Photo: Mark Dellas

I am a musician. I have known that simple fact since my seventh birthday, when I wrapped my arms around the little guitar that had been a gift from my father, when I breathed the dusky fragrance of wood and varnish, when I touched the grainy fingerboard that would become my personal road to enchantment. Despite challenges, I have never had one moment of regret about that calling, nor a second of doubt about the vital role that music plays in the world around us. As a conductor, I have witnessed thousands of audiences – literally millions of listeners – come to the concert hall and leave, two hours later, in a place they would never have been able to imagine when they arrived frazzled and distracted, earlier that evening.

I feel a certain conflict of emotions as I write this essay- gratitude certainly, for being given this opportunity to talk about the importance of the art form, but also a profound sorrow that classical music somehow finds itself desperately in need of advocates. Why should that be especially so in troubled economic times? We feel betrayed perhaps by Wall Street greed, by ineffectual governance, by political leadership. But music has never betrayed us, never let us down. It constantly gives back to us, as a boundlessly beautiful repository of the past or a vibrant mirror of our current society. The need for music is not learned – it is “hard-wired” into our being. Even infants respond to it and understand it. As we grow, our exposure to music sharpens our brains, awakens a heightened sense of individual awareness, helps us develop an appreciation for beauty and value.

The ancient Greeks in their extraordinarily sophisticated society understood the tremendous power of music. Plato himself espoused careful planning of the number of hours young people should listen to music in certain keys – so powerful was the influence of each key that it would have strong affects on the long-term personality and character of the young listeners! In my many visits to schools, I have observed that the musicians in the orchestra, band, or chorus are most often the students on the dean’s list, on the student council, in clubs and after-school activities and are often involved in community service as well. A strange coincidence? I don’t think so – I am convinced that the making of music teaches them the skills – discipline, patience, respect and dedication – that enable them to succeed in all their endeavors.

We remain for all of our lives extremely sensitive to that power of music, whether or not we choose to (or even can) articulate that power. I have always been fond of Garrison Keillor’s words: “An orchestra concert is where people go to find their souls. Having worked so hard to lose them, people come and sit in the dark under the spell of music and are reminded of their humanity”. What happens? That room full of people – all with different issues on their minds – experiences together a force that we can never fully explain. Listening, our sense of time changes, our focus sharpens, our problems fade, our priorities shift.

We all know that the “music business” has a strong positive affect on our economy. Facts and figures will bear out the statement that concerts bring many times their cost back to the community. But that is truly besides the point. Music has a profound affect on our psyche, our understanding of ourselves, our view of a world grown astonishingly small. In a global community where solutions will be found through creativity, ingenuity and imagination, music holds the key to nurturing the values that will help us find answers to seemingly insurmountable challenges.

Why do we need music as a nation, as citizens of the United States? There are those that would claim that Americans are not an artistic people. I could not disagree more strongly. Americans invented film, jazz, modern dance, musical theater, country music, abstract impressionism. We are an expressive, innovative, imaginative – even audacious people. Our art echoes our essential American-ness – our willingness to experiment and to take risks, our desire to share and borrow and change, our egalitarianism, our inclusiveness, our endless curiosity and humor. This American art echoes every culture in the world, and has spread to the furthest reaches of the globe. The arts are how we explain ourselves and come to know ourselves. They are woven into the very fabric of our complicated democracy and into the lives of our people. They are, in a very real way, the sum of our collective soul. The American orchestra is at the center of the arts in our country, and the cornerstone of our cultural society. Orchestras preserve our heritage, foster diversity, encourage creativity, and stand as a shining paradigm for excellence.

What do we remember and value from great civilizations of the past? Certainly it is not their business plans, their economic challenges, their financial success; not their wars, their fleeting conquests, their eventual collapse. We remember the beautiful legacy of their artistic life – the paintings, poetry, architecture, music, gleaming as brightly centuries after their creation, still able to move and touch us. Through their art, we realize that these long-dead creatures were really not so very different from us, filling their small parcel of life with as much beauty as they could. What will our great-grandchildren inherit from us? What will they remember? Will the economic recession of the early 21st century color their world? Or will the next century – most probably more complex and more intense than ours – still look to the nobility in the arts as a touchstone for what is truly valuable?

In times of economic difficulty, the arts, rather than languishing as a discretionary luxury, becomes more vital to the human condition. Through the arts, we honor our past, celebrate our present and dream our future. The very best of who we are is inherent in the arts, and the arts are at the core of the continual re-invigoration of our humanity.

If you can’t listen in tomorrow afternoon, you can stream the segment on the WNYC site.

On April 1, 2008, Naxos of America begins physical distribution of the award-winning U.K.-based Chandos catalogue. The month kicks off with 12 new releases (street date of April 29), including Mozart’s Così fan tutte (CHAN 3152) on the celebrated Opera in English series. Sir Charles Mackerras, recent winner of a “Best Opera” GRAMMY® Award for his Chandos recording of Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel, conducts the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and a cast of British luminaries who include Janice Watson, Leslie Garrett, Diana Montague, and Sir Thomas Allen.

Chandos also releases Schubert’s Mass in E-flat, D950 (CHAN 0750), conducted by GRAMMY® Award-winner Richard Hickox. This recording is the latest addition to Hickox’s extensive discography and follows a successful performance of the Mass at the 2007 BBC Proms. The same superb artists appear on this recording, including Susan Gritton, James Gilchrist, Mark Padmore, and Collegium Musicum 90. Composed in 1828, Schubert’s Mass in E-flat D950 was premiered posthumously the following year under the direction of his brother Ferdinand. This mass, more than any of Schubert’s others, emphasizes the chorus, relegating the soloists to three brief episodes. It is an emotive and haunting masterpiece, blending liturgical opulence with the composer’s trademark Romantic sentiment, influenced by Haydn, Beethoven, and Bach.

Chandos begins a new series of recordings exploring the music of French composer Vincent d’Indy (1851-1931) this month with Orchestral Works, Volume 1 (CHAN 10464). This debut features rarely-performed music, including Jour d’été à la montagne, Op. 61 (1905), a work of d’Indy’s full maturity. A three-part cycle, Jour evokes a day in the Ardèche mountains in southern France. While the influence of Debussy is apparent in the impressionistic details and tone painting, the piece is essentially Classical in its tonal structure. The recording also features La forêt enchantée, Op. 8, and fundamentally contemporary Souvenirs, Op. 62, which d’Indy composed in memory of his wife. Rumon Gamba, whose previous recordings for Chandos include the music of Malcolm Williamson, conducts the Iceland Symphony Orchestra.

Also slated for release in April is Austrian composer Franz Schmidt’s Das Buch mit sieben Siegeln (Book of the Seven Seals; CHSA 5051), recorded in hybrid surround sound. Dutch bass Robert Holl, whose name has become almost synonymous with this oratorio, performs with the Tonkünstler Orchestra under its principal conductor Kristjan Järvi. Das Buch mit sieben Siegeln, often deemed Schmidt’s greatest work, is an ambitious setting of the Book of Revelation. In the program notes for its premiere, Schmidt comments on the immense challenge of setting the End Times to music and says his priority “was to bring the text into a form which retained everything important, wherever possible in the original wording, and yet [to] reduce the immense dimensions of the work to a point where they could be grasped by ordinary human brains.”

Percy Grainger was an unconventional Australian composer and pianist recognized for his arrangements of folk tunes and original works. Grainger: Transcriptions for Wind Orchestra (CHAN 10455) is the label’s latest foray into his oeuvre, featuring the acclaimed Royal Northern College of Music Wind Orchestra. This release includes arrangements of music for wind band by composers Grainger particularly admired, mostly from the series Chosen Gems for Winds. Grainger’s chosen arrangements span the development of Western music, from Renaissance (Ferrabosco and Josquin des Prez) to Baroque (J.S. Bach) to Romantic (Liszt, Franck, Fauré, and Goossens).

Other releases for this month include Great Operatic Arias, Volume 19, featuring beloved British baritone Sir Thomas Allen (CHAN 3155) performing works by Mozart, Verdi, Meyerbeer, and Weill; and a new disc of works by composer Edgar Bainton (CHAN 10460) who emigrated to Australia in 1934 and disappeared from the British music scene. The release includes four premiere recordings: Concerto Fantasia for piano and orchestra; Suite ‘The Golden River’; Pavane, Idyll and Bacchanal; and Three Pieces for Orchestra. Paul Daniel conducts the BBC Orchestra; Margaret Fingerhut is the piano soloist.

Additionally, Chandos continues its ongoing series of music by British composer Arnold Bax with two releases: Arnold Bax: Tone Poems, Volume 2 (CHAN 10446) features the BBC Philharmonic, led by Vernon Handley, and includes Three Northern Ballads, Into the Twilight, The Happy Forest, Nympholept, and Red Autumn. Bax: Orchestral Works, Volume 9 (CHAN 10457) includes The Truth About Russian Dancers and From Dusk Till Dawn with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Bryden Thomson.

Chandos marks the 50th anniversary of the death of British composer Ralph Vaughan Williams with a recording of his 1909 song cycle On Wenlock Edge, based on A.E. Housman’s A Shropshire Lad (CHAN 10465). The recording features tenor Mark Padmore, joined by the acclaimed Schubert Ensemble in their Chandos recording debut. It also includes the rarely-performed Piano Quintet in C Minor, recently released by the composer’s widow and published in 2002, and his Romance and Pastorale, two brief, lyric pieces for violin and piano, published in 1923.

Tempesta di Mare, a Philadelphia-based Baroque orchestra and chamber ensemble, takes its name from Antonio Vivaldi’s concerto. Italian for “storm at sea,” the title reflects composers’ belief in the power of their music to evoke drama. Artistic directors Gwen Roberts and Richard Stone founded Tempesta in 1996 to pursue their ideal of Baroque music as a rhetorical, dramatic art form. Johann Friedrich Fasch (1688 – 1758) Orchestral Music (Chaconne/CHAN 0751) is Tempesta di Mare’s third recording for Chandos, featuring the music of one of Bach’s most significant contemporaries. Fasch’s orchestral works are characteristic of the late Baroque-early Classical era.

Finally, Welsh organist, choral director, and composer Iain Quinn provides a survey of unusual organ repertoire in Czech Music from the Norwich Cathedral (CHAN 10463), which includes works by Vítĕzslav Novák, Leoš Janáček, Jiří Ropek, Bohuslav Martinů, Antonín Dvořák, and Bedřich Smetana. Based in the U.S., he serves as Director of Cathedral Music and Organist at the Cathedral Church of St. John in Albuquerque. Quinn has performed throughout the world and previously released a disc of Russian organ music, Tsar of Instruments, on Chandos.

Chandos, which celebrates its 28th anniversary this year, is one of the finest independent classical labels in the world, celebrated for its world-class artists, unusual repertoire, and superb sound and engineering. It has pioneered the idea of the ’series’; its catalog features an impressive roster of British composers and artists, as well as a masterful film music series and the critically-acclaimed “Opera in English” series. Chandos is also dedicated to the SACD format, in which it has released over 40 discs. Since its founding in 1979, Chandos has championed rare and neglected repertoire, filling in many gaps in record catalogues and exposing audiences to the music of British composers, including Alwyn, Bax, Dyson, Moeran, and Rubbra. Today, Chandos’ richly diverse catalogue contains over 1500 titles and includes recordings of music, ancient and modern, by composers from around the globe. Chandos issues at least five new recordings a month—together with re-issues of back catalogue material—rivalling major classical companies.

Chandos has received numerous awards from Gramophone: 2001 Record of the Year for Richard Hickox’s recording of the original version of Vaughan Williams’ A London Symphony; Best Choral Recording of 2003 for a rediscovered Mass by Hummel; Best Orchestral Recording of 2004 for a set of Bax’s Symphonies; and Editor’s Choice of 2006 for Stanford: Songs of the Sea/Songs of the Fleet. This year, Chandos artists took home two GRAMMY® Awards, one for Best Opera Recording for its Opera in English CD of Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel (Sir Charles MacKerras, conductor), and an award for Best Engineered Classical Album (John Newton, engineer) for its multi-nominated recording of Grechaninov’s Passion Week. The Chandos recording of Britten’s Peter Grimes, conducted by Richard Hickox, received a GRAMMY® Award in 1997.

In April, Naxos artist Spectrum Concerts Berlin will perform a series of concerts in New York and Los Angeles in celebration of their 20th season. The programs will prominently feature music by composer Ernst Toch (1887–1964), an Austrian-born Jew who fled Berlin in 1933. The Ensemble, who has championed the music of Ernst Toch since 1997, also releases their second Naxos CD of his music on April 29 (Naxos 8559324). The recording includes many of the works which they will be performing on their concerts including his powerful and vividly defiant Piano Quintet (1938), Three Impromptus, Violin Sonata No. 2 (1928) and Burlesken. Spectrum Concerts Berlin has four other Naxos recordings to date including another CD of music by Ernst Toch (8559282), which was released in 2006, and recordings of music by Robert Helps, Ernst von Dohnanyi and John Harbison. Their sixth Naxos CD, which will be released in late summer, features pianists Robert Levin and Ya-Fei Chaung and will include chamber and solo music of Stanley Walden.

New York concerts include appearances at The Times Center on Wednesday, April 9 at 8 PM and at the College of Staten Island, Center for the Arts, on Thursday, April 10 at 7:30 PM. Concerts in Los Angeles are scheduled at the Goethe-Institute on April 13, at 4 PM and at the Villa Aurora on April 14 at 8 PM. Lannan Literary Award winner and Artistic Director of the Chicago Humanities Festival (Ernst Toch’s grandson) Lawrence Weschler will lead a pre-concert discussion at all venues except the College of Staten Island.

SPECTRUM CONCERTS BERLIN:
Annette von Hehn, Linus Roth Violin
Lars Wouters van den Oudenweijer Clarinet
Hartmut Rohde Viola
Frank Dodge ‘Cello
Daniel Blumenthal Piano

PROGRAM:
ROBERT SCHUMANN: Marchenerzahlungen for Clarinet, Viola and Piano, Op. 132
PAUL HINDEMITH: Quartet for Clarinet, Violin, Cello and Piano
ERNST TOCH: Burlesken for Piano, Op. 31 • Impromptus for Cello, Op. 90 c
Sonata for Violin and Piano, No. 1 • Piano Quintet, Op. 64

Led by founder and Artistic Director Frank Dodge Spectrum Concerts Berlin (www.spectrumconcerts.com) has, over the past two decades, been acclaimed for producing eclectic concerts of European and American chamber music for a team of expatriate Americans and such European stars as violinist Janine Jansen and Julian Rachlin. The group is known in its native city for its adventurous programming, private support in the midst of a formidable system based on state support, and the outstanding quality of performances. Information: www.spectrumconcerts.com

Ernst Toch was a self-taught modernist, who learned music’s fundamentals from Mozart’s string quartets. Having fought for Austria in WWI, he was able to ground his musical expression on both theory and human experience. Toch was hugely successful in Germany until 1933, when he left and settled in Southern California, where he had to get used to the radically different music world of the U.S. and Hollywood. He was successful, but largely unfulfilled composing for the movies. In his last years, Toch composed seven symphonies, the third of which won him a Pulitzer Prize.

*This disc has been generously supported by the Ernst Toch Society, the Aaron Copland Fund for Music, Inc. and was coproduced with Deutschlandradio

SPECTRUM CONCERTS BERLIN ON NAXOS:

DOHNANYI: Serenade for String Trio/Sextet; 8557153
HARBISON: Four Songs of Solitude/Variations/Twilight Music; 8559173
HELPS: Shall We Dance/Piano Quartet/Postlude/Nocturne; 8559199
TOCH: Tanz-Suite/Cello Concerto; 8559282

Gioachino ROSSINI: La cambiale di matrimonio
Paolo Bordogna; Désirée Rancatore; Saimir Pirgu; Fabio Maria Capitanucci;
Enrico Maria Marabelli; Maria Gortsevskaya; Orchestra Haydn di Bolzano e Trento;
Umberto Benedetti Michelangeli, conductor;
Director: Luigi Squarzina;

Filmed at Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro, 2006
Naxos 2110228

La cambiale di matrimonio received its premiere at the San Mosé theatre in Venice on 3rd November 1810 to fill in a void left by another composer’s desertion. The opera’s earned the then 18-year-old Rossini the commission of an opera buffa for Bologna’s Teatro del Corso.

La cambiale di matrimonio follows the farcical efforts of Tobias Mill, a rich English merchant, who seeks to combine business with pleasure by forcing his daughter, the lovely Fanny (“the merchandise”) to marry Slook, his rich colonial American correspondent, by means of a bill of exchange. Eventually it is the gallant Slook himself who persuades Mill to allow Fanny to marry her true love, Edward Milfort. This Rossini Opera Festival production in Pesaro features Désirée Rancatore and Saimir Pirgu, supported by Fabio Maria Capitanucci, Enrico Maria Marabelli, and Maria Gortsevskaya. Umberto Benedetti Michelangeli conducts the Orchestra Haydn di Bolzano e Trento.

Giuseppe VERDI: Luisa Miller
Darina Takova; Giuseppe Sabbatini; Alexander Vinogradov; Damiano Salerno;
Ursula Ferri; Arutjun Kotchinian; Elisabetta Martorana; Luca Favaron;
Orchestra and Chorus of the Teatro La Fenice, Venice; Maurizio Benini;
Chorus Master: Emanuela Di Pietro;
Director: Arnaud Bernard

Filmed at the Teatro la Fenice, Venice, Italy, May 2006
Naxos 2110225-26

Based on Schiller’s Kabale und Liebe (Intrigue and Love), Verdi’s tragedy Luisa Miller revolves around the love affair between the titular heroine and Rodolfo, son of Count Walter, and the machinations of the jealous Count’s steward, Wurm, which result in the death of all three. Directed by Arnaud Bernard, who took as his inspiration Bernardo Bertolucci’s 1976 film 1900, this La Fenice production features the outstanding Bulgarian soprano Darina Takova, whose intense characterization of Luisa emphasizes the heroine’s inner torture. Giuseppe Sabbatini brings thrilling drama to the role of Rodolfo, especially in the opera’s most famous aria, Quando le sere al placido.

UPCOMING NAXOS OPERA TITLES:

Donizetti: Roberto Devereux
Wolf-Ferrari: La vedova scaltra
Galuppi: L’Olimpiade
Verdi: Macbeth
Donizetti: Maria Stuarda
Puccini: La rondine
Rossini: Il turco in Italia
Giordano: Marcella
Donizetti: Lucrezia Borgia
Schubert: Alfonso und Estrella

In the years leading up to World War I, Bartok occupied himself with a series of works for

the theater. He completed his first stage work Bluebeard’s Castle in 1911. The Wooden Prince (1914-16) is a fairytale ballet with an original story by Bartók’s literary acquaintance Bela Balazs, who wrote the libretto for Bluebeard’s Castle (Naxos 8660928).

Set “once upon a time” in a forest whose trees rustle to life, the ballet runs continuously as a series of seven dances with connecting music and recurring musical themes. Though outwardly lighthearted in its subject matter, The Wooden Prince contains a mystical element that may explain Bartók’s attraction to the story. He crafted the work as a symmetrical, tripartite symphonic poem, with the final section recalling materials from the first part in reverse order.

Marin Alsop began her tenure as Music Director of the Baltimore Symphony in September. She is the first conductor ever to receive the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship and was the first musician to win both Gramophone’s “Artist of the Year” award and the Royal Philharmonic Society’s Conductor’s Award in the same season.

DVD 2
Lieder Recital with Songs by Franz Schubert, Hugo Wolf,
Gustav Mahler, Richard Strauss und Leonard Bernstein
Christa Ludwig, mezzo-soprano
Charles Spencer, piano
Vienna Masterclass Part II
Arthaus Musik 102089

Born in Berlin on March 16, 1928, beloved mezzo-soprano Christa Ludwig celebrates her 80th birthday this year. In recognition of her musical legacy, Arthaus Musik releases a

special birthday edition DVD—Christa Ludwig: The Birthday Edition (Arthaus Musik 102089). This 2-DVD set includes Franz Schubert Die Winterreise, together with a lieder recital dating from the last year of her stage career. In addition, both DVDs feature master classes given by Ms. Ludwig at Vienna’s magnificent neo-Baroque Volkstheater in 1999.

Renowned for her vocal longevity and artistic consistency, Christa Ludwig’s career spanned nearly 48 years before her retirement from the concert stage in 1994. In 1994, she became the second female singer, after Lotte Lehmann, to give a concert performance of Die Winterreise, and this is its first commercial release. That same year Ms. Ludwig also performed several lieder recitals as part of a farewell tour, which included works by Schubert, Wolf, Mahler, Strauss, and Bernstein, accompanied by Charles Spencer.

The first master class focuses on Mozart and concludes with an excerpt featuring the young Ludwig as Dorabella in Così fan tutte (1970). The second includes pieces by Beethoven, Bizet, and Massenet, concluding with a stunning excerpt of Ludwig singing Mistress Quickly in a production of Verdi’s Falstaff (1982).

Born in Berlin in 1928, Christa Ludwig was the daughter of two singers who were members of the Vienna Volksopera. She studied with her mother and Felice Hüni-Mihaczek, making her début in 1946 as Orlofsky in Die Fledermaus at Frankfurt, where she sang until 1952. At the invitation of conductor Karl Böhm, she joined the Vienna Staatsoper in 1955 and remained there for more than 30 years. Christa Ludwig made her American début in Chicago in 1959 as Dorabella in Così fan tutte. At the Metropolitan Opera, where she sang from 1959-1990, her roles included Cherubino, the Dyer’s Wife, Dido in the first American production of Les Troyens (1973), Fricka, Waltraute, Ortrud, Kundry, the Marschallin, Charlotte, and Clytemnestra. At Bayreuth she sang Brangäne (1966) and Kundry (1967). She made her Covent Garden début in 1968 as Amneris and returned in 1976 as Carmen. Her repertoire included Leonore (Fidelio) and Lady Macbeth, as well as Monteverdi’s Octavia, Eboli and Marie (Wozzeck). She was also a renowned interpreter of lieder, especially that of Brahms and Mahler. Christa Ludwig recorded much of her concert and lieder repertoire, notably Bach’s St Matthew Passion, Brahms’s Alto Rhapsody, and Das Lied von der Erde (all with Klemperer).

Arthaus Musik is distributed by Naxos of America.

Herbert VON KARAJAN
Beethoven: Symphony No.9 “Choral”

In 2008 the musical world observes the 100th birthday of one of the most widely respected performers of the past century.

Born in Salzburg on April 5, 1908, Herbert von Karajan influenced fellow musicians and public taste for generations

through his live appearances and recordings. As principal conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic for over 30 years, he

moulded that orchestra into an ensemble of peerless power, tonal beauty and stylistic flexibility. Recorded live at the

Berlin “Philharmonie” on New Year’s Eve 1977, this rousing interpretation of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 (EuroArts

2072408) has acquired legendary status and features world-renowned soloists Anna Tomowa-Sintow,
Agnes Baltsa, René Kollo and José van Dam.

Leonard BERNSTEIN
Schubert: Symphony No.9
Schumann: Manfred Overture
Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks
Wiener Philharmoniker
Leonard Bernstein, conductor
Recorded at the Kongresssaal, Deutsches Museum, Munich, 10-15 June 1987 (Schubert) & Musikvereinssaal, Vienna, 23 October
– 6 November 1985
EuroArts 2072168
UPC: 880242721686

EuroArts celebrates Leonard Bernstein’s (1918-1990) recorded legacy with the release of a new DVD (EuroArts 2072168) in

their series of recordings by this outstanding conductor and composer. The release features Franz Schubert’s Ninth

Symphony (“The Great”) and Robert Schumann’s Manfred Overture, with Leonard Bernstein conducting the Vienna Philharmonic

and the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks.

Eugene ORMANDY
Gustav Holst: The Planets • Claude Debussy: La Mer
The Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia (Chorus)
The Philadelphia Orchestra
Eugene Ormandy, conductor
Recorded live at the Academy of Music, Philadelphia, 24-26 June 1977
EuroArts: 2072268
UPC: 880242722683

This DVD (EuroArts 2072268) pays tribute to one of the notable conductor personalities of the last century: Eugene

Ormandy (1899-1985), energetic and graceful on the podium, with an infallible ear and prodigious memory. Ormandy became

famous for his relationship with the Philadelphia Orchestra, for which he served as Musical Director from 1936-1980.

Under his direction, the orchestra developed its legendary warm, textured, romantic “Philadelphia” or “Ormandy” sound.

These performances feature the 78-year-old Ormandy, who conducted the orchestra with unassuming gestures and eagle-eyed

alertness in Gustav Holst’s seven-movement symphony
The Planets and Debussy’s vivid tone-poem La Mer.

EuroArts is distributed by Naxos of America.

In December 2006, Gramophone Magazine named Dutch pianist Ralph van Raat “one to watch.” Now, with his second recording for Naxos, van Raat tackles one of the most important works of the modern piano literature: Frederic Rzewski’s fiendishly difficult set of 36 piano variations, The People United Will Never Be Defeated! (Naxos 8559360).

Composer Frederic Rzewski studied at Harvard and Princeton with composers Milton Babbitt and Roger Sessions, and later with Luigi Dallapiccola in Italy. As a successful

pianist, he performed works by classical masters alongside premières by fellow composers Karlheinz Stockhausen and Christian Wolff. Rzewski had hands-on, practical experience as a stage musician, and, as a founding member of Musica Elettronica Viva, he combined live electronics and avant-garde improvisation in theatres.

The People United Will Never Be Defeated! was written in only two months on a commission from American pianist Ursula Oppens, after Rzewski met Chilean composer Sergio Ortega. Three months before Salvador Allende’s death, Ortega heard a street-singer shout El Pueblo Unido Jamás Será Vencido!, which made him think immediately of a tune to accompany these words. A day later, the pop group Quilapayun played the melody. Since then, the tune has become an impassioned international symbol against any form of dictatorship. It was no surprise that Ortega and the politically leftist Rzewski greatly impressed and inspired each other when they met in Italy a few years later, resulting in Rzewski’s vision of this emblematic song.

One of the striking elements of this variation work is its length; the composition is a marathon for both the listener and for the performer. The extensive duration of its 36 variations is symbolic of the human struggle for change. Any struggle feels long, with many hurdles obstructing the final goal. The variations themselves all symbolize the different phases and aspects of a struggle: this readily explains the huge array of compositional styles that Rzewski has used, from angry, highly-energized modernism, via melancholic references to blues, calculated dense polyphony and nostalgic folk-music to written-out free jazz passages. Rzewski incorporates contemporary piano effects in some variations, which he charges with an unusual dramatic meaning (for example, the sound of a slammed piano lid in Variation 11, reminds one of a gunshot). Throughout all variations the intervals of Ortega’s theme are always present, whether they are used as a twelve-tone row or as a basis for a fugal passage.

Also featured on this recording is the popular Winnsboro Cotton Mill Blues, which was written in 1979 as part of the set North American Ballads. The basis for this work is an existing song bearing the same name, which cotton-mill workers used to sing while working.

Pianist and musicologist Ralph van Raat studied piano with Ton Hartsuiker and Willem Brons at the Conservatory of Amsterdam and musicology at the University of Amsterdam. He concluded both studies with distinction in 2002 and 2003. As a part of the Advanced Programme of the Conservatory of Amsterdam, and with the support of a Prince Bernhard Fellowship, Van Raat also studied with Claude Helffer (Paris), Liisa Pohjola (Helsinki), Ursula Oppens at Chicago’s Northwestern University and Pierre-Laurent Aimard at the Musikhochschule in Cologne. van Raat has won a number of prizes, including the Second Prize and Donemus-Prize (for Contemporary Music) of the Princess Christina Competition (1995), the Stipend-Prize Darmstadt during the Darmstadt Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik ( 1998), First Prize of the International Gaudeamus Interpreters Competition (1999), the Philip Morris Arts Award (2003), the Elisabeth Everts Prize (2004), a Borletti-Buitoni Fellowship (2005), the VSCD Classical Music Prize (2005), and the Fortis MeesPierson Award from the Concertgebouw, Amsterdam (2006). He appears as a recitalist and soloist with orchestras in Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and the United States, with many of his concerts broadcast on radio and TV. He has several recordings to his credit and regularly collaborates with composers, many of whom have dedicated their piano compositions to him. Ralph van Raat has been a Steinway Artist since 2003.

RALPH VAN RAAT ON NAXOS:

“And then comes the true splendor of this disc, the 1996 piano duet “Hallelujah Junction,” which comes off — in a magnificent performance by van Raat and Maarten van Veen — like a synthesis of everything that’s come before. It’s boisterous and elegant and funny and beautiful, by turns and all at once.”
—Joshua Kosman, San Francisco Chronicle

“Ralph van Raat displays an innate affinity for the composer’s idioms, be it China Gates’ lyric beauty, Phrygian Gates’ stamina-testing epic sprawl, or American Berserk’s thorny, Ives-inspired ragtime allusions. Next to Gloria Cheng’s chamber-like refinement and Emanuele Arciuli’s extraordinary variety of color and touch, van Raat treats Phrygian Gates as an out-and-out virtuoso vehicle, with plenty of paragraphic sweep and brawny, roof-raising climaxes.”
—Jed Distler, ClassicsToday.com

“Scott Wheeler’s one-act opera The Construction of Boston, in which the city emerges from primordial verdancy while Back Bay, Beacon Hill, and even the opera itself comment,

cries out for an extravagant, Jacobean staging. The Boston Cecilia adopted the next best strategy on Sunday, appealing to the audience’s imagination with a concert performance … While Wheeler’s warm, tonal harmonies echo Thomson’s own neoclassical Americana, he deploys unexpected instrumental colors—a twanging banjo, a chirping, fife-like piccolo—with modernist verve. Like Thomson, he sets words with unfailing clarity …”
— Matthew Guerrieri, The Boston Globe

The Construction of Boston (Naxos 8669018) began its life as a stage work, written by poet Kenneth Koch (1925-2002) for three New York artist friends: Robert Rauschenberg, Jean Tinguely, and Niki de Saint-Phalle. Composer Scott Wheeler’s one-act opera was written as a tribute to his teacher Virgil Thomson and had its premiere in 1989 with the John Oliver Chorale. In February 2002, the Boston Conservatory produced a fully-staged version of the work, directed by Patricia Weinmann. This recording is from a live concert performance at New England Conservatory’s Jordan Hall on April 1, 2007. It features The Boston Cecilia, with
Donald Tetters, Music Director, and a cast that includes William Hite, Charles Blandy, Marcus DeLoach,
Krista River, Christòpheren Nomura, Elizabeth Anker and Sharla Nafziger.

The composer has written:

“The Construction of Boston has elements of comic opera, masque and dramatic cantata. Koch referred to it as ‘a postmodern Baroque opera.’ I dedicated the work to my teacher Virgil Thomson; it takes some of its aesthetic from Thomson’s Gertrude Stein operas Four Saints in Three Acts and The Mother of Us All. As in the Thomson-Stein works, aspects of nonsense and opacity of meaning are no obstacle to the most serious artistic intent. In Construction, there is also a political (or at least civic) message.”

Scott Wheeler, Boston Cecilia Composer-in-Residence, was born in Washington DC in 1952. He studied at Amherst College, New England Conservatory and Brandeis University, where his principal teachers were Lewis Spratlan and Arthur Berger. He pursued further studies at the Tanglewood Music Center with Olivier Messiaen, the Dartington School with Peter Maxwell Davies, and privately with Virgil Thomson. In 1975 he was a founding member of the new-music ensemble Dinosaur Annex, which he continues to direct and conduct. Scott Wheeler’s first full-length opera, Democracy: An American Comedy, with libretto by Romulus Linney, was commissioned by the Washington National Opera and premièred in January 2005. Other ensembles to commission and/or perform Wheeler’s works include the orchestras of Minnesota, Houston, Toledo and Indianapolis, New York City Opera, and the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. In January 2007, Kent Nagano and Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin commissioned a new chamber symphony, City of Shadows, featured in a portrait concert of Wheeler at the Kammermusiksaal of the Berlin Philharmonie.

Apotheosis (1996) is a revision of the final movement from Rautavaara’s Sixth Symphony

(1992), which was the symphonic reworking of music from the opera Vincent, hence the subtitle ‘Vincentiana’. The instrumentation lacks the synthesizer that evokes the paintings of the Dutch master in the opera, but the musical substance is intact.

Manhattan Trilogy (2004) is one of Rautavaara’s recent orchestral works, commissioned by the The Juilliard School for its centennial season and first performed by the Juilliard Orchestra under Dennis Russell Davies in October 2005. Consisting of three movements—Daydreams, Nightmares and Dawn—Manhattan Trilogy does not constitute a symphonic piece as such. Its slow-fast-slow sequence equates to classical precedent, while the thematic working and textural elaboration follow directly from the composer’s practice in his last four symphonies.

Given its première by the Philadelphia Orchestra and Wolfgang Sawallisch in April 2000, the Eighth Symphony (1999) remains Rautavaara’s most recent contribution to the genre. Subtitled ‘The Journey’, it pursues its metamorphosis of ideas in ways similar to those of his previous three symphonies, but here the order of movements is nearly Classical; pointedly so in the second and third, whose contrast is emphasized by a lack of pause between movements.

The New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, founded in 1946, is the country’s leading professional orchestra. It has an establishment of ninety players and performs over 100 concerts annually. They tour extensively within their own country.

Music Director of the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra Pietari Inkinen is one of the most exciting talents of the new generation of conductors. He has collaborated with major orchestras and with soloists such as Vadim Repin, Hilary Hahn, and Pinchas Zukerman. His recording with the Bavarian Chamber Philharmonic has received outstanding reviews and was voted the BBC Music Magazine’s recording of the month. His recordings for Naxos include works by Sibelius and Rautavaara with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, as well as recordings with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, the Finnish Radio Symphony, and the Avanti Chamber Orchestra. Inkinen also is an accomplished violinist. He has appeared as soloist with many of the leading Finnish orchestras including the Finnish Radio Symphony and Helsinki Philharmonic, with which he performed the Sibelius Concerto in a celebration of the centenary of their performance of the work.

Leonardo BALADA
María Sabina (1969); Dionisio: In Memoriam (2001)
Soloists; Orchestra and Chorus of the Comunidad de Madrid;
José Ramón Encinar;
Naxos 8570425

Barcelona native Leonardo Balada is credited with pioneