaking out into a full singing. However, the latter never lasts long. The piano soloist plays
alone I would say most of the time, without ever quite heading into pure cadenza. Unlike its
role in the traditional concerto, the orchestra exists mainly to support the soloist or to
reinforce points the soloist has already made.

No reservations whatsoever about the Double Concerto – to me one of the composer’s
artistically vigorous and psychologically most integrated works. Schulhoff wrote it for himself
and the great French flutist Ren??? Le Roy as soloists. One gets from the work a great feeling
of Paris in the Twenties (although Schulhoff didn’t write it there exclusively) and of what
the French imply by the word mesure – a sense of proportion, balance, elegance, and
restraint. At the time, Paris, of course, had diverse strands and a wide expressive range
of music, most of which derived from either Stravinsky or Debussy. From the fripperies of
Les Six’s Les Mari???s de la Tour Eiffel to the granitic Oedipus Rex by Stravinsky, you could
hear just about anything in Paris, probably the great music capital of Jazz-Age Europe.

According to the liner notes, the latest work here, the Concerto for String Quartet, comes
from Schulhoff’s experience as a radio and recording-studio musician, and the composer wrote it
with contemporary electric-mike techniques and capabilities in mind. Schulhoff emphasizes the
contrast in sound between winds and brass (a 15-piece wind ensemble comprises the orchestra)
and the string quartet. The soloists and tutti very rarely blend. The solo wind writing is mainly
harsh and in-your-face, despite a downright lovely opening to the second movement. What
delicacy we encounter comes from its accompaniment to the string quartet – often just one A
or two instruments, so as not to drown out the strings – although the string writing itself is
hardly gentle in idiom.

Music Composed by Erwin Schulhoff
Played by the Deutsche Kamerphilharmonie Neuss
With Aleksander Madzar (piano), Bettina Wild (flute)
And with The Hawthorne String Quartet
Conducted by Andreas Delfs

"Degenerate music (German: Entartete Musik) was a label applied in the 1930s by the Nazi
government in Germany to certain forms of music that it considered to be harmful or decadent.
The Nazi government’s concern for degenerate music was a part of its larger and more well-known
campaign against degenerate art (‘Entartete Kunst’). In both cases, the government attempted
to isolate, discredit, discourage, or ban the works.

The Nazi government considered several types of music to be degenerate, for several different
reasons. Any music that was opposed to the Nazi regime by virtue of its content or the political
views of its composers and performers was considered degenerate. This included works by
Jewish and Jewish-origin composers (such as Felix Mendelssohn, Arnold Schoenberg, Franz
Schreker, Walter Braunfels, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Kurt Weill, Gustav Mahler, David
Nowakowsky and Berthold Goldschmidt); works that featured Jewish or African characters
(such as those by Ernst Krenek); or works by composers of Marxist persuasion (e.g., Hanns Eisler).
It also applied to artists that had shown sympathy for opponents of the Nazi Regime (such as
Anton Webern, who had maintained a friendship with Schoenberg during his exile from Germany).
Modernist music, such as works by Paul Hindemith, Alban Berg, Schoenberg, and Webern, was
also considered degenerate. Modernist music was judged to be inferior to previous classical music,
and it therefore offended the Nazis’ sense of progress and civilization in general — and in particular
their loyalty to Germany’s many great classical composers. In addition, one might speculate that
Modernist music’s abandonment of structure and form presented a threat, albeit immaterial, to
the culture of order and control that fascist regimes such as the Nazi party both developed and
relied on. Finally, jazz music was considered degenerate because of its roots in and association
with the African-American culture.

From the Nazi seizure of power onward, these composers found it increasingly difficult, and
often impossible, to get work or have their music performed. Many went into exile (e.g.,
Schoenberg, Weill, Hindemith, Goldschmidt); or retreated into ‘internal exile’ (e.g., Karl Amadeus
Hartmann, Boris Blacher); or ended up in the concentration camps (e.g., Viktor Ullmann, or
Erwin Schulhoff).

Some works which were later enthusiastically adopted by the Nazi regime, such as the
hugely popular Carmina Burana by Carl Orff (1937), were initially described as degenerate
by local music critics.

Like degenerate art, examples of degenerate music were displayed in public exhibits in
Germany beginning in 1938. One of the first of these was organized in D???sseldorf by Hans Severus
Ziegler, at the time superintendent of the Weimar National Theatre, who explained in an opening
speech that the decay of music was "due to the influence of Judaism and capitalism". Ziegler’s
exhibit was organized into seven sections, devoted to (1) the influence of Judaism, (2) Schoenberg,
(3) Kurt Weill and Ernst Krenek, (4) "Minor Bolsheviks" (Schreker, Berg, Ernst Toch, etc.), (5)
Leo Kestenberg, director of musical education before 1933, (6) Hindemith’s operas and oratorios,
and (7) Igor Stravinsky (anon. 1938, 629).

From the mid-1990s the Decca Record Company released a series of recordings under the title
‘Entartete Musik: Music Suppressed by the Third Reich’, covering lesser-known works by
several of the above-named composers."

Source: Decca CD (my rip!)
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File Sizes: 333 MB / 183 MB

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No.36

Takashi Yoshimatsu (*1953) is one of the most prolific and popular of contemporary Japanese
composers. Born in 1953 in Tokyo, his earliest inspiration to pursue music came as he watched his younger
sister practicing the piano at home. He entered Keio University as an engineering student, but turned to
music, teaching himself composition and studying with Teizo Matsumara. Yoshimatsu was exposed to a
multitude of musical idioms growing up in Japan, and performed with jazz and rock bands in his 20s
before turning to serious concert music.

As a composer of concert music, Yoshimatsu’s preference is for "new lyricism," and an avoidance of
the unmusical characteristics (and, especially, the atonalism) of much modern concert music. His work has
utilized Japanese instruments such as the koto in a chamber music context, but has also embraced
such traditional European forms as the symphony and the piano concerto. Yoshimatsu draws from a vast
range of musical influences, including rock and jazz; his cultural influences include his native Japan —
his Symphony No.1 "Kamui-Chikap" takes its name from the Ainu word for "God Bird;" and his
Concerto for Guitar "Pegasus Effect" takes part of its name from Japanese mythology, though
it also owes a musical debt to American jazz and rock.

This album features the premiere recording of Yoshimatsu’s Saxophone Concerto "Albireo Mode", along
with some established classics like Jacques Ibert’s Concertino da Camera and Lars-Erik Larsson’s
Saxophone Concerto, along with another premiere by a Japanese composer, Toshiyuki Honda (himself
a saxophone player).

Music by Takashi Yoshimatsu, Toshiyuki Honda, Jacques Ibert & Lars-Erik Larsson
Played by the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra
With Nobuya Sugawa (saxophone)
Conducted by Yutaka Sado

"The first work on this superb new disc of saxophone concertos is Takashi Yoshimatsu’s Albireo Mode (2004-5).
Written for Nobuya Sugawa, the featured artist on this release, it is a stylistically diverse composition that
takes in references to everything from free jazz, to Japanese traditional music, to minimalism, to Hollywood
soundtracks; yet it never strays away from its insistence on a kind of static, contemplative calm.

Written in two movements, Yoshimatsu’s work is an almost entirely effective statement of the essential enigma of
sound. With the exception of the excessive use of the bell-tree, the composer displays a fine ear for shimmering
orchestral colour creatively spread across piano, metallic percussion and of course the soloist’s soprano saxophone,
and the conductor, Yutaka Sado, produces a delicate and timbrally responsive performance. With the exception of
some minor mistakes (for example the wrong note given on the celesta in its intimate and exposed exchange with
the piano at the end of the first movement), the players of the BBC Philharmonic are on impressive form. The
generally elegiac second movement is particularly moving, and the impression I was left with whilst listening of a
more adventurous, more eclectic and more vital Sketches of Spain (with added Albert Ayler-esque squawks in
the cadenza) speaks of the high accomplishments of all involved. Sugawa’s performance is revelatory- his
utterly flexible technique means he moves from the unstable, sliding pitches required at times in the first movement,
to the post-bop stylings that pop-up in the second (for example) with extraordinary ease. Albireo Mode is
hardly original, but it certainly beguiles.

The second item on the disc is Toshiyuki Honda’s Concerto du vent, another work written recently and for the
present soloist. It has, however, a very different character to its predecessor. Instead of Eastern postmodernism,
the work is a rather straightforward homage to the kind of jazz-infused orchestral writing found in pieces like
Gershwin’s An American in Paris, in various Golden Age musicals (and beyond), and on numerous film soundtracks
from the forties or fifties onwards. Like Gershwin, Honda possesses a great melodic ability, and his very sweet
palette means the work comes across as humbly and quite beautifully lyrical.

In lesser hands perhaps things could appear glib, but the performers on this recording stay comfortably on the
right side of the sensibility. Their interpretations are always fluid, delicate, sensitive to the idiom, and expressive.
The two outer movements are performed with great alacrity, especially the first, which comes across as
something Stravinsky might have written in the twenties had he been much less severe. The frequent detours
into swooning expressiveness in the otherwise restive finale make for an impressive contrast and Sugawa, now
on alto, produces playing of broad poignancy in the slow movement (with phrases that often suggest the
repeated motif of Herrmann’s score to Taxi Driver). The conductor ensures likewise that a striking suppleness
enters the performance in that section, along with indulgent, but effective, degrees of vibrato and rubato. The
soloist is forthright and capable elsewhere, and his interactions with the orchestra are always productive.
Sugawa’s cadenza towards the end of the work is impressive insofar as it is technically dense and skilfully given,
but with the exception of the precipitous slide into the final tutti chord, it makes for a tonally incongruous
conclusion.

The final two works on the disc are much more familiar, and as such provide more of a chance for the
performers to cut loose and revel in the exuberant scores that confront them. Jacques Ibert’s Concertino da
camera (1935) is an enjoyable piece that has plenty of opportunity for the soloist and ensemble to trot along
rowdily, without much consequence. The work does contain a slow movement with all the tender depth of
Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G-major, and the performance of it is affecting and warm. The attaca move into
the finale is somewhat gauche though, but the sheer joy with which each of the 12 instrumentalists take
part in that finale’s effusive conversation more than makes up for any previous lapses; every performer
infuses the short closing movement with an exciting momentum that almost succeeds in overcoming the
slightness of the material.

Lars-Erik Larsson’s Concerto for Saxophone and String Orchestra (1934) is more limited in scope than the
other works on the disc, it being more homogenous in ensemble and more rigidly neoclassical in idea and
form, but the economy of its material and the invention of the execution mean that it is a notable work
still. The quite expansive first movement is given a rigorous and intelligent reading in which the syntactical
punctuation is always proper and prevailing, and Sado brings a real sense of frothy substance to the finale.
Sugawa, as ever, is on persuasive form, with his intricate altissimo in the first movement providing a
highpoint of the disc. On the whole then very much a release of two distinct halves, each of which
in their own way provide plenty to consider and enjoy."
Musical Criticism Com

Source: Chandos CD (my rip!)
Formats: FLAC, DDD Stereo, mp3(320)
File Sizes: 301 MB / 178 MB (incl. cover, booklet)

Download Link:https://mega.co.nz/#!70wTFKzb!ZFKqx3Aqbn0raYCmNIHlzn-n6hoffQM-cTSW-w_rhvA
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In the years immediately following the end of the Second World War, Poland’s musicians and film-makers suddenly
blossomed in a remarkable resurgence of artistic independence. But the Communist regime demanded music that
was ‘accessible’ and folkloristic, requirements that many Polish composers, Witold Lutoslawski prominent among
them, found restrictive, though they managed to conform without compromising their principles. The Dance Preludes
are a product of that difficult period and they remain one of Lutoslawski’s most popular works. Originally written in 1954
for clarinet and piano, Lutoslawski subsequently made two orchestral versions. One closely adheres to the original with
the clarinet as soloist; the other, made in 1959 for a larger group, breaks up the solo line and shares it between several
instruments. The earlier of these two orchestral versions, the one recorded here, dates from 1955.

M???ty???s Seiber was one of that distinguished group of European composers (others were Roberto Gerhard and
Egon Wellesz) who sought refuge in Britain from Nazi tyranny. Seiber, a pupil of Kod???ly in Budapest, brought with him
his Hungarian heritage and a love of jazz as well as an awareness of the music of his most distinguished
contemporaries, Bart???k and Hindemith – and, to a lesser degree, Schoenberg. All these influences eventually
became distilled into a personal style whose further development was cruelly cut short on 24 September 1960 by
a fatal car crash in the Kruger National Park during a visit to South Africa. The Concertino was sketched during a
train journey from Frankfurt to Budapest in 1926. The work began life as a quintet titled Divertimento for
clarinet and string quartet. Its composition occupied Seiber on and off until 1928 and was his only major
composition during that period. The present version for clarinet and string orchestra dates from 1951.

Howard Blake was born in London in 1938, but grew up in Brighton. At eighteen he won a scholarship
to the Royal Academy of Music in London where he studied piano with Harold Craxton and composition with
Howard Ferguson. Then, during the next ten years, he proved himself a highly versatile, all-round musician,
working in London as a pianist, conductor and orchestrator, but especially as a composer. In 1971 he left
London to live in a watermill in Sussex, and started to forge a personal style of composition – rhythmic,
contrapuntal, and above all melodic. Since then there has been a steady stream of works in many
different forms. The Clarinet Concerto was commissioned by Thea King and first performed by
her at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London in June 1985, with the English Chamber Orchestra
conducted by the composer.

Music by Witold Lutoslawski, M???ty???s Seiber & Howard Blake
Played by the English Chamber Orchestra
With Thea King (clarinet)
Conducted by Andrew Litton & Howard Blake

"Lutoslawski’s Dance Preludes for clarinet and piano were composed in 1954 and the orchestral
version for small orchestra recorded here was made by the composer in 1955. This well-known
and popular piece is a typical product of Lutoslawski’s attitude during the painful Stalinist years
in Poland. He chose to compose folk-inspired music rather than comply with the Socialist Realism’s
dictates. The peak of his output of that period is the magnificent Concerto for Orchestra of 1954.
In any version, Dance Preludes is a delightful, folksy piece that has since become highly popular,
and quite deservedly so.

The music of Seiber is still too little-known nowadays although some of his late major works
were recorded by Decca many years ago during the LP era (some of these recordings have been
re-issued on Continuum). The Concertino for Clarinet and String Orchestra is the only one so
far that has been recorded more than once. (Another recording was issued by RCA in 1977.)
Originally written as a clarinet quintet in 1928, it was arranged for string orchestra in 1951. It
is also a folk-inspired piece that brings Kodaly or Lajtha rather than Bart???k to mind. It is a hugely
enjoyable piece, and it is good to have this fine performance available again.

Howard Blake is a versatile composer who may be better known for his marvellous film scores
The Snowman and Granpa in which his gifts for colourful orchestration and memorable tunes
are clearly evident. He nevertheless also composed a good deal of concert works including the
superb choral-orchestral Benedictus and several concertos. Though the intent is overtly more
serious, the music of the Clarinet Concerto of 1984 is still memorably tuneful, superbly scored
and quite attractive. The Clarinet Concerto is in every respect a fine work that deserves wider
currency, and Thea King’s advocacy should earn this fine piece many new friends, hopefully
among clarinettists.

An attractive programme, superbly performed and recorded. If you did not get it when it was
first released, you now have no reason to ignore it, especially at the customer-friendly
bargain price of the Helios re-issues."
Musicweb International

Source: Hyperion CD (my rip!)
Formats: FLAC, DDD Stereo, mp3(320)
File Sizes: 219 MB / 107 MB (incl. liner notes)

Download Link: https://mega.co.nz/#!nkBHWBDT!SwVY5lEzJEqRKOjkSkebzmEkC1d9w_k9yPtBBzI hUwM
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You can get large artwork for your CD here: CD Minoru Miki – Selected Works VII – Pipa Concerto (1999) – 320kbps & ISO-Image (http://www.hdvietnam.com/diendan/120-noi-dung-cho-phuc-hoi-link/105138-cd-minoru-miki-selected-works-vii.html)

James MacMillan (*1959) has produced a spate of works in various genres — symphonic,
concerto, opera, theater, sacred, choral, and much else. He has achieved great success with a
number of them, placing him easily among the leading Scottish composers from the late twentieth
and early twenty first centuries. 1990 was a watershed time for MacMillan: that year his theatrical
piece B???squeda (1988) was introduced at the Edinburgh International Festival, and his
orchestral work The Confession of Isobel Gowdie was premiered at a Proms concert, both events
catapulting him to national as well as international notice. MacMillan’s style incorporates some
modernist characteristics (leftovers from his youth), but on the whole his music, with its use of
Scottish folk music; his quite approachable melodic and rhythmic invention; and his
gift for imaginative and colorful scoring place his style well within the accessible range.

The composer on Veni, Veni, Emmanuel: "It’s a concerto for percussion and orchestra in
one continuous movement and lasts about 25 minutes. Dedicated to my parents, it is based on the
Advent plainsong of the same name and was started on the 1st Sunday of Advent 1991 and
completed on Easter Sunday 1992. These two liturgical dates are important as will be explained later.
The piece can be discussed in two ways. On one level it is a purely abstract work in which all the
musical material is drawn from the 15th century French Advent plainchant. On another level it is
a musical exploration of the theology behind the Advent message.

Soloist and orchestra converse throughout as two equal partners and a wide range of percussion
instruments are used, covering tuned, untuned, skin, metal and wood sounds. Much of the music
is fast and, although seamless, can be divided into a five-sectioned arch."

Music Composed by James MacMillan
Played by the Ulster Orchestra
With Colin Currie (percussion)
Conducted by Takuo Yuasa

With Colin Currie, the young prize winning percussionist, matching his compatriot predecessor, Evelyn Glennie,
in flair and panache, the Naxos version of the brilliant and dramatic percussion concerto, Veni, Veni, Emmanuel,
cannot be recommended too highly. Takuo Yuasa is a strong and persuasive conductor, not just in Veni, veni,
Emmanuel, but in the earlier work, Tryst, an extended and colourful fantasy in five sections built on a setting
of a Scottish song. Recorded in the helpful acoustic of the Ulster Hall, Belfast, the sound is exceptionally full
and vivid, matching the excellent playing of the orchestra.
Penguin Classical Guide (****)

Source: Naxos CD (my rip!)
Formats: FLAC, DDD Stereo, mp3(320)
File Sizes: 259 MB / 126 MB (incl. booklet)

Download Link: https://mega.co.nz/#!K0g1VZDQ!Gpwmamz4LqTlsJ8kWe5v5DVw06cASp1N_EbU5H6 PtHs
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Edit: As I can’t resolve the issues with the Berserking recording at the moment, I’ve opted to post the
same composer’s percussion concerto Veni, Veni Emmanuel instead. It’s uploading in FLAC right now and should be
available within one hour.

Edit: As I can’t resolve the issues with the Berserking recording at the moment, I’ve opted to post the
same composer’s percussion concerto Veni, Veni Emmanuel instead. It’s uploading in FLAC right now and should be
available within one hour.

Well that’s a darned shame, I was really looking forward to that one. Oh well, MacMillan deserves something on this list, might as well be one of his most famous works. A continued thanks for this gem of a thread!

Born in Brooklyn, New York, where she still makes her home, Deborah Drattell (*1956) trained as a violinist
before turning to composition at age nineteen. She quickly made up for this relatively late start. ‘It became a passion,’
Drattell said of her early experience of writing music. ‘Once I started, I couldn’t stop.’

Early in her career, Drattell concentrated on instrumental music. Her orchestral compositions have been performed
by the New York Philharmonic, the Orchestra of St Luke’s, the Seattle Symphony and other major American orchestras.
Since the turn of the millennium, the composer has devoted herself principally to opera, creating several well-regarded
works for the theatre. These include Nicholas and Alexandra—written expressly for Pl???cido Domingo, who performed
the title r???le in its premi???re production—and two collaborations with the lauded American playwright Wendy
Wasserstein as librettist.

The music of Deborah Drattell is saturated in vivid colour and neo-Romantic vitality, and this selection reflects
both its warmth and also its dynamism. In Sorrow is not Melancholy gentleness co-exists with pervasive melancholy
and tenser sonorities, whereas the Clarinet Concerto is a very different work, embracing dance patterns that pulsate
with excitement. Both Lilith and The Fire Within share Middle Eastern influences. The first is a sensual, sinuous
evocation of ‘the female demon’ whilst the latter is imbued with drones, drums and tambourine, all exotically
spiced. Syzygy brilliantly explores nature in all its elemental power.

Music Composed by Deborah Drattell
Played by the Seattle Symphony
With David Shifrin (clarinet) & Scott Goff (flute)
Conducted by Gerard Schwarz

"Sorrow is Not Melancholy…is an eloquent threnody for strings, packing a great deal
of mournful emotion into its 11 minutes before its final sigh. A piquant contrast is Fire Dances
…full of haunting Eastern colors…Drattell wrote this one-movement work…for David Shifrin, who
plays it here with uninhibited passion. The orchestra has a great deal to say as well, and the
Seattle Symphony under Gerard Schwarz…comes through splendidly…

A more sinister note is struck in both Lilith, a two-movement portrait of the mythical vampire
seductress, and The Fire Within, a concertante piece for flute and orchestra played with
intensity by Scott Goff…the lyrical sections have an Eastern sensuousness…This is raw,
compelling music…"
American Music Guide

Source: Delos CD (my rip!)
Formats: FLAC, DDD Stereo, mp3(320)
File Sizes: 248 MB / 142 MB (incl. booklet of the Naxos re-release!)

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Best known for his "Mission: Impossible" theme song, Lalo Schifrin is an Argentinean-born composer,
arranger, pianist, and conductor, whose jazz and classical training earned him tremendous success as a
soundtrack composer. Born Boris Claudio Schifrin in Buenos Aires on June 21, 1932, his father was a
symphonic violinist, and he began playing piano at age six. He enrolled in the Paris Conservatoire in 1952,
hitting the jazz scene by night. After returning to Buenos Aires, Schifrin formed a 16-piece jazz orchestra,
which helped him meet Dizzy Gillespie in 1956. Schifrin offered to write Gillespie an extended suite,
completing the five-movement Gillespiana in 1958; the same year, he became an arranger for Xavier Cugat.
In 1960, he moved to New York City and joined Gillespie’s quintet, which recorded "Gillespiana" to much
general acclaim. Schifrin became Gillespie’s musical director until 1962, contributing another suite in
"The New Continent"; he subsequently departed to concentrate on his writing. He also recorded as
a leader, most often in Latin jazz and bossa nova settings, and accepted his first film-scoring assignment
in 1963 (for Rhino!). Schifrin moved to Hollywood late that year, scoring major successes with his
indelible themes to Mission: Impossible and Mannix. Over the next decade, Schifrin would score films
like The Cincinnati Kid, Bullitt, Cool Hand Luke, Dirty Harry, and Enter the Dragon. As a jazzer, he
wrote the well-received "Jazz Mass" suite in 1965, and delved into stylish jazz-funk with 1975’s CTI
album Black Widow. Schifrin continued his film work all the way through the ’90s; during that decade,
he recorded a series of orchestral jazz albums called Jazz Meets the Symphony, and became the
principal arranger for the Three Tenors, which complemented his now-dominant interest in composing
classical music.

The Guitar Concerto, composed for leading virtuoso Angel Romero, uses some of the music
Schifrin wrote for the Richard Lester swashbuckler The Four Musketeers (sequel to the superior
The Three Musketeers, which was scored by Michel Legrand). Like the Concierto Caribeno for
flute and orchestra, it is neo-romantic in style, while the short suite Tr???picos is more modern.

Music Composed and Conducted by Lalo Schifrin
Played by the London Symphony Orchestra
With Juan Carlos Laguna (guitar), Marisa Canales (flute)

"Lalo Schifrin, when presented with the action scenes & blank spaces in the Mission:Impossible
dialogue said, "I have some ideas…" Here are a few more ideas, and they are worth listening
to. A profile for someone who should purchase this album: If you liked listening to Andres
Segovia perform not just solo but with an orchestra, or you enjoy any of the "less accessible"
of Aaron Copland’s works, or you listened to all the "other music" (i.e. not just the main theme)
in the Mission:Impossible (TV) soundtrack, then you must listen to this album. The confluence
of latin, jazz, a tiny bit of twelve-tone, and concerto form is just great. I often fall asleep
during the usual concerti for piano and orchestra; this held my attention. Maybe I’m just a
philistine who can’t appreciate "real" classical music, and need it "John-Williams’ed-up". On
a scale from "profound" to Claude Bolling [LOL!], this is somewhere in the middle: definitely
worthwhile, and far more interesting than just "something to play while the credits roll."
Amazon Reviewer

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File Sizes: 207 MB / 146 MB

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BTW: I would be very happy if someone could post
the original recording of the guitar concerto!

Ukranian-born Sergey Zhukov’s (*1951) profound and powerful music is here
revealed in the premiere recordings of two works for piano trio and orchestra.

Concerto Mystery was commissioned by The Bekova Sisters, the performers requiring a work which
could share a programme with Beethoven’s Triple Concerto. Immediately after this, and again at
the Bekovas’ request, he wrote his Concerto Grosso for a trio of soloists and orchestra, employing
material from his own Partita for unaccompanied violin.

The concept of the mystery-play accounts for the original forces required to play Concerto Mystery:
besides the main (principale) trio of soloists, there is an alternative (contra) trio whose players are seated
at the edges and at the back of the platform. This plan physically suggests the coming together within
the mystery-play of the participants with their doubles, the latter reflecting the dark aspects of each
individual’s nature.

The chief purport of the action is the victory over the negative aspects of one’s soul. Whilst the
composer stresses that this is’pure’ music which develops according to its own internal laws, one can
detect certain points of significance: the appearance of a theme by Beethoven in C major early on, the
octave descent of the solo instruments into the dark, rumbling orchestral depths, the recurrent
interruption of an important chorale theme by the chaotic sounds of Death and Darkness and, finally,
the breaking away from the principale solo instruments at the ecstatic climax to the work, as the
contra soloists are literally forced out of their respective registers.

In Concerto Grosso, the initials of the soloists (E, A and B) acquire musical significance. Here,
there is no unified trio of soloists but, rather, a piano and string duet which are set in opposition
to one another.

Music Composed by Sergey Zhukov
Played by the Residentie Orchestra The Hague
With the Bekova Sisters
Conducted by George Pehlivanian

"The stimulus to write the Concerto Mystery came in the form of a commission from the Bekova Sisters.
The performers wanted to fill out their repertoire with a work which could share a concert program
with Beethoven’s Triple Concerto, and which, being thematically linked to it, could be interpreted
as the second part of a unique diptych. Zhukov reacted enthusiastically to this idea, since the
technique of immersing a classical theme in a stylistically different context seemed to him to
be analogous to the ritual of a mystery-play in which someone undergoes a series of trials in order
to become spiritually stronger and to be resurrected to a new life. This accounts for the original
forces required to play the work: besides the main (principale) trio of soloists, there is also an
alternative trio {contra), whose players are seated at the edges and at the back of the platform.
Setting the players against one another in this way symbolizes the coming together of the
participants of the mystery-play with their doubles who personify the dark aspects of our nature.
Victory over one’s double, in effect, over oneself, over the negative aspects of one’s own soul, is
the chief purport of the action. At the same time, the composer stresses that, whilst taking this
programmatic idea as his starting point in the overall plan, he wrote the work just as his
spontaneous musical feelings dictated. This is ‘pure’ music which develops according to its own
internal laws, and is not the illustration of a mystery-play."

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This is a colorful and varied collection of British music for recorder and (small) orchestra

Franz Reizenstein’s Partita Op.13b was originally written for recorder and piano;
but the composer arranged it later for string trio. However, it seems that he envisaged a version
for string orchestra, since there exist parts for second violin and double bass as well as a copy
of the score with hand-written annotations to adapt the accompaniment for full string orchestra.
This short Neo-classical work clearly bears the imprint of Reizenstein’s teacher, Hindemith, and
none the worse for that, for this is a delightful work of great charm.

There was a time when Gordon Crosse’s music was well served in terms of commercial
recordings, some of which are now available again on Lyrita. Then, very little of him was heard
for many years, although an odd piece might pop-up again from time to time. Watermusic,
dedicated to John Turner as are many of the other works in this selection, was also originally
written for recorder and piano and arranged later for strings. It is in three short movements
(Prelude, Barcarolle and Hornpipe) that never outstay their welcome.

It is always good to be able to hear some recent piece by Arthur Butterworth whose
beautifully crafted music is still unjustly overlooked. A recording of all six of his symphonies is
a priority. His short R???verie Op.113a is based on the tune "Farewell Manchester", a
popular ballad at the time of Bonnie Prince Charlie’s brief sojourn in Manchester. Originally
written for recorder and piano, this very fine miniature was later scored for recorder,
harp and strings.

Antony Hopkins’ (not the actor) delightful Suite has also been recorded by
Ross Winters and Andrew Ball. John Turner suggested an orchestration of the work
for strings and harp; but the composer did not feel able to prepare the full score that
was actually notated by John Turner under the composer’s supervision.

Francis Jackson may be primarily known as an organist and a composer of finely crafted
choral works; but here is Moonrise, a short impression for recorder and piano, composed in
1999 and arranged for string orchestra some time later. A beautifully atmospheric miniature.

Another pupil of Hindemith, the late Arnold Cooke enjoyed a long and prolific creative life.
His huge and varied output includes works in almost every genre. Though indebted to Hindemith,
Cooke’s music nevertheless managed to be individual, as the lovely Divertimento for recorder
and strings heard here clearly shows. This lovely work is in three short and neatly contrasted
movements, the whole displaying Cooke’s lighter vein in a most convincing way.

Michael Hurd’s Three-Piece Suite turned out to be his final work, completed in
2004. It is another charming set of three lighthearted miniatures.

Anthony Hedges is a versatile composer equally at ease with ‘serious’ concert music as
well as with ‘lighter’ music, both displaying this composer’s remarkable craftsmanship. As many
of the other works here, Three Miniatures were composed for recorder and piano.
The composer was reluctant to transcribe it for string orchestra, but eventually took up
the challenge. The result is another delightful piece in three colourful and neatly
characterised movements.

The last work here – and the most substantial – is Elis Pehkonen’s Concerto
“Over the Water”. The composer describes it as “a programmatic piece with Jacobite
overtones”, because it “traces the history of the 45 from Bonnie Prince Charlie’s arrival at
Moidart to the catastrophic battle of Culloden”. It is thus coincidentally linked to Butterworth’s
R???verie. The music does not set out to be descriptive ??? la Richard Strauss, but has
many fine moments of atmospheric writing. The very opening of the first movement "Gathering"
is a case in point. It reminded me of the first time I drove through Glencoe on a wet and misty
day! The second movement "Advance/Retreat" is more overtly descriptive, whereas the final
movement "Over the Water" is an epilogue based on Bonnie Prince Charlie’s tune, on which
much of the music is actually founded in one way or another. It is a most welcome find.

Music by Franz Reizenstein, Gordon Crosse, Arthur Butterworth, Antony Hopkins
And Francis Jackson, Michael Hurd, Anthony Hedges, Arnold Cooke & Elis Pehkonen
Played by the Manchester Camerata
With John Turner (recorder)
Conducted by Philip Mackenzie

"John Turner was Senior Scholar in Law at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge before pursuing
a legal career, acting for many distinguished musicians and musical organisations, alongside
his many musical activities. These included numerous appearances with David Munrow’s pioneering
Early Music Consort of London. He now devotes his time to playing, writing, reviewing, publishing,
composing and "generally energising". He has played and broadcast as recorder soloist with the
Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, the Academy of Ancient Music, the English Chamber Orchestra
and the English Baroque Soloists, amongst other leading chamber orchestras. His recordings include
no less that five sets of the Brandenburg Concertos, but lately he has concentrated on contemporary
music – recent CDs include music of Alan Rawsthorne, Richard Arnell, David Lumsdaine, Anthony
Gilbert and George Nicholson.

In the last years of the 20th century he played in Germany, Switzerland, Poland, France, New Zealand
and the USA, and given several recitals on BBC Radio 3 with pianist Peter Lawson. In all he has
given first performances of some 300 works for the recorder, many of which have now entered
the standard repertoire. His own recorder compositions are regularly set for festivals
and examinations."

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File Sizes: 362 MB / 177 MB

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American composer, conductor, and educator Lukas Foss (1922-2009) contributed profoundly to the
circulation and appreciation of music of the twentieth century. He began his musical studies in
Berlin, where he studied piano and theory with Julius Goldstein. Goldstein introduced Foss to
the music of Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven, which had a profound effect on Foss’s musical
development. In 1933, Foss went to Paris where he studied piano with Lazare L???vy as well
as composition with No???l Gallon, orchestration with Felix Wolfes, and flute with Louis Moyse.
Foss remained in Paris until 1937, when he moved with his family to the United States, continuing
his musical instruction at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. In addition, Foss studied
conducting with Koussevitzky during the summers from 1939 to 1943 at the Berkshire Music
Center. He also studied composition with Paul Hindemith as a special student at Yale from 1939 to 1940.

The compositions of Lukas Foss illustrate two main periods in his artistic development, separated by
a middle, avant-garde phase. The works of his first period are predominantly neo-classic in style,
and reflect his love of Bach and Stravinsky. In the transitional period he fused elements of controlled
improvisation and chance operations with 12-tone, and serialist techniques.

The two Piano Concertos recorded here pose no big challenges, them being a mix of Prokofiev,
Stravinsky, Bart???k – with more than a dash of Americana thrown into the mix. Also, there are
two recordings of Foss’ moving Elegy for Anne Frank (one with narration, one without).

Music Composed by Lukas Foss
Played by the Pacific Symphony Orchestra
With Jon Nakamatsu & Jakov Kasman (piano)
And Eliza Foss (narrator)
Conducted by Carl St. Clair

"This collection of Lukas Foss’ piano music is singular not only for its two world premiers —
"Elegy for Anne Frank," with Foss himself performing on piano with a recitation by his
daughter Eliza, and his first "Concerto for Piano and Orchestra" from 1943 — but also for
the radical reinterpretations of the "Elegy" without narration and Yakov Kasman’s virtuoso
performance of the second concerto. Foss is, among Americans, the great link between
Aaron Copland, traditional classical music, and the findings of the New York avant-garde in
the ’50s and ’60s. As displayed here, the two concertos, written six years apart, reflect Foss’
study with Paul Hindemith. Originally composed at the age of 17 for clarinet and orchestra
(a few measures of it remain untouched in the second movement), the first concerto
creates a new use for Hindemith’s chromatic tonality by elongating its meter and overturning
its rhythmic considerations to deepen colors and textures. The harmonic equations are,
nearly 60 years later, staggering. The first movement, with its sprightly tempo, is followed
with a deeply romantic one (where the clarinet makes its precisely stated yet brief appearance
as a soo instrument). And the third movement is one of Hungarian folk song. In all three
movements, however, it is Jon Nakamatsu’s piano that guides an orchestral flow through
timbral nuance and polytonal transformation. "Concerto No. 2," which was began in 1949
and later revised in 1952, recalls both Beethoven and Stravinsky’s orchestral considerations,
particularly in the first movement, and becomes in its pianistic efforts completely virtuosi
in its second and third movements. It’s a very grandiose piece and has always been performed
as such. Here, though, conductor St. Clair loosens his control and allows for the subtle
anarchy in the counterpoint between piano and orchestra to make its presence felt. Of the
two versions of "Elegy for Anne Frank," it’s Foss’ own performance that raises the curtain
here on his feeling for his compositional method. In particular, it is highlighted by his use of
staggered arpeggios. The elegant, nuanced reading of the text by his daughter deepens
the emotional value of the work. As she reads from the diary — the unexpurgated one —
she becomes not only the character but also Foss’ muse. The manner in which he was
moved comes through first in a melancholy lilt by violins that give way to a childlike
nursery rhyme on a piano, plucked out nostalgically as if in memory of what was. As the
piano plays, its tonality deepens and moves modally toward the ominous until the
drumbeats come, signifying the end of childhood, and then the Nazi marching hymn
brings with it all the terror of that apocalypse. And just as the march itself becomes
unbearable, there is a sudden, very pronounced silence. When the childlike piano
melody returns, we know what has taken place, whose life has passed into history.
This is one of the most successful Foss volumes to date, not only because of the
selection of its material, its wonderful crystalline sound, or even of its tremendous
performances, but for the manner in which they fit together to give a portrait of
the composer’s humanity and musical evolution."
All Music

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Thank you so much for introducing me to new composers

British-Australian composer Arthur Benjamin (1893-1960) studied at the RCM and after serving in the infantry
and the air force in WWI, joined the staff of the RCM in 1926. His early compositions were influenced by Gershwin,
although such an influence is difficult to find upon hearing his work. An accomplished pianist, his ability on the
instrument also played an important role in his work. A later and more productive influence was that of Latin
American music. One of his most popular pieces and the one that gained him international recognition is the
Jamaican Rumba (1938). The majority of his work is light and jovial in character. Benjamin also wrote a
number of film scores, the most significant of which is The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934), which
incorporated the miniature cantata "The Storm Clouds", which was used again (but not re-orchestrated, as is
often claimed) by Bernard Herrmann in his work for the 1956 remake. Other Benjamin scores include
An Ideal Husband (1947) and Fire Down Below (1958).

Remembered mostly for his light music, Arthur Benjamin did write a number of "serious" concert works, of
which the quasi-double concerto for violin and viola, the Romantic Fantasy, is certainly the best-known
and most often recorded (including a version with Jascha Heifetz). It features memorable melodies, skillfully
developed and set with orchestra. Almost no attention has so far been lavished on the rather more ambitious
Violin Concerto and his Elegy, Waltz and Toccata – a Viola Concerto in all but the name.

Music Composed by Arthur Benjamin
Played by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra
With Lorraine McAslan (violin) & Sarah-Jane Bradley (viola)
Conducted by John Gibbons

"British composer Arthur Benjamin is best known for a light piece called Jamaican Rhumba that
became a hit for Canadian-American orchestra leader Percy Faith, among others. Some of
his full-scale orchestral music, notably the Romantic Fantasy for violin, viola, and orchestra heard
here, is performed from time to time in Britain. But the other two works here receive their first
recordings. The basic vocabulary is close to that of Arnold Bax, but there is no extramusical content.
There doesn’t seem to be a strong thread connecting the violin concerto, the Romantic Fantasy,
and the Elegy, Waltz, and Toccata for viola and orchestra, other than their three-movement structure
and basic concerto configuration. The Violin Concerto is almost overflowing with motivic details in its
first-movement Rhapsody, and it poses large technical challenges that are surmounted by violinist
Lorraine McAslan. The Romantic Fantasy is a more melodic, less dissonant piece throughout, and
the Elegy, Waltz, and Toccata is a dark work inspired by not only the World War II period when
it was written, but by the composer’s own experiences in the previous world war. Perhaps this
lack of an overarching vision is what has caused Benjamin’s neglect, but the ambition and
seriousness of purpose in the two premieres here is noteworthy, and each piece deserves to
be heard more often. McAslan, violist Sarah-Jane Bradley, and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra
under John Gibbons achieve impressive results in music for which they had very few models to
follow. Recommended for lovers of British music of the 20th century."
All Music

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Fr???d???ric Devreese was born on 2 June 1929 in Amsterdam to a very music family. His mother
played the violin, as did his father Godfried, who was also a well-known composer and conductor.
Devreese took his first lessons in harmony from his father at the conservatory in Mechelen. He later
studied at the Brussels conservatory with Marcel Poot (composition) and Ren??? Defossez (orchestral
conducting). In 1949 he won the composition prize at the international piano competition in Oostende
with his first piano concerto, which as a result became the compulsory work in that competition.
This led to national attention and grants to study in Rome (composition with Ildebrando Pizzetti and
conducting with Previtali) and Vienna (conducting with Hans Swarowski). Devreese rounded off
these studies in 1956, returning to Belgium. In 1958 he made television programmes for the then
BRT (state broadcaster), where he would later become a director and producer. He also worked for
three years at the BRT producing soundtracks, ideal training for his later work as a composer
of film music.

Fr???d???ric Devreese has always taken great interest in young musicians, whom he has sought to
stimulate and promote though such initiatives as Tenuto (Belgian national competition for talented
musicians under 25), Jong Tenuto (for musicians under 17) and Procemus (centre for promotion
and production of young talent). He was also the chief conductor of the Belgian Youth Orchestra
and director of the music academy in Overijse. Devreese has won a number of prizes with his work,
including the Prix Italia (1963) for his opera Willem van Saefthinghe written for the BRT, the
Georges Delerue Award (1994) for La Partie d’Echecs, and the Joseph Plateau Prize (1988 and 1990)
for the film music to L’Oeuvre au Noir and Het Sacrement respectively.

Music Composed and Conducted by Fr???d???ric Devreese
Played by the Belgian Radio and Television Philharmonic Orchestra
With Daniel Blumenthal (piano)

"Until recently, I had never even heard of this Belgian composer (1929- ), probably because
of his nationality. Belgium is not a high-profile international stop like the U.S., England, France,
Italy, Germany, or Austria. I consider him a major discovery, although I’ve found only two disks
of his music – one of film scores, the other these piano concerti. He obviously has a much
larger catalogue, which I can’t wait to hear.

The idiom mixes several influences – Bart???k, Rachmaninoff, even jazz – and comes up with
something individual. Devreese has abstracted all these influences into something his own. Despite
the distinctly 20th-century language, the music is solidly in the great Romantic tradition. If you
like the Rachmaninoff concerti, you will probably like Devreese.

The Gershwin concerto – particularly the lyric sections – lurks in the background of the second
piano concerto, without making us feel we’ve gotten a knock-off. The first movement begins with
a Bart???kian ostinato. Percussive sections alternate with Romantic singing. The second movement
sings a highly abstract blues or slow gospel. Here, the feeling comes close to Gershwin or even
Ellington. The third movement has all the energy of a jam session, without literal quotation.

The third concerto’s first movement plays sophisticated, allusive games with the "blue" third and
seventh of jazz. Again, this is not a jazz concerto. Devreese has taken the jazz element into an
idiom that reminds slightly of Honegger and Jolivet. His music, however, is much more focused and
direct than that of either of the latter. The second movement sings intently and rises to great
Romantic climaxes. The third movement, with its rat-a-tat repeated notes, shows off jazz most
prominently and calls to mind the finale to the Gershwin concerto, though Devreese’s language
is distinctly his own.

"Bart???k meets jazz" describes the fourth concerto pretty well, as does "From tiny acorns, mighty
oaks." The work grows out of one cell, which Devreese treats to continuous variation throughout
most of the piece. The last movement ends in a fiery ball of imitative counterpoint, but, overall,
the concerto’s a reticent work. Blumenthal manages to make a powerful impression nonetheless,
all the while putting his considerable technique and moxie at the service of the composer.

Daniel Blumenthal – like the great Leon Fleisher, a winner of the Queen Elizabeth of the Belgians
Competition – has the finest technique of any of the younger pianists (and quite a few of the
older ones), as well as the brains and vitality to negotiate the work’s considerable interpretive
demands. He arrests our attention from the opening bars. His playing rings in the percussive
sections and flows powerfully in the lyric ones. By God, he swings. The orchestra catches his
enthusiasm. In the bad old days, one used to find obscure work like this terribly recorded. On
the one hand, such treatment focused attention on the work itself wonderfully well. On the other,
one found oneself wondering how a first-class treatment would sound. Probably like this. I haven’t
gotten this excited about a pianist since I heard the young Van Cliburn. They both share a bright,
ringing tone and great lyric feeling. However, to me Blumenthal has, even at this early stage,
much greater assurance than Cliburn at a comparable point. Conductor and orchestra cut
through the works’ knots like Alexander’s sword. The recorded sound is thoroughly professional,
if not positively exciting in its own right."
Classical Net

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Born on October 28th 1938, English composer Howard Blake grew up in Sussex, from the age of
11 singing lead roles as a boy soprano and at 18 winning the Hastings Festival Scholarship to The Royal
Academy of Music where he studied piano with Harold Craxton and composition with Howard Ferguson.

Over an intensely active career he has written numerous film scores, including ‘The Duellists’ with
Ridley Scott which gained the Special Jury Award at the Cannes Festival, ‘A Month in the Country’ with
Kenneth Branagh and Colin Firth which gained him the British Film Institute Anthony Asquith Award for
musical excellence, and ‘The Snowman’, which was nominated for an Oscar after its first screening and
has won many other prizes internationally. His famous song ‘Walking in the Air’, for which he also wrote
the lyrics, was the chart success that launched Aled Jones in 1985, whilst the concert version for
narrator and orchestra is performed world-wide as is the full-length ballet, with 15 consecutive seasons
for Sadler’s Wells. Howard has composed many concert works, including a Piano Concerto commissioned
by The Philharmonia Orchestra for the 30th birthday of Princess Diana in which he also featured as
soloist: a Violin Concerto to celebrate the centenary of the City of Leeds; a cantata to celebrate
the 50th Anniversary of the United Nations Organization, performed in the presence of the
Royal Family; and the large-scale choral/orchestral work ‘Benedictus’, first championed by
Sir David Willcocks, Robert Tear and the Bach Choir, given its London premiere in Westminster
Cathedral with Cardinal Hume as narrator and widely performed since.

Also included here are two less ambitious but not less polished works, the Diversions for
Cello and Orchestra, and the Toccata for Orchestra.

Music Composed by Howard Blake
With The Philharmonia Orchestra
With Howard Blake (piano) & Robert Cohen (cello)
Conducted by Sir David Willcocks & Howard Blake

"For a composer with such an impressive body of work as Howard Blake it is scandalous that he
should be known by only a few pieces – the most famous being his score for the animated film The
Snowman. His music is readily approachable, quite often has a smile on its face (a characteristic of the
composer himself), and his catalogue is frighteningly diverse, ranging from music for The Avengers ("A
glass of champagne, Mrs Peel?") to scores for some 60 films, including Ridley Scott’s The Duellists (available
on Airstrip One AOD HB 002), and far too much concert music to begin listing here. This year he turns 70
and shows no signs of slowing down, having recently completed a stunning String Quartet, named
Spieltrieb, and started work on his 1st Symphony!

This is a timely re–issue, to coincide with his birthday on 28 October, featuring three concertos, one
each for piano, cello and orchestra. The Piano Concerto was commissioned by the Philharmonia Orchestra
to celebrate the 30th birthday of Princess Diana, who was the orchestra’s patron. Blake was promised
a pianist of the calibre of Kissin as soloist so he wrote a true virtuoso work only to be told, as he reached
the end of the composition that, as no–one was available, he would have to play it himself. He rose to
the challenge, despite having never played a Piano Concerto in his life, and gave the premi???re in the
Royal Festival Hall, in London, shortly after making this recording.

In the usual three movements, and, as with his Violin Concerto (available on ASV CDDCA 905), the first
movement takes up the bulk of the playing time, it is a joyous piece, starting with the simplest and
most innocent of ideas – and what an idea it is, pregnant with possibilities – which returns in the finale
and is transformed at first into a musical box idea, then a fugue and finally a rhumba! These two fast
movements – Blake is a master at writing sustained fast music, which is none too easy and is seldom
encountered in so much music of today – enclose a tender slow movement which truly has an heart of
gold. The piano writing is of the most virtuoso kind, the orchestration is colourful and always interesting –
just listen to the wonderful writing for brass – especially the horns – at the beginning of the recapitulation
of the first movement. It sends shivers down my spine every time I hear it – which is often. Nobody
can afford to miss this, one of the truly memorable Piano Concertos of the last century for it is fine stuff
indeed. I will stick my neck out and say that, for me, it is the most sheerly joyous Piano Concerto since
Ravel’s in G.

Blake talked quite extensively about the genesis of the work when I interviewed him recently.

The Diversions is a more serious and complicated work. Originally written for cello and piano, in 1973, it
was a meeting with the great French cellist Maurice Gendron, eleven years later, which brought about
a full scale concerto piece and the orchestration was completed in 1985. In eight movements, some
very short, the work shows the cello off to great advantage in richly romantic music, the soloist quite
often singing its heart out in wide ranging melodies or showing off its agility with rapid passage work.
There’s an extended Aria (movement 5), a wonderfully Gallic Serenade (movement 6) and the work ends
with a riotous finale. The cello repertoire still isn’t as big as it should be, given the amount of fine players
around, and this is a valuable addition to the catalogue. Cohen is one of this country’s best players and
he is grossly under represented on disk so it’s good to have this example of his work. He plays with
total conviction, as if he’s been playing the work all his life, and it’s a thrilling performance, brilliantly
accompanied by the Philharmonia.

To end, the orchestra itself comes under the spotlight. First the woodwind, with gloriously gamboling
bassoons, entertain us, soon joined by the horns. Gradually all the various instruments join in until the
full orchestra has entered the game. This, however, is no display piece in the manner of Young Person’s
Guide or the Bart???k Concerto for Orchestra. The tempo is fairly relaxed, there’s much humour – Blake is a
very funny man and I can hear him now doing impressions or telling stories of the people he has known
and worked with – and, in a way, it’s as much a portrait of the composer as it is a work celebrating
the orchestra.

This disk must not be missed on any account for it contains music by a much under-rated composer
whose voice is clear and well focused, who can communicate with his audience, can write fluently and
with great confidence for the full orchestra and, best of all, knows how to entertain. The performances
are magnificent, the sound gloriously full and rich and the notes from the original (1991) issue by the
much missed Christopher Palmer, who also produced the disk, although out of date in some respects,
are a lesson in how to write clearly and without fuss about music.

Beg, steal or borrow the money to buy this disk, for, once heard, you’ll not want to be without this
marvellous music."
Musicweb

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File Sizes: 278 MB / 157 MB

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Contemporary classical Chinese composition often employs the form of a suite of
character pieces to illustrate a certain subject or historical incident/character – thus,
the Suona Concerto "Lady Hua Mulan" is in fact a medley of traditional Henan
opera tunes, re-arranged as a character study of the "lady general" (in Chinese mythology,
Mulan is not a perky little prankster but a great general). The peculiar sonorities of the
suona, a kind of squaking Chinese trumpet, are set against an orchestra made up
entirely of traditional instruments.

The remaining works are shorter, picturesque pieces which again show the vitality of
contemporary classical composition in the Chinese manner. Kwan Nai-Chung of
Taiwan is not only a very prolific composer in that genre, but also a busy conductor of
Chinese orchestras in Mainland China, Taiwan and Hong Kong.

Music by Kwan Nai-Chung, Cheng Ning-Chi & Lee Dong-Heng
Played by the Kaohsiung City Chinese Orchestra
With Kwok Chin-Chye (suona)
Conducted by Kwan Nai-Chung

"SUONA (Chinese trumpet or oboe) – The instrument often popular called laba (trumpet), firstly appeared in
the Wei and Jin period (200-420). Yet it has found great favor ever since the Zhengde period (1506-1520)
of the Ming dynasty. Owing to its large volume and strident, penetrating tine quality, the suona is most
appropriate for the ardent and lively style, especially for the imitation of the singing of hundreds of birds.
Experienced Players can control their breath with double lips to produce the characteristic soft tone (called
the tone of xiao) for plaintive or sentimental effect. A smaller high-pitched variety known as haidi (sea flute)
is a fourth higher in range than the common type. In the modern Chinese orchestra the suona has its revised
alto and bass varies with added keys.

The instrument is commonly used in the accompaniment to local theaters or singing and dancing, and also for
solos or ensembles on such occasions as weddings, funerals or other ceremonies and celebrations.
Range: a1-b3 (D key suona)"

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File Sizes: 350 MB / 142 MB

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Petrus Leonardus Leopoldus Benoit was born in Harelbeke, Flanders in 1834. He was taught music at an
early age by his father and the village organist. In 1851 Benoit entered the Brussels Conservatoire, where
he remained till 1855, studying primarily with FJ F???tis. During this period he composed music to many
melodramas, and to the opera Le Village dans les montagnes for the Park Theatre, of which in 1856 he
became the resident conductor. In 1857 he won the Belgian Prix de Rome for his cantata Le Meurtre d’Abel.
The accompanying money grant enabled him to travel through Germany. In the course of his journings he
found time to write a considerable amount of music, as well as an essay called "L’???cole de musique
flamande et son avenir".

F???tis loudly praised his Messe solennelle, which Benoit composed in Brussels on his return from Germany.
In 1861 he visited Paris for the production of his opera Le Roi des Aulnes ("The Erl King"), which, though
accepted by the Th??????tre Lyrique, was never performed. (He also composed a work for piano and orchestra
called Le Roi des Aulnes.) While there he conducted at the Th??????tre des Bouffes Parisiens. Again returning
home, he astonished the musical community with the production in Antwerp of a sacred tetralogy, consisting
of his Cantate de No???l, the above-mentioned Mass, a Te Deum and a Requiem, in which were
embodied to a large extent his theories about Flemish music.

The Piano and Flute Concertos featured here are thematically related and programmatic in nature. Benoit
himself called them "Two Symphonic Tales", although they adhere to the classical three-movement structure
with a first movement in sonata form. The Flute Concerto is particularly lovely.

Music Composed by Peter Benoit
Played by the Royal Flanders Philharmonic Orchestra
With Luc Devos (piano) & Gaby van Riet (flute)
Conducted by Fr???d???ric Devreese

"The performances are good. The sound is also good. This is an excellent introduction to a
little-known but highly worthy Romantic composer."
Fanfare

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Paul Ben-Haim (1897-1984), born Paul Frankenburger in Munich, was an eminent German-born Israeli
composer and teacher, leader of the Eastern Mediterranean school, synthesized Eastern and Western approaches
to music in compositions of exceptionally fine craftsmanship. He studied composition with Friedrich Klose and Walter
Courvoisier and conducting and piano with Berthold Kellermann at the Munich Academy of Arts from 1915 to 1920.
When the Nazis came to power in 1933, the composer emigrated to Palestine and there changed his surname
from Frankenburger to Ben-Haim. He accompanied and arranged music for folk singers, an experience which
brought the influence of Middle Eastern music to bear upon his compositional style. In 1937 he wrote a string
quartet which synthesizes European and Eastern Mediterranean music, and in 1939 he wrote his Variations on
a Palestinian Tune for chamber trio. Although considered neo-classical by some critics and late Romantic
by others, there is no disagreement about the high professional standards of Paul Ben-Haim’s work.

Noam Sheriff (*1935 in Tel Aviv) is an Israeli composer, conductor and arranger. Sheriff is one of I
srael’s most versatile and world renowned musicians. He studied composition in Tel Aviv with Paul Ben-Haim
and in Berlin with Boris Blacher, conducting in Salzburg with Igor Markevitch, and philosophy at the Hebrew
University, Jerusalem. In Noam Sheriff’s music one finds an original solution to the fusion of East and West,
of musical elements from ancient Mediterranean cultures and from the West. Among his most significant
works are the three scale vocal compositions that form a trilogy. Mechaye Hamethim (Revival of the Dead)
which was premiered in Amsterdam by the IPO in 1987, based on the Jewish East-European traditional
music as well as on the ancient oriental Jewish themes of the Samaritans. I upped this work in my "programe
music thread".

Oded Zehavi was born in Jerusalem in 1961. He is well versed in a wide variety of musical styles (pop/rock
arrangements, soundtracks, electronic, chamber and orchestral music) and is renowned for his vocal scores
and textual affinity for classics of Hebrew literature. He obtained a Bachelor’s degree in music from the Jerusalem
Rubin Academy of Music and Dance under composers Andre Hajdu and Marc Kopytman and moved to the United
States in 1986 to begin graduate studies with American composer George Crumb at the University of Pennsylvania.
He also studied with Noam Sheriff. In 1992 Zehavi returned to Israel and served as a senior lecturer at a number
of academic institutions before accepting the position of Associate Professor of Music at Haifa University,
where he founded the Department of Music. He resides in Tel Aviv with his wife and two children.

Music by Paul Ben-Haim, Noam Sheriff & Oded Zehavi
Played by the London Philharmonic Orchestra
With Michael Guttman (violin)
Conducted by David Shallon

"An enterprising triptych, spanning three generations. Born Paul Frankenburger in Munich, Paul Ben Haim
(1895-1984) was an assistant to both Knappertsbusch and Walter before the rise of the Nazis forced him
to relocate to Palestine in 1933. His Violin Concerto (written for Zvi Zeitlin in 1960) is a consummately
crafted, richly communicative outpouring, whose lively, rather Hindemithian outer movements frame a
central Andante affettuoso of rapt beauty. Anyone who has ever responded to Bloch’s masterly Violin
Concerto or Sche/omo should certainly lend it an ear, especially in as committed and sensitive a rendering
as the present one. True, Michael Guttman may not quite match Itzhak Perlman in terms of absolute
technical security, but EMI’s live 1990 Mann auditorium taping now sounds uncomfortably pinched and
lacking in bloom next to Tony Faulkner’s glowingly natural sound picture for ASV.

A pupil of Ben Haim and Boris Blacher, Noam Sheriff (b. 1935) is one of Israel’s most distinguished
pedagogues and composers. Begun in 1983, his Violin Concerto was completed in 1986 and premiered that
same year by dedicatee Michael Guttman. ASV’s excellent annotator Malcolm Miller writes of Sheriff’s
"Modernist synthesis of East and West, in which the rich blend of oriental and Eastern-European Jewish
features combine with the harmonic richness of Berg, Strauss and Stravinsky", a description which
certainly applies to this particular piece. Though it draws strongly on cantorial influences (the finale’s main
idea is, Miller tells us, taken from "a traditional oriental Sephardi setting of the ‘Kol Nidre’ prayer of the
‘Day of Atonement"), the concerto also displays a line sense of proportion and exquisite craft, while
Sheriff’s richly textured, yet luminous scoring offers plenty to beguile the ear. Certainly, the LPO sound
as though they enjoyed the experience.

That just leaves the Violin Concerto by Oded Zehavi (b.1961), commissioned earlier this year by Guttman.
Zehavi studied with George Crumb in the United States and has also served as composerin-residence
to both the Haifa SO and Israel CO. Even more than Sheriff, Zehavi delights in stylistic unpredictability.
So we find that, after the tolling Angst of the opening Andante ma non tanto, the second movement
"Lullaby" acts as a perfect foil, the soloist’s memorably tender and serene A minor cantilena penned
immediately following the birth of Zehavi’s daughter. The work concludes succinctly with a colourful
snapshot of "an oriental wedding with visitors from central Europe" (to quote the composer). Another
terrific performance rounds off an impressive issue."
Gramophone

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This is a colorful collection of French works for saxophone and orchestra,
most of which are not that well known:

Claude Debussy: Rapsodie pour orchestre et saxophone solo
Florent Schmitt: L???gende
Henri Tomasi: Saxophone Concerto
Vincent d’Indy: Choral Vari???
Paule Maurice: Tableaux de Provence

Paule Charlotte Marie Jeanne Maurice (29 September 1910 – 18 August 1967) was a French composer.
Maurice was born in Paris to Raoul Auguste Alexandre Maurice and Marguerite Jeanne Lebrun. Registration lists
at the Conservatoire National Sup???rieur de Musique de Paris report that her father was an office worker and state
only that the two were married.

Her most famous composition is Tableaux de Provence pour saxophone et orchestre written between
1948 and 1955 dedicated to saxophone virtuoso, Marcel Mule. It is most often heard as a piano reduction.
It was premiered on 9 December 1958 by Jean-Marie Londeix with the Orchestre Symphonique Brestois
directed by Maurice’s husband, and fellow composer, Pierre Lantier.

Music by Claude Debussy, Florent Schmitt, Henri Tomasi
And by Vincent d’Indy & Paule Maurice
Played by the London Symphony Orchestra
With Theodore Kerkezos (saxophones)
Conducted by Yuri Simonov

"The saxophone really came into its own with the advent of jazz, although Berlioz
admired it as early as the 1840s. If it has remained somewhat on the periphery of the
classical sphere, the saxophone’s potential for expression and bravura has been exploited
when there have been soloists of virtuosity and persuasive persistence around to help
composers see the advantages of writing for it.

On Theodore Kerkezos’s imaginative CD, all five pieces have connections either with the
French saxophonist Marcel Mule or with the American Elise Boyer Hall – or, in the case of
Florent Schmitt’s L???gende of 1918, both of them: Hall commissioned it but Mule gave the
premiere of the original saxophone version in 1938. Kerkezos is one of the most astounding
players of the day. His artistry inspires contemporary composers to take the saxophone
seriously just as the ones on this disc were motivated in the past. His tone is mellifluous
and rich.

There is a wonderful opalescent, fluid quality to the way he observes both drama and
subtleties of colouring, whether in Debussy’s Rapsodie, Schmitt’s L???gende or Vincent d’Indy’s
Choral vari???. Curiously enough, all three pieces last about 11 minutes, but there is nothing
samey about the music or the performances. Kerkezos, discerningly partnered by the LSO
and Simonov, is haunting, seductive and dazzling in Henri Tomasi’s Concerto of 1949, a work
that betrays distinct sympathies with Ravel, and he brings evocative atmosphere and zest
to the charming musical snapshots in Paule Maurice’s Tableaux de Provence."
Gramophone

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File Sizes: 247 MB / 157 MB (incl. cover, booklet)

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Pianist and composer Michel Camilo was born in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, in 1954.
Fascinated with music since childhood, he composed his first song at the age of five, then studied for 13
years at the National Conservatory. At 16, he became a member of the National Symphony Orchestra.

Seeking to expand his musical horizons, he moved in 1979 to New York, where he continued his studies
at Mannes and Juilliard School of Music. His composition Why Not? was recorded by Paquito D’Rivera as
the title tune for one of his albums, and The Manhattan Transfer won a Grammy Award for their vocal
version in 1983. His first two albums were titled Why Not? and Suntan/In Trio.

Camilo made his Carnegie Hall debut with his trio in 1985. Since then, he has become a prominent figure
performing regularly in the United States, the Caribbean, Japan and Europe. December 1987 marked
his debut as a classical conductor. Camilo’s list of compositions, recordings and other achievements
throughout the ’90s is vast. His composition Caribe was recorded by pianists Katia and Marielle
Labeque, and by the legendary Dizzy Gillespie, in 1991. His Rhapsody for Two Pianos and Orchestra,
commissioned by the Philharmonia Orchestra, premiered a year later at the Royal Festival Hall. In 1993,
Gavin and Billboard magazines picked his Rendezvous as one of the top jazz albums of the year.

If you’re into symphonic jazz you will be having a whale of a time with Michel Camilo’s
Caribbean-inflected compositions, played here by himself.

Music Composed by Michel Camilo
Played by the BBC Symphony Orchestra
With Michel Camino (piano)
Conducted by Leonard Slatkin

"Any fan of Gershwin – especially his Piano Concerto and Cuban Overture – who relishes the colour
and vibrancy of South American music, be it Villa-Lobos or something more ’popular’, should find
themselves well served here. So too anyone who admires virtuoso piano-playing of a high order.
If you need an intro to Camilo go to the last track – Caribe is his signature tune; this one-and-
only-take is ’hot’! Michel Camilo, born in Santo Domingo, begins his three-movement, 30-minute
concerto with a suggestion of the great outdoors; the atmosphere is uniquely American, the
space suggested is rocks, mountains and dusty trails (despite the composer’s marking of
’Religiosamente’). Soloistic concerns are met by elaborate cadenzas, the jazz side of Camilo’s
musical life is established though within a ’classical’ definition of structure. More lyrical expression
belongs touchingly to the American sense of nostalgia. Harmonies and rhythms are individual
and unpredictable, the strains of a laconic nightclub pianist are intimated; it’s all tightly considered.
Wild West belongings are emphasised with the generous melody that blossoms at 7’10”, something
not too far from a ’Western’ film-score; I promise you it’ll float around your mind for hours.
The blaze of pianistic display from 9’19”, which starts the high-energy final sequence, is well
suggested by the orange cover; there’s plenty for the orchestra too. OK, that’s the first
movement! The following ’Andante’ begins with a simple, rather Ravelian tune (think G major
Concerto, slow movement) with some ’blues’, solo decoration and full-throated ’symphony’
statement; muted trumpets add a distinctive voice. The ’Allegro’ finale resides in New York –
punchy, fleet, dynamic – Mr Gershwin’s in town! For the jazz-inspired suite, Camilo exchanges
traditional Italian directions for … ’Tropical Jam’, ’Tango for Ten’, ’In Love’, and ’Journey’. After
the bright and breezy opener – a winner on its own terms with some fabulous playing from
Camilo – comes a tango-allusive set-piece, inventively cross-referenced and contrasted (and
originally written for ten pianos!). ’In Love’ is misty-eyed reflection in the early hours – its
’mood’ derivation instantly recognisable but Camilo personalises it; the last movement’s
excursion is multi-faceted and consistently inventive – again Gershwin looks in, maybe
quoted, (well, he had rhythm too!). I hesitate to say these are definitive performances –
no doubt Camilo will play all this stuff differently next time; it’s a definitive recording
though; in such scores, there’s nobody better than Slatkin to get just the right orchestral
response. I think the best closing word is … enjoy!"
Classicalsource.Com

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Violists need not complain that there’s not enough music for their instrument: Two large-scale,
substantial concertos are featured on this album, one from the British composer Stanley Bate,
the other by William Henry Bell, who – despite being born in Britain – later emigrated
to South Africa. Both are cast in an attractive late/neo-romantic idiom and are a pleasure to
listen to. Neither has been heard since its premiere.

Stanley Bate (1911-1959), the liner notes tell us, was a pupil of Vaughan Williams’. They needn’t
have told us, since from the very first bars of the 1946 Concerto for Viola and Orchestra it
is overwhelmingly obvious whose style Bate is adopting. That’s not entirely a bad thing, since the
piece itself is beautifully crafted and every lover of the older British composer (or Walton) should
lap it up. It’s a wonderful piece – it just doesn’t have RVW’s name-tag on it. Bate’s career stalled
in the 1950s, which eventually drove him to suicide by the end of the decade.

Thirty years earlier, in 1916, William Henry Bell’s Rosa Mystica (Concerto for Viola and Orchestra)
was premiered in Cape Town. It, too, is infused with the spirit of English music, if a bit more
conservative than Bate’s piece. Lyrical and tumultuous episodes alternate, and the concerto is really
very entertaining and beautifully orchestrated. Both works receive splendid performances by
Roger Chase and the BBC Concert Orchestra under Stephen Bell (no relation).

Music by Stanley Bate, William Henry Bell & Ralph Vaughan Williams
Played by the BBC Concert Orchestra
With Roger Chase (viola)
Conducted by Stephen Bell

"Dutton has done it again! With this totally unexpected disc, they have unearthed and, one hopes, revived
the visibility of one of the most shamefully neglected 20th-century English composers, Stanley Bate (1911–1958).
And, with his Viola Concerto, written in the closing years of World War II (1944–46), they are representing
him at the peak of his powers. This writer never thought he would live to see the day when Bate’s music
would be making its recording debut. I heard a BBC air-check of Bate’s Third of his four symphonies in a
wonderful reading conducted by Adrian Boult, and its scale and sweep make it equally worthy of revival.
There are also several concertos for piano and violin; it is amazing how much valuable music Bate was able
to produce within his tragically short life.

This wide-spanned, four-movement Concerto, clocking in at just under 40 minutes, comes close to being a
sinfonia concertante, though the soloist is seldom out of the spotlight. Bate received impeccable training,
first with his beloved master Vaughan Williams, followed by stints with Boulanger in Paris and Hindemith in
Berlin; and, as the result of his peripatetic life style (Australia in the 1930s, New York during the war years,
then back to England for his final decade), his essentially very British idiom was stimulated and invigorated
by an international neo-Classicism nurturing a hardy romantic spirit.

Although the principal note struck by this concerto, premiered by Emmauel Vardi with the NBC Symphony,
is one of grieving lyricism, this elegiac content (except for a very brief Scherzo which seems to belong in
another piece) is enclosed in an almost triumphantly epic framework. From the opening measure as the
viola outlines its deeply expressive and modality-flavored motto theme, we sense we are embarking on a
musical journey of great warmth and weight. The solo instrument, with the orchestra’s steady underlying
support and emphasis, practically never ceases to unspool its sad soliloquy. Perhaps the war’s toll played
a part in Bate’s creative impetus. This is a viola concerto that can stand comparison with the great Walton
and Rubbra counterparts.

Sharing this program with the Bate is an impressive viola concerto by another forgotten Englishman of an
earlier generation, William Henry Bell (1873–1946). In 1912, when he seemed to be on the verge of
reaping the rewards of a growing reputation in his own country, Bell made the fateful decision to
accept a post as director of a college of music in South Africa. Like Edgar Bainton and Eric Chisholm,
after this self-removal from the central currents of English music, Bell was quickly eclipsed. But it was
in this far-flung place that he became well known for establishing a native musical tradition as
conductor, composer, and educator.

This concerto, enigmatically subtitled “Rosa mistica,” and thus bearing an indeterminate spiritual
or even autobiographical significance, was one of Bell’s first compositions completed in his new home.
But, contrary to the opinion expressed in the annotation by the estimable Lewis Foreman, I found
the work intelligent and agreeable enough but lacking in any real individuality. A better example of
Bell’s maturity can be heard on an early marco polo CD of his “South African” Symphony of the 1920s
(one of five), where his gifts as an evocative orchestrator are much more prominent. Otherwise,
this concerto is a rather typical product of its time and place—turn-of-the-century, post-Elgarian
British music of a conservative bent, similar to but not as inspired as early John Ireland or Frank Bridge.

Also on this disc is a brief, unpublished, but lovely little Vaughan Williams piece, a Romance of uncertain
date, but probably written in the 1920s or 1930s as an encore for the great violist Lionel Tertis.
Soloist Roger Chase has carefully orchestrated it in a deft and delicate manner.

Chase and Stephen Bell, conducting the thoroughly experienced BBC Concert Orchestra, present all
three works with a sense of impassioned advocacy. But it is the Bate Concerto that makes this an
extraordinary and unmissable release."
Fanfare

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Christopher Gunning (born 5 August 1944, in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, England) is a British composer
of concert works and music for films and television. He studied at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama where
his tutors included Edmund Rubbra and Richard Rodney Bennett.

Gunning’s film and TV compositions have received many awards, including the 2007 BAFTA Award for Best
Film Music for La Vie en Rose, as well as three additional awards for Agatha Christie’s Poirot, Middlemarch,
and Porterhouse Blue. He also has won and three Ivor Novello Awards, for Rebecca, Under Suspicion, and Firelight.
In the 1970s and 1980s Gunning collaborated with rock musician Colin Blunstone and was responsible for the distinctive
string arrangement on Blunstone’s 1972 hit "Say You Don’t Mind". Gunning’s scores for The Big Battalions, Wild Africa,
Cold Lazarus and When the Whales Came also received nominations for BAFTA and Ivor Novello Awards, and his
music for the Martini advertising campaign, heard around the world for thirty years, won three Clio Awards.

The composer writes: "I had wanted to write a piano concerto for several years before finally getting to grips with
it in 2001. So much contemporary piano music seems to ignore that which I like best – the instrument’s ability
to sing – and I was interested in doing something which explores the lyrical as well as the percussive qualities of
the piano. Storm composed early in 2003 has slow outer sections; apart from those it is pretty noisy and dramatic.
It is scored for a large symphony orchestra, and I wrote it shortly after spending some time at the seaside and
feeling totally exhilarated by the wind and waves of a violent storm. Symphony No.1, composed in 2002, continues
a process begun a few years previously with my Saxophone Concerto, which was my first concert piece following
many years of working in films and TV. It was then that I discovered a penchant for single movement forms which
move through many changing emotional moods; I think of them as novels or journeys."

Music Composed and Conducted by Christopher Gunning
Played by the Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra
With Olga Dudnik (piano)

"Having listened to this disc, it came as no surprise to this reviewer to learn from the composer/
conductor???s biography in the booklet notes, that Christopher Gunning is primarily a composer of
music for film and television. The music is well crafted and the scoring clean-cut.

The central section of the dramatically vivid Storm colourfully reflects the title of the work (even
it???s hard to banish thoughts of Britten???s Peter Grimes when listening to it). The musical language
may be a little unvaried in places, so that there are times when it all veers dangerously toward
the monotonous, but on the other hand there are exciting aural experiences to be had. Stravinsky
occasionally comes to mind when the writing is at its most rhythmically vibrant (particularly in the
piano concerto), but there is also no doubt that the music of his mentor Edmund Rubbra lies at the
core of his approachable tonal idiom and its eloquent harmonic language. The symphony is in one
through-composed movement, a loose-fitting garment in terms of its structure but nevertheless
one which concentrates the mind for the most part.

Olga Dudnik gives an impressively energetic and commanding account of the piano concerto,
while Gunning himself guides the Slovak Radio Orchestra through his music to produce
committed performances of all three works. An exhilarating disc, and one which
will not disappoint."
Christopher Fifield

Source: Albany CD
Format: mp3(320), DDD Stereo
File Size: 155 MB

Download Link (mp3 only!): https://mega.co.nz/#!EQQBUBiR!Txt6hHK3aXIDO_XXCf58RgE6KA8YW8CsLfXyDB2 x2Ak

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———- Post added at 11:41 AM ———- Previous post was at 11:02 AM ———-

Just checked the depositfiles mp3 links (No.28-No.50), five are already dead. As you probably noticed, I switched the mp3 versions to MEGA, too.

Born in Detroit, Paul Schoenfield (*1947) began piano lessons at the age of six and
composed his first piece the next year. Following studies at Converse College, in Spartanburg,
South Carolina, and Carnegie Mellon University, in Pittsburgh, he earned a D.M.A. degree at the
University of Arizona. His principal teachers included Rudolf Serkin, Julius Chajes, Ozan Marsh,
and Robert Muczynski. After holding a teaching post in Toledo, Ohio, he lived on a kibbutz in
Israel, where he taught mathematics, one of his great loves, to high school students in the
evenings. Later he spent a number of years in the Minneapolis–St. Paul area as a freelance
composer and pianist, and throughout the 1990s he lived in the Israeli city of Migdal Ha’emek
(near Haifa), which he still considers his secondary residence after moving back
to the United States.

Schoenfield has been compared with Gershwin, and one writer has asserted that his works
“do for Hassidic music what Astor Piazzolla did for the Argentine tango.” Although he has
stated, “I don’t deserve the credit for writing music—only God deserves the credit, and I would
say this even if I weren’t religious,” his inspiration has been ascribed to a wide range of musical
experience: popular styles both American and foreign, vernacular and folk traditions, and
the “normal” historical traditions of cultivated music making, often treated with sly twists.

The Viola Concerto of 1998 is emblematic of Schoenfield’s celebrated eclecticism,
especially of his ingenious fusion of Western art forms with Israeli and eastern European Jewish
popular, folk, and liturgical elements—all within a classical framework. As in much, if not most,
of his music, authentic folk motifs are extended and varied, but they are never obscured by
his judicious use of such 20th-century idioms as harmonic dissonances, disjunct intervals,
and rhythmic complexities. Never superficially superimposed, these techniques are
organically employed to give the genuine folk melos freshness and heightened interest.

Music Composed by Paul Schoenfield
Played by the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin
With Robert Vernon (viola)
And members of the University of Michigan Opera
Conducted by Yoel Levi & Kenneth Kiesler

"Schoenfield’s music has often been noted for its Hassidic aspects though the melancholic
elements that co-exist have perhaps been downplayed. In his recent Viola Concerto we can
certainly hear an aesthetic which we can impute to the influence of Bloch, with a patchwork
of melodic strands and some bold rhythmic dance gestures in both solo and especially orchestral
lines. To that we can add light but elegantly precise scoring with an especially delightful
moment in the central, slow movement where the oboe winds behind the musing viola’s solo
– it has an expressive, communing quality that impresses. Schoenfield isn’t afraid to take his
soloist up high over the reflective, supporting orchestral tissue. This is warmly romantic, purely
tonal and carried off in this performance with considerable aplomb. In the finale there are hints
of Shostakovich, and the Hebraic elements are more artfully, less effusively presented than
in a contemporary work such as Isaac Schwartz’s Yellow Stars. There’s increasing drama,
especially in the Dance of David, with dance patterns renewed and some Klezmer smear
as well.

The Viola Concerto is the major work here but the Four Motets make an individual mark
with their reflections on High Renaissance practice, the chromaticism adding to an effect
of newly minted traditionalism. The harmonies are at their richest in the second of the
– all are short – and the sense of displaced time, or a sense of time as a continuum, is
maybe at its most effective in the last. There are also three excerpts from Act II of The
Merchant and The Pauper, his 1999 two-act opera. This was based on mystic ideas
enshrined in the writings of Reb Nahman of Bratslav (1772-1811), a charismatic leader
of his community. The most substantial is the twelve-minute excerpt from Scene 1 –
strong romantic lines and sonorous narration, whilst there’s vibrant dance music in the
fifth scene. Extensive though the notes are – they always are with the Milken Archive
discs – it’s invariably only a partial view of the opera.

All the performances are committed and the trio of recording locations fortunately
doesn’t jar the ear. I found the Concerto the most impressive of the works here –
full of Bloch and Shostakovich lineage and attractive. All are premiere recordings."
Jonathan Woolf, MusicWeb

Source: Naxos "Milken Archive" CD (my rip!)
Formats: FLAC, DDD Stereo, mp3(320)
File Sizes: 259 MB / 133 MB (incl. booklet)

Download Link: https://mega.co.nz/#!qtJmQRAb!FJhfrWKSofJxiNKdnEnXOC7xPGRYQGEdfhb5tul 0rPY
mp3 version: https://mega.co.nz/#!j9YFATxD!Xg1vlgDq1_vFRU6ATkhFghQX1ZtL28gLoQXXWgz 8m3I

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After the era of Heitor Villa-Lobos, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Camargo Guarnieri (yep, that’s right!) became the best
known Brazilian composer. His music is as imbued with the same quality of "Brazilianness" (Brasilidad) as that of his
predecessor, and it is not as polyphonically complex. Camargo Guarnieri is particularly noted for his art songs and dance
pieces, many of which have also been successful as popular songs.

Camargo Guarnieri’s father was a Sicilian immigrant who gave each of his children a name honoring a great composer. At age
ten, Camargo Guarnieri began to fulfill the implied promise of his name by beginning musical studies. In 1923, the family
moved to S???o Paolo, where he took piano lessons; to help support the family and to pay for further musical studies he
played in silent theater orchestras and in caf??? bands. He also took classes at the S???o Paolo Musical and Theater Conservatory,
studying composition and conducting.

Camargo Guarnieri’s work in the popular music field and his contact with the nationalist Brazilian ethnomusicologist Mario
de Andrade influenced him to adopt Brazilian popular and folk influences in much of his music. By the time he was 21 he
had written his Brazilian Dance and his Can??????o Sertaneja, highly popular pieces (the dance is his best-known work outside
of Brazil) that put him on the road to renown. In 1927, he was appointed to teach piano at the Conservatory. His reputation
was bolstered by the appearance of the early installments in his body of songs, one of the most important by any Latin
American composer.

Most of his music included a variety Brazilian national elements. One of the main differences between Camargo Guarnieri’s
outlook and that of Villa-Lobos is that Camargo Guarnieri avoids the sense of the mysterious or exotic that is a frequently
a trait of his older compatriot’s works. His Symphony No. 3 (1952) was dedicated to the 400th anniversary of the
founding of S???o Paolo. Some critics consider his Symphony No. 6 his finest achievement in the form. Aside from opera
and other stage genres, Camargo Guarnieri wrote in virtually every genre of classical music. His violin sonatas are particularly
well respected among chamber music players, but the crown jewel of his oeuvre is his series of over 200 songs. These
adroitly reflect the main currents of Brazilian music: Portuguese, Afro-Brazilian, and Amerindian. Many of them have been
adapted by Brazilian popular musicians.

Music Composed by "Mozart" Camargo Guarnieri
Played by the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra
With Max Barros (piano)
Conducted by Thomas Conlin

"This is a most encouraging issue. In the wake of BIS’s continuing series of Mozart
Camargo Guarnieri’s symphonies, Naxos – knowing a good thing when they hear it –
have collected his three piano concertos onto a single disc, the First being a premiere recording
with neither of the others otherwise available. Indeed, there is little enough of Guarnieri’s
bright and attractive music in the catalogue at all. Recording the appealing First Concerto
highlighted some major textual issues with the score, as James Melo succinctly summarizes
in the booklet. The manuscript being missing, the present recording was made from a
reconstruction sourcing instrumental parts, two piano reductions (each with different endings!),
a private recording conducted by the composer and revisions to the piano part from the 1960s.
The result is completely convincing, however, a relatively compact, exciting concerto full of
good tunes deftly orchestrated. Guarnieri’s personal style is already clearly audible (he was just
24 when he wrote it) though there are inevitable traces of influences: Villa-Lobos, Prokofiev,
Bartok. The central Saudosamente even has a touch of Gershwin about it.

The Second (1946) and Third (1964) are more cosmopolitan in idiom but still decidedly Latin
American through and through. In the former one can detect that Guarnieri’s frame of reference
had widened to include Stravinsky and North and South American composers such as Copland
(who described Guarnieri as “the most authentic composer on the continent”) and Ginastera;
but whatever the stylistic mix he remained his own man. I doubt whether the Warsaw Philharmonic
had played much of his music beforehand, but they respond with gusto and evident enjoyment
to all three works, expertly directed by Thomas Conlin. Max Barros – brought up in Brazil –
sounds completely comfortable and confident in the solo parts. Had this been released a few
months earlier, it might have made the Editor’s Top 100 Budget CDs."
Guy Rickards

Source: Naxos CD (my rip!)
Formats: FLAC, DDD Stereo, mp3(320)
File Sizes: 332 MB / 163 MB (incl. cover, booklet)

Download Link: https://mega.co.nz/#!hMBDhI4A!EJgBvx4kTdqmNKpAgg_yXmRu0EEUSdL2kWO-w5s-tAk
mp3 version: https://mega.co.nz/#!dcZQEDjY!dTIROG6BgIQilp-6SusI0whJvFV86ybrR66fMjGGqpI

Enjoy! Don’t share! Buy the original! 🙂

John Corigliano’s Clarinet Concerto, full to bursting with antiphony and visual spectacle, might best survive
the transition to CD in a live recording. And what better communal ritual than the Proms? The RAH acoustic seems
to minimise aural spotlighting, so Michael Collins can assume a role within the orchestra as needed. The BBC
engineers give even the biggest orchestral onslaughts a nice transparency and bloom, and Leonard Slatkin
and Collins unearth musical and timbral details unnoticed by either Richard Stoltzman (RCA) or Stanley Drucker
with Mehta (New World, 5/88R). In Slatkin and Collins’s hands, the Elegy??? Corigliano writing simply for perhaps
the last time? ??? has a poise and sense of shape that fairly take the breath away.

Going from the American composer to Zhou Long’s quite short and fairly severe The Immortal (2004),
the sharpened sense of musical concentration can be startling. Kaia Saariaho’s Orion (2002) is more
elemental but never over-scored. Some might find this music stand-offish but Saariaho’s second movement, with
its pedal tones and delicate, slowly shifting sonorities, gives that rare sense of a composer knowing exactly where
she wants to go and how to get there.
Andrew Achenbach, Gramophone

Music by John Corigliano, Zhou Long & Kaija Saariaho
Played by the BBC Symphony Orchestra
With Michael Collins (clarinet)
Conducted by Leonard Slatkin & Jukka-Pekka Saraste

"Michael Collins is among the most prominent British clarinetists of his generation. He has
appeared in concert as principal clarinetist with the Philharmonia Orchestra and London
Sinfonietta, as a member of the Nash Ensemble, and as a freelance soloist and chamber player.
He has made more than 30 recordings for the Hyperion label since 1984, mostly in chamber
music fare. He has also recorded for DG, Chandos, and EMI. His repertory is broad, taking
in much British music, however, including works by Elgar, Vaughan Williams, Britten, Walton,
Arnold, Bax, and Bliss. He has also performed and recorded large chunks from the output of
disparate European composers like Mozart, Brahms, Spohr, Poulenc, Bart???k, Richard
Strauss, and Suk. In addition, Collins has premiered important works by contemporary
composers, including Richard Rodney Bennett and John Adams.

Collins was born in Isleworth (west London), England. He enrolled at the Royal College of
Music in London in his early teens. His chief teachers there were David Hamilton and Thea
King. By age 16 he attained virtuoso status, winning the woodwind prize at the 1978 BBC
Young Musician of the Year Competition.

The year 1981 was a watershed one for the young Collins: he joined both the London
Sinfonietta and Nash Ensemble. He debuted at Carnegie Hall in 1982, and the following
year made his first recording as a member of the Nash Ensemble — A Centenary Tribute
(chamber music of Lennox Berkeley). In 1984 he recorded three volumes of chamber music
by Arnold with the Nash Ensemble and also debuted at the Promenade Concerts as soloist
in an acclaimed performance of Musgrave’s Clarinet Concerto.

In 1985 Collins began teaching at the Royal College of Music and two years later accepted
the post of principal clarinetist for the Philharmonia Orchestra. Collins founded the
chamber ensemble London Winds in 1988, a group he has toured with throughout Europe,
the U.S., and Canada.

Collins left his posts at the Philhamonia and RCM in 1995 to concentrate on freelance work.
In the latter 20th and early 21st centuries, he has been appearing as soloist and as
chamber music partner to many of the leading musicians of the day, including Martha Argerich,
Mikhail Pletnev, Joshua Bell, and Yuri Bashmet. He has also increasingly turned to conducting,
and in 2010 became principal conductor for the City of London Sinfonia. Yet he still performs
as a soloist, playing such works as John Adams’ Gnarly Buttons in 2009 with the
composer conducting."

Source: BBC CD (my rip!)
Formats: FLAC, DDD Stereo, mp3(320)
File Sizes: 271 MB / 149 MB

Download Link – https://mega.co.nz/#!EUJwiDCA!JaYUW0JF0Ox_znlrjLJ7AAPF-5xltB6hTtQMc4VJPkk
mp3 version: https://mega.co.nz/#!kVRyiTIB!CHv7GGWkGfoPhtOZHTpd92f4y4ZerZVxEdwj70T 2TmQ

Replacement for corrupted Zhou Long work (FLAC) – https://mega.co.nz/#!2w5nBAjS!KJje1sbc4rOgOPRTwpsUdR6JCPc9Pv9woaOc9qK 3jBw

Enjoy! Don’t share! Buy the original! 🙂

Edit: As I can’t resolve the issues with the Berserking recording at the moment, I’ve opted to post the
same composer’s percussion concerto Veni, Veni Emmanuel instead. It’s uploading in FLAC right now and should be
available within one hour.

Thank you so much for interesting new selections

BTW were you able to fix Gunning recording?

Also can you recommend anything more like

Respighi – Concerto Gregoriano?

That was awesome

Respighi – Concerto Gregoriano?

That was awesome

Respighi – Concerto in Modo Misolido

The man was a master at making something amazingly modernly beautiful out of musical relics.

Also, obligatory this-thread-is-still-awesome seal of approval from me, 😛

Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s Violin Concerto No.2, "The Prophets" might be an even better fit (and was indeed
coupled with the Gregoriano on another disc which I already upped in the program music thread). So I’m presenting
it here again, but with the Ben-Haim Violin Concerto available in a different recording further above in this thread.
Fans of Goldsmith’s Masada should also be delighted by the Castelnuovo-Tedesco.

No.57

Please refer to earlier notes on these composers and works.

Music by Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco & Paul Ben-Haim
Played by the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra
With Itzhak Perlman (violin)
Conducted by Zubin Mehta

"Two composers from axis countries who left those countries in the face of
fascism: Castelnuovo-Tedesco from Italy to the USA and Ben-Haim from Munich to
Palestine. They are represented here by two fairly brief three-movement violin
concertos in a tonal-melodic idiom.

In the Castelnuovo-Tedesco we experience the flaming eloquence of the ancient prophets.
The composer shows a singing heart at 3.34 and 10.45 in movement I but also there
are moments that are jaunty and swashbuckling. A slight sense of glitzy Hollywood overlay
and echoes of Rozsa, Bloch and Respighi do nothing to dilute the attractions of this
highly coloured music. In The Lament Of Jeremiah second movement there is a memorable
quick yearning recurring motif. The finale is a tone poem representing Elijah seemingly a
blithe soul by this account and one inclined to carnival and the full gamut of virtuoso display
including a few I did not recalling hearing before. After this I would like to hear the first
concerto. Has it ever been performed in modern times, I wonder. I’d be fascinated to hear it.

I have not been able to compare this version with the famous Heifetz (BMG-RCA) but
this sounds good and with no audience noise except in the well merited explosion of
applause at the end.

The Ben-Haim concerto is a compact three movement work written for Zvi Zeitlin in 1960.
It’s also in an approachable romantic style though less succulently fruity than the technicolor
pleasures of the Castelnuovo-Tedesco. The two works do however share a sinuous Middle-
Eastern sway and bejewelled orchestration. The Ben-Haim shows more restraint but there are
some lovely moments as in the harp and soloist interlude in the first movement. There’s a
beguiling smiling coolness and honeyed oriental ululation in the andante affetuoso – all in all
a very beautiful movement; a sort of oasis Lark Ascending. Treasure indeed. For the finale
there’s an indomitable acceleration towards a wild conflagration of flaming virtuosity. This
carries echoes of Bartok and Enescu, a bluesy haze and the scorch and skirl of the folk fiddle.
Someone should also look over Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s two piano concertos, the second of
which the composer played with Barbirolli and the NYPO in 1939."
Musicweb International

Source: EMI CD (my rip!)
Formats: FLAC, DDD Stereo, mp3(320)
File Sizes: 254 MB / 115 MB

Download Link: https://mega.co.nz/#!pU53hLYK!HwAMlB8pTbk0YYM7JN6ZCUer7kZEjX2ZM2MqnEa I1xw
mp3 version: https://mega.co.nz/#!JY4nABqJ!D64PfDugYiVoIkggSpnzoj2zc08U8ZFoaSOfbz6 yYy4

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One of the many Russian musicians who fled their homeland after the dual ravages of the first World War
and the 1917 Revolution, composer and pianist Nikolai Lopatnikoff ended life in 1976 a U.S. citizen
and a respected part of American musical academia. Lopatnikoff was born in Estonia in 1903 and trained
at the St. Petersburg Conservatory as a teenager. In 1918, not yet 16 years old, he left St. Petersburg
– which, like the whole region, was embroiled in civil war — for Helsinki. He studied at the Helsinki Conservatory
for two years and took some private lessons from composer Ernst Toch. In 1945, one year after becoming
a naturalized U.S. citizen, Lopatnikoff joined the music faculty of Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh;
he retired in 1969. He was twice awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, was elected to the National Institute
of Arts and Letters in 1963, and in 1951 married the well-known poet Sara Henderson Hay. Lopatnikoff’s music
has been described as a blend of late nineteenth-century Russian nationalism and the leaner twentieth-century
neo-Classical sounds of Hindemith and Stravinsky: rhythmically pointed but melodically voluptuous. His output
includes the opera Danton (1932), a pair of piano concertos (both premiered by Lopatnikoff),
four symphonies, and a great deal of chamber and piano music.

Alexandre Tansman is called both a French composer of Polish birth and a Polish composer who emigrated
to France. However, he likely considered France his adopted homeland; except for the war years he lived in
Paris from 1919 until his death in 1986, and he chose the French spelling of his given name, Aleksander. His
career as pianist and composer remained quite successful throughout the 1930s and in 1938, he was given
French citizenship. But trouble was on the horizon with the growing menace of Adolf Hitler in Germany. Shortly
after the occupation of France in 1941, Tansman fled with his French wife, pianist Collete Cras, and two
daughters. Helped by a fund established by Charlie Chaplin, they settled in Los Angeles that same year,
where Tansman met other Jewish exiles, including Arnold Schoenberg and Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco.
Tansman returned to Paris in 1946, but soon found his career would never be the same. He remained
true to his largely neo-Classical style, which was quickly going out of fashion in favor of serial music
and other avant-garde styles. While he continued to write much music, including operas, such as
Georges Dandin (1973-1974) and ballets, such as R???surrection (1961-1962), as well as
orchestral and instrumental works, his reputation gradually faded.

Extremely prolific, highly uneven, and tremendously influential, Gian Francesco Malipiero (1882-1973)
came to be regarded – even by other Italian composers – as the most original musical mind of his day and
place. His music fused modern techniques with the stylistic qualities of early Italian music. Malipiero initially
produced works that, although often harmonically dense and oddly structured, reflect the spirit of
seventeenth and eighteenth century Venetian music. His compositions are characteristically contrapuntal,
with some dissonance resulting from the counterpoint. What is usually judged to be his best music bases
its tonality on free use of diatonic material, although Malipiero employed chromaticism more aggressively
in his old age.

Music by Nikolai Lopatnikoff, Alexandre Tansman & Gian Francesco Malipiero
Played by the Slovak State Philharmonic Orchestra
With Joshua Pierce & Dorothy Jonas (pianos)
Conducted by David Amos

"Centaur have always had an enterprising catalogue. Collections of this type are not
exactly common and it is to Centaur’s credit that this exists at all.

The Lopatnikoff is brittle and acidic but not without romantic pith. This is a combination
recalling Walton with a Stravinskian twist. Melodic vigour abounds in this slightly tart confection.
Lightly spiced note clashes draw in memories of Finzi’s Grand Fantasia and Toccata. The music
is ruminative in the andante second movement but howls in the finale showering off piano
shrapnel like welding torch sparks. This music has certain overlaps with Walton and Shostakovich
but lacks Walton’s humanity. The Oldham composer’s convulsive pulse and nervy accents are
certainly evident.

The Tansman has the accent of a Gershwin but this is crossbred with gritty dissonance and
neo-classicism. Along the way we encounter a tune of simple nobility tastily served up, a Tom
and Jerry scherzo joyously uncorked, a chaotically Graingerian medley and a Bachian fugue.
These are world premiere recordings set down in up-front style (a touch of mild congestion
sometimes)."
Musicweb

Source: Centaur CD (my rip!)
Formats: FLAC, DDD Stereo, mp3(320)
File Sizes: 214 MB / 119 MB

Download Link: https://mega.co.nz/#!30R1ib7Y!RVRqTC1jGzgLAHvcAtu8D3EB0eI4b4ZpWBlp7DH mcVs
mp3 version: https://mega.co.nz/#!K04RTICB!D04JJWHQr83TsduzswqdEDIhxkEsL14-8VNQZbZLcxE

Enjoy! Don’t share! Buy the original! 🙂

French composer Pierre-Max Dubois (1930-1995) had his first radio commission as a composer while
still at the Paris Conservatoire. A prolific composer, he shows in his music the influence of Prokofiev and
affinity with other French composers of his own or a slightly earlier generation. Dubois made considerable
additions to the repertoire of the saxophone, providing the instrument with two solo concertos, sonatas,
concert pieces and a Concertino for four saxophones.

Roy Harris (1898–1979), who grew up in the San Gabriel Valley in California, began composing at
the University of California at Berkeley, after which he studied privately in Los Angeles with American
composer Arthur Farwell (1872–1952), an enthusiast for American Indian culture who attempted to
emancipate modern American music from the strictures as he perceived them of the European tradition.
Farwell also introduced Harris to the poetry of Walt Whitman, which Harris embraced and later set many
times in various genressolo songs, choral pieces, and orchestral works. But his studies in Paris with the
legendary Nadia Boulanger generated his first significant works: a piano concerto, a piano sonata, and
a clarinet and string quartet. The single-movement Third Symphony (1937) became Harriss most
popular and frequently performed work. Harris wrote fifteen symphonies, sometimes calling for a
variety of instrumental forces beyond the standard symphonic instrumentatio nsuch as West Point
Symphony (1952), which includes a band.

Arthur Benjamin was born in Sydney, Australia, on 18 September 1893 and received his earliest
education in Brisbane. Even as a boy, he was determined to pursue his musical training in London, and
in 1911 he achieved his aim, studying composition with Sir Charles Villiers Stanford and piano with
Frederick Cliffe. At the outbreak of war in 1914 Benjamin joined the army, later transferring to the RAF.
His wartime service was curtailed when his plane was shot down and he was captured. Demobilised on
the return of peace, he travelled home to Australia, where he began to compose in earnest. But he
soon found the atmosphere too restrictive, and in 1921 returned to England. Among Benjamin’s notable
scores are a symphony, first performed at the Cheltenham Festival in 1948 and recently recorded on the
Marco Polo label; Elegy, Waltz and Toccata for viola and orchestra, also a Cheltenham premiere
(in 1949), a Concerto quasi una Fantasia for piano and orchestra (1950, recorded by Benjamin’s
piano student, Lamar Crowson), a Romantic Fantasy for violin, viola and orchestra (premiered
by Jascha Heifetz and William Primrose in 1938) and a harmonica concerto for Larry Adler (first performed
in 1953). Another work that brought considerable success was the oboe concerto, arranged in
1942 from keyboard sonatas of Domenico Cimarosa, which has succeeded in maintaining a place in the repertoire.

A belated sequel to Pierce & Jonas’s earlier Koch album of concertos for two pianos and orchestra, the main
attraction here is the Harris, which is entirely characteristic of the old man’s fondness for big rethorical
gestures and wholesome Americana. The Concerto Italien by Dubois is a rather hyperactive piece,
with plenty of virtuoso writing for the two pianists, while Benjamin’s North American Square Dance Suite
is colorful and entertaining, but not quite as "light" as the title may suggest.

Music by Pierre-Max Dubois, Roy Harris & Arthur Benjamin
Played by the Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra
With Joshua Pierce & Dorothy Jonas (pianos)
Conducted by Kirk Trevor

"I had enjoyed the previous Pierce and Jonas disc devoted to compositions for two pianos
and orchestra by Walter Piston, Quincy Porter and Morton Gould (American Music for Two Pianos and
Orchestra), and I am very much into the music of Roy Harris these days, so this was the obvious next
step. As it turns out the duet of indefatigable discoverers, have scored a new winner, at least with
Dubois and Harris.

Pierre Max Dubois (1930-1995), though a prolific composer, is an obscure figure of the 20th Century
music world, even in his native country France. When, after the war, composers of his generations launched
themselves with a vengeance in the explorations of new music paths, he was content to remain in a
tonal idiom, true to his master Milhaud. To him music was first and foremost entertainment. Within those
limits his Two-Piano Concerto is a highly enjoyable work and a fine discovery. The outer movements
have the dynamic boisterousness of Poulenc and rich and dynamic interplay between both solo instruments,
and there is a touching wistfulness and simplicity in the second movement.

The music of Roy Harris is a fairly recent discovery to me (see my reviews of Barber: Capricorn Concerto;
Copland: Saga of the Prairies; Harris: Symphony No. 6 "Gettysburg", Roy Harris: Symphony 1933;
Concerto for Violin and Orchestra; Symphony No. 5 and Roy Harris: Concerto for Piano & Strings), and I
love it. I recognize the formulas – the dynamic exuberance of the outer movements, the triumphant
perorations, the simple harmonic progressions, the quasi-chorales of scorching lyrical intensity, the
solemn dialogues of strings and brass: take a Harris Symphony, add two pianos, and you have the
Two Piano Concerto from 1946 – but that’s what they call "a style" with other composers, so why
not with Harris, as long as the style is as appealing and as uniquely personal as Harris’? The
Two-Piano Concerto is a great work."
Amazon Reviewer

Source: Kleos Classics CD (my rip!)
Formats: FLAC, DDD Stereo, mp3(320)
File Sizes: 224 MB / 125 MB

Download Link: https://mega.co.nz/#!qgQRVICY!CHZ23T6li6bT7BvMJit05k3pLSRPaxzMgaNWKh_ AdsQ
mp3 version: https://mega.co.nz/#!yspxRQ4Q!WkGjFVt4W3CO8oKlSh9Z_Ce1T2I3P7uozY_9WzQ yJWQ

Enjoy! Don’t share! Buy the original! 🙂

A collection of American works for two pianos – with and without orchestral accompaniment.
Walter Piston’s particular brand of "Americana neo-classicism"is evident in his Concerto for
Two Pianos and Orchestra, while Morton Gould once again displays his great talent for
fusing popular and classical elements in his Dance Variations (also with orchestra). The remaining
works, for piano duo only, are Copland’s El Salon Mexico (in an arrangement by Leonard Bernstein),
the Danz???n Cubana and two pieces from Rodeo. You will find additional information on these
composers in either one of my two classical "mega threads".

Music by Morton Gould, Walter Piston & Aaron Copland
Played by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
With Joshua Pierce & Dorothy Jonas (pianos)
Conducted by David Amos

"One of his finest scores, Walter Piston’s concerto comes from the late part of his career (1959),
when his star as one of America’s best symphonists had dimmed in the glare of new suns. A jewel of the
Harvard faculty and the teacher of a host of A-list composers himself, Piston became respected but old-hat
in serious circles while the then-avant-garde – Carter (a Piston pupil), Berio, Stockhausen, Cage, Boulez,
and Babbitt, for example – took center stage. The same thing happened to just about every other American
composer of Piston’s generation and neoclassic style. Many really good scores fell into oblivion, if anybody
performed them at all. At any rate, Piston’s concerto premi???red in New Hampshire, of all places, and
deserves a wider hearing. It has the young energy of Piston’s music in the Thirties and Forties, especially
of the Violin Concerto #1 and of the Symphony #2. The first movement, a sonata, plays with two main
ideas: the first, an athletic one based on fourths and fifths; the second, quicker and more chromatic.
Piston fully uses his resources in an ensemble strategy that recalls the concerto grosso. The orchestra
(ripieno) and the soloists (concertato) reinforce, call and respond, sing alone, and intermingle. The
solemn slow movement begins with the two soloists gracefully handing a long-breathed melody off to
one another. The orchestra briefly takes over, and the soloists continue with an insistent rhythmic idea
which continues alongside the expansive theme. The rest of the movement works out the juxtaposition
of these two gestures. The finale rounds the concerto off with an opening theme evoking
boulevardier insouciance.

Written for Whittimore and Lowe, Morton Gould’s Dance Variations comes from 1953. Gould’s humor
and quick-wittedness step to the fore, but one shouldn’t mistake this as a slight work simply because
it doesn’t pull a long face and tries to please. One discovers here much original thinking and what seem
"basic finds" – like Liszt’s diminished chord, Vaughan Williams’s use of the flatted seventh and the
pentatonic scale, or Stravinsky’s freeing of rhythm. Here, much of the musical play derives from the title.
For example, the first movement is a jazzy chaconne with a six-note bass – that is, a dance in triple
time, probably originating in Spain, on a repeating bass with variations above that foundation. The second
movement reverses the emphasis: here, Gould takes a theme and rhythmically varies it through a mini-
suite of dance forms – gavotte, pavane, polka, quadrille, minuet, waltz, and can-can. The third movement,
entitled "Pas de deux (Tango)," is a slow, sultry tango that often moves in five-beat phrases, rather
than the usual four, while the finale, a tarantella, like the mythical red shoes, aims to dance the
metaphorical feet off the listener. Gould plays all sorts of games with a "Dies irae" bit written like a
playground chant, canon, stretto, the theme sounding against itself played half and then a third as
fast. The orchestra blazes in a Stravinskian P???trouchka way, but with an agility and lightness missing
from that earlier score. As Gould once joked, "That Stravinsky. He’s always stealing from me." But with
Gould one hears an American expansiveness, rather than the stamp of a peasant’s boots."
Classical Net

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This agreeable and varied collection of works for alto/soprano saxophone was a labor of love for its
virtuoso protagonist, saxophonist Greg Banaszak. Only in that respect does the title "Romances"
make any sense. It features two fully-fledged concertos (by Americans David Morgan and Alan Hovhaness),
along with several, mostly slow, vignettes by various international composers.

Music by Joanna Bruzdovic, David Morgan, Subaram Raman, Wojiech Kilar, Heitor Villa-Lobos
And by Alan Hovhaness, James Leatherbarrow & Eugene Bozza
Played by the Beethoven Academy Orchestra
With Greg Banaszak (alto/soprano saxophones)
Conducted by Piotr Borkowski

"Bruzdowicz, a pupil of Messiaen with a gift for Gallic-accented melody, launches this
collection with her Largo. It’s from her film music for Jacquot de Nantes (1991) – Rachmaninov’s
Vocalise out of Faur??? and with a decidedly sombre curve. Away from the soprano saxophone
to the alto with Raman’s gentle Aria which was inspired by the Bozza Aria. Raman was a pupil
of Paul Chihara – who himself wrote a saxophone concerto (1981) which was premiered by
Harvey Pittel in Boston. Raman’s Aria moves in dove-gentle tones between Barber and Vaughan
Williams. Kilar’s Vocalise, with solo parts for harpsichord and piano, unfolds at unhurried leisure.
It has the mien and plaintive droop of the quieter parts of Nyman’s Where the Bee Dances. The
Villa-Lobos is well enough known from the soprano original – a pity we do not get the whole thing.
Leatherbarrow was born in England but is how studying in the USA. His Don Quixote in Love is
an offshoot from a work-in-progress, tone-poem The Last Dream of Don Quixote for soprano
saxophone and full orchestra. The work heard here is tender and melodic with a Delian susurration
over which the saxophone slowly glides and courses. Gleaming strings melt their way from phrase
to phrase. The sound recalls an intensely romantic take on the ???seagull music??? from Watership
Down. Bozza’s equable and feminine Aria is the oldest piece here. It was dedicated to Marcel Mule.
The apt orchestration is by Hunter Ewen. While Bozza cannot quite match his likely models, the
Ravel and Faur??? Pavanes, this is certainly an agreeable and moodily pleasing piece.

David Morgan (not the same David Morgan whose Contrasts recently featured on Lyrita), based
at Youngstown University, writes for both the jazz and classical worlds. The triptych that is the
Three Vignettes was written specially for Greg Banaszak. The first vignette is The Secret of the
Golden Flower and moves without effort between Vaughan Williams and an Oriental sway: fast,
punchy and meditative. Consolation has the contours of a primitive church hymn moving through
a mist of melancholy. The final First Light makes play with Latin-American dance. Elements of
rumba and tango are married to 1950s-style commercial sophisticated light music. Morgan’s
writing is delicate and luminously orchestrated. An undemanding delight.

The Hovhaness concerto was written for the New England Conservatory, then performed once
by the Chatauqua Symphony and forgotten. The composer’s widow assures us that like many
works of its vintage the solo line was written with her high coloratura voice in mind. This seems
completely plausible and by all means listen to the later Poseidon CDs for further proof. The three
movement concerto pleases with its high sinuous solo line and breathing string figuration.
The second movement is a surprise: its instrumental solo melody suggests sentimental British
music-hall rather than Eastern esoterica. The composer also draws here on a dashing Mozartian
effervescence which only once reconnects with Hovhaness’s core lingua franca. The finale carries
the archetypical title Let the Living and the Celestial Sing. It returns us to the composer’s
‘campground’ with delicate pizzicati, great wheeling yet grounded angelic paeans and sinuous
foregrounded solos. These are lent airy movement by surprising interactions with the warm
string choir. Intriguingly, even in this last movement, Hovhaness admits elements of
sentimentality to interact with the devotional.

A pleasingly consistent collection for those wanting melodic tonal music for saxophone and orchestra."
Rob Barnett, MusicWeb

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Akio Yashiro was born in Tokyo on 10th September, 1929. Brought up in the artistic environment
provided by his parents, Yashiro began his piano lessons at the age of five, and, soon turning to composition,
became a pupil of Saburo Moroi when he was ten. Moroi had studied in Berlin, and was composing works of
absolute music in the form of symphonies, concertos, sonatas, and similar established forms. A great admirer
of Beethoven, Moroi believed that the organic and strict development of a motif was all in all in music.
From 1943 on Yashiro studied under Qunihico Hashimoto. The modernist Hashimoto introduced his young
pupil to Debussy, Ravel and Stravinsky. On the other hand, at Gyosei High School, run by French Catholic
monks, where Yashiro had his secondary education, he was trained in the French language.

Yashiro’s Piano Concerto was commissioned by NHK, Nippon Hoso Kyokai, the Japan Broadcasting Corporation,
and was composed between 1964 and 1967. It was first heard in a broadcast performance on 5th November, 1967,
with Hiroko Nakamura as the soloist and the NHK Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Hiroshi Wakasugi, and
was awarded the Odaka Award of the Year. Instituted in commemoration of the composer Hisatada Odaka, the
award is the most important prize in Japan given to orchestral works. This work has ever since enjoyed particular
favour in Japan among works written by Japanese composers, and has been played several times in the West.
Among those who have conducted the concerto are Jean Martinon, Jean Fournet, and Michael Gielen.
The Piano Concerto consists of three movements, and there one can recognize the influence of Bart???k,
Prokofiev, Jolivet and others, as well as that of a Japanese composer who also studied in France and whom
Yashiro regarded as his rival, Akira Miyoshi, notably his Piano Concerto of 1962 and Concerto for Orchestra
written two years later.

Yashiro’s Symphony was commissioned by the Japan Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra and was written
between January and May, 1958. It was first performed in June of the same year by this orchestra, under the direction of
Akeo Watanabe. In 1963, it was given its European premi???re by the Orchestre National de l’O.R.T.F., under the
baton of Charles Br???ck. The Symphony consists of four movements, which are organically co-ordinated into a
close-knit unit, more so than his Piano Concerto, by several recurrent motifs.

Music Composed by Akio Yashiro
Played by the Ulster Orchestra
With Hiroki Okada (piano)
Conducted by Takuo Yuasa

"Japanese composer Akio Yashiro (1929-76) studied in Paris with both Nadia Boulanger and
Olivier Messiaen and writes in a style reminiscent of a cross between Ravel and Dutilleux. Original
he ain’t, but there’s nothing wrong with that. Indeed, his considerable craftsmanship and polish
reflect the best in the French tradition, and anyone who loves the modern French school will
feel very comfortable with these atmospheric and appealing works.

The Piano Concerto begins like some dreamy offspring of Messiaen and adds a touch of Bart???k
to the mix as well. Its marvelous central slow movement obviously owes its inspiration to Ravel’s
“Le Gibet” from Gaspard de la nuit, with its creepy persistent repeated notes and aura of Gothic
horror. Hiromi Okada plays a pretty mean piano, as poetic in the music’s softly impressionistic
moments as in its more virtuosic passages. While hardly conventionally melodic, this brilliantly
written piece offers no difficulties to any listener with a reasonably open mind and an ear for
adventure.

The Symphony makes just as favorable an impression. It opens with sounds that could have
come from some lost late tone poem of Sibelius. The vivacious scherzo shares the same
“perpetual ostinato” technique as the comparable movement from Debussy’s string quartet.
It all culminates in a lengthy and melancholy Lento, featuring some lovely wind solos and long,
lyrical phrases that carry the melodies effortlessly over the bar lines. The finale owes a lot to
Messiaen: it begins with a few characteristic bird-like “whoops” and then takes off like a rocket.
The ending paraphrases the climactic chorale and frantic dash to the finish line of the
Turangalila-symphonie, complete with extravagant cymbal and tam-tam crashes.

It would be easy to dismiss this music as excessively derivative, but it works so well and sounds
so confidently written that in the end it winds up striking you more as a friend you believe you
might have met in a previous life than some sort of cheap imitation of a beloved master. Takuo
Yuasa leads the Ulster Orchestra in exciting, flamboyant, very well recorded performances of
both works, reminding us that in the arts what matters is not so much who does something
first, but who does it best. Yashiro was, without question, one of the best."
Classics Today (9/9)

Source: Naxos CD (my rip!)
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Henri Collet was a French critic and a composer, born in Paris on the 5th of November 1885.
He showed brilliant ability in literature from early of his life such that he finished his bachelor
when he was 14 and a half years old, under the dispensation of the president of French republic.
In that period, he also studied piano under Joseph Thibaud (brother of a famous violinist
Jacques Thibaud). His enthusiasm for Spain (through novels and music) let him to go there
in 1990, three years after his graduation. He settled in Zurbar???n and travelled through Castilla
region to collect folklore. He was appointed professor at the Institute of Spanish Culture called
Casa Velasquez. He then devoited himself to composition. On 16th and 23th of January 1920
in two issues of the famous magazine Comoedia, he identified Milhaud, Honegger,
Durey, Tailefferre, Poulenc, and Auric (they are members of a jean Cocteau’s circle and initially
named themselves a fifferent name) as a group of composers and named the Les Six. It is
for "labelling" this group that he is best remembered today. He was also awarded the French
National Literature Award for his novel L’???le de Barataria in 1929. He died in Paris on the
23th of November, 1951.

Although Collet composed a substantial number of works, none of them stayed in the repertoire,
and very few have been recorded. His two Flamenco Concertos, one for violin, and one for piano,
are very colorful and brilliantly orchestrated, written in a late romantic, folkloristic idiom.

Music Composed by Henri Collet
Played by the Real Orquesta Sinf???nica de Sevilla
With Regis Pasquier (violin) & Ricardo Riquejo (piano)
Conducted by Gary Brain

"Collet’s orchestral works are sumptuously sampled on the second volume. It will be clear from the
timing and apparent from the brevity of the songs that Collet is not prone to meandering. These are
compact three movement concertos neither of which runs more than 25 minutes. The symphony
is in four movements. Every one of the movements carries a Spanish title descriptive of
dance (e.g. Fandango – the last movement of the piano concerto) or place (Calles de Sebiya – first
movement of the violin concerto).

While the melodic line of the violin concerto apes Bruch and maybe Saint-S???ens’ Caprice Andalou the
setting is all shimmer with searing Iberian trumpets. Havanaise meets the Elgar in the broad El Desgraciado.
The Sevillana finale is a blast of spiccato and Paganinian double-stopping accelerating into feria style
bombast. The castanets, also used in the first movement, return at the end. The high calorie symphony
has four movements against the three for the two concertos. The hyper-coloured music has the modern
sensibility of travelogue film music. The Piano Concerto offers the listener scorching trumpet lines,
castanets and ripe Mediterranean hallmarks. It would go well, as would all three orchestral works, in a
concert with a Spanish theme. These are not profound works. Rather we are in the world of distinctive
light music like Ron Goodwin’s Beatles Concerto or any one of the cadre of works that also includes
Malcolm Arnold’s Concerto for Phyllis and Cyril.These recordings have been languishing largely unattended
since 1995 and 1998. I have been pleased to make the acquaintance of this finely performed music.
Here is another splendid example of the French feeling for Iberian culture in music. Collet is more than
the music critic who in 1920 (Comoedia 16 and 23 Jan 1929) dubbed a group of Parisian based
composers ‘Les Six’."
Musicweb

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No.64

"When James Galway approached me in 1978 with the idea of writing a flute concerto for him, my initial
reaction was, "Oh no, not another wind concerto!" I had already written two (oboe, clarinet) and had
planned that my next work would explore quite different territory. I was in a quandary. While I postponed
committing myself on the idea of a flute concerto, I decided to put what I knew of the proposed event
together to see if anything interesting and special would result. So I looked further-particularly into the
specialized techniques of the soloist, who also plays the tin whistle. This primitive form of the recorder
(a close relative of the flute) is one of the many varieties of "pipes" that are found around the world,
and I decided to investigate some of the legends surrounding them. Almost instantly, the tale of
the Pied Piper of Hamelin came to mind.

Galway as the Piper seemed the most natural thing in the world, for to many, myself included, he is a
kind of Pied Piper ("…to blow the pipe his lips he wrinkled, and green and blue his sharp eyes twinkled"-
Robert Browning). Here, the mating of personality and instrument could hardly be better. But what was even
more exciting was that this could offer me a new way of writing a wind concerto. The idea of a programmatic
fantasy-concerto based on the Pied Piper legend became a fascinating structural challenge. I contacted
Galway with the proposal of writing a Pied Piper Fantasy and, with his approval, started planning the work.

Robert Browning’s poem The Pied Piper of Hamelin is the best known telling of the legend, so I reread it and
began to consider how the story could generate the architecture of a flute concerto. The biggest problem
was that the legend per se had no elements of virtuosity in it; the Pied Piper played his song to charm the
rats and lead them to destruction and piped a march to lead the children away from Hamelin, but there
were no actual confrontations or tensions that could lead me to write virtuosically for the soloist. So I had
to modify the story a bit, and I included battle scenes between the Piper and the rats and other elements
that could set the soloist’s fingers racing.

In restructuring the legend I had to provide a logical continuity for this story, but I also had to produce a
satisfying purely musical structure so that the piece worked as a concerto for flute and orchestra too.
Inherent in my concept was the idea that the soloist would switch from flute to tin whistle for The Children’s
March. I also wanted the march to include other flutes and drums played by children and led by the soloist.
I used the jaunty march against an independent orchestral background that evoked the sense of loss generated
by the departure of the Piper and children. A technical problem-the fact that two groups of performers each
playing music extremely divergent in tempo ideally requires two conductors-thus provoked a theatrical
solution: the separation and exit of one of the groups."
John Corigliano

Music Composed by John Corigliano
Played by the Eastman Philharmonia
With James Galway (flute)
Conducted by David Effron

"At the time James Galway contacted John Corigliano to commission a flute concerto, the composer
had recently finished the Clarinet Concerto (1977), preceded by the Oboe Concerto (1975). Yearning
to write for instruments other than woodwinds, Corigliano was less than enthusiastic. However,
knowing that he would be writing for Galway and the Los Angeles Philharmonic convinced him.

When Corigliano thought of the tale of The Pied Piper of Hamelin, he felt that "Galway as the Piper
seemed the most natural thing in the world…But what was even more exciting was that this could
offer me a new way of writing a wind concerto. The idea of a programmatic fantasy-concerto based
on the Pied Piper legend became a fascinating structural challenge." Galway approved of the plan and
the composer set to work. For flute, orchestra, and 100 children, the Pied Piper Fantasy is Corigliano’s
first instrumental work with a programmatic scenario.

Robert Browning’s poem The Pied Piper of Hamelin provides the basis for the story. Corigliano, however,
found that it lacked the conflict necessary to justify passages that would make full use of Galway’s
technique and provide structurally important contrast. The Piper simply leads the rats to their death
and marches the children away from Hamelin. Corigliano’s most drastic alteration was the insertion of
a battle between the Piper and the rats. He also has the soloist change from flute to tin whistle for
the final section, The Children’s March, in which the children play instruments. Galway gave the first
performance of the work, with the Los Angeles Philharmonic under the direction of Myung-Whun
Chung, at the Hollywood Bowl on February 4, 1982.

The Pied Piper Fantasy consists of seven continuous sections: "Sunrise and the Piper’s Song,"
"The Rats," "Battle with the Rats," "War Cadenza," "The Piper’s Victory," "The Burgher’s Chorale,"
and "The Children’s March." The orchestra assumes numerous roles and interacts with the soloist.
Corigliano achieves colorful tone-painting effects as he moves through different styles of
composition, from simple diatonicism to strident dissonance. Rhythm plays an important part in the
piece, beginning with the ephemeral "Sunrise." Quietly at first, individual instruments enter and play
non-rhythmically with unusual effects. A colorful crescendo ensues, abruptly breaking off and leaving
the strings alone to depict the sun. Out of this grows the "Piper’s Song." At night the rats come
out, represented by eerie music filed with squeaks and thumps created by the highest possible
notes on various orchestral instruments, trills, and tapping on the bodies of instruments. Two
"rat motives" emerge from the sound. In the "Battle with the Rats," the Piper chases the rodents
through various pitch registers and frightens them with outbursts. In "War Cadenza," the Piper
stands alone, victorious.

Most impressive is "The Children’s March," during which children from the audience, playing
flutes and drums, join the Piper and follow him through the auditorium and out the doors.
The orchestra plaintively performs the villagers’ lament at the loss of their children, in music
completely unrelated to the still-sounding march."
John Palmer, Rovi

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Armenian-born composer Aram Khachaturian is renowned for composing in bright colours with bold and
frequently memorable melodies. Infused with folk music the scores often contain picturesque and exotic textures.
The three movement Flute Concerto is a transcription of Khachaturian’s Violin Concerto of 1940 made
by the eminent flautist Jean-Pierre Rampal, revised for this recording by Patrick Gallois.

In contrast, Joaqu???n Rodrigo’s Concierto Pastoral was indeed conceived as a flute concerto,
and it’s representative of the composer’s neo-classical, folklore-inflected style.

Music by Aram Khachaturian & Joaqu???n Rodrigo
Played by the Philharmonia Orchestra
With Patrick Gallois (flute)
Conducted by Ion Marin

"One of the most prominent solo flutists in the post-Rampal era, Patrick Gallois studied with Jean-Pierre
Rampal and Maxence Larrieu at the Paris Conservatory, where at age 19 he won first prize. He
immediately became principal flutist in the orchestra of Lille, the major city nearest his hometown,
and in 1977 he moved to the principal position in the French National Orchestra, where he remained
until 1984. After that, he pursued an increasingly successful career as a soloist, although he also
founded his own chamber orchestra, the Acad???me de Paris, in 1990, and since then has served as a
guest conductor with orchestras around Europe. In 2003 he became music director of Finland’s
Jyv???skyl??? Sinfonia. He has also frequently performed chamber music in an ensemble that includes
his companion, Canadian cellist Shauna Rolston."
All Music

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Thanks for all the recent ups

Thanks for providing informations regarding to the bio, artists, etc. Please do continue posting like that. I think many of us will read, if not reading everything, at least some parts.

David Chesky (*1956) is a perfect example of a professional musician who spent much
of his time helping to run a record company. The New York resident, who grew up in Miami,
co-owns the independent Chesky Records with his younger brother Norman Chesky; and
because the Manhattan-based company has taken up a lot of his time, David Chesky’s own
catalog isn’t as large as it could be. Nonetheless, he’s a talented pianist, keyboardist,
producer, and composer who is capable of playing jazz as well as European classical and
different types of Latin music (including Afro-Cuban, Brazilian, and tango).

The early to mid-’80s found Chesky doing a lot of classical composing; his pieces were performed
by the London Symphony Orchestra, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and others. By 1987,
David Chesky and his brother were running Chesky Records, an audiophile-friendly company
that has concentrated on jazz, European classical, and Latin music.

Music Composed by David Chesky
Played by Area 31
With Tom Chiu (violin), Jeffrey Khaner (flute)
And Kim Wonjung (soprano)
Conducted by Anthony Aibel

"David Chesky comes of age as a "classical" composer with these two concertos, in which his personal
brand of Latin jazz finds itself in the company of ideas that lend themselves to large-scale forms,
and a colorful orchestral idiom that consistently engages the ear and makes for rewarding repeated
listening. The Violin Concerto employs a spiky and pungent quasi-tonal language, with clear-cut,
memorable thematic material and a vibrant rhythmic impetus (much flamenco-style hand-clapping,
in all three works). Chesky’s writing for woodwinds, bassoons especially, may bring to mind Ginastera
or Villa-Lobos, but with greater transparency in the orchestration, which features lots of tuned
percussion and some lovely passages for harp. The solo part is busy but never lacks lyricism, and
it’s particularly gratifying to hear how Chesky seems to have really thought about how to characterize
the solo role–I’m thinking here of the evocative soft interlude about five minutes into the first
movement–while the neo-Baroque, triple-time finale sounds particularly splendid.

Violinist Tom Chiu plays with the necessary gusto and with the kind of personality the music invites,
observations that also are true of Jeffrey Khaner’s contribution to the Flute Concerto, which is
very similar in style to the Violin Concerto but a bit more jovial in outlook. Again, Chesky has taken
care to imagine the music as a vehicle for the flute, and the result is a charming work that really
does seem created for this particular combination rather than generic music coincidentally scored
as a flute concerto. It’s especially good to learn that Chesky can "write classical" and not entirely
abandon his sense of humor too.

The Girl from Guatemala is a short concert aria that sets an English translation of Poem No. 9 by
Cuban poet Jose Marti, about a girl who dies of love after being abandoned by her boyfriend. Here,
I have to say, Chesky has written an instrumental concerto movement and given it to the voice.
The vocal line is nearly unsingable, the words largely incomprehensible despite the fearless efforts
of soprano Wonjung Kim. It’s not a bad piece–the delicate opening is lovely–but it’s not on the
level of the two concertos.

Aria 31, a modern-music ensemble led by Anthony Aibel, plays all of this music with real enthusiasm,
and they clap with bravura. I’m not joking: the rhythmic element is really important here, and it
needs commitment as well as accuracy so as not to sound self-conscious or gimmicky. I
particularly like their willingness to let the music swing a bit–and get rowdy at the chaotic
climaxes that punctuate both concerto finales. As with most Chesky productions, the sound
is state-of-the-art, whether in stereo or multichannel format. There’s real substance here, and
a dynamic, creative personality at work. I’m very interested to hear how Chesky will follow this
achievement, and I hope that the wait won’t be too long."
Classics Today

Source: Chesky Records CD (Duh! – my rip)
Formats: FLAC, DDD Stereo, mp3(320)
File Sizes: 264 MB / 129 MB

Download Link – https://mega.co.nz/#!yhwglD7L!D17liBhzjtI80NWqDpjn81WfKrhwUfoWbL0qJA-4hA4
mp3 version – https://mega.co.nz/#!H1YCmSgI!BLm8wGuraxQ7OyVZn72f9wO9_2s-6azOO_MQfoU8rE0

Enjoy! Don’t share! Buy the original! 🙂

Please note:

I have started a "Desert Island Discs" thread for everyone who loves classical music to post/upload their 5 favorite albums:

Thread 136063

Formats can be lossy (192kHz or better) or lossless. I’m hoping for a healthy response …

I have started a "Desert Island Discs" thread for everyone who loves classical music to post/upload their 5 favorite albums:

Thread 136063

Formats can be lossy (192kHz or better) or lossless. I’m hoping for a healthy response …

192khz? I know high fidelity audio is all the rage nowadays, but that seems a tad excessive. 192 kbps on the other hand… XD

Also, I’d love to post there if I could narrow the list down… or if I could even find any CD’s (digital downloader, born ‘n raised, I’m afraid) Perhaps 5 favorite pieces, or best 500 MB of music, considering it’ll all get downloaded anyways, (definitely gives an unfair edge to lossy, though, :P)

lol it figures….hehe. Great thread, W. A lot of new stuff here, thanks.

M

No.67

Two Norwegian concertos that make much more creative and satisfying use of
the hardanger fiddle than Howard Shore did in his Lord of the Rings scores! 😉

The Hardanger fiddle has a dominant position among native Norwegian instruments. In
construction it follows the principles used by early Italian violins, but in shape and in the
way it is tuned the Hardanger fiddle differs from the common European violin. The
bridge and the fingerboard are much lower. The strings, which are specially made for the instrument,
are thinner than violin strings. The neck is shorter, as is the free length of the strings. The
body of the instrument is narrower and the sound holes are longer and the edges thicker. In
addition to the ‘upper’ strings the Hardanger fiddle is also fitted with up to four lower strings.
The lower strings are not played by the bow and their tuning is normally fixed at A, F sharp, E
and D, counting downwards. The upper strings are usually tuned E, A, D and A (as in Concerto
No. 2) or E, A, D and G (as in Concerto No.1), though there are many other ways of tuning the
fiddle with at least twenty standard modes. Particular dances require special tunings.

The ‘Gigja’ and ‘fidla’ are instruments that are referred to in the old Norse sagas. It is claimed
that there has been a continual tradition of stringed instruments in Norway since the middle
ages. Scholars seem to be in agreement that the most important characteristic of the Hardanger
fiddle, the sympathetic strings, represent a technical development inspired by the viola d’amore
of the late Baroque.

Tveitt’s Concerto No.1 for Hardanger Fiddle was written in the course of a month before
Christmas of 1955. The unusually exciting first performance took place in May of 1956.
The rhythms and characteristic timbre of Norwegian folk music are apparent right from the
start. One perceives the fiddle being tuned before it begins to play. The harp’s presentation of the
intervals of the sympathetic strings is a striking idea. The notable main theme is announced and
developed and then recurs in constantly differing versions with the Hardanger fiddle’s marked
rhythmical flow against the orchestra’s sonorities. The second movement, Andante, is a striking
mood painting, a sad and tender song, almost a plaint characterized by a strange sonic timbre.
This is a splendid piece of music, one of the most attractive of Tveitt’s stylish and introverted
concerto movements. In the opening of the third movement the low woodwinds provide a dark
sonorous background for the striking principal theme which is repeated in a richly shifting, at
times ostinato, orchestral passage. The solo part is filled with lively and burlesque ideas and it
draws with it the entire orchestra in a wild tornado of a finale.

A decade later the European Broadcasting Union decided to commission a work
from a Norwegian composer to be performed at the 1965 Nordzee Festival in Ostende and left it
up to the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation (NRK) to choose the composer. NRK placed the
commission with Geirr Tveitt who wanted to write another concerto for the instrument.
It was the fjords of Vestland that Geirr Tveitt wanted to honour with his Concerto No.2 for
Hardanger Fiddle and Orchestra with the name Three Fjords: Hardanger fjord, Sogne fjord and
Nord fjord. The first movement opens with two orchestral chords, whereupon the Hardanger
fiddle leaps in – like the play of light with its incomparable glitter above the Folgefonn glacier,
before the composer changes his point of view and lets his gaze glide over a range of proud
peaks before it again descends towards the fjord that lies there, calm and peaceful.
The opening bars of the second movement, Sognefjord, form a theme of eight notes to be
played without vibrato. The delicate tones of the solo instrument are interrupted by chords for
full orchestra. Is it the contrast between the tiny species man and the overwhelming wildness of
nature that the composer wants to express? With the third movement the journey reaches Nordfjord.
This is an energetic movement that reflects the mood of the people of the district, and perhaps
particularly the genial Alfred Maurstad. The concerto is dedicated to this great actor, who
was also proficient on the Hardanger fiddle. Osa asked Tveitt how loud he should play in this
movement but Tveitt replied that ‘here you should just rejoice’. The concerto thus attains a
festive climax with a captivating finale.

Music Composed by Geirr Tveitt
Played by the Stavanger Symphony Orchestra
With Arve Moen Bergset (hardanger fiddle)
Conducted by Ole Kristian Ruud

"The Hardanger fiddle resembles its ancestor the viola d’amore in that it has a course of
resonating strings under the fingerboard, and this gives the otherwise thin-toned instrument
a certain huskiness that sounds oddly compelling. Of course, it helps that Geirr Tveitt
composed two terrific concertos for this folk fiddle. The first, dating from 1955, is quite a
substantial piece (nearly half an hour long), and as might be expected the music takes
traditional Norwegian melodies as its starting point–but like Bart???k Tveitt integrates the
idiom into a contemporary musical language. It’s a lovely work, one that consistently
engages the ear and skillfully contrasts solo episodes with evocative and powerful
passages for full orchestra. The second concerto, from a decade later, has three
movements named for three famous fjords. Tveitt marks the slow movement "Danza
determinata e lenta", and "determined" is the quality that comes most readily to
mind in this compact (less than 20 minutes), tuneful, and purposeful piece. Soloist
Arve Moen Bergset plays both concertos with the necessary verve and gutsy
enthusiasm, and Ole Ruud supports him confidently.

Nykken, subtitled a "symphonic painting for orchestra", tells the story of a
mischievous water sprite who takes the form of a white horse, lures a young
man onto its back, and then takes him on a wild ride that culminates in a deadly
plunge back into its native pond. The music is extremely colorful and quite
graphic, making the story easy to follow and one heck of a good time too.
There’s an excellent earlier recording of this piece on Simax, but the differences
between the two aren’t really significant. Anyone who has recently been
turned on to Tveitt as a result of the wealth of attention he has been getting
from Naxos and BIS needs no further urging from me. This is marvelous music,
marvelously played and recorded."
Classics Today http://i1084.photobucket.com/albums/j415/wimpel69/p10s10_zps455b1f8d.gif

Source: BIS CD (my rip!)
Formats: FLAC, DDD Stereo, mp3(320)
File Sizes: 281 MB / 159 MB (incl. cover, booklet)

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Arthur De Greef (1862-1940) composed his Piano Concerto No.1 in C minor
in 1914 and dedicated it to Camille Saint-Saens, who was not only honoured by this gesture
but also predicted that the concerto’s fame would equal that of Edward Grieg’s.
The prediction never came true and Saint-Saens’ valued opinion shows how unjust
history can sometimes be. Like his second concerto, this concerto is in C minor. One
cannot really call this a virtuoso work, even though one needs to be a virtuoso to be
able to perform it. De Greef’s great piano moments are not there to overwhelm,
but were simply created and written to awaken feelings and dynamism.

De Greef finished his piano Concerto No.2 in B flat minor, dedicated to his pupil
and friend Ren DeIporte, in 1930 at the Villa Caeciliain at the charming Belgian seaside
resort of Middelkerke, lying half in the sand dunes and half in the polders, an oasis
for meditation. The concerto has three movements, each of which has a poetical name,
namely Fear (Angoisse), Separation and Sursum Corda (Let us lift up our hearts),
the thoughts one has as one nears the age of seventy. The orchestral introduction of
the first movement, Agitato, is rather long and ends with a dynamic climax that slowly
fades. The piano then enters. The development of the lilting theme is simple
romanticism, even in the more dramatic moments with octave leaps. The finest
moments are the meditative conversations of the piano. The second movement,
Separation, marked Assez lent, sounds like a prayer, a spiritual. In the 1930s courage
was needed to compose in this way, but the music remains beautiful to hear. The work
as a whole is rather mournful, with here and there glimmers of hope. The finale is
played by two quartets. First a chorale line from the horns, followed by a downward
flattened seventh of the piano, sotto vocce, as a restful sigh, and ends ppp in an
amazing chorale from the violins. The third movement, Sursum Corda, Mouvemente
et energique, is totally different in character. Orchestra and soloist encourage each
other. The one keeps the other going, which sometimes leads to passionate repartee
between piano and orchestra.

Music Composed by Arthur de Greef
Played by the Moscow Symphony Orchestra
With Andr??? de Groote (piano)
Conducted by Fr???d???ric Devreese

"Arthur de Greef studied piano at the Brussels Conservatory with Louis Brassin,
winning first prize in 1879. He also studied composition with Fran???ois Auguste
Gevaert, and it may have been one of these teachers who suggested that the
young de Greef continue his studies in Weimar with Franz Liszt. It is not absolutely
certain how long he studied with Liszt: an authority, Donald Manildi, states that he
was fifteen when they met and that he studied for ‘about two years’ which implies
the years 1877–1879; however, he may not have begun tuition until 1879. Following
his period of study with Liszt, de Greef spent some time in Paris where he received
tuition from Saint-Sa???ns. In 1889 Grieg visited Belgium and conducted performances
of his piano Concerto in A minor Op. 16 with de Greef as soloist. The performances
were a great success, and Grieg asked de Greef to play the concerto in Paris the
following year. The two musicians became friends, a relationship that lasted until
the composer’s death in 1907. Grieg wrote in a letter to violinist Ole Bull, ‘de Greef
is the best interpreter of my music I have met with. It is surprising how he understands
my meaning. Whether I roam over the mountains or through the valleys, whether
I am refined or vigorous, he follows me with a wonderful instinct. I feel happy and
honoured by his sympathy for my art. He is a real Master; that I see more and
more, just one of those whom you may look for with a lantern all around the
musical world.’

In 1885 de Greef returned to Brussels to take up a post as teacher of piano at the
Conservatory, and in December 1887 was created Professeur Sup???rior de piano by
royal command. He first visited London in 1890, and in 1892 took the rare step
of playing a piano concerto by Mozart in a performance conducted by Hans Richter.
George Bernard Shaw who reviewed the concert stated, ‘I have to congratulate M.
de Greef on having come triumphantly through the ordeal of taking Mozart’s own
place at the pianoforte in the C minor Concerto.’ In the same year de Greef gave
a series of recitals in Paris devoted to the history of piano music, and for the next
forty years he combined a teaching career at the Conservatory with that of performing.
He also composed, leaving amongst his works a symphony, three symphonic poems
and two piano concertos.

De Greef’s style is somewhat like that of Emil von Sauer. His playing is clear and lucid,
free from indulgence and rhetoric. An interesting feature of some of his recordings
is his alteration of the text. Most important are the recordings of works by Grieg,
Saint-Sa???ns and Liszt where it can be assumed that the alterations and additions
were sanctioned by the composers themselves. Grieg evidently approved, as Percy
Grainger, who also studied the work with its composer, makes changes to the text
in his performances of Grieg’s piano Concerto, and later published an edition for
Schirmer detailing these changes.

De Greef recorded for HMV from 1918, and because he made many discs in the
early 1920s by the acoustic process, he made them again after 1925 when this
process was superseded by electrical recording. His most important recording is
that of the Grieg piano Concerto, which he recorded acoustically in an abridged
version in 1921, and electrically in 1927. The same thing happened with Liszt’s
Hungarian Fantasy, and also Saint-Sa???ns’s piano Concerto No. 2 in G minor Op. 22
which he recorded in 1921 and 1928. Unfortunately he did not re-record Liszt’s
piano Concerto No. 1 in E flat, so this only exists in an acoustic version, but in 1930
he recorded the piano Concerto No 2. de Greef also made recordings with violinist
Isolde Menges (1893–1976) of Beethoven’s ‘Kreutzer’ Sonata and Schubert’s
Sonatina D. 408.

Of the solo discs the best are Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No. 12, the Polonaise
No. 2 in E major and some solos by Grieg. de Greef’s Chopin is rather uninspired,
although in 1925 he made the first electrical recording of Chopin’s piano Sonata
in B flat minor Op. 35."

Source: Marco Polo CD (my rip!)
Formats: FLAC, DDD Stereo, mp3(320)
File Sizes: 208 MB / 133 MB (incl. booklet)

Download Link – https://mega.co.nz/#!utgTiJZR!SuQ_-3zZ4uffp4_WV3zpnFigeydAQF9t7_PimBWXvdY
mp3 version – https://mega.co.nz/#!D1RlnDBa!JADA-xZV_WOwZxrZAw2XWDhShz0dOFYdy_liWXz_M4I

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Two Norwegian concertos that make much more creative and satisfying use of
the hardanger fiddle than Howard Shore did in his Lord of the Rings scores! 😉

There is very little Tveitt music available in the world due to 90% of his compositions going up in flame when his house was struck by lightening. I favor the second concerto as being the most lyrical and full of life. The tone poem is delightful and exciting.

None of Tveitt’s work sounds like Bartok. He studied in France, did incorporate Norwedian folk sound in some of his work but in general his music is beautifully unique.

Howard Shore did a wonderful job with the Hardanger fiddle using it to establish a whole culture of Rohan. For many it was the first introduction to this instrument and the use was distinct and VERY satisfying.

Seek out his piano concertos- what few there are. I was lucky to land his concerto for harp. Musicologists continue to piece together his work virtually from the ashes and old acetate recordings.

I don’t see why you find the Bartok comparison so appalling, perhaps the similarities aren’t in the music, but the same reverence for their culture can be found in the music of both. I’d say the Fiddle concertos have a kindred spirit in Bartok’s Rhapsodies, but maybe that’s just me.

Also, if you don’t hear just the tiniest bit of Bartok in the opening of Tveitt’s 5th Piano Concerto, you need to listen to more Bartok, XD

Exactly.

What makes you thinking I found the erroneous reference APPALLING?

Just a clarification.

Liner notes on the 5th piano concerto:

Tveitt’s modality is much less uncompromising than Bartok or Vaughan Williams. His theories may posit a primitive sound-world, reinventing music almost from the first principles like his Icelandic contemporary Jon Leifs, inspired by the barbaric grandeur of NORDIC NATURE.

"The work has a compact, arch-like structure, suggesting the influence of Bart???k."
– Review of PC#1 on Classical Music Review

"Tveitt, 1908-1981, was a Norwegian composer and cultural figure, who studied at the famous conservatory in Leipzig and then in Paris with Honegger and Villa-Lobos, and with—here comes the big name—Nadia Boulanger. So there’s every reason to say, as most commentators do, that his music bears influences of Stravinsky and Bart???k."
Comment on Tveitt’s Life and Career

"Geirr Tveitt is one of Scandinavia’s most distinctive composers. Strong …. It is possible to trace influences from other composers, especially Bartok."
Classical MP3, from liner notes to Tveitt’s piano music, Marco Polo.

"Taking up, in a way, where Edvard Grieg left off, Geirr Tveitt was devoted to the sounds of Norwegian folk music: the bracing brightness of the Hardanger fiddle, the national folk instrument, and its typically tart harmonic language. Bart???k makes a still better comparison"
eMusic Review

" It was Bela Bart???k, however, who demonstrated how deeply an ethnic musicality could be assimilated to serious concert music. In Norway, although Grieg had shown the way, Geirr Tveitt, Harald Saeverud, and Eyvind Groven took up the challenge."
The Orthosphere

"Geirr Tveitt. A composer with perhaps the most immediate stylistic rightness when compared to his international contemporaries. His music has something of the folkoristic aspect of Bart???k similarly filtered through a prism of accessable modernism"
Good Music Guide Forum

"Geirr Tveitt (1928-1981), one of the most talented and prolific Norwegian composers … Tveitt might best be classed as Norway’s answer to Bela Bart???k"
Classics Today

" Naxos is proud to present this exciting premi???re recording of the Piano Concertos Nos. 1 and 5. Folk music forms the basis for these stimulating works, though the influence of Grieg, Sibelius, Ravel and Bart???k is also present."
Naxos advertising

"Geirr Tveitt and B???la Bart???k: Sons of Grieg and Brothers in Spirit."
Studia Musicologica Norvegica. ISSN 0332-5024. 25, s 348- 364

Igor Raykhelson was born in St Petersburg – then still called Leningrad – on 24 April 1961.
He was admitted to the Leningrad-Rimsky-Korsakov Conservatory in 1976 where he studied both
classical and jazz piano. Early in his career he formed a jazz quartet, The Emerging Stars,
which toured extensively throughout the former Soviet Union.

In 1979 Raykhelson moved to New York and began his piano studies with Alexander Edelman,
going on to tour with such eminent jazzmen as Eddie Gomez, Joe Lock and Russia’s leading
saxophonist, Igor Butman. Raykhelson continued his study of classical piano, performing chamber
music and appearing as orchestral soloist and recitalist. It was in 1998 that Raykhelson first
met the violist Yuri Bashmet, whose brilliance has inspired several pieces of music.

The Viola Concerto, completed in 2005, is dedicated Bashmet, who commissioned
the work and premiered it in Yaroslavl in 2009. In addition to being a viola virtuoso, Bashmet
is also a skilful pianist, and it was his suggestion that the piano should be given a prominent part
in the work. Raykhelson remarks that this composition is different from everything else that he has
written to date. His goal was to write a grand, majestic concerto, in which he could bring out the
ability of the viola to sing against a backdrop of rich harmonies and orchestral colours. The style is
eclectic – classical and jazz influences from Schubert to swing exist side by side with echoes of
Raykhelson’s Russian and Soviet counterparts, Rachmaninov, Prokofiev and Shchedrin.

The Violin Concerto, cyclic in construction, was written in 2007, when Raykhelson
met his second wife, to whom it is dedicated. He says that this work, the most overtly romantic
piece he has yet written, is about love: its lyrical and soulful music is a direct response to the
emotions he was feeling at the time. Perhaps this is why the melodies – some emotional, some
dramatic, some intensely lyrical – are the building blocks of this concerto, the most prominent
and significant elements of the work.

Music Composed by Igor Raykhelson
Played by Novaya Rossiya Orchestra
With Yuri Bashmet (viola) & Nikolay Sachenko (violin)
Conducted by Claudio Vandelli & Alexander Slatkovsky

"The Modernist era wasn’t too kind to the violin concerto, so it’s easy to understand
why Igor Raykhelson takes the last generation of Romantics as a starting point for his
work in the genre. Raykhelson’s career to date has been divided between Russia and
America. It has also been divided between jazz and classical, with the emphasis
shifting decisively toward the classical in recent years.

Both dichotomies are played out in these concertos. Rachmaninoff is a clear model
(to the point of quotation in the Viola Concerto), with Raykhelson drawing on his
predecessor’s success in bridging Russian and American tastes. But the Romanticism
is up against competition from Raykhelson’s jazz side, with swung rhythms and jazzy
chords appearing in the finales of both works. In fact, these concertos, which date
from 2007 and 2005, respectively, mark an endpoint in the composer’s journey from
jazz pianist to classical composer, so the jazz only has a nominal presence in what is
otherwise a predominantly late-Romantic aesthetic. It integrates well enough, but it
always feels constrained, with the soloists only occasionally breaking into jazz
rhythms and never even contemplating improvisation.

The concertos are well served by both soloists, and violinist Nikolay Sachenko
has nothing to fear from comparison with his more esteemed viola-playing colleague.
Both give engaged and precise accounts, and both are able to dominate the orchestra
without their tone ever sounding forced. They are both able to switch straight into the
jazz when required, and Yuri Bashmet’s louche hotel lobby sound is a particular treat
in the finale of the Viola Concerto.

The Novaya Rossiya Orchestra presumably draws on years of experience performing
Rachmaninoff to give these beautifully flowing and expressive performances. There are
a few moments of poor ensemble from the strings in the first movement of the Violin Concerto,
but otherwise the playing is ideal. The Violin Concerto is a studio recording while the
Viola Concerto is taken from a live concert. The difference is only apparent in the acoustic,
with the dry studio sound no match for the more conducive resonance of the concert hall.

This disc should provide an excellent introduction for anybody seeking to explore the
sound world of Igor Raykhelson. It’s a world of unreconstructed and unapologetic
Romanticism. Adorno would turn in his grave at the thought of it, but those with a
taste for expressive melodic writing may be more sympathetic."
Fanfare

The world’s greatest living violist.

Source: Toccata Classics CD (my rip!)
Formats: FLAC, DDD Stereo, mp3(320)
File Sizes: 263 MB / 209 MB (incl. cover, booklet)

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mp3 version – https://mega.co.nz/#!ulgUlTDD!cMGJ1EOLLix2xuvJUGdL43CDoJIAr43ZC9puU1_ zmuA

Enjoy! Don’t share! Buy the original! 🙂

Perhaps best known for his collaborations with author Gertrude Stein, American composer and music critic
Virgil Thomson (1896-1989) was born in Kansas City. He began playing piano at the age of five and
began taking lessons with local teachers at age 12. He studied organ from 1909 until 1917, and again in 1919.
In the fall of 1919, Thomson enrolled at Harvard University, where he met three individuals who would come
to have a profound influence on the young musician. The first of these was Edward Burlingame Hill, with whom
Thomson studied orchestration and modern French music. Archibald T. Davison was the conductor of the
Harvard Glee Club, a group with which Thomson spent three years as assistant and accompanist. Thomson
also came into contact with S. Foster Damon, a Blake Scholar who introduced him to the music of Satie and
the writings of Gertrude Stein. Thomson began to compose in 1920, while still a student at Harvard.

From 1925 to 1940, aside from occasional visits to the U.S., Thomson resided in Paris. It was there, in 1926,
that he met Stein. The two began to plan an opera, the result of which is Four Saints in Three Acts, perhaps
Thomson’s most famous work. For a period of approximately seven years after the composition of Four
Saints in Three Acts, Thomson explored the problems of "pure" music as he worked on expanding his
technical facility as a composer, especially in regards to writing for string instruments. During the late 1930s,
Thomson returned to a more nationalistic vein with the scores to two films, The Plow That Broke the Plain
and The River, and a ballet, Filling Station (see my other mega-thread).

The Cello Concerto "Rider on the Plains", as the title strongly suggests, is one of Thomson’s most obviously
"American" works, a mellifluous and appealing piece that does not deserve its present neglect.

Music by Virgil Thomson & Charles Fussell
Played by the Nashville Chamber Orchestra & New England String Ensemble
With Emmanuel Feldman (cello) & Joy Cline Phinney (piano)
Conducted by Paul Gambill & Susan Davenny Wyner

"Virgil Thomson’s Cello Concerto “Rider on the Plains” is wholly marvelous, a bright,
breezy, beautifully crafted piece that really deserves to enter the repertoire. I suppose
its comparative brevity (20 minutes) counts against it, but the Saint-Sa???ns First
Concerto isn’t any longer and it gets played all the time. The thematic material is recognizably
“American”, and the formal treatment is clear, unfussy, and natural sounding. Charles
Fussell’s Right River variations for cello and strings is similarly straightforward and expertly
laid out, if a touch more self-consciously “modern”. It too would make a lovely addition to a
chamber orchestra concert featuring ensemble principals (it only lasts about 11 minutes).

After the two larger works, cellist Emmanuel Feldman includes a selection of short pieces
for violin and piano–five works from Thomson’s large series of musical “portraits”, and
Two Ballades by Fussell, less interesting and appealing music than Right River. Indeed,
if I have any quibble with this release, it is that the mixture of orchestral and chamber works,
though coherent in theory, makes for a much less interesting second half of the program.
Certainly this isn’t the fault of the performers, all of whom do very well. Feldman in particular
plays with real panache and a warm, singing tone in the outer movements of Thomson’s
concerto. He’s a joy, the sonics are terrific in all formats (SACD and normal stereo),
and for the two orchestral pieces alone I can recommend this disc without reservation."
Classics Today (9/9)

Source. Albany CD (my rip!)
Formats: FLAC, DDD Stereo, mp3(320)
File Sizes: 215 MB / 127 MB (incl. booklet)

Download Link – https://mega.co.nz/#!y0JU3RCb!RBmBKhnkrUj1di5FSMZbnhPv1Jh_58m22DwGrVj yC8E
mp3 version – https://mega.co.nz/#!2xh0Wa4Z!abD6unjR0z96kOg93FzM9UIeAPcSgjMyQ9KDD-EJ-D4

Enjoy! Don’t share! Buy the original! 🙂

Three mid-20th century violin concertos by British composers: Peter Racine
Fricker, David Morgan and Don Banks (the latter known to film music
enthusiasts for his Hammer Films scores, like e.g. The Reptile).

Music by Peter Racine Fricker, David Morgan & Don Banks
Played by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
With Yfrah Neaman (violin) & Erich Gruenberg (violin)
Conducted by Norman Del Mar & Vernon Handley

"Lyrita’s breathless reissue programme here produces a coupling which resolves a few challenges.
We have the Fricker and Banks issued in the 1970s. Together they are too short for a CD. Then
again Morgan’s Contrasts was added to a Lyrita anthology on SRCD.318 which left the Morgan Violin
Concerto orphaned and looking for a home which it did not need when it was cosied up to Contrasts
on Lyrita LP SRCS97. The result is a trio of three very different concertos from the 1950s and 1960s
unified in these world premiere recordings by the RPO.

Fricker was hardly ever a star. He emerged in the 1950s and had his measure of premieres but there
was to be no major enduring public coup. His reputation remains something of an unglamorous
quantity; perhaps not helped by his decamping to a Californian University from 1964. He died
in Santa Barbara. Not that geography should have made any difference to his critical reception.

The Concerto heard here comes from a copiously productive period between the First and Second
Symphonies – both recorded (RCA (not reissued on CD), EMI) – the Viola Concerto, the Piano Concerto
and the First Violin Sonata. In 1958 came his choral-orchestral piece, A Vision of Judgement,
premiered at the Leeds Festival under Groves. Of the little I know of his music this ‘oratorio’ has
the mark of something special. A mesmerising melodic fragment from that work endures with me
to this day.

The Fricker Violin Concerto is the first of two. The second, the unrecorded Rapsodia Concertante,
is from 1954. It has its moments both intimate and dramatic. There are touches here of the sultry
Walton in the middle movement. The outer two movements have the bark and grit of Bartok and
the melodic contours of the first Rawsthorne concerto but with the angularity chamfered somewhat.

Morgan was an even more peripheral figure. His only finger-hold – and that a narrow one – on public
knowledge derives from the Lyrita LP which made little impression when first issued in the 1970s.
His Contrasts has only been well received on its unshackled reissue a couple of months ago as
part of a multi-composer Lyrita odds-and-sods collection [review RECORDING OF THE MONTH].
His three movement Violin Concerto is more approachable than the Fricker. Its roots are struck
deep into the mulch of Walton, Vaughan Williams and Szymanowski. There is a devilish and
skittering air to the work in the middle movement. Its layout is familiar: two slow movements
framing a Presto. Its mien is such that one can easily imagine it having been taken up by
Heifetz in another life and another time. The finale has its episodes of military determination
mixed with a smilingly contented quasi-Bergian dreamland (6:34) swept asunder by a stomped
out and bongo-goaded gale.

After studies in Melbourne with Dorian Le Gallienne, Don Banks founded the Australian Musical
Association in London. This he did with Margaret Sutherland. Banks had been studying in the
UK with Matyas Seiber. Both Seiber and Banks had a strong interest in the shadowlands between
Jazz and Classical. Seiber co-wrote the Jazz Improvisations for jazz ensemble and orchestra
with Johnny Dankworth in the 1950s. Banks wrote a number of works in which those two
worlds collide. He studied with Dallapiccola, Nono and Babbitt and embraced serialism. The
Violin Concerto while tensely atmospheric is the most ‘extreme’ of the three concertos. Even
if you find the first movement difficult to take Banks immerses the listener in a fascinating
iridescent Bergian web in the Andante Cantabile. However fragmented this music is – and it
is typically explosive, hesitant and dysjunct – its sounds are always expertly crafted;
always in focus.

The liner-notes and audio production values are typically excellent. There are no crashed
gears between the British Council-derived tapes (Banks, Fricker) and the Lyrita original (Morgan).
The performances reflect a committed and expert advocacy. A sometimes challenging,
sometimes smiling collection of concertos otherwise lost to us in a beckoning vinyl Gehenna."
Rob Barnett, MusicWeb

Source: Lyrita CD (my rip!)
Formats: FLAC, ADD Stereo, mp3(320)
File Sizes: 325 MB / 174 MB

Download Link – https://mega.co.nz/#!6oRykCQa!NlebvhdKSVy01z8-9mEFQzD2l9YKQvz88YWgWu9fx3s
mp3 version – https://mega.co.nz/#!C5xFEDJC!KTG9IgtNH5lgSNuFsdRWXAm_f4wrt-UBYqHUiMWVnvE

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"In 1991 I composed and recorded a ‘cantata’ overnight as a challenge for
the BBC TV programme ‘Challenge Anneka’. It was done for a good cause, to help
promote ‘The Paralympics’ and a large crowd of participants and fundraisers joined
us at ITV in London to watch the first broadcast of it at 11.15pm that night April 17th.
I found myself talking to Bernard Atha who ran the Arts in Leeds. He was amazed
by it and wondered, since I could write a cantata overnight, whether I could compose
a full-scale violin concerto for Nigel Kennedy in time for the centenary of Leeds
in early 1993. I said that I had always longed to write such a work and would be
delighted. Arrangements began but although I knew Nigel I couldn’t get any response
from either him or his agent at that time. Years later his manager wrote and said
that when he moved offices he found my letter behind the radiator! That September
I was visiting a music festival in a castle near Steyr in Austria and heard some
terrific violin practise coming from the next room. I was so excited by the sound that
I sat down and sketched out the opening theme of the concerto, taking it to the
terrace where the violinist Christiana Edinger was having coffee. She said ‘Let’s try it’
and our host Ilona von Ronay suggested that we go to Bruckner’s house in the village
where there was a good piano. On playing it Christiane declared she would love to
give the premiere. I began work and finished the orchestration the following July.
Christiane then began rehearsing it, giving the first performance in February 1993.

My inner, personal motivation for composing the concerto was quite different.
My mother, who had played and taught me the violin, had died in 1990 to my
most heartfelt grief. On the title page of the concerto I placed a dedication
‘To the memory of a most true and saintly soul’."
Howard Blake

Music Composed by Howard Blake
Played by the English Northern Philharmonia
With Christiane Edinger (violin)
Conducted by Paul Daniel

"This is a fine example of the way Classical music should be heading in the 21st
Century. Lyrical, lush and romantic, the concerto uses the full range of the violin’s
expression without resorting to mal-treatment and noise. The orchestration is at
times sparse (a single flute at one point), at times mindblowingly broad, such as
at the climax of the second movement. The thematic tightness of the whole piece
makes it reward repeated listening. A wonderful work."
Amazon Reviewer

Source: ASV CD (my rip!)
Formats: FLAC, DDD Stereo, mp3(320)
File Sizes: 231 MB / 144 MB

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Frank Martin was born in Geneva, Switzerland, on 15 September 1890. He was the tenth and
youngest child of a clergyman’s family. He attended classical languages high school and, to please
his parents, went on to study mathematics and physics at the University of Geneva for two years.
Simultaneously he started studying piano and composition with Joseph Lauber, who initiated him
in the "craft", especially in instrumentation. Between 1918 and 1926 Frank Martin lived in Zurich,
Rome and Paris.

In 1932 he became interested in the 12-tone technique of Arnold Sch???nberg. He incorporated
certain elements into his own musical language, creating a synthesis of the chromatic and twelve-tone
techniques, without however abandoning the sense of tone – that is, the hierarchical relations between
notes. Le Vin Herb??? (1941) was the first important work in which he completely mastered this
very personal idiom. Together with the Petite Symphonie Concertante (1944-45) it established
his international reputation.

Over the course of his career Frank Martin produced a series of pieces he called Ballades, all
one-movement works featuring a solo instrumental part, accompanied by symphony orchestra.

Music Composed by Frank Martin
Played by the London Philharmonic Orchestra
Conducted by Matthias Bamert

"The collection of Ballades is, for me, the ‘Prince’ among these five Chandos discs. Substantial single
movement essays provide an ideal medium for Martin’s Lutheran-tempered (if not subdued) voice. When
he uses voices (especially solo singers) he can tend towards an unvariegated recitative as the story is told.
This can infer monotony. The Piano Ballade is typically subtle with overtones of Ravel and a dramatic
smash and swing to its finale. The Trombone accentuates the chansonnier rather than the buffoon in
its short and lyrical episode.

Do not look for an unbridled ecstasy in Martin. His religious convictions (manifest in the music) do not
permit the sort of religious exaltation that crosses the divide into fleshly joys. Martin might thus be
compared to Herbert Howells but a Howells with a sombre Gallic accent and purged of the Delian abandon
that shakes the rafters and galleries in Missa Sabrinensis and Hymnus Paradisi.

The Cello Ballade could easily partner Edmund Rubbra’s Soliloquy and Nicolas Flagello’s Capriccio (1962)
both for cello and orchestra. It is given a rhythmic jolt by an ostinato that Martin may have encountered
in Sibelius’s Nightride and Sunrise. The shades are Dutch Master ochres and are perfectly matched to the
natural tones of the cello and its inclination to profundity and wonder.

The tightly bunched French tone of the solo in the Saxophone Ballade is contrasted with string writing
taking us to the chillier passages in Shostakovich’s Eighth Symphony. The Viola Ballade’s accents are
oriental with a dash of Stravinsky along the way – perhaps a linkage with Pribaoutki and the Japanese
Songs. The neatly chiselled Flute Ballade adopts a Ravel-like approach and mixes it with the engaging
chatter of Nielsen’s Flute Concerto.

Decca have recorded some of the Ballades before. Those for Piano, Trombone, Saxophone and Flute are
coupled with the Concerto for Seven Wind Instruments, Timpani, Percussion and Strings on Decca
444 455-2DH. The Royal Concertgebouw are conducted by Riccardo Chailly. The solo team includes some
of the most celebrated virtuosos of the age including John Harle and Christian Lindberg as well as
Roland Brautigam.

The fact is however that Chandos have the most natural and generous of couplings and this and the
inherent musical values of the music and its performance make this a preferred choice."
MusicWeb

Source: Chandos CD (my rip!)
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File Sizes: 283 MB / 182 MB (incl. cover, booklet)

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The Double Concerto for Bandone???n and Guitar is a relatively lyrical and tender work
by the Argentine master of Tango nuevo, who is often known for infusing his modern style of tango
with a sense of bitterness and loss. Astor Piazzolla (1921-1992) was of Italian descent, born
in a fishing village near Buenos Aires but often traveling to the United States to stay for extended
periods of time, including part of his school years. By the time he wrote this concerto he had
been gaining a sudden international popularity for a few years, and was even winning over
many in his homeland who had resisted his stylistic experiments with their beloved national dance.

He wrote this concerto for the Fifth International Guitar Festival, which was held in Li???ge, Belgium,
in 1985. Piazzolla wrote the work for guitarist Cacho Tirao and for bandone???n and played that
instrument at its premiere with Tirao and the Li???ge Philharmonic, conducted by Leo Brouwer
(himself a master composer for guitar). The opening movement is marked Introduction Lentamente.
This section is for the two solo instruments only. It is a piece clearly about loneliness and longing.
The absence of the orchestra facilitates the piece being written in a free, seemingly unmeasured
rhythm, allowing the soloists to create the impression of an improvised movement.

The central movement is marked Milonga. This is a song form with essentially the same rhythm
as the tango, but it is less accented, being a vocal work rather than dance accompaniment.
Moreover, a traditional milonga is likely to be lighthearted or romantic in mood.

The finale is a work of pure Tango nuevo. The choppy adaptation of tango rhythm, a surging
feeling at the end of phrases, adventurous harmonies, and other stylistic traits Piazzolla found
in North American popular music and in classical music are all hallmarks of this style and present
in the concerto. Piazzolla creates percussion effects by calling on the soloists to slap their instruments.

The remaining shorter works in this album are all Piazzolla favorites, especially Adi???s Nonino, a tribute
to the composer’s late father, and Milonga del ???ngel; also, Tres Movimientos Tangu???sticos Porte???os,
a work I already uploaded earlier (together with Luis Enrique Bacalov’s Triple Concerto).

Music Composed by Astor Piazzolla
Played by the Orchestre Symphonique de Montr???al
With Daniel Binelli (bandone???n) & Eduardo Isaac (guitar)
Conducted by Charles Dutoit

"Still the Piazzolla bandoneon keeps rolling. After celebrity excursions from Yo Yo Ma, Barenboim and Kremer,
not to mention innumerable arrangements and reinterpretations, comes this sumptuous and beautifully
recorded programme from Montreal. The notes speak of tango nuevo as a compound of chromaticism,
dissonance and jazz elements though you will be hard pressed to extrapolate much jazz from the fabric of
the scores – unless you count some innocuous sounding runs from solo instruments. In fact chromaticism
and dissonance are not the first things to spring to mind either; I would cite a filmic imagination, textured
sonorities, a quixotic structural sense, an occasionally inspired lyrical gift and some rather stale romantic
rhetoric.

That said the music begins unforgettably with Piazzolla’s most widely known and triumphant piece, Adios
Nonino, a tribute to his father. The 1981 orchestration opens with some all-purpose abrasion, percussive
clatter, staccato piano (much employed in the orchestral texture here and elsewhere) before opening
out into a tune of decisive beauty and tranquillity. Milonga del angel is evocative but essentially filmic.
The move from a winsome introduction to a more harmonically animated and austere middle section
is certainly welcome but the Francophile leanings of the composer are always present (the fact that
he studied, briefly I believe, with Boulanger is probably irrelevant here) inasmuch as the lyric impulse
is towards the status of a glorified chanson. The three movement Double Concerto was premiered by
the composer himself in 1985. The fusion of bandoneon – the mid nineteenth century German square
button accordion – and guitar is effective; the first movement is withdrawn, the second rather frisky
and the finale has a nice passage for solo violin with momentum increasing to the conclusion but the
thematic material itself is threadbare and the whole piece lacks any kind of direction or distinction.
Oblivion derives from a film score and features a winding oboe figure and bandoneon
quasi-extemporisation – attractive in its way but slight. The Tres movimientos tanguisticos
portenos are of a more rewarding stamp. There is some surprisingly fluent writing here from
woodwind, excellently taken runs from the Montreal players, intriguingly apposite textures (brass,
tambourine, percussive piano writing) and jaunty rhythms. The central movement however
bursts into what sounds like some Turkish belly dancing music, an exoticism too far for me,
in the context. Nevertheless there is some heady and surging music in the piece, and the focus
of the disc as regards sheer compositional craft as well as being of itself evocative both in texture
and in mood. Danza criolla is propulsive and colourful and replete with drum splashes, brass
interjections and piano outbursts. Tangazo, premiered in 1970 and sans bandoneon, is a
fourteen-minute single movement piece that embraces a range of moods and rhythms;
I can’t say I found it structurally convincing but it is certainly colourful."
Jonathan Woolf, MusicWeb

Source: Decca CD (my rip!)
Formats: FLAC (RAR), DDD Stereo, mp3(320)
File Sizes: 323 / 185 MB (incl. artwork & booklet)

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A pacifist who believed that creative artists were the prime representatives of a civilization,
Gerald Finzi (1901-1956) is perhaps best known as a composer of songs. He believed that all
texts of artistic merit can be set by composers who wish to work with their artistic substance; none are
either too fine or too familiar. Many of his songs are set in an aria-like style. His accompaniments, designed
to complement and support the material of the singer, are often reminiscent of the treatment given
his short orchestral works. Finzi was influenced in his melodic and harmonic vocabulary by the music
of Elgar and Vaughan Williams.In 1933, Finzi married artist Joyce Black. In 1935, the couple moved
to Aldbourne in Wiltshire. Then, in 1937 they built a house, designed for them to work in, on a 16-acre
site on the Hampshire hills at Ashmansworth. From this base of operations, Finzi composed, assembled
a music library, and tended an orchard of rare apple trees. He also traveled, taking whatever adjudication,
examination, or committee work was offered him.

In 1951, Finzi learned that he suffered from a form of leukemia. He was told that he had, at the most,
ten more years to live. He kept this news within his family, simply continuing to work between his
treatments. In 1955, he gave the Crees lectures at the Royal College of Music; providing a somewhat
provocative survey of the history and aesthetics of English song during which he presented his principles
of text setting. He died of a severe case of shingles, exacerbated by his leukemia, in 1956.

This is a neat collection which brings together three of Finzi’s finest works in very good interpretations
from Canada (there are even more distinguished readings, but not in the same coupling). The song cycle/
"cantata" Dies Natalis is possibly his greatest achievement, recorded here with a soprano (most versions
use a tenor), and almost as fine is the later cycle Let Us Garlands Bring. The disc concludes with
his most popular work, the infectious and sharply defined Clarinet Concerto.

Music Composed by Gerald Finzi
Played by the Manitoba Chamber Orchestra
With Valdine Anderson (soprano), Russell Braun (baritone)
And James Campbell (clarinet)
Conducted by Simon Streatfeild

"Acclaimed by the Toronto Star as “Canada’s pre-eminent clarinetist and wind soloist”,
James Campbell has performed solo and chamber music concerts in 25 countries,
has been soloist with over sixty orchestras, including the Boston Pops, the London
Symphony, the Russian Philharmonic, and the Montreal Symphony and has performed
Copland’s Clarinet Concerto five times with Aaron Copland conducting. He has appeared
with over thirty string quartets, including the famous Amadeus Quartet when he
replaced an ailing Benny Goodman for a tour of California.

He has made over forty recordings, including the Debussy Rhapsody with Glenn Gould,
the Philharmonia Orchestra of London, and the premi???re recording of the Berio arrangement
of Brahms’s F minor Sonata with the London Symphony. His recording of Brahms’s
Clarinet Quintet was chosen by the BBC and The Times in London as the best available.
He has been awarded a Juno (Canada’s Grammy), Canada’s Artist of the Year, the
Queen’s Jubilee Medal, and Canada’s highest honour, the Order of Canada. James
Campbell has been Professor of Music at Indiana University since 1988 and Artistic
Director of the Festival of the Sound since 1985."

Source: CBC CD (my rip!)
Formats: FLAC (RAR), DDD Stereo, mp3(320)
File Sizes: 352 MB / 189 MB (incl. cover, booklet)

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Music Composed by Gerald Finzi
Played by the Manitoba Chamber Orchestra
With Valdine Anderson (soprano), Russell Braun (baritone)
And James Campbell (clarinet)
Conducted by Simon Streatfeild

Fascinating to see this disc as the Finzi entry here, would have imagined the Cello/Clarinet Concerto pairing with John Denman and Yo-Yo- Ma getting uploaded here, although I like this choice as it gives me some new works to listen to. Thanks for your continued support of this thread, glad to see it’s still going strong! 😀

I got a number of versions of the Cello & Clarinet Concertos, including the Handley/Lyrita disc, and I was pondering to upload that, but the two vocal works here are really among Finzi’s very best, and because of the selection this album is beautifully balanced. 🙂

Lossless version of the Finzi is now up.

This collection of miscellaneous premiere recordings and/or commissions was released under the
banner "British Modern", which seems a tad dated when you look at the names of the
composers and the styles of the individual works. Even in 1957, when Louisville commissioned
Arthur Bliss’s Discourse for Orchestra, it is unlikely that it would have been perceived
as "modern" at the time. Admittedly, there are better works by this composer, too. The primary attraction
of this disc is the Trumpet Concerto by John Addison, a composer who came to notice for
his work in film music, for which he received one Academy Award (for Tom Jones) and where he
worked on many prestigious projects. He is today probably best remembered for the main title theme
for Murder, She Wrote. The Concerto is an attractive neo-classical work. The Arnold
and the Rubbra are both superior works, too.

Music by Arthur Bliss, Edmund Rubbra, Malcolm Arnold & John Addison
Played by The Louisville Orchestra
With Sidney Harth, Peter McHugh & Paul Kling (violins)
And Leon Napier (trumpet)
Conducted by Jorge Mester & Robert Whitney

"In the Fifties and Sixties, the Louisville Orchestra, under the guidance of its director
Robert Whitney and with the support of the Ford Foundation, embarked on one of the
most enterprising commissioning and recording series of its time. Whitney had wide-ranging
interests. Although he concentrated on American composers, he did not confine himself to
them. Like most talented commissioners, he seemed to know whom to ask for work.
Louisville premi???red live performances or recordings of scores by Martinů, Milhaud,
Hindemith, Bloch, Ibert, Foss, Hovhaness, Chou Wen-Chung, Riegger, Sessions, Mennin,
and Piston, among many others.

First Editions has repackaged many of the original recordings, and, thank goodness, in
a rational way. Here we have a selection of work by British composers. The Bliss and the
Rubbra were Louisville commissions. All four recordings were premi???res. The Louisville
First Edition series constituted an important part of my musical education ‘way back
when – an easy, mostly painless introduction to 20th-century music. Whitney, a
Britisher himself, knew the English scene quite well and could dig a bit deeper
to find more than the usual suspects.

Sir Arthur Bliss made his biggest splash in the Twenties and Thirties as an aggressive
British Modernist, aligning himself with Stravinsky and the younger French.
His Modernism, however, turned out mostly superficial – a matter of concept, really –
and his links to Elgar and late Romanticism soon became apparent. In the Thirties,
he was eclipsed by Vaughan Williams and Walton, in the Fifties by Britten. However,
he succeeded Bax as Master of the Queen’s Music, and his postwar music, with the
exception of his oratorio Morning Heroes (a work that comes out of his experience
of the First World War), remains the period of his work that interests me most.
Discourse belongs to this period. Despite his Romantic language, I find a strongly
objective, "illustrative" quality to his music. The music may build powerful climaxes,
but this does not usually indicate any sort of personal catharsis. It’s as if he observes
emotions at a remove, rather than feels them himself. I don’t condemn, I merely
describe the peculiar atmosphere of his music. For this reason, I think, some of his
most successful work he wrote for ballets and film scores. Usually, these genres
attract composers weak in structure, but that’s certainly not the case with Bliss.
Indeed, most of his music shows a strong architectural interest, and even playfulness.
One sees this in the Discourse, which combines features of a variation set with a
symphonic movement. Bliss later revised the score, not necessarily for the better
(he cut out my favorite section), and this is the original version. It’s a score of
great color and energy, but not necessarily of great depth.

Edmund Rubbra has an artistic personality almost the exact opposite of Bliss’ –
sober, serious, and introspective. Rubbra studied with Holst and through him
became enamored of the counterpoint of the Tudor composers, which he has
applied to modern classical forms. He’s a terrific symphonist, not all that interested
in theater, and his music characteristically meditates, rather than sings or dances
in the usual way, although it has both beauty and rhythmic interest. Much of the
time it unfolds like an Elizabethan fantasia. The Improvisation for violin and
orchestra, one of his finest scores, typifies his output. It proceeds in long, lyrical
lines – although the composer may not have conceived it that way. For the lines
consist of little bits of ideas, which Rubbra combines and recombines into new long
melodies. Unlike many other composers who work in this fashion, Rubbra never
leaves you in doubt as to where you are. Indeed, the effect of the score is that of
a long melody played under different moods. The effect, in a good performance,
is one of spontaneous inspiration. The score, however, shows the amount of work
that went into achieving that effect.

Malcolm Arnold began his career as an orchestral trumpet player and virtuoso.
His scores brim with the kind of practical, professional knowledge that players love.
However, this quality sometimes got in the way of critics, who used to attack him
as slick. His considerable income as a film composer didn’t help. Musically, Arnold
belongs to the Walton wing of British music. Unlike Walton, however, he feels the
influence of Mahler, especially drawn to the inclusion of "low" elements in serious
contexts. Early on, critics and audiences alike felt disoriented and put off, just as
their counterparts had with Mahler. This also contributed to the low level of Arnold’s
stock and the undervaluing of many of his scores. With the appearance, however,
of the seventh symphony, this assessment has been revised upwards.

Arnold has written at least twenty concerti, many of them for his friends or for
players he admired. The concerto for two violins, commissioned by Menuhin, stands
as one of his best. Although it lacks the composer’s characteristic vulgarity and raucous
humor, it compensates by a beautifully tight argument, contrapuntally advanced.
Arnold wrote it in memory of his two brothers, which accounts for its sober (though
neither stolid nor pompous) tone. It’s so well-written that it brings to mind the Bach
d-minor for two violins. The violins weave in and out in quasi-fugato and stretto. The
accompanying strings provide lean, muscular support. The slow movement crowns the
work: an intense, long-lined aria based on two related ideas, so that it becomes nearly
monothematic. One point of interest: the finale is a rhythmic rewrite of the opening
movement.

Like Malcolm Arnold, John Addison studied with Gordon Jacob at the Royal College of
Music. After making a splash in the early Fifties with such scores as his ballet Carte Blanche,
he became increasingly involved with theater and film. He scored John Osborne’s Luther
and The Entertainer and won the Academy Award for his music for Tom Jones. In the
Seventies, he disappeared into movie and TV work in Los Angeles, coming up with the
main title for, among other things, Murder, She Wrote. I wouldn’t hold it against him.
All the concert work by Addison I’ve heard has run on the light side, not excepting the
trumpet concerto. He reminds me more of a French composer like Ibert or Fran???aix, full
of blithe spirits, than the Modern British. The concerto, a masterpiece of light music,
allows the trumpet to saunter down the boulevards, like Charles Trenet.
It’s more important than profound: it’s loveable.

Paul Kling and Peter McHugh give a stirring performance of the Arnold, while Harth sings
with warmth and intelligence in the Rubbra. Trumpeter Leon Rapier is appropriately
cheeky in Addison’s concerto. The Louisville never was a first-rank orchestra, but it
worked heroically on behalf of, by definition, unfamiliar scores. The sound isn’t super-
swell, but it is acceptable."
Classical Net

The Louisville Orchestra back in the day.

Source: Louisville "First Edition" CD (through Albany) (my rip!)
Formats: FLAC (RAR), ADD Mono/Stereo, mp3(320)
File Sizes: 360 MB / 156 MB

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This album features premiere recordings of piano concertos by Georgy Catoire (1861-1926)
and Percy Sherwood (1866-1939), two worthwhile but neglected contemporaries who came to
musical maturity in the closing years of the nineteenth century. The Russian Catoire ??? who came into the
circle of Tchaikovsky, Arensky and Lyadov ??? wrote in that glorious musical time in Russia before the dissolution
of the Revolution, and it is remarkable that his heart-warming, lyrical Concerto of 1909 has been
unrecorded until now. To all intents and purposes, the German-born Percy Sherwood was a late romantic
composer, who made a significant career as both pianist and composer in Germany until 1914, but he died
in London in June 1939. His output derives from the late-nineteenth century romantic tradition, a character
particularly apparent in the gorgeous slow movement of his Second Piano Concerto (1932-33).
These are two delightful additions to the piano concerto repertoire.

Music by Georgy Catoire & Percy Sherwood
Played by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra
With Hiroaki Takenouchi (piano)
Conducted by Martin Yates

"These two concerti share almost no similarities except the slightly confused nationalities
of their composers. Georgy Catoire (1861???1926) was born and died in Moscow, but as you
can guess from his name, his family was French, prominent in Moscow business circles. Percy
Sherwood (1866???1939) was born in Dresden of an English father and a German mother. On the
eve of World War I he emigrated to England, living in Hampstead until his death on the
eve of the Second World War.

Sherwood was certainly the less lucky of the two. He studied at the Dresden Conservatorium
with Felix Draeseke and garnered attention as both a composer and pianist. He wrote five
symphonies and as many concerti for various instruments, as well as six string quartets and
other chamber music. In 1911 he was named professor of piano at his alma mater. Then it all
came crashing down. With the start of World War I, all things English became anathema in
Germany, including a native son with an English name. When Sherwood and his family relocated to
London, he found that his name didn???t ingratiate him with the British either. His conservative,
echt-German Romantic style was out of step with musical trends in England, and for the rest of
his life he had to make his way as a piano teacher though he didn???t stop composing; his
Second Piano Concerto dates from 1933.

Gregory Catoire also studied in Germany, in Berlin, and caught the Wagner bug while he was
there. Returned to Russia from his studies, he gravitated to the circle of Tchaikovsky and
Arensky, apparently more comfortable with these Western-influenced composers than with
the Mighty Handful. He became a professor of music at the Moscow Conservatory, numbering
Kabalevsky among his pupils. Unlike Sherwood, his catalog is relatively brief???a symphony
(which Martin Yates and his Scottish band have recently recorded for Dutton), some chamber
and solo piano music, and of course the Piano Concerto, Op. 21, completed in 1909.
However, unlike the unlucky Sherwood, Catoire???s music has been recorded more often.

The Concerto has an unusual structure, the long (nineteen minutes) first movement being
a set of six variations following an extended introduction, by turns lyrical and dramatic,
capped by a cadenza. So it sounds as if Catoire is putting the musical cart before the horse
in this movement, but it???s attractive all the same. The opening music has a kind of cinematic
sweep to it; in fact, it???s a bit like one of those phony concerti that film composers wrote into
their scores back in the 40s (you know, the Spellbound Concerto and Warsaw Concerto).
But the variations are very businesslike???interesting and accomplished???making for an
impressive opening, all in all.

The slow movement taps into a vein of melancholy dreaminess ??? la Russe, though its
central section is more restless and agitated, ending with a glittery splash of piano chords,
trills, and runs before a return to the tranquility of the opening. The finale starts bombastically,
recalling Scriabin in one of his more rhetorical poses. Again, I can???t help thinking this is movie
music before its time, but it???s all very pretty, especially for those who can???t get enough of
heart-on-sleeve Romanticism.

The Sherwood Concerto, then, makes a good foil because it???s Romanticism of the old school,
Germanic to the core. ???This is music that in 1933 was fifty or sixty years out of date??? quips
note-writer Lewis Foreman. In fact, Brahms???s Second Piano Concerto sounds modern by
comparison! But as with the Catoire piece, the music is likable, well crafted and with good tunes."
Audiophile Audition

Georgy Catoire, Percy Sherwood

Source: Dutton Epoch CD (my rip!)
Formats: FLAC (RAR), DDD Stereo, mp3(320)
File Sizes: 280 MB / 213 MB (incl. cover, booklet)

Download Link – https://mega.co.nz/#!tYA2gRBC!Dxxu3jI4aYJYwOO07RfKLGkwN39_HtgrL38JM9b 6cag
mp3 version – https://mega.co.nz/#!AV4U2bZS!O_kyhF8_KBku7qN54LDD2SccpmlWySaNIdYImpT 7qCM

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Arthur Meulemans (1884-1964) was born in Aarschot; a town in the north of the
Flemish province of Brabant on 19 May 1884. When he was sixteen he enrolled at the
Lemmens Institute in Mechelen, where he studied organ with Oscar Depuydt, and was
taught counterpoint, fugue and composition by the Institute’s director Edgard Tinel. It was,
however, his teacher of harmony, Aloys Desmet, who opened his eyes and ears to the latest
scores of Richard Strauss, Gustav Mahler and especially those of Claude Debussy. The
startling harmonic audacity of the latter and his revolutionary orchestration technique would
leave their marks on Meulemans’ future composition.With more than 350 works to his credit,
Arthur Meulemans belongs not only qualitatively, but also quantitatively among the most
important Flemish composers from the first half of the twentieth century. roughly one third
of his list of works are orchestral pieces, including no less than fifteen symphonies, more
than forty concertante works for piano, organ and nearly every instrument in the orchestra,
except the double bass and the tuba, and a wealth of symphonic poems, suites, concertos,
overtures, variations, and so on. an incredible amount of this orchestral work was written
between 1930 and 1942, when Meulemans was conductor of the large symphonic orchestra
of the Institut National de Radiodiffusion, the then National Radio Orchestra of Belgium.

Marinus de Jong (1891 – 1984) was born in Oosterhout, The Netherlands. His teachers
at the Royal Flemisch Conservatory of Antwerp include Emile Bosquet (piano) and Lodewijk
Mortelmans (fugue). De Jong was a virtuoso pianist, who toured the USA in 1920, giving recitals
in New York and other large cities. In spite of his many concerts and his busy teaching career,
de Jong was a prolific composer, with works in all genres. One of his masterpieces is the oratorio
Hiawatha’s Lied op. 37 (1933 – 1947), set to the (Dutch) translation of Longfellow’s "The Song
of Hiawatha" by the Flemish poet Guido Gezelle.

Robert Herberigs (1886-1974) was a Flemish composer, painter and writer. He was born
in the East Flemish capital as the son of an emigrated Dutch Limburg Joseph Herberigs and
Charlotte van Beveren from Drongen. The least you can say about Robert Herberigs is that he is
versatile and very active. To our knowledge, he gained respect in his artistic activity in all three
branches of art; however, it became most known in the music world. He studied at the Conservatory
of Ghent, and in 1909 won the Prix de Rome. From 1951 to 1953 he was director of the Royal
Flemish Opera in Antwerp. In 1963 he received the Lifetime Achievement Award known as the
Peter Benoit prize; however, after 1966 he devoted himself entirely to painting. Herberigs wrote
two operas, orchestral works (including symphonic poems Cyrano de Bergerac for horn and
orchestra (1912), Antony and Cleopatra (1949) and Romeo and Juliet (1966)), spiritual choral
works (including masses), two piano concertos, 20 piano sonatas, chamber music, songs, and
among other compositions including the texts of Guido Gezelle and film music. In addition, he
published a number of regional novels, including The Pasterke Candeels and Wolvenhof. From
the Dutch Wikipedia site "The centipede could not resist even apricots to grow in the Ard???che,
on the estate Ch???teau Rochecolombe where his descendants now builds wine."

Music by Robert Herberigs, Arthur Meulemans, Marinus de Jong & Prosper van Eechaute
Played by the Belgian Radio and Television Philharmonic Orchestra
With Andr??? van Driessche (french horn)
Conducted by Alexander Rhabari

Arthur Meulemans, Marinus de Jong.

Source: Discover International CD (my rip!)
Formats: FLAC(RAR), DDD Stereo, mp3(320)
File Sizes: 307 MB / 191 MB (incl. covers, booklet)

Download Link – https://mega.co.nz/#!dAgTGAqA!Izk5-lP7mdp2zn3_D5yKlTvC_Ss-0VjQdV1vWTtPUxw
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Mikl???s R???zsa’s Violin Concerto of 1953 follows a conventional general path: an argument-bearing
first movement, a singing second, and a rapid-fire finale. The finale, fine in itself, seems a bit disconnected
from the other two movements, simply because they emphasize song and the finale emphasizes rhythm.
The concerto throws off plenty of drama, especially in the first movement where a flowing 3/4 theme contrasts
with one in a slightly hectic 6/8. After the cadenza, placed almost midway through the development, the
themes switch rhythmic milieus. The theme in 3/4 acquires the character of the 6/8 and vice versa. The
emotional wallop and the free, unforced singing quality of the concerto probably strikes most listeners first,
but R???zsa has put in plenty of headwork as well. The entire first movement grows out of the opening strain,
and gestures from it occur into the slow second movement as well, much in the manner of Tchaikovsky’s inter-
movement variants. One doesn’t find inexorable Beethovenian logic but rather a bunch of half-familiar
reminiscences. You’re not, in Roland Wiley’s phrase, quite sure whether you’ve "heard that song before."
In the same way, some of the slow-movement ideas find their way into the virtuosic finale, this time ginned
up and dancing wildly. This score brilliantly meets expectations of what a concerto "should" be.

The Concerto for String Orchestra dates from the 1940s. It is modeled after a Baroque concerto
grosso, although the material (while tonal) is modern. The Hungarian influence is particularly strong in
the third movement. There is a slight hint of Shostakovich in the last movement, not surprising given the
time of writing. No doubt R???zsa had heard the famous wartime recordings of the Leningrad Symphony
or at least seen the score of this or other Russian works perhaps the sixth symphony. R???zsa achieved
early success in Europe with his orchestral Theme, Variations, and Finale (Op. 13) of 1933,
which he composed before he emigrated to England. The driven, vigorously Hungarian piece was
also on the radio program that night in 1943 when a young Leonard Bernstein, without even having
had a rehearsal with the orchestra, replaced an ailing Bruno Walter in a New York Philharmonic concert
that catapulted him to stardom.

Music Composed by Mikl???s R???zsa
Played by the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra
With Jennifer Pike (violin)
Conducted by Rumon Gamba

"Hungarian Mikl???s R???sza (1907-1995) was a very interesting composer whose career somewhat
resembles that of Erich Korngold. Both composers became much better known and decidedly better
paid for their film scores back when movie scores were big orchestral works that required a composer
familiar with that “sound”. For example, R???zsa is probably best known to American audiences for
his score to the epic Ben Hur starring Charlton Heston. However, many might be familiar with his
music to the Hitchcock Spellbound. R???zsa wrote over fifty film scores; some massive, some a little
smaller scale but – none the less – this is the genre he became known for, which is why this third
volume in the Chandos set of his orchestral works is a great place to get to know his concert hall side.

The Violin Concerto, from 1953, is reason enough to own this disc. This is a wonderful very Bartok-
like work (R???zsa being a contemporary of his countryman) with a pulsing, modal opening and a simply
beautiful folk-like central movement and a driving finale that will again remind the listener of some
Bartok (I felt there are echoes of the Concerto for Orchestra). This is a very “orchestral work”
wherein the solo violin has plenty to do but, in several places, the orchestration is the show where
the solo line sounds more like a solo violin within the larger framework. I really enjoyed this work
and soloist Jennifer Pike is a terrific player.

The Concerto for String Orchestra, dating from 1943, offers similar pleasures. There is a fairly ominous
opening featuring a bit of interplay between the low voice and the upper strings. The tone of this
work is fairly dark throughout and it is said that R???zsa was undoubtedly affected by the war that
was ravaging his homeland at the time. There are some truly dramatic outbursts, balanced by
some very poignant and lovely solo lines for the violas and violins. Stylistically, this very fine
work is also reminiscent of Bartok and – interestingly – it was actually premiered by the Los Angeles
Philharmonic under his direction, while he was in the midst of his film scoring career. (R???zsa died
in LA and is buried there in fact).

This collection concludes with the Theme, Variations and Finale, a work from 1933 (later revised).
Structurally this is just what the title implies: a very nice set of variations for full orchestra based
on a theme which is first presented by the oboe. This work was written just at the time when
R???zsa was leaving his family to settle in Paris; an event that offered very mixed feelings for
the young composer. The variations within are cleverly scored and show a masterful use of
orchestral color including some beautiful and esoteric use of percussion, harp and celesta in
places. I found this a wonderful work that I compare most favorably to one of my other very
favorite – and quite “Hungarian” – theme and variations compositions, the “Peacock”
Variations of Kodaly.

I admit I am a sucker for the gypsy-infused sounds and modal melodies of the great twentieth
century Hungarian composers: Bartok, Kodaly, Dohn???nyi and one should include Mikl???s R???zsa.
I am anxious to track down the other volumes in this collection. This is very enjoyable music
and big compliments go to the amazing conductor Rumon Gamba, too. I am very familiar
with the terrific recordings put out by Gamba and his Iceland Symphony (which must be
heard to be believed) but this disc confirms that this conductor should become better known
in America as well. He is a major talent and this music is a major pleasant surprise!"
The Audiophile Audition

Source: Chandos CD (my rip!)
Formats: FLAC(RAR), DDD Stereo, mp3/320k
File Sizes: 343 MB / 194 MB (incl. cover, booklet)

Download Link – https://mega.co.nz/#!oRIijDSL!d_bgzmamMKtqtRkFU8rxxCp3RbJWG4ZuIpESiEG Dq7g
mp3 version – https://mega.co.nz/#!ZFoFBJKD!EGW8Wlvt8IfaQhrh9ql-wi2QoSABfKqLvYrHGK4akes

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Joseph Horovitz was born in Vienna in 1926 and emigrated to England in 1938. He studied
music at New College, Oxford, with Gordon Jacob at the Royal College of Music where he won the Farrar
Prize, and for a further year with Nadia Boulanger in Paris. The Festival of Britain in 1951 brought
him to London as conductor of ballet and concerts at the Festival Amphitheatre. He then held positions
as conductor to the Ballet Russes, associate director of the Intimate Opera Company, on the music
staff at Glyndebourne, and as guest composer at the Tanglewood Festival, USA.

His compositions number sixteen ballets, nine concertos, two one-act operas, chamber music, works for
brass band, television and radio, and a number of choral cantatas – most famously Captain Noah and
His Floating Zoo. Since 1961 he has taught at the Royal College of Music, where he is now a Fellow.
He has also won two Ivor Novello Awards, and in 1996 he was awarded the Gold Order of Merit of the
City of Vienna. The Worshipful Company of Musicians awarded him the Cobbett Medal in 2008 for
services to chamber music.

Included in this upload are four concertos, the first three of which are in a neo-tonal/romantic style
and could considered "British light music", the fourth is an infectious Jazz Concerto for piano, strings
and percussion. You will find further details about the works in the review quoted below.

Music Composed and Conducted by Joseph Horovitz
Played by the Royal Ballet Sinfonia
With Fiona Cross (clarinet) & Stephen Mead (euphonium)
And Andrew Haveron (violin) & David Owen Norris (piano)

"The Viennese-born ???migr??? composer Joseph Horovitz made his home in England and absorbed its
essence through his pores. He was a student of Gordon Jacob at the RCM and of Nadia Boulanger
in Paris. His music demonstrates more in common with Jacob than with Boulanger. Theatre, ballet,
opera and broadcast conducting posts made for a rewarding apprenticeship. There are sixteen ballets
including Alice in Wonderland for Festival Ballet (1953), nine concertos (oboe, trumpet, clarinet,
bassoon, euphonium, tuba, violin, percussion, jazz harpsichord/piano), various orchestral works, five
string quartets, a clarinet Sonatina, the Horrortorio (1959), a Hoffnung commission (familiar from the
EMI Hoffnung set) but let’s not forget the other Hoffnung special, the cantata Bournevita, Captain
Noah and His Floating Zoo (1970), and Summer Sunday (1975), an ecological cantata and an oratorio
Samson. Most recently there has been an opera Ninotchka.

No symphonies from this adopted Briton. That fits with the profile of his teachers Jacob and Boulanger.
Jacob wrote several but he was much more attuned to concertos, suites and chamber pieces. These
concertos present Horovitz as something of a chameleon, such is their variety. The Clarinet Concerto
is lyrical, lucid and makes free with the accustomed woodnotes amid the capering maenads and satyrs.
It’s from the same year as the Finzi and has that communing luminous impulse in common although
Finzi would not have infused the sauntering finale with such jazzy informality. The Euphonium
Concerto is grippingly determined yet exploits the considerable singing heart of the instrument.
There’s no buffoonery here especially not in the Lento whose long-spun melody has the lineaments
of a modest yet sweetly intoned carol. The finale has something of the quality of Frankel’s Carriage
and Pair, carefree and slightly showy yet not undignified in the manner of a slightly whimsical 1950s
British film score. The Violin Concerto (1949) is said by the composer – who should know – to be
strongly influenced by the neo-classicism of Les Six. I am not convinced. It seems to me to be pretty
romantic – even very redolent of the Barber at times. The Adagio bears something of the hand of
Bach (1:49) but there is a dignified voluptuousness about both the orchestral skein and the solo
line. The humming tension of the start of the folksy capering and skipping finale shows off the
excellent work done by the Dutton engineers. The Jazz Concerto exists in versions for piano and
for harpsichord. The title prepares you for the most overtly jazzy of the four concertos here.
The keyboard, bass and drums rhythm trio are active prominently in the two outer movements
which have the mien of the Jacques Loussier Bach of the 1950s and 1960s. The central movement
is a harmonically wayward Slow Blues with something of the sultriness of Gershwin’s Summertime
and the commercialism of Moon River. Sultry, yes, but this also a cooling episode.

We should not forget Horovitz’s entertaining Captain Noah And His Floating Zoo (1970) to words
by Michael Flanders Chorus with piano, bass and percussion. This was first issued on Argo LP
ZDA 149 in 1972 and has now been reissued on Dutton CDLF8120. Discover Horovitz the craftsman
whose touching cantilena is as accomplished as his jazzy lightness of being. Let’s now hear the
other concertos, please."
Musicweb

Source: Dutton Epoch CD (my rip!)
Formats: FLAC(RAR), DDD Stereo, mp3(320)
File Sizes: 347 MB / 195 MB (incl. covers, booklet)

Download Link – https://mega.co.nz/#!4YYyEZ4Q!F-h-22dp1xE_fL8QTSd6pxou1K80vw2iPcRCeF7gnZE
mp3 version – https://mega.co.nz/#!0UJQkL4b!Dm_XnE_qBV4-vLBoV2fgkUtpZetQWqCFY4Z0zm3k7Ds

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This is an upload following a request for Peter Schickele’s Pentangle (Five Songs for French Horn and Orchestra).
Schickele, of course, is best known for his music parody shenanigans as "P.D.Q. Bach" (Oedipus Tex, 1712 Overture,
Concerto for Vacuum Cleaner and Orchestra, etc), but he composed quite a lot of "serious" concert music as well,
and of course the popular film score Silent Running. In Pentangle, Schickele can’t help himself but to
include a little twist, or joke, which I won’t be giving away.

The other two pieces are more straight-faced, or serious, if you will – Norman Dello Joio’s Homage to Haydn and
Vincent Persichetti’s Symphony No.8, the latter being the even more weighty. Both could be considered
"neo-classical", although not truly of the same ilk.

Music by Norman Dello Joio, Peter Schickele & Vincent Persichetti
Played by The Louisville Orchestra
With Kenneth Albrecht (French horn)
Conducted by Leonard Slatkin & Jorge Mester

"The Haydn work is the most attractive piece of Dello Joio I have heard. Across its three movements
(beautifully recorded – as are all the tracks here) it includes Haydn-Beethoven pastiche with a rebellious American
jolt, a restfully sustained Baxian glow (adagio) and an uproariously flickering Waltonian allegro.

Peter Schickele (‘onlie begetter’ of P.D.Q. Bach) is much more than the periwigged Clown Prince who has
haunted record catalogues since the 1960s. Schickele, the Iowan, arranges his five movements under
sub-title ‘Pentangle’ intending to create a resonance with enchantment. The music’s five named movements
and its character are all easy on the air without being facile. The composer intended the five movements to
approximate to the effect of a single side of a folk-rock LP album of the 1970s from the likes of Fairport
Convention or Pentangle. The movements are songful, in the case of Tom on the Town, grittily confrontational
between soloist and the orchestra’s own horn section, humorously ‘Cowboy’ (Copland rattles the dust from
the rafters) and a surprise. Overall this music stands confidently between Copland folk-style and music
theatre. This is extremely attractive music if hardly profound – but then who needs profound all the time?

Persichetti, who has often had his premieres in his home city of Philadelphia, has been jostled into the
shade by Mennin, Piston, Hanson and Schuman. The Eighth Symphony is easy to appreciate, pliably responsive
and lyrical with the lightest dusting of atonality, sometimes ruffled by Beethovenian protest, and rippling
restive rhythmic material, welcoming of Schuman-style adagio writing for the strings, accessibly chugging
and chuckling, spitting and venomously triumphant in the finale. Ultimately that finale reeks of a formula
(Schuman again) for closure rather than ringing with the conviction of symphonic consummation; some
very fine music along the way though. Naxos should really give us the complete cycle."
Musicweb

Source: Louisville First Edition (via Albany Records) (my rip!)
Formats: FLAC(RAR), ADD Stereo, mp3(320)
File Sizes: 344 MB / 165 MB

Download Link – https://mega.co.nz/#!sEohGJiS!NFIvph1WB8kiLNSGMBotSQrFMqZyOvlkdiakICI 73to
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As a follow-up to her first CD of original theremin works, "Music from the Ether", Lydia Kavina returns with
first recordings of major works for theremin and ensemble. The album features the first recording of
Mikl???s R???sza’s chamber version of music from the Hitchcock film Spellbound, a suite from
Howard Shore’s Ed Wood, compiled especially for Kavina, who had performed on the original movie
soundtrack as well. Leading Austrian composer Olga Neuwirth created a suite from her opera
Bahl???ams Fest. In it, the theremin is treated as an ensemble member, aptly combining it with
strings, electric guitar, soprano saxophones and water-filled glass to reveal hitherto unsuspected possibilities
for the instrument’s stereotypically eerie voice. Again, Kavina performed in the opera’s premiere.
Christian Wolff wrote Exercise 58 especially for this project. Shore and Wolff supervised the
recording and rehearsal of their works. There are also three short pieces by the always adventurous
Australian composer Percy Grainger, scored for theremin(s) alone.

This same program was premiered at the 2000 Lincoln Center
Summer Festival to a sold-out audience and received rave reviews.

Music by Howard Shore, Percy Grainger, Olga Neuwirth, Christian Wolff & Mikl???s R???zsa
Played by the Ensemble Sospeso
With Lydia Kavina (theremin)
Conducted by Charles Peltz

"Leon Theremin’s grand-niece, Lydia Kavina was born in Moscow and began studying the
theremin under the direction of Theremin himself when she was nine years old. Five years
later she was ready to give her first theremin concert, which marked the beginning of a
musical career that has so far led to more than a thousand concerts and theater, radio and
television performances worldwide. She has appeared as a solo performer at such prestigious
venues as the Grand Hall of the Moscow Conservatory, the Moscow International Performing
Arts Center (with the National Philharmonic of Russia, under Vladimir Spivakov) and the
Palace Bellevue in Berlin (the residence of the German president) and has been a guest
artist at leading music festivals around the world, including Caramoor (with the Orchestra
of St. Luke’s), the Lincoln Center Festival, the Holland Music Festival, the Martinu Festival
and the Bourges International Electronic Music Festival.

Together with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, she performed in Howard Shore’s
soundtrack of the Oscar-winning film Ed Wood, as well as in eXistenZ (also by Shore)
and The Machinist (music by Roque Banos). She has also been featured in stage productions,
including Alice and The Black Rider (both conceived and directed by Robert Wilson, with
music by Tom Waits) in Hamburg’s Thalia Theater, and in collaboration with the Russian
experimental surf band Messer Chups. She also performed in The Little Mermaid, a ballet
by Lera Auerbach, choreographed by John Neumeier, in Copenhagen’s New Opera
House and in the Hamburger Staatsoper.

As both a composer and a performer, Kavina has significantly enlarged the theremin
repertory. Her concerto The Seasons of the Year was premiered by the Boston Modern
Orchestra Project, directed by Gil Rose. Works written for her include Lydia for theremin
and string quartet by Jon Appleton, Mixolydia for theremin and tape by Jorge Antunes
and Glissandi for 3-6 theremins by Jorge Campos. In collaboration with Barbara Buchholz
and the Kammerensemble Neue Musik Berlin, Lydia Kavina created the performance
and recording project Touch! Don’t Touch! (Wergo, 2006) in which eight Russian and
German composers were commissioned to write pieces for two theremins and
chamber ensemble.

Kavina is a highly sought-after teacher and recording artist. She created a video
tutorial Mastering the Theremin for Moog Music and has given private lessons and master
classes in Western Europe, Russia and the United States. She holds a degree in
composition from the Moscow Conservatory, where she also completed a postgraduate
program. Her solo recordings include Music from the Ether (mode 76, 1999;
remastered 2005), Lydia Kavina: Concerto per Theremin; Live in Italy (Teleura, 2000)."

Lydia Kavina at age 9, with Leon Theremin

Source: Mode Records (my rip!)
Formats: FLAC(RAR), DDD Stereo, mp3(320)
File Sizes: 251 MB / 143 MB

Download Link – https://mega.co.nz/#!ZNIETAwY!Qzkomy4uQlXRRh1DBPotcULI544r6fUOjEXVH2V wS7A
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Eric Ewazen is an important American composer active in the latter twentieth and
early twenty first centuries. He has demonstrated considerable versatility in his output,
producing orchestral, piano, vocal, chamber, and various other works. He has favored
brass and wind instruments in many of his compositions, however, and exhibits a unique
style often tinged with the spirit of Copland, Creston, and other iconic American composers,
and a melodic facility one critic compared to Prokofiev’s, not that there is anything
particularly Russian about his music.

Ewazen was born in Cleveland on March 1, 1954. He enrolled at the Eastman School of
Music in 1972 and after graduating went on to Juilliard, where he earned a doctorate degree.
Among his teachers were Milton Babbitt, Joseph Schwantner, Samuel Adler, and Gunther
Schuller. He was active in composition even in his student years, turning out such works
as Dagon for 5 cellos (1973), Psalm 90 for baritone, horn and piano (1977),
and Kronos for brass quintet and tympani (1979). After receiving a BMI Award for
Dagon, Ewazen continued with a string of composition prizes, his harvest including a
Louis Lane Prize (1974) and Howard Hanson Prize (1976).

Ewazen joined the faculty at Juilliard in 1980 and serves as professor of composition there.
He remained active in composition with highly successful works like the Colchester Fantasy
for brass quintet and Ballade for clarinet, harp, and strings, both from 1987, and
the American Indian-inspired 1996 work Shadowcatcher for brass quintet and orchestra,
regarded by many critics as one of his finest compositions. From the 1980s onward Ewazen
extended his ties to education and to actively promoting serious music in general by accepting
numerous invitations to appear at universities in the United States and abroad

The three works featured on this album are all cast in an attractive neo-tonal idiom, which
is popular among contemporary American composers (ending the phase of avantgarde
alienation from the audience that had been prevalent in the 1960s to 1980s).

Music Composed by Eric Ewazen
Played by the International Sejong Soloists
With Adele Anthony (violin) & Linda Strommen (oboe)
Conducted by Hyo Kang

"Ewazen’s violin concerto was premiered in 2000 by the St. Luke’s Chamber Ensemble.
He was composer-in-residence there at the time, and the work for oboe and strings,
Down a River of Time, comes from 1999, but both these and the Sinfonia could easily have
been written 60 years earlier. Ewazen’s language is traditional and conservative. These are the strings
of Bliss (but without Bliss’s acidic edge), Frank Bridge, even Elgar. In the Oboe Concerto, we’re
in the same ballpark as Roy Harris: just sample the open, easy-going Americana of the third movement.
So is that a plus or a minus? It really depends on what you are looking for. Nowadays many composers
have reclaimed traditional form and tonality, which concert audiences never abandoned, but they manage
to use these elements in a new and individual way.

The violin concerto sets off at a cracking pace in a movement described by the composer in his
CD notes as "rhapsodic," although that might imply a tendency to ramble, which is definitely not the
case here. Some of the figuration, and the contrapuntal uses to which it is put, could be described
as neo-Classical. The style is akin to Roussel in its forward-moving momentum (a quality contemporary
music conspicuously lacked for decades). Anthony throws herself into the solo part with panache,
caressing the soaring solo lines of the second movement’s variations with a sure touch.

Down a River of Time was written in memory of the composer’s father who died at Christmas 1997,
and commissioned by the present soloist in honor of her own late father, so there is a good deal of
personal feeling invested in the piece. The second movement (Ewazen is very much a three-movement man)
allows us to drift through a series of memories, as one might drift down a "river of time," recalling
and savoring various moments in nostalgic reflection. Oboe and string orchestra are the perfect vehicles
for this. It is a particularly lovely movement and, while episodic, it never falls into all-purpose mood
painting; at each point, the composer retains a sharp focus. The outer movements are more sprightly
but still exhibit the memorial flavor in which the work was conceived. Linda Strommen plays with skill
and feeling, producing a beguiling tone."
Fanfare

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American composer George Antheil (1900-1959) clearly took some kind of pride in being
labeled "the bad boy of music" — he used the phrase as the title of his 1945 autobiography. In the
1920s he was notorious as the composer of Ballet Mechanique, written for an experimental film but
creating outrage during concert performances, thanks in part to a roaring airplane propeller in its
percussion section. He was also known for being one of those young Americans in Paris in the ‘20s,
hanging out in literary/musical circles and fusing jazz to modern classical music.

The great influence on the First Piano Concerto (1922) is not jazz, however. The CD booklet article
calls the piece "a quite unmistakable tribute to Igor Stravinsky," but the word "plagiarism" might occur to
the unkind, considering the strong echoes in particular of Petrouchka, which is more or less quoted
in a number of places. But the concerto, in one 22-minute movement with an unpredictable structure, has
attractive qualities of its own: a sprightliness and breeziness, more French than Russian; colorful percussive
writing for the piano; fresh, playful orchestration, dominated by woodwinds and brass; and quieter passages
that contrast the predominantly perky mood.

The Second Piano Concerto, dating from 1926, is about the same length as the First, but is divided
into three movements connected without a break: a longer Moderato followed by a Largo and an Allegro.
Again winds dominate the chamber-orchestra texture, but there are few moments that could be called brash,
and this concerto’s Stravinskian echoes are neoclassical and rather less conspicuous. It’s a difficult piece
to characterize beyond saying that it has neo-baroque elements, especially in the piano writing; recurring
themes, though it’s full of unpredictable turns; and a cool rather than hyper-emotional demeanor, with a
quiet, tossed-off ending. If a piece of music can be genial and aloof at the same time, this is such a piece,
as vernal as the First Concerto but less "boyish," more calmly confident.

Antheil’s Jazz Symphony, the most familiar work on this CD program, is an 8-minute piece written
in 1925 for the same Paul Whiteman concert that premiered Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue. Unfinished in time,
it had to wait two years for its own premiere, with the W.C. Handy jazz orchestra, only to be overshadowed
by the scandal of Ballet Mechanique on the same program.

Music Composed by George Antheil
Played by the Radio-Philharmonie Hannover des NDR
With Markus Bender (piano)
Conducted by Eiji Oue

"Aside from his legendary Ballet m???canique, which still gets played as a kind of souvenir
of the madcap 1920s, George Antheil’s concert music has mostly fallen into obscurity. In
spite of his reputation as an enfant terrible who hobnobbed with the leading lights of the
avant-garde, his works attract less attention than the details of his life. Yet this state of affairs
might be reversed if this delightful release from CPO gets proper distribution, for the pieces
presented here are worth hearing in their own right, in addition to whatever biographical interest
they may hold. The Piano Concerto No. 1 (1922) has a few obvious touches of Bart???k and
Debussy, and more than a little borrowing from Stravinsky’s Petrouchka, but in spite of these
derivative aspects, it is an imaginative composition with lively repartee between the pianist
and the orchestra and quicksilver changes of mood. Somewhat more independently developed,
consistent in material, and mature in style, the Piano Concerto No. 2 (1949-1950) is almost as
entertaining as its predecessor, though it is tinged with a melancholy not found in Antheil’s brash,
youthful works. A Jazz Symphony (1925, rev. 1955) smacks of Ballet m???canique’s chaos and
irreverence, and its surrealistic jumble of dance tunes and rapid metrical changes may suggest
to some ears a nightmarish montage by a Gershwin or a Milhaud. The 2004 performances
by pianist Markus Becker and the NDR Orchestra, conducted by Eiji Oue, are bright and vibrantly
colorful, and the program is enhanced with five short encores for piano solo, which Becker
delivers with charm and wit."
All Music

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The Turtle Island String Quartet has prided itself with stretching musical boundaries that record
labels, radio, the press, record stores, and even their own fans are not sure if there’s one predominate
style of music in which they can be categorized. Following the departure of one of the group’s founders,
David Balakrishnan (who still wrote for the group and eventually returned), the quartet widened their
musical horizons even more. They are featured in excerpts from several 1994 concerts with the
Detroit Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Neeme Jarvi, on this CD for the English labe
l Chandos. Balakrishnan’s occasionally eerie two-part suite Spider Dreams opens the disc. The opening
movement, "Introductions," of Jeff Beal’s four-part suite Interchange is reminiscent of the
symphonic works of Frank Zappa and is fully composed, while the remaining sections gradually add
improvisational elements. Dizzy Gillespie’s A Night in Tunisia was one of the stunning
tracks of the Turtle Island String Quartet’s debut recording; this version with orchestra was co-arranged
by Balakrishnan and Vince Mendoza.

Music by David Balakrishnan, Jeff Beal, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis & Johann Sebastian Bach
Played by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra
With The Turtle Island String Quartet
Conducted by Neeme J???rvi

"Its name derived from creation mythology found in Native American Folklore, the
Turtle Island Quartet, since its inception in 1985, has been a singular force in the creation of
bold, new trends in chamber music for strings. Winner of the 2006 and most recently, the 2008
Grammy Award for Best Classical Crossover Album, Turtle Island fuses the classical quartet
esthetic with contemporary American musical styles, and by devising a performance practice
that honors both, the state of the art has inevitably been redefined. Cellist nonpareil Yo-Yo Ma
has proclaimed TIQ to be “a unified voice that truly breaks new ground – authentic and passionate
– a reflection of some of the most creative music-making today.”

The Quartet’s birth was the result of violinist David Balakrishnan’s brainstorming explorations
and compositional vision while completing his master’s degree program at Antioch University
West. The journey has taken Turtle Island through forays into folk, bluegrass, swing, be-bop,
funk, R&B, new age, rock, hip-hop, as well as music of Latin America and India …a repertoire
consisting of hundreds of ingenious arrangements and originals.

Another unique element of Turtle Island is their revival of venerable improvisational and
compositional chamber traditions that have not been explored by string players for nearly
200 years. At the time of Haydn’s apocryphal creation of the string quartet form, musicians
were more akin to today’s saxophonists and keyboard masters of the jazz and pop world,
i.e., improvisers, composers, and arrangers. Each Turtle Island member is accomplished in
these areas of expertise as well as having extensive conservatory training as instrumentalists."

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No.86

John Corigliano on his Concerto for Violin and Orchestra, "The Red Violin": "My third
film score (The Red Violin) gave me an opportunity to visit my own past, for my father, John
Corigliano (I was a “jr.”) was a great solo violinist and the concertmaster of the New York Philharmonic
for more than a quarter of a century. My childhood years were punctuated by snatches of the great
concertos being practiced by my father, as well as scales and technical exercises he used to keep in
shape. Every year, he played a concerto with the Philharmonic (as well as in other venues), and I
vividly remember the solo preparation, violin and piano rehearsals, orchestral rehearsals and the
final tension-filled concerts (where I would sit backstage in the Carnegie Hall green room, listening
to my father over a small speaker breathlessly playing the work in my head and listening to make
sure everything came out all right.)

It is no wonder that the concerto form, and the violin concerto in particular, has a deep place in my
heart. I have written a half-dozen concerti, but this is my first one for my first love, the violin. It is
an “in the great tradition” kind of concerto, because I wrote it in an attempt to write the piece my
father would love to play. Because he inspired it, it is dedicated to his memory.

The event that galvanized my energies into composing this concerto was, of course, the scoring
of the film The Red Violin, directed by Fran???ois Girard, and featuring the sublime young virtuoso,
Joshua Bell as the voice of the violin. Josh’s playing resembles that of my father; he is an artist
in the grand tradition. No cold, clinical dissection of a work would flow from his bow. The story of
The Red Violin is perfect for a lover of the repertoire and the instrument. It spans three centuries
in the life of a magnificent but haunted violin in its travels through time and space. A story this
episodic needed to be tied together with a single musical idea. For this purpose I used the Baroque
device of a chaconne: a repeated pattern of chords upon which the music is built. Against the
chaconne chords I juxtaposed Anna’s theme, a lyrical yet intense melody representing the violin
builder’s doomed wife. Then, from those elements, I wove a series of virtuosic etudes for the
solo violin, which followed the instrument from country to county, century to century. I composed
these elements before the actual filming, because the actors needed to mime to a recording of
these works since their hand motions playing the violin would have to synchronize with the music.
Then, during the summer of 1997 while the film was being shot all over the world, I remained at
home and composed the seventeen-minute The Red Violin: Chaconne for Violin and Orchestra.

And, like Schumann, I decided to add some movements to the existing chaconne (he to his piano
and orchestra fantasy) and make it a full-length concerto. In my case, that meant composing
another three movements to balance the large first one. The other movements are connected to
the first (and the film) in different ways: the first is a fleet Pianissimo Scherzo in which the dynamics
are soft, but the action wild and colorful. I wanted to break the romantic mood of the first movement
with sonoric and timbral effects that create a sparkling, effervescent energy. A central trio is
distantly related to Anna’s theme, but here heard in knuckle-breaking double harmonics by the
soloist—high, ethereal, and dance like. The third movement (Andante Flautando) starts with an
intense recitativo that is more closely related to the film’s main theme, but soon gives way to a
gentle, rocking melody played by the soloist in an unusual manner that results in his sound
changing to that of a flute (flautando.) He and the alto flute pair up as a complementary duo in
this theme. The final movement (Accelerando Finale), as the title suggests, is a rollicking race
in which the opposed forces of soloist and orchestra vie with each other."

Jaakko Kuusisto (b. 1974) is one of Finland’s most versatile musicians, with a busy schedule
as violinist, conductor and composer. Having won prizes at several international violin competitions,
he is a frequent guest artist with Finnish orchestras and festivals. His performances often include
a combination of playing and conducting, and he is known for a wide variety of repertoire, also
including music outside the classical genre. His compositions include three operas, several
chamber music works, and music for motion pictures.

Kuusisto studied composition with Eero H???meenniemi at the Sibelius Academy and David Dzubay
at Indiana University. His most recent work is a Violin Concerto dedicated to Elina V???h???l???,
premiered with the Lahti Symphony in 2012.

Music by Jaakko Kuusisto & John Corigliano
Played by the Lahti Symphony Orchestra
With Elina V???h???l??? (violin)
Conducted by Jaakko Kuusisto

"The novelty in this Swedish release lies not necessarily with the performances by American-Finnish
violinist Elina V???h???l???, which have little to object to, but with the program. For all the success of John
Corigliano’s score to The Red Violin and its subsequent rearrangement and expansion into a violin
concerto, success that has been international in its dimensions, the work has rarely been taken
out of American surroundings. It’s highly enjoyable to have it bump up against some contemporary
Scandinavian music, in this case a violin concerto and a short symphonic poem, Leika, Op. 24, by
the Finnish composer and conductor Jaakko Kuusisto. The latter two works will be new to most
Finnish listeners as well as those in the English-speaking world. They fall into the large group of
works that extend the Sibelius ethos into the modern compositional realm, with brilliant orchestral
effects, an imposing sound, and traditional forms and tonal languages greatly extended rather
than completely discarded. Sample the momentum of the concerto’s finale (track 4), which holds
up well in comparison to its models. The parallels with Corigliano, an American extended romantic,
emerge as the album unfolds and bespeak the development of a new stylistic consensus, or at
least reference point, in an age of diversity. Highly enjoyable from start to finish, and aided by
impressive SACD engineering work at the Sibelius Hall, Lahti, Finland."
All Music

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John Foulds’s Cello Concerto: This is a beautiful, romantic programme. In his booklet notes,
Malcolm MacDonald describes Foulds Cello Concerto as “a youthful essay in a melodious late-Romantic
idiom … a succession of memorable tunes in superb orchestration.” He goes on to find the coupling –
the Cello Concerto by Lionel Sainsbury – as “unabashedly tonal and opulent melodic language, recalling
the neo-romantic idiom of great 20th century composers such as William Walton and Samuel Barber.”
Long requested by Foulds enthusiasts after Raphael Wallfisch had revived it in a broadcast over twenty
years ago, Dutton Epoch is delighted to make it available following the success of their two-volume
survey of Foulds’ shorter orchestral works. Raphael Wallfisch is now joined by Martin Yates and the
Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra to make this world premiere recording. For Lionel Sainsbury’s equally
delightful Concerto, the Dutton Epoch team journeyed to Glasgow where the Royal Scottish National
Orchestra relished Sainsbury’s memorable invention, recorded in the presence of the composer.

Music by Lionel Sainsbury & John Foulds
Played by the Royal Scottish National & Bournemouth Symphony Orchestras
With Raphael Wallfisch (cello)
Conducted by Martin Yates

"This disc of two relatively unknown cello concertos offers us a chance to compare similar styles
that were composed almost a century apart. Both are unabashedly tonal and neo-romantic in style,
but Foulds wrote his in 1909 and Sainsbury’s concerto was penned in 1999. Lionel Sainsbury (b. 1958)
played piano and composed at an early age. At 21, he was awarded the prestigious Mendelssohn
Scholarship, allowing him to travel and study with Edmund Rubbra, John McCabe and Henri Dutilleux.
It was William Walton that provided a style that he admired: “He has this feeling of tension and
resolution …and that passionate intensity which is incredibly exhilarating,” commented Stainsbury.
There is a brief whiff of the orient in the theme of the first movement, which the cello plays on the
high tenor register. Rhythmic and motivic development alternates with the cello’s cry for fulfillment
and the brass answers fervently. Resolution arrives in the quietly intense adagio, whose beauty
and sadness rivals that of Mahler. The folk-like, dramatic, and brilliantly orchestrated allegro changes
the mood, but the adagio stays in the memory. Raphael Wallfisch is a passionate soloist and
Martin Yates and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra accompany superbly. Anyone who loves
the music of Samuel Barber or William Walton will love this wonderful concerto, a real discovery
for this music lover.

The eclectic English composer John Foulds (1880-1939) became a cellist in the Halle Orchestra,
after apprenticing in theater and promenade orchestras. He became a popular composer of
British light music and theater scores, and later in life, lived in Paris and India, and wrote a large
variety of music—much of it inspired by Indian folk music and the more radical music of the
twentieth century. The great conductor Hans Richter, in his final subscription concert with the
Halle Orchestra, let Foulds conduct his early Cello Concerto (1909) with the German cellist Carl
Fuchs as the soloist. It was forgotten until Raphael Wallfisch revived it in the 1980s. It lacks
the sophisticated melodic and orchestral invention of its discmate, but, it is an early work of a
composer who blossomed later in his musical life. For a more interesting work, try Foulds’
Dynamic Triptych for Piano and Orchestra. The performances and sound of this disc is of the
highest order. Don’t miss the Sainsbury Cello Concerto, which will appear on my ‘Best of 2012 List.’"
The Audiophile Audition

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You have to give us some time to respond, I only get to check this thread for new stuff twice a day, 😛

Anyhow, the Kuusitso is a fascinating piece, reminds me a bit of Rantala’s piano concerto in its eclecticism (and its orchestration, but that’s to be expected considering they’re by the same person, XD). It always seems to be shifting in genre, keeping my interest, yet not in tone, thus not jolting me out. The third movement in particular jumped from film score to Adams-esque ostinato with delightful efficiency. That being said, I’m dissapointed by its lack of personality, and the violin line just doesn’t feel very distinct to me. Kuusitso is an amazing orchestrator though, I’d love to hear more concertos from him for the Jazz greats who can’t do it themselves.

As for the Corigliano, Bell’s is still the best, but people should keep trying. It deserves as many interpretations as it can get.

Kuusisto is not a full time composer (yet), he’s primarily a violinist and conductor. Thus it’s not surprising he’s picking up the pieces of earlier music where he finds them (not surprisingly in Sibelius, Korngold and Barber – three composers who themselves wrote great violin concertos). He would make a great film composer, especially given his already polished orchestration.

The Sainsbury and Foulds Cello Concertos are now up in FLAC.

kuusisto work; its a very colorful work but it dont shake me to the ground,
in german we say its: ‘geschw???tzig’ means to much notes, kuusisto is overdoing…klingklangglockenspiel, yeah its spielmusik… dont know a word in english for it ;O)
but the corigliano concerto is much more better in my opinion, it speaks to my heart. thats it.

Thanks wimpel 🙂

John J. Becker (1886-1961), "The Musical Crusader of Saint Paul," was a figure among
the group of early modernists making up the so-called "American Five," along with Charles Ives,
Carl Ruggles, Wallingford Riegger, and Henry Cowell. A 1905 graduate of the Cincinnati Conservatory
of Music, Becker studied with Carl Busch and Wilhelm Middelschulte and taught at an obscure
Conservatory in North Texas until the outbreak of World War I. Afterward Becker continued his
education and, in 1923, achieved a doctorate in Music from Wisconsin University and taught music
at a number of Catholic universities in the American Midwest. Becker’s early compositions are
Romantic in style and gradually absorbed the influence of Debussy, but after meeting Henry Cowell
in 1928, Becker became a tireless advocate of new music and active in the Pan-American Association
of Composers; his music became more acrid, dissonant, and contrapuntal, as well.

Becker’s most remarkable cycles of works included some pieces, widely divergent in terms of scoring,
entitled Sound Pieces (Nos. 1 & 5 on this album) and a number of Stageworks, the
latter including the all-percussion ballet Abongo (1933) and A Marriage with Space (1935),
said to be the first multimedia work in American history. Altogether Becker composed seven symphonies,
five concertos — including two for violin and the Concerto Arabesque (1929) and other works, and
while he conducted the Midwestern premieres of some of the music written by his contemporaries in the
Pan-American Association, Becker’s own music remains little known and, for the most part, unheard.
Becker is best remembered for his work assisting his friend Charles Ives in preparing the vocal-
orchestral score of the song General William Booth Enters Into Heaven and in creating a clear
copy of Ives’ Symphony No.4.

Music Composed by John J. Becker
Played by the Monadnock Music Festival Orchestra
With Anthony de Mare (piano) & Susan Narucki (soprano)
Conducted by James Bolle

"This album is the only classical record completely devoted to the music of John J. Becker, a
highly original and seriously overlooked modernist. No small factor in his neglect was his
Minnesota location, a sad reminder that American composers have a much harder time
working outside of New York and Boston than they should have. Another sad fact is that
with this recording the number of recorded works by Becker can still be counted on two
hands. I would love to see recordings of the Violin Concerto, Horn Concerto, Four Modern
Dances, Two Songs of Departure, Soundpieces 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, and A Marriage of Space (a large
multimedia opera work). Becker’s particular focuses were clangorous, stacked chords, the
line between smooth and percussive playing, and the point when music becomes noise.
The performances on this CD range are quite good (I know there’s another recording of
Concerto Arabesque, but I haven’t heard it), and considering how cheaply you can get
this CD I think it’s worth the money, especially if you’re a fan of early American modernist
composers like Ives, Ruggles, Crawford Seeger, Cowell, etc."
Amazon Reviewer

Left to right: Carl Ruggles, John J. Becker, Edgar Var???se.

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In 1946, Swiss-American composer Ernest Bloch began a major score for piano and orchestra – the
Concerto Symphonique – which occupied him for a full two years. The premiere, under
the composer’s direction, took place on 3 September 1949 at the Edinburgh
International Festival, with the Scottish Orchestra and the pianist Corinne Lacombl??? as
soloist. This is a ‘symphonic’ concerto in several senses of the word – not simply because of its
large scale and seriousness, but because Bloch’s thematic material does not, on the
whole, consist of long melodies but of complex subject-groups made up of several
short motifs which are always being developed and extended on each appearance. The work is
more concerned with organic growth than fixed statements. Moreover, the piano, though
obviously the focus of much of the argument, is often not treated as a soloist so much as an
obbligato instrument functioning as part of the orchestra in articulating the musical argument.
That argument is a troubled and deeply serious one. Whereas the Violin Concerto, written
before the outbreak of war, had ended on a note of hope, the Concerto symphonique wins
through at best to a sense of fierce triumph, of having survived a titanic and costly struggle.

Corinne Lacombl???, soloist in the first performances of the Concerto symphonique,
was the joint dedicatee, with her husband, of the Scherzo fantasque for piano and
orchestra, which Bloch composed in late 1948, as soon as the Concerto was
completed. It is almost as if the latter work had not exhausted the basic, urgent
expressive impulse, nor the interest in piano and orchestra: the Scherzo fantasque is in very
much the same wild, untrammelled spirit, though kept within a shorter and simpler form.

Music Composed by Ernest Bloch
Played by the SWR Rundfunkorchester Kaiserslautern
With Jenny Lin (piano)
Conducted by Jir??? St???rek

"Swiss composer Ernest Bloch is largely known for his ambitious works inspired by Hebraic themes
such as the cello rhapsody Schelomo, his Sacred Service, and Suite Hebra???que for viola and
orchestra. Far less well known are his concerted works for piano and orchestra, and on H???nssler
Classic’s Ernest Bloch: Works for Piano and Orchestra, piano virtuoso Jenny Lin takes them on
with help from the SWR Rundfunkorchester Kaiserslauten under the direction of J???r??? St???rek.
This is the first time that all of Bloch’s work in this genre have been brought under the same
umbrella on CD. The Concerto Symphonique (1949) is certainly underrated; one of the longest
piano concertos in the twentieth century, Bloch’s sense of imagination, originality, and grasp
of form are firing on all cylinders in this work. Although it gets off to a tentative start, once
warmed up the SWR Rundfunkorchester Kaiserslauten dives fully into this mesmerizing score,
and pianist Jenny Lin pulls out all of the dramatic stops — she has been touring with the
work and her sense of familiarity with it shows here. Although Bloch is often called
"neo-classic," the Concerto Symphonique is closer to the idiom of Mikl???s R???zsa [sic!],
big-boned and romantic in expression with a touch of the cinematic, yet clearly conceived
with the concert hall in mind and specifically for keyboard artists with the strength, stamina,
and power of Jenny Lin.

The Concerto Grosso No. 1 has been recorded more often than the Concerto Symphonique;
dating from 1925, it too is often referred to as "neo-classic" yet the designation seems no
more meaningful here than it would be for the Concerto Symphonique. In contrast to the
standard sonata-allegro scheme, its four movements grow progressively longer rather
than shorter. The Scherzo fantasque (1948) is similar to the Concerto Symphonique,
although much shorter — it seems almost like a sketch for the larger work, although
it is easily appealing on its own and the Scherzo fantasque’s formal concision is admirable.
Lin brings an equal amount of ardor and discipline to every movement of this recording,
yet reserves a lovely and sweet tone for the languid beauty of the "Pastorale and Rustic
Dances" of the Concerto Grosso. Sometimes one is impatient for the SWR
Rundfunkorchester Kaiserslauten to pick up the pace a little, but overall H???nssler
Classic’s Ernest Bloch: Works for Piano and Orchestra is a highly satisfying effort that
makes one want to hear more of Bloch, an aspect that recordings of his better known
works does not always tend to inspire."

Source: H???nssler Klassik CD (my rip!)
Formats: FLAC(RAR), DDD Stereo, mp3(320)
File Sizes: 378 MB / 177 MB (incl. cover)

Download Link – https://mega.co.nz/#!kY43mYga!FNkUPyb1QFsqdW3sDX731DbKHoNZBBRJOfxunFg RkJM
mp3 version – https://mega.co.nz/#!xVZWxZYD!ahn3kTmsrS2Np3xIFRBRKFC9X9cVHwXtrn0SJ1R eyhc

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The Belgian violinist Godfried Devreese (1893-1972) was a pupil of Ysa???e and
C???sar Thomson. He led the Kurhaus Orchestra in The Hague and was a member of the
Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam, also working as a conductor in Antwerp and
Brussels. He spent some 29 years as director of the Malines Conservatory, establishing
the city as an important musical centre. The compositions of Devreese, romantic in
general style, include concertos, symphonies and a wide variety of works. His
reputation as a composer has remained largely limited to his own country.

Music Composed by Godfried Devreese
Played by the Belgian Radio and Television Philharmonic Orchestra
With Guido De Neve (violin) & Viviane Spanoche (cello)
Conducted by Fr???d???ric Devreese

"It is played simply and with atmosphere…This is a very attractive disc."
American Record Guide

"With rich burnished tone and expressive, nuanced playing, cellist Viviane Spanoghe
is outstanding…the sound is very fine. Strongly recommended."
Fanfare

Source: Marco Polo (my rip!)
Formats: FLAC(RAR), DDD Stereo, mp3(320)
File Sizes: 304 MB / 156 MB (incl. booklet)

Download Link – https://mega.co.nz/#!JAZmjDLK!F_ISfEuuxJzBaHI44ikQ3VaBPVs1woFFpwlpj7H Qk-M
mp3 version – https://mega.co.nz/#!dAIzBZzQ!BBZxzQFgkGdXeLmYzRrqcjYZOmUXR6F5BanE7-4yA14

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———- Post added at 05:01 AM ———- Previous post was at 04:50 AM ———-

thanks for bloch he has so much great music composed, this cd is stunning! have it in my collection and Concerto Symphonique is my reference recording. 1. concerto grosso i love the old mercury hanson recording.

Kai Nieminen???s Flute Concerto "Palomar, In the Enchanted Garden" introduces enchanting melodies
woven into a modern idiom. The timbral ambience is lyrically impressionistic, but the work also has darker,
mysterious hues. The flute is a highly adaptable soloist, at times a whispering breath on a starry sky, at others an
arctic bird soaring above a winter landscape, taking startled flight on spotting a human figure.
The structure of the one-movement concerto relies on a recurring motif that, in undergoing transformation,
generates new musical moods. The texture is transparent, crystal-clear and sparkling
throughout, and more in the nature of intimate chamber music, for the orchestration allows the various
instruments to express their intrinsic characteristics and timbres. Nieminen in fact regards the concerto more as a
symphony of character types and himself as a tone painter of fantasies from the life around him.

The Clarinet Concerto "Through Shadows I Can Hear Ancient Voices???" immerses the listener in the
dream-like world of Nieminen???s musical legends. From the very first bars the soloist is like a snake-charmer
hypnotising all around. Again the inspiration for this work lies in literature: the novel Indian Nocturne by the
Italian Antonio Tabucchi, the narrative of which wavers between real life and an imaginary world to create
moods that cannot be logically interpreted. The book alludes to flashbacks to a previous life and, inspired by
Tabucchi, Nieminen plays with musical d???j???-vu experiences: a motif heard earlier in the work may, even
in transformation, still be recognisable. Nieminen???s first work for orchestra, Vicoli in ombra (Alleys in Twilight),
looks ahead to the world of Palomar and was likewise born in Rome. The orchestral writing is
again limpid and airy and the music exudes a sense of serenity, calm and enjoyment of the mood of the
moment. Nieminen has a gift for building with fantasy, yet his works always have a clear musical structure.
Vicoli in ombra is like a journey into the shady labyrinth of the mind, as symbolised by the Trastevere alleys in
Rome.

Music Composed by Kai Nieminen
Played by the Sinfonia Finlandia Jyv???skyl???
With Patrick Gallois (flute) & Mikko Raasakka (clarinet)
Conducted by Patrick Gallois

"Kai Nieminen calls himself a ???painter in music??? and this triptych of works goes a long way to proving the point.

Palomar is his Flute Concerto, written in 2001, and its pellucid impressions suggest a language of subtle
hues and colouration. It???s full of flute and harp exchanges but also sports some traditional sounding, grounding
horn harmonies. The orchestration is light and subtle, glittering with the concentration of a sextet in places,
and revelling in firefly and crepuscular distinction. It???s a two movement work, the finale of which is called La
Notte (Night, Old People and Birds)???which is both charming in itself and an indication of his pluralistic
inclinations in general. Here we find loquacious voicings, incessant birdsong in which all nature seems soprano-
like to be teeming, luscious and avidly vibrating. Then an achingly beautiful and warmly hued string melody
courses romantically through the undergrowth, lovely as a Rota song, before the birdsong, though now less
agitated resumes. It???s a fine work, impressionistic, less reliant on Messiaen than you may think from my
description???and charming.

The Clarinet Concerto was written the following year, 2002. It???s titled Through Shadows I Can Hear Ancient
Voices. The writing here is fuller than in the Flute Concerto. Echoing phrases abound as do moments of stasis
and, once again???and this is a repeated feature of his writing???rarefied chamber sized clarity. The second
movement, The Toilers of the Sea, is in effect an Andante, lyrically spun and irradiated by percussive colour.
Lines thin to single voices, before a frantic clarinet outburst erupts, pitch twisting and accompanied by torrid
percussion. This is a finely judged work, theatrical but surely shaped, and never off-putting in its vigour.

Finally there is the oldest work, written in 1995: Vicoli in ombra (Alleys in Twilight). A stalking, walking bass
motif starts this one and orchestral colours vary from burnished windy strings to more locally vocalised
persistent wind writing. There is a real sense of narrative development here, something of which Nieminen
is an august exponent. Though the mood darkens somewhat and the work ends quietly it???s not pessimistic."
Musicweb

Source: Naxos CD (my rip!)
Formats: FLAC(RAR), DDD Stereo, mp3(320)
File Sizes: 236 MB / 136 MB (incl. cover & booklet)

Download Link – https://mega.co.nz/#!tAgFGQgR!OPBUO3A7p_mz61bkhdNSQT4P19x0OOjossM5ePT 4VXM
mp3 version – https://mega.co.nz/#!wRRj3BaL!cC02jC1A-_DKZ4wUtf0dol2srJ8cSRWOoeegbp3stF0

Enjoy! Don’t share! Buy the original! 🙂

Peggy Glanville-Hicks (1912-1990) was an Australian composer. At age 15 she began
studying composition with Fritz Hart in Melbourne. She also studied the piano under Waldemar
Seidel. She spent the years from 1931 to 1936 as a student at the Royal College of Music in
London, where she studied piano with Arthur Benjamin, conducting with Constant Lambert and
Malcolm Sargent, and composition with Ralph Vaughan Williams. (She later asserted that the
idea that opens Vaughan Williams’ 4th Symphony was taken from her). She was married
to British composer Stanley Bate, who was gay, from 1938 to 1949. Bate was a fellow student
of Vaughan Williams’s who later killed himself (see his bio and listen to his Symphony No.3
in my other ffshrine thread, here (http://forums.ffshrine.org/f92/wimpel69s-could-film-music-classical-corner-work-121898/20.html#post2283178)).

From 1949 to 1958 she served as a critic for the New York Herald Tribune and took U.S.
citizenship. After leaving America, she lived in Greece from 1957 to 1976. In the United States
she asked George Antheil to revise his Ballet M???canique for a modern percussion ensemble
for a concert she helped to organize before returning to Australia in the late 1970s.

Major works in her output include the Sinfonia da Pacifica, Etruscan Concerto,
Concerto romantico, and her Harp Sonata which was premiered by Nicanor Zabaleta
in 1953 as well as several operas. Her best known operas are The Transposed Heads and
Nausicaa. The Transposed Heads is in six scenes with a libretto by the composer after
Thomas Mann and premiered in Louisville, Kentucky on 27 March 1954.

The Etruscan Concerto of 1954 shows the influences on Peggy Glanville-Hicks’ music of
both the British pastoral composers who had taught her and of American contemporaries such as
Copland and Virgil Thomson (to whom her Thomsoniana of 1949 is dedicated). But it also shows
her music emerging from those influences. The direct rhythmic energy of her writing, the strong
hues of the orchestration, and the antique echoes suggested by her subject (the remains of the
ancient Etruscan civilisation) and coloured by her growing interest in Indian classical and Greek
demotic musics, all contribute to a musical voice that was becoming increasingly distinctive.
The three movements of the Etruscan Concerto are each composed in response to specific
quotes (given in the score) from D.H. Lawrence’s ‘Etruscan Places’ (a collection of travel writings).

Music Composed by Peggy Glanville-Hicks
Played by the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra
With Caroline Almonte (piano)
And Deborah Riedel (soprano) & Gerald English (tenor)
Conducted by Richard Mills & Anthony Walker

"The Etruscan Concerto is a souvenir of her Mediterranean years and of D.H. Lawrence’s
Etruscan Places (1933). Its foot-stamping first movement is flavoured with the carefree
dances of Skalkottas and of The Isles of Greece by Donald Swann. As with her other
concerto pieces there is just a suggestion of prolixity but there is much else to compensate.
The central movement with its laggardly winding melodies and incense swirling slowness
picks up on the ancient mysteries of the Etruscan civilisation ??? a Mediterranean connection
also touched on in her Gymnopedies. The finale has much in common with the first
movement but with a hint of Hovhaness and RVW. It seems that this concerto has also
been recorded by Keith Jarrett but, sadly, I have not heard it.

Glanville-Hicks delved into opera more than once. Her Sappho (1963) succeeded the
opera Nausicaa (1961). Sappho was written with Callas in mind and to a commission by
San Francisco Opera who then refused to perform it seemingly because of the predominance
of modal tonality (Kurt Adler). This is the first substantial extract of Sappho to be recorded
in the original scoring. I would like to hear the whole work. This is a pleasing if low-key
soliloquy. It has a touch of Barber’s Antony and Cleopatra but without that work???s flaming
fervour. Deborah Riedel keeps the embers glowing and flaring.

Tragic Celebration began life as the ballet score Jephtha’s Daughter in which a rash oath
results in Jephtha having to slay his own daughter. This orchestral piece has the redolence
of Barber’s Cave of the Heart with crackling violence and some tenderness. The piece
ends touchingly with a silvery tintinnabulatory gleam.

Letters from Morocco were borne out of composer, Paul Bowles’ letters to Glanville-Hicks.
These were part of a forty year correspondence. Islamic muezzin ululation and spoken
words are meshed and interleaved. The setting style is free-ranging and while tonal is
intrepidly engaged with Brittenesque techniques and wildnesses we may associate with
Our Hunting Fathers. These are wonderfully fragrant yet not fragile settings. They variously
celebrate the remorseless Sahara, music heard on the warm nights, a hashish almond
candy bar, orange blossom, evening drums and the oasis. The hashish bar song has a
wandering oriental contour redolent of Hovhaness and Cowell. The seventh of the songs
is simply spoken ??? there is no music. It???s a brave and successful close and a valorous
tribute to the words of Paul Bowles. "
Musicweb

Source: ABC Classics CD (my rip!)
Formats: FLAC(RAR), DDD Stereo, mp3(320)
File Sizes: 203 MB / 123 MB

Download Link – https://mega.co.nz/#!dYgWjZYS!J5Y3niUZx_BAKK-4-hfrwwpEW7QSzVbON8WTT-8N4X8
mp3 version – https://mega.co.nz/#!ZcpFAaDD!S-Hxc006kr1AJ9v6dPgdTjw80_MLFEvBaQnJ4TPsds0

Enjoy! Don’t share! Buy the original! 🙂

The Persian composer Reza Vali (*1952) began his music studies at the Teheran
Conservatory of Music, finally settling in the United States. His compositions include
pieces for orchestra, string quartet, piano and voice, and chamber ensemble. Vali’s
Flute Concerto, commissioned by the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, is influenced
by Persian classical and folk-music. The flautist uses a technique involving simultaneous playing
and singing in order to imitate the sound of the Persian bamboo flute, the ney. Folk Songs
(Set No. 10), is the tenth set of an ongoing cycle of compositions based on Persian folkmusic.
In Deyl???m???n (the name of a region in northwestern Iran), two Persian instruments, the ney
and the b???rb???t (oud) are added to the Western symphony orchestra as the music moves between
Persian modes, short quotations from Beethoven, Bruckner, Mahler and Wagner, African
folk-song and Peruvian folk-song.

Music Composed by Reza Vali
Played by the Boston Modern Orchestra Project
With Alberto Almarza (flute)
And Jana Baty (soprano) & George Mgrdichian (Oud)
Conducted by Gil Rose

"I am very impressed by this CD. By mating Western classical music with the musical traditions
of his homeland – both popular and classical – Vali has been the foster-father to a beautiful hybrid,
a rara avis. The exotic atmospheres of Persia suffuse this music, which nonetheless retains its
classical form and control. The one composer who kept coming to mind as I heard this CD was
Khachaturian, but without the agitprop. … Sumptuously played and recorded, Reza Vali’s music
is a tremendous treat. This CD will continue to find a place in my changer for months to come,
and it probably will be counted among 2004’s best new releases."
Classical.Net

Source: Naxos CD (my rip!)
Formats: FLAC(RAR), DDD Stereo, mp3(320)
File Sizes: 251 MB / 152 MB (incl. cover & booklet)

Download Link – https://mega.co.nz/#!8N5AHDSS!PScBzRjeB9Cv8M_QxG-wiU7I71gkA9x4v9eoEvOby5Y
mp3 version – https://mega.co.nz/#!5c5hXR7K!Wju9FxzPKWSUSmEWqEO51FdNktYr0BSk0Tzxbsn QskM

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Mikl???s R???zsa’s Piano Concerto, written in 1966 for Leonard Pennario (who plays the work on this recording,
made more than decade later) is cast in three movements: the first is the dark and dangerous ‘Allegro Energico’
with dissonant piano that is as intense as anything you are likely to find in his film work. Actually, this is similar
to the Spellbound film score and concerto as it also evokes a sense of some troubled inner conflict.
The ‘Adagio’ features oboe and piano working together to bring to life a gentler theme, although there is still a
sense of unrest with strings taking a firmer hold mid way through, before the piano is finally given its head in
strident, incisive manner. This then subsides, fading out with genteel simplicity. The tempo quickens with ‘Vigoroso’,
the percussive and xylophone backing used to good effect. A number of different instruments take brief centre stage
to create a mosaic of sound and although there are some respites, the tempo becomes steadily more manic,
galloping on towards an almost frenzied conclusion.

The Cello Concerto, was composed in R???zsa’s Italian retreat of Santa Margherita Ligure. It was the third of
R???zsa’s four concertos for solo instrument and orchestra with an opus number. The work came about as
a result of meeting the Hungarian-American cellist J???nos Starker after the latter had given a performance in
New York of the Cello Concerto, Op. 52 by the French conductor and composer Jean Martinon. Starker, to whom
the work is dedicated, asked R???zsa there and then to write him a cello concerto and this immediately ignited
R???zsa’s inspiration. Given that R???zsa was not a cellist (he played the viola at Leipzig College, Starker’s advice was
sought and several technical changes were made to the score; once these had been incorporated the composer
set to work on the orchestration which was completed during the winter months. The Concerto, cast in three
movements also, is a dark, savage and often quite brutal work and is certainly the most austere of all his concerti.

Music Composed by Mikl???s R???zsa
Played by the Munich Philharmonic & Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestras
With Leonard Pennario (piano) & Jan???s Starker (cello)
Conducted by Moshe Atzmon & Wilfried B???ttcher

Source: Pantheon CD (my rip!)
Formats: FLAC(RAR), AAD Stereo, mp3(320)
File Sizes: 265 MB / 128 MB

Download Link – https://mega.co.nz/#!85EWBKrK!ei7H6CoGlqX-5Eo–OrD_j3JR849Is1TzjO4q8msPfc
mp3 version – https://mega.co.nz/#!kh9yBRRR!ND5MDk5jaPlq09QTPCLuhB0XB0wRym1SM97dMUQ d5Q4

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Also, Marius Constant’s concertos have grown on me like a delightfully persistent carbuncle, as have Devreese’s jazzy piano concertos, and even Vali’s fascinating flute cadenza. All told, it’s a pretty good sign when seeing an unheard of name invites excitement instead of skeptical dread, and you’ve got that tone going here to a T. Keep ’em coming!

FLAC link for the R???zsa concertos added.

Roumi Petrova: Enchanted Rhythma

Sir Malcolm Arnold
Arnold: Guitar Concerto
Julian Bream, guitar
Melos Ensemble
Malcolm Arnold, conductor
RCA 09026-61598

Many thanks to any that oblige me.

No.95

English composer Stanley Myers (1933-1993) is best known for his many film and television scores. From 1958 to 1993 Myers
wrote music for 130 film and television projects, among them The Deer Hunter (1978), The Border (1979), and six
episodes in 1964 from the popular English TV series Doctor Who. Without doubt, the most famous music Myers ever wrote
was his Cavatina for guitar (1970), which appeared in several guises, most memorably as the title theme in The Deer Hunter.
He had studied at Oxford University and by the early ???50s was active as a songwriter and music director for musicals. His first work
in films was a collaborative effort with Reg Owen on the 1958 English movie Murder Reported.

Stan Getz (1927-90) was an American jazz saxophonist probably best remembered for his 1950s recordings with Dizzy Gillespie
and Oscar Peterson. But his musical interests were evidently not confined to jazz and, during a rehearsal with the Boston Pops
Orchestra, he remarked that it was a pity he had no concerto to add to the concert arrangements of Gershwin tunes they were
programmed to play. The suggestion that he should (like Benny Goodman before him) consider commissioning one came form the
conductor of that particular concert, John Williams, as did the name of the composer most likely to relish the challenge of writing
a ‘classical’ concerto for a jazz performer. For although first and foremost a composer of concert music, Richard Rodney Bennett
(1936-2012) was famed for the unusually broad scope of his musical interests; he is moreover a gifted performer, and his own
keyboard repertoire shows him equally at ease with all twentieth-century musical styles – from jazz to the avant-garde.

So the match seemed ideal: Getz had found a composer whose stylistic sympathies appeared perfectly in tune with his own,
and Bennett was offered the services of a performer eager to adapt to the demands of a ‘crossover’ undertaking of this kind.
Indeed, Bennett’s enthusiasm for the project was such that he began work as soon as the idea was mooted – long before any
mention of a performance date, or even a fee for the commission. In the event there was neither, for Getz’s illness meant that
practical decisions were deferred, while the progress of the concerto continued unabated. Despite the sadness occasioned by
the death of its dedicatee, Concerto for Stan Getz is a thoroughly celebratory tribute to the possibilities of using jazz
harmonies in conjunction with the composer’s own free-flowing serial technique.

Michael Torke, born in Milwaukee in 1961, has emerged as a contemporary composer whose music has been received
with uncharacteristic warmth by traditional classical audiences and newcomers to "serious" music alike. Torke’s music
is characterized by a fusion of styles that range from lush Romanticism to pop- and jazz-influenced idioms. Typically,
the composer makes use of colorful timbres, minimalism-influenced repetition, and dance rhythms. A number of his
works have proven especially adaptable as dance scores; a number were specifically commissioned by dance ensembles.
Torke’s Javelin (1994), commissioned by the 1994 Olympic Commission to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary#
of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, has proven to be one of the composer’s most popular works.

Music by Stanley Myers, Richard Rodney Bennett & Michael Torke
Played by the Albany Symphony, Argo Syphomy and BBC Concert Orchestras
With John Harle (saxophones)
Conducted by David Alan Miller, James Judd & Barry Wordsworth

"By the time John Harle became established as a composer, he had already a ten-year reputation
as the leading saxophonist of his generation. Since the mid-1990s he has had three commissions
for the BBC Proms, and has released two albums on the Argo label. With his supreme lyrical gift,
he is much in demand as a composer for television, having written scores for over forty
productions for the BBC and Channel 4, notably Simon Schama’s acclaimed History of Britain
series, and four series of Silent Witness."

Source: Decca Argo CD (my rip!)
Formats: FLAC(RAR), DDD Stereo, mp3(320)
File Sizes: 300 MB / 140 MB

Download Link – https://mega.co.nz/#!0doiiTBQ!YKgRR1QemdsFrqlrAa39ey8T6mILT6N_duk5QhQ ZZyI
mp3 version – https://mega.co.nz/#!5IYTXaoS!S0Hh5lARRZxgkZi27acs_VcRMZlPBeOdO8hIpOe RkyE

Enjoy! Don’t share! Buy the original! 🙂

No.96

"If there were anybody who still holds the belief that to write well for the guitar a Spanish surname
is the sine qua non, they would probably consider Malcolm Arnold’s Guitar Concerto to be an anomaly.
As it is, the Concerto is a triumphant demonstration of the versatility of the guitar, and it is not surprising
that many guitarists (including myself) consider it to be one of the finest concertos in the repertoire. Very few
composers, if any, have exploited the guitar’s chameleon-like characteristics and facility for allusion with such
skill – its ability to go from lyricism to drama, from light-hearted joke to serious comment, the fluid personality
that allows it to assume innumerable masks.

Instead of drawing from the usual Spanish well (and fishing out the usual trite clich???s) Arnold chooses to take
jazz as a source (at the very least, an equally valid idiom for the instrument). In fact the second movement
could well be titled ‘Blue Scherzo in memorium Django Reinhardt’: seldom has the guitar been given such a
wealth of emotion as in the slow sections, and the way in which it is made to hold its own against the brass
instruments is a minor prodigy of orchestral mastery. The swift break into an impish and wildly virtuosic
scherzo is nothing short of breath-taking. The slow movement looms largest in the memory, as it does in
length – taking up about half of the entire work – but there is also much to be found in the other two
movements. Arnold uses Greek models as the basis for his harmony and melody; in the first movement,
a sonata form, the two main themes are each in a different mode. The mode chosen for the second theme
(probably the catchiest tune in a work full of them) is the familiar major scale; rhythmic verve and lyricism
here strike a perfect balance. The third movement, a rondo, begins with the main theme presented by the
solo guitar; the canonic writing for the instrument is bold indeed. The guitar retains a leading role throughout
all the episodes, bringing the concerto to a close with an astonishing glissando."
Eduardo Fern???ndez

Music Composed by Malcolm Arnold
Played by various orchestras and ensembles
With Eduardo Fern???ndez (guitar)
Conducted by (various)

"Collaborations between composers and performers have often produced fine works,
as with this Concerto, first played in 1959 by Arnold’s friend Julian Bream to whom it is
dedicated. The problems of writing for an instrument with few avante garde credentials are
solved by a neo-classical style into which the composer introduces modern harmonies and
progressions. The first-movement themes are graceful, and the dialogue between solo
instrument and chamber orchestra intimate are brilliant by turns. The slow movement,
inspired by the guitar playing of Django Reinhardt (1920-1953), has an emotional intensity
distant from the clich???-ridden Spanish and Latin-American mannerisms of the popular
guitar. A long bluesy theme (though not based on blues harmony) takes the Concerto into
deep waters, high guitar harmonics casting an eerie, chromatic sheen over a gently-rocking
orchestral accompaniment. The third movement, an eccentric Minuet in Rondo form in
6/8 time, restores the genial balance until a muted horn and clarinet together recall the
second-movement theme. The Concerto ends with tragic overtones, guitar and ‘cellos fading
into silence on repeated low Es. Both Arnold and Bream were wary of the directions in
which contemporary music was heading in the 50s, and remained faithful to diatonic
tonality and more contemporary influences, such as jazz and popular music, though no
trace of the latter appears in the Concerto. The composer’s biographer, Piers Burton-Page,
calls it "One of Arnold’s most outstanding inventions. … Once heard, never forgotten"
("Philharmonic Concerto", Methuen, 1994). It has rarely been out of the recorded music
catalogs."
All Music

Source: Decca CD (my rip!)
Formats: FLAC(RAR), ADD/DDD Stereo, mp3(320)
File Sizes: 305 MB / 170 MB

Download Link – https://mega.co.nz/#!ZYph2YbL!fpdUuxcJ2JNIR5OTouQTgkmpKd1MbKJnITs1O_H myRc
mp3 version – https://mega.co.nz/#!wZQyUZrb!AkgAqmtK0jFxtLXlMtbmKH1qEuo9yWdVS3huYwT IAxI

Enjoy! Don’t share! Buy the original! 🙂

P.S.: Now, this is the Bream/Melos Ensemble/Arnold recording of 1960 (not my rip, Arnold concerto only, mp3(320) only!) –
https://mega.co.nz/#!5pU2iS5S!RoC6BVTSMuID0y7stckM4nS0K6s8XP1DS3drguy Z5HM

Joly Braga Santos (1924-1988) was one of the most significant and prolific Portuguese composers of
the twentieth-century. Santos began his studies at the Lisbon Conservatory in 1934, starting out primarily as
a violinist; in time he would devote increasing attention to composition. Santos left the Lisbon Conservatory
in 1943 just shy of earning his certificate, and instead entered into two years of private study with the most
prominent Portuguese composer of the day, Lu???s de Freitas Branco. Branco imparted to Santos a great deal
of his personal approach to orchestration, which was vivid and colorful in the manner of Respighi.

"The Concerto for Cello and Orchestra is a work in three movements (Moderato – Allegro – Andante)
without interruptions. Again, each movement being divided into different sections and movements, it is not
easy to distinguish its three movements. It would be an exhausting exercise to examine each section and
it would hardly help the listener. Therefore I would rather emphasize that this is more like an orchestral work
with a cellist who, here and there, appears as a soloist, than a cello concerto in the traditional sense, where
the soloist exchanges musical ideas with the orchestra, as two partners would do when discussing a mutually
interesting subject. Braga Santos was certainly keen on keeping the listener attentive, therefore never
indulging in any kind of clearly defined melodies or rhythms. The music develops like a symphonic poem
where vaguely defined images and feelings are followed in what seems to lack focus, but then, after a second
or third hearing, becomes clear as an extraordinarily coherent single statement. It is the kind of work where
the music speaks for itself, and trying to write about it I feel completely lost." (???lvaro Cassuto)

Music Composed by Joly Braga Santos
Played by the Algarve Orchestra
With Jan Bastiaan Neven (cello)
Conducted by ???lvaro Cassuto

"Joly Braga Santos (1924-1988) was Portugal’s best-known composer of the twentieth century. His work
displayed little national flavor; it incorporated various foreign influences and changed according to prevailing
trends, yet displayed a consistent melodic inclination and rhythmic verve that are recognizable across stylistic
lines. His six symphonies are his best-known works, but the Naxos label’s Marco Polo imprint, dedicated to
the exploration of unfamiliar repertories, has issued a series of discs devoted to other music by Braga Santos
in recent years. This set of orchestral pieces spans his entire career, from the 20-year-old composer’s
Nocturno for strings to the Concerto for cello and orchestra and Staccato brilhante, written in the last year
of his life.

The Nocturno is a quiet, romantic work that will be enjoyed by anyone with an ear for Samuel Barber or the
music of the English pastoralists, while the late Divertimento No. 2 and the dark, deliberate, more dissonant
cello concerto suggest the influence of Shostakovich, a major model for any composer who resisted the
peer pressure of atonalists in the 1960s and 1970s. Yet cataloguing the influences that appear in Braga
Santos’ music fails to convey its full flavor. It is artfully wrought throughout, with a tendency toward sheer
melodic beauty. The Divertimento No. 1 uses snare drums and other percussion effectively, and the
composer expertly uses a variety of devices to control the music’s temperature: he varies rhythmic intensity,
piles on dissonant counterpoint, lets the texture dissolve into spacious pianissimos. The regional and mostly
youthful Algarve Orchestra of Portugal handles the quiet string passages very well (listen to the end of the
Nocturno), and you might easily take them for one of the major European orchestras. Though this music
is obscure, anyone who enjoys Copland, Vaughan Williams, or more recent orchestral works will find it well
worth its budget price."
All Music

Source: Marco Polo CD (my rip!)
Formats: FLAC(RAR), DDD Stereo, mp3(320)
File Sizes: 287 MB / 168 MB (incl. cover & booklet)

Download Link – https://mega.co.nz/#!R9FXgSAI!dPZGZmWgu7kxKS77vyFElg7WQi8WcqWKD47EGcM X_Po
mp3 version – https://mega.co.nz/#!lx93WaKA!A4jnyXM-8Y1hcGjqJNzXzAcp05AN4Rs8eFdPziWfouU

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These recordings were made at a concert on occasion of the 3rd Jacinto & Inocencio Guerrero Foundation Prize,
extended to Anton Garcia Abril. It was held on December 10, 1994 and included three orchestral works
(one, a concertante), drawn from different periods, clearly highlighted both the inner essence of Garcia Abril’s
art as well as the variations in approach adopted during the course of his long and fruitful career.

The Three Sonatas for Orchestra (1984) come from a ballet, Danza y tronio (Dance and Swagger), first
performed in Zaragoza in the same year by the Spanish National Ballet. In this ballet, Garcia Abril recreated the
Madrid of the second half of the eighteenth century, using works by Boccherini and Father Soler interlaced with his
own compositions. Some episodes were subsequently hived off from the ballet and now lead independent lives.

Hemeroscopium, the following work on the programme, and Concerto for Piano and Orchestra confront
composer and audience alike with an approach that is different, though not radically so, from that adopted above:
in both instances, the works involve reflection on earlier pieces, yet in this particular case the earlier work happens
to be the composer’s own. This is something many a composer has done over the years, whether in order to take
the decision to maintain the original intact with slight reworkings (as is the case of Hemeroscopium, a work
which, though written between 1969 and 1972, has been published by Bolamar only now in 1995), or whether in
order to carry out a thorough, in-depth revision (as is the case of the 1966 Piano Concerto, first performed
by Esteban Sanchez with Garcia Asensio and the selfsame orchestra in 1967).

Not only is Hemeroscopium Garcia Abril’s first grand orchestral work, it is also something akin to a personal
manifesto. A devotee in his youth of pronouncedly reformist groups (1958, Grupo Nueva Musica de Madrid, along
with Barce, Cristobal Halffter and Luis de Pablo among others) and, thanks to a Juan March Foundation Scholarship,
a student in Rome able to delve into the inner workings of new music, ranging from dodecaphonism right across
to electro-acoustics, Garcia Abril absorbed all he felt to be of use and proceeded to craft a work-cum-resume clearly
in sympathy with neo-tonal movements (???figurative??? would be the word if one were talking of a painter), thereby
breaking free of all manner of prejudice.

The Piano Concerto, a big-boned, virtuoso work was influenced by Garcia Abril’s own career as a concert
pianist and underwent several revisions. In particular, the revision affects the orchestration, now wiser and more
imaginative, and the role of the soloist, entrusted with new cadences and passages affording enhanced potential
for bravura. The dialogue traced by Garcia Abrilover the underlay of his youth has resulted in a work that is new
and yet infused with that erstwhile freshness which time has gradually mellowed.

Music Composed by Anton Garcia Abril
Played by the Madrid Symphony Orchestra
With Guillermo Gonzal???z (piano)
Conducted by Enrique Garc???a Asensio

"For those listeners who love to immerse themselves in waves of lush, sensual sonorities,
this…is quite a substantial discovery for the rest of us too….one of Marco Polo’s most dazzling
(recordings)…Highly recommended to all fans of postimpressionism."
Fanfare

Source: Marco Polo CD (my rip!)
Formats: FLAC(RAR), DDD Stereo, mp3(320)
File Sizes: 288 MB / 157 MB (incl. cover & booklet)

Download Link – https://mega.co.nz/#!t1k1RLCK!FG29V0r7X4Mm5L1zBqPVN2CGf9YN8PrSeR4HUQW KqyA
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Polish composer Alexandre Tansman wrote his Cinq pi???ces in 1930 for Joseph Szigeti in two versions:
for violin and piano and for violin with small orchestra. If the first movement, ???Toccata,??? sounds motoric and spiky,
the second, ???Chanson et bo???te ??? musique,??? strikes a richer, more sultry vein. The third movement, a chatty, bustling
perpetual motion, somewhat in the manner of Heifetz???s famous transcriptions of Poulenc???s pieces in the genre, gives
way to a throbbing ???Aria??? and a concluding jazzy ???Basso ostinato.???

The weight of the violin pieces here lies in the longer, more highly developed Violin Concerto from 1937, a
four-movement virtuosic showpiece in which, the notes relate, Heifetz had taken an interest. In fact, the first
movement???s soaring passages seem as reminiscent of Heifetz???s style as do similar ones in works dedicated to him,
such as Korngold???s (or Gruenberg???s) Violin Concerto. But the writing for the solo instrument sounds more
violinistic in the technical passages than do the corresponding moments in Korngold???s work. The second movement
begins ruminatively and introduces cadenza-like passages in which the solo instrument engages in spectral effects???
but, as did the preceding movement, this one ends with colorful rapid passagework, in which the solo violin vies
with winds and even percussion. The third movement spreads a lush harmonic (and textural) backdrop behind
the violin???s cantabile – the generally tonal, accessible style, in fact, never seems to invite such waywardness.
The finale alla zingaresca introduces contrapuntal passages in the woodwinds after a cadenza, and that
complexity, no matter how high-spirited, serves as a foil to the Gypsy passages with which Tansman has
peppered the movement.

Music Composed by Alexandre Tansman
Played by the Symphony Orchestra of the Podlasie Opera and Philharmonic
With Bartosz Cajler (violin)
Conducted by Marcin Nale???z-Niesiolowski

"This Polish composer was a tireless advocate of the neo-classic; he adopted the style in
the 1920s, became an expert practitioner within it and stuck with it all the way up until his death
in 1986. That the outbreak of World War II annihilated interest in the style among other
"serious" composers, and that serialism and various kinds of formalized music took center
stage during most of the years left to him meant nothing at all to Tansman; he plugged right
on ahead with what he felt he did best. Although this plan of action may have cost Tansman
his relevance to chroniclers and critics — and later in life, in the concert hall — his music
sounds uncommonly fresh, congenial, and technically satisfying in the way that Bohuslav
Martinu’s does — it’s modern, but it isn’t in your face. This Dux disc devoted to violin and
orchestra music of Tansman is an excellent introduction to his music in general, and
furthermore features the wonderful playing of young Polish virtuoso Bartosz Cajler.

Featured is Tansman’s very fine, nearly cinematic Violin Concerto (1937), quite different
from, but also similar to, the much better known violin concerti of Korngold and R???zsa.
The Cinq Pi???ces (1930), however, is the most striking track on the disc; it’s lively and
exciting in faster movements and lyric and heartfelt in the slower ones. The Suite Baroque
(1958) for chamber orchestra is a little reminiscent of Stravinsky’s Dumbarton Oaks
Concerto, but it is also good. Dux’ recording is present, clear, and full-bodied, and the
extraordinarily long-named Symphony Orchestra of the Podlasie Opera and Philharmonic
in Bialystok under Marcin Nalecz-Niesiolowski plays with precision and dedication.
Unless one’s tastes only run to "Gloomy Gus" classical music or the extremes of the
avant-garde, this fine Dux disc cannot fail to satisfy."
All Music

Best buds: Alexandre Tansman and Igor Stravinsky.

Source: Dux CD (my rip!)
Formats: FLAC(RAR), DDD Stereo, mp3(320)
File Sizes: 248 MB / 115 MB

Download Link – https://mega.co.nz/#!FpNCGZiK!NhUKHjienfTfsVfubMdwFymMwd1wTph15P3Ivgo ggiE
mp3 version – https://mega.co.nz/#!41cHnZjb!V2ZlAmev4H0Z2_7osOFSpj2XkCUXrs0Fcx_aEZZ 2JrI

Enjoy! Don’t share! Buy the original! 🙂

———- Post added at 11:07 AM ———- Previous post was at 10:23 AM ———-

No.100

Samuil Yevgenyevich Feinberg (1890-1962) was a Russian and Soviet composer and pianist. Raised in Moscow,
he entered the Moscow Conservatory and studied under Alexander Goldenweiser. He is most remembered today for
his complete recording of Bach’s The Well-Tempered Clavier and many transcriptions. Feinberg was awarded the
Stalin Prize in 1946. He also composed a dozen piano sonatas as well as fantasias and other works for the instrument,
and 3 Piano Concertos which have been for the most part neglected in the standard repertoire.

Many listener who compare Ernest Bloch’s generalize that mature Bloch’s inspiration ran dry compared to his
earlier masterpieces like e.g. Schelomo. However, this magnificent Symphony for Trombone and Orchestra
gives the lie to such generalization. Written in 1954, when the composer was already suffering from his terminal illness,
the work is back to the world of Schelomo, its language, its intensity and poignancy that talks of open spaces and
stars. It is also one of the best pieces for trombone ever written. There are three movements. The first, Maestoso,
opens with a passionate orchestral statement. The trombone makes a relaxed entrance. The contemplative mood
prevails for most of the movement. The second, Agitato, begins with a propulsive rhythm and fanfares of distant
trumpets. The agitation grows to a powerful climax. After it subsides, the mood becomes somewhat pensive. But
the intensity begins to mount again culminating in a second climax. The trombone is left alone in meditative mood
with a melancholic background of strings, bringing the movement to a quiet close. The third movement, Allegro
deciso, starts with loud calls of the wind instruments. The strings reply, the trombone joins the dialogue. Then
the intensity diminishes. Muted trumpets and oboe bring back the opening theme. The trombone meditates briefly
and the music dies out quietly in the distance.

Music by Ernest Bloch & Samuel Feinberg
Played by USSR and Ostankino Symphony Orchestras
With Grigory Khersonsky (trombone) & Victor(!) Bunin (piano)
Conducted by Vladimir Kozhukhar & Gennadi Cherkasov

"Victor Bunin was born in Voroniezh March 2,1936. His first musical impressions were connected with his
father, famous composer Vladimir Vasilievich Bunin. After graduation from Musical College of the Tchaikovsky
Conservatory under the instruction of Olga Feodorovna Mukhortova,then Mirra Yakovlevna Sever,he studied
at the Moskow Tchaikovsky Conservatory under professor Samuil Evgenievich Feinberg /in 1956-1962/, and
then took up a post-graduate course with professor Victor Karpovich Merzhanov.

In 1961,Victor Bunin appeared in All-Russian piano competition and won the First prize.The pianist agenda
is well-packed with recitals and tours round Russia and abroad. Since 1963 Vuctor Bunin has been teaching
piano performance techniques at the Tchaikovsky Conservatory, the Central Music School and the Academic
Musical College /both under Moscow Conservarory. From 1993-2003 he also taught at the Syrian National
Conservatory and the Lebanese National Superior Conservatory in Beyrouth. Many of his students became
prize-winners of different international piano contests."

Source: Consonance CD (My rip!)
Formats: FLAC(RAR), ADD Stereo, mp3(320)
File Sizes: 276 MB / 163 MB (incl. artwork & booklet)

Download Link – https://mega.co.nz/#!tkEjwbja!MhyWtE3X9wSX25EpBNfD9yFfzdRyxia46IFTYnj DU6E
mp3 version – https://mega.co.nz/#!54FQFRbA!WHffY0iQ5zp8f9yTi6h86w0iKFZ2OTcwbEi5l4O i8Sc

Enjoy! Don’t share! Buy the original! 🙂

I think I love you. :awsm:

EDIT: This Tansman disc is EXCELLENT! Just the kind of orchestral texture I have been looking for nowadays. Now only if this Feinberg Mega link would start up…

Thanks again!!!

David Ward-Steinman (*1936) is an American composer and music professor. He studied at
Florida State University and the University of Illinois, where he received the Kinley Memorial
Fellowship for foreign study. After receiving his doctorate, he was a fellow at Princeton University
from 1970. His teachers included John Boda, Burrill Phillips, Darius Milhaud (at Aspen, Colorado),
Milton Babbitt (at Tanglewood) and Nadia Boulanger.

Music Composed by David Ward-Steinman
Played by the Moravian Philharmonic Orchestra
With Howard Colf (cello) & Karen Elaine Bakunin (viola)
Conducted by David Amos

"American composer David Ward-Steinman draws considerable inspiration from a great many British
composers of the last 50 years. In his music you can hear the dashing spirit of Malcolm Arnold, the quirky
pacing of Havergal Brian, and Arnold Bax’s staunch romanticism (without any of his moroseness). These
elements are particularly evident in Ward-Steinman’s Cello Concerto (1964-66), an effervescent affair
that takes the cello through several eminently delightful transformations. Howard Colf’s performance
is both adroit and sympathetic, but in this piece, the overall sonics are very strange. The concerto is
bright and cheerful throughout, but here and there the sound of the cello fades, leaving in its wake a
very peculiar echo. In the third movement (at 3:48, to be precise), the miking on the cello is dead-on,
then suddenly (and inexplicably) the echo appears. This only lasts a few bars, then everything returns
to normal. I can’t imagine how it was done or whether it was done intentionally. Still, for all that, the
Cello Concerto is a beautiful work and has much to recommend it.

The echoing effect is not present in the Cinnabar Concerto for viola and chamber orchestra (1991-93).
Karen Elaine Bakunin is the soloist and she delivers a confident and stylish performance that’s quite
captivating even though this work is not as perky as the Cello Concerto. The last piece is the very
dynamic Chroma Concerto (1985) for multiple keyboards, percussion, and chamber orchestra. It’s a
wild ride of prepared piano sounds and computer effects. Through it all Ward-Steinman keeps it
alive with a blithe romantic spirit. All the performances here are quite good, particularly those of the
Moravian Philharmonic Orchestra, an ensemble that demonstrates a natural feel for these pieces.
I can recommend this disc for the sheer pleasure of the music, despite the slightly distracting
resonant echo in the Cello Concerto."
Classics Today

Source: Fleur de Son CD (my rip!)
Formats: FLAC(RAR), DDD Stereo, mp3(320)
File Sizes: 235 MB / 154 MB

Download Link – https://mega.co.nz/#!dlURhLjR!S7todWWkNWMw-QW8M-3veQc78z0cSJ9o4bcVKAVVAyU
mp3 version – https://mega.co.nz/#!8x8HVRRS!fKk3RPm–7N2RXYeelI4QZ2PnyyHS8hmv4BPSvKKGeM

Enjoy! Don’t share! Buy the original! 🙂

Brian Boydell (1917-2000) was born in Dublin and educated at Cambridge University, the University of Heidelberg, the Royal
College of Music and the Royal Irish Academy of Music. He was awarded the MusD degree of Dublin University in 1959
and was Professor of Music at Trinity College from 1962 to 1982. For more than twenty years he was conductor of the
Dublin Orchestral Players and frequently a guest conductor with the RTE Symphony Orchestra.

Brian Boydell’s Violin Concerto is undoubtedly the most important work by an Irish composer to make its
appearance during 1954. It was a worthy winner of the Carolan Prize, and received its first performance on October
1st in the Phoenix Hall, with Jaroslav Vanecek, to whom the work is dedicated, as soloist, and the Radio Eireann
Symphony Orchestra conducted by Milan Horvat. However, since the first performance Boydell has undertaken
considerable revision until it assumed its final shape. This further revision has nearly all been in the direction of
compression and concision, and chiefly affects the last movement. It was felt by some, that the work, although
indubitably a composition of power and force, could do with a little pulling together, here and there, and it speaks
well for the composer’s integrity and sincerity of purpose that he should have undertaken this difficult task so soon,
for it is never an easy thing to sacrifice the children of one’s own invention. While the composer has not specified
any particular key for his Concerto, he does tell us that “tonality is related to the note ‘E’”. He has written a
solo part of really remarkable virtuosity and skill, and his music is always close-knit, rising more than once to
moments of great excitement, both mental, and emotional.

Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated at the end of January 1948. Deeply moved by the death of one whom many
consider to have been the greatest figure of our age, Brian Boydell immediately began the composition of this
In Memoriam, which was completed that year at the end of June. Since its first performance, shortly after
it was completed, it has become the most widely performed of the composer’s works. Formally, the work consists
of a Prelude and Funeral March, with a Coda based on the ideas contained in the former. The Prelude sounds a
note of human tragedy, and after the Funeral March builds up to a big climax, the final section transforms the
mood into one of unearthly peace.

The composer on Masai Mara: "There was once a marvellous innocence in the spirit of life on earth.
It may have been a harsh innocence, with seemingly cruel moments, but it appears to have conformed to a
positive plan, so that life could gradually adapt to changing conditions, and negative or destructive forces were
ecologically balanced, resulting in changes that were beneficial to continuity. A deep concern about the
increasing erosion of this natural balance brought about by human greed and misguided ideas of ‘progress’
has always occupied my mind. These ideas were brought to the surface as something which I had a strong
urge to communicate in music by the marvellous experience of being a guest of the animals in their land in
the great game park in Kenya known as Masai Mara. There, in a landscape that had changed so little from
the time it was the cradle of the human race, I could feel what it might have been like to live in harmony
with the natural world."

On Megalithic Ritual Dances: "At various places in Ireland, circles of immense stones remind us of the
strange religious rituals which took place before the arrival of St. Patrick. The fascination of these rituals, with
their dark hints of human sacrifice, suggested the title of these orchestral dances. Although the music does
not follow any strict ‘programme’, the imagination of the listener may well suggest many details; the
slower dances in 2/2, for instance, could obviously be connected with the part played by the maidens
in these rituals, or even with the virgin who might have been the victim of human sacrifice."

Music Composed by Brian Boydell
Played by the RT??? National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland
With Maighread McCrann (violin)
Conducted by Colman Pearce

"Dublin-born Brian Boydell (b. 1917) was one of the first composers in his land to cast off the narrow
features of national Irish aesthetics and adopt certain influences of international modern music. But he
did not in any way become an avant-garde composer, a serialist, or anything like it. In fact, though he
was "the naughty boy of modern Irish music" in the 1940s and 1950s, as he said in a recently published
interview, he admits now to being rather "old-fashioned" and to feeling "lost with very contemporary
music."

For the 80th birthday last year of this self-proclaimed "old fogey," Marco Polo has issued this
retrospective CD of four of Boydell’s orchestral works. If you know his orchestral music at all, it is probably
the Megalithic Ritual Dances, once available on a Decca LP. But some lucky readers may have the New Irish
LP of Boydell’s grand, picturesque Symphonic Inscapes of 1968. But if you know neither work, then this
CD is your way to get to know Boydell.

ln Memoriam Mahatma Gandhi was written and premiered within six months of the great man’s death in
January of 1948. The music builds slowly to a climax in the Funeral March middle section before subsiding
to everlasting calm. The work’s deeply felt, tragic character becomes something else to remember about
the piece. (This is one of the surprisingly few pieces written in Gandhi’s memory. In fact, the only
other such work I know of is Lukas Foss’s 1948 orchestral Recordare.)

The Violin Concerto of 1953-54 is quite beautiful. Rhapsodic but strongly argued, the concerto is
reminiscent of Bloch; the Lento middle movement has a particularly passionate lyricism that aches over
some unidentified loss or regret. The Rondo finale has rhythmic and harmonic elements of late Bart???k
that challenge the soloist’s precision and intonation, a challenge that Ms. McCrann conquers dead on.

Masai Mara (1988) was named for a game park in Kenya where the composer felt that he could nearly
coexist in harmony with the dawn of humanity. Frankly programmatic, Masai Mara opens by depicting
a limitless, wide-open plain populated by mysterious bird sounds re-created on a tenor recorder.
Eventually a threatening mood ensues, and the bird sounds become cries, though, as Boydell says,
"they should not be interpreted too literally." This powerfully angular, driving middle section achieves
the contrast that sets up the final, prayerlike conclusion.

The Megalithic Ritual Dances (1956) were inspired by the circle of huge stones found in various
places in Ireland—a vestige of some long-ago religious practices occurring before the arrival of
St. Patrick in the fifth century A.D. It was the stones’ "dark hints of human sacrifice" that attracted
Boydell. He will admit to pictorial elements in the music to the point of acknowledging that the slow
dances could "obviously" be connected to the possible offering up of virgins. So these are not
Malcolm Arnold-like, high-energy folk dances; based on mock-folk melodies, the music is heavier
and more ceremonial, without rambunctiousness but with all the variety of orchestration and
rhythm that makes such cycles rich listening. The work’s Final Dance is driven on by cascading
timpani, to end this fine CD quite emphatically."
Fanfare[/B]

Source: Marco Polo CD (my rip!)
Formats: FLAC(RAR), DDD Stereo, mp3(320)
File Sizes: 274 MB / 168 MB (incl. cover & booklet)

Download Link – https://mega.co.nz/#!gsNBDZ7S!g8602LFH5Z61Nih4L1Uvokm_4sjmlESfowHp9hW uHw4
mp3 version – https://mega.co.nz/#!EwMyyb7a!M7yWjMXLsjHyIMTaYYzVOvUTvC61vWCw1Amjd1C hyS8

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This trio of Soviet works for trumpet or flugelhorn and orchestra was compiled to showcase the extraordinary
virtuosity of the young Sergei Nakariakov. The Gli???re concerto, arranged from the composer’s
popular Horn Concerto, is a premiere of sorts, because it was arranged to be played on a B-flat flugelhorn
for the first time. Both his and Arutiunian’s works are conservative (they were highly decorated composers
of the Soviet state), while Weinberg’s (Vainberg) is a little more adventurous.

Music by Alexander Arutiunian, Mieczyslav Weinberg & Reinhold Gli???re
Played by the Jenaer Philharmonie
With Sergei Nakariakov (trumpet/flugelhorn)
Conducted by Andrei Boreyko

"The colourful trumpet concertos by Moisey Weinberg (1919-96) and Alexander Arutiunian (b1920)
have inspired Sergei Nakariakov to achieve his most accomplished recording to date. Not only are
they musically secure performances of some panache, but they also demonstrate his acquisition of
an even tone over the range of the instrument and its dynamic spectrum. Weinberg’s rather derivative
work – it is indebted to Shostakovich, Prokofiev and Mahler – is given a persuasive account by
Nakariakov and conductor Andrei Boreyko. The frenetic character established by a hurried tempo
and emphasised by incisive and dramatic playing is carried through to the last movement, though
the opportunity is therefore lost to point up the sinister distortions that the fantastic quotations
from Stravinsky’s Petrushka and Rimsky-Korsakov’s The Golden Cockerel suggest. Nakariakov
seems far more comfortable with the music of his native land than he is with the two main sources
of the trumpet’s repertoire: Baroque and contemporary music. It is perhaps for this reason that
his father Mikhail Nakariakov attempted a transcription for the flugelhorn of the Horn Concerto by Gli???re."
Classical Music

Source: Teldec CD (my rip!)
Formats: FLAC(RAR), DDD Stereo, mp3(320)
File Sizes: 300 MB / 151 MB (incl. covers & booklet)

Download Link – https://mega.co.nz/#!498QWZxD!U4Da0ZAWey2KQa8eFkY2Hs8d21GJlkDPoWRzXmq sZq8
mp3 version – https://mega.co.nz/#!s5NgVSZC!s-xJe_vc_6Yy4j4QifXid-S7w1k8d0Og66UitqJ9ABc

Enjoy! Don’t share! Buy the original! 🙂
And please click on "Like" if you downloaded this release! 😉

A beautiful collection of mostly elegiac British music for viola and orchestra. Gustav Holst’s
Invocation (one of his best works outside of The Planets) and William Alwyn’s Pastoral Fantasia
have had several recordings already, but David Matthews’ Winter Remembered, John McCabe’s
one-movement Concerto Fun???bre and Elizabeth Maconchy’s Romance are relative rarities on disc.
Because the tone is somber/lyrical throughout I’d recommend not to listen to all the pieces in one sitting.

Sarah-Jane Walker is one of the most promising young violist in England today, you can hear her
on several other Dutton releases, including the Viola Concerto by Arthur Butterworth. The Orchestra Nova
are a smaller-sized ensemble, which adds to the lucidity of these very clear, contoured recordings.

Music by (see above)
Played by the Orchestra Nova of London
With Sarah-Jane Bradley (viola)
Conducted by George Vass

"While the list of great British concerted works for violin and orchestra is long and distinguished — Elgar, Walton,
and Britten’s concertos along with Vaughan Williams’ one-movement "The Lark Ascending" — the list of great
British concerted works for viola and orchestra is nearly as long and nearly as distinguished. In addition to the
concertos by Walton and Rubbra, there are the five one-movement works on this disc appropriately called British
Viola Music. Played with passionate commitment by violist Sarah-Jane Bradley accompanied with ardent dedication
by the Orchestra Nova under George Vass, this disc includes Gustav Holst’s serene "Lyric Movement" from 1933,
William Alwyn’s tranquil "Pastoral Fantasia" from 1939, John McCabe’s harrowing "Concerto Funebre" from 1962
(but virtually unknown until this recording), Elizabeth Maconchy’s atmospheric "Romance" from 1979, and
David Matthews’ haunting "Winter Remembered" from 2002. Known to international audiences from her
recordings with the Leopold String Trio on Hyperion and the Sorrel Quartet on Chandos, Bradley makes her
recorded debut as a soloist with this disc — and scores a hit. Her husky tone, sweet intonation, and unswerving
devotion make each work as persuasive as possible and supported with strength and sensitivity by Vass and
the Orchestra Nova, this disc will no doubt advance her career as it will no doubt advance the standing of these
excellent but lesser known works. Dutton’s 2006 digital sound is lush, deep, and detailed.
All Music

Source: Dutton Epoch CD (my rip!)
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File Sizes: 276 MB / 151 MB

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Darius Milhaud’s three violin concertos here couldn???t be more contrasted. The First Violin Concerto lasts a
bit less than 10 minutes, but features in its central slow movement one of Milhaud???s most evocative music-hall or cabaret-
style songs (subtitled ???Romance???), and Steinbacher sings it beautifully through her violin.

Concertino de printemps (Spring Concertino) is the first in what eventually became Milhaud???s ???Four Seasons???,
each composed for a different ensemble: viola and nine instruments (summer), two pianos and eight instruments (autumn),
and trombone with string orchestra (winter).

The Second Violin Concerto is a very major work, one of the great unknown violin concertos of the last century.
It???s a big piece, about 25 minutes long in three movements, and fully symphonic in scope. Its emotional depth, supposedly
inspired by reflection on the just-ended Second World War, belies the composer???s reputation for polished superficiality. The
opening movement is a stern march with lyrical interludes that ends threateningly; the slow movement, marked ???slow
and somber???, is an absolutely gorgeous elegy that really lets Steinbacher display her warm tone to excellent effect. The
finale begins in an optimistic mood, but the ending is agitated and quite exciting.

Music Composed by Darius Milhaud
Played by the Munich Radio Orchestra
With Arabella Steinbacher (violin)
Conducted by Pinchas Steinberg

"Magnificently played, the soloist literally tossing off the fearful difficulties of the piece seemingly
without a care in the world – the characterization is superb. The violin and orchestra version of
Le boeuf sur le toit received the best performance it has had on disc."
International Record Review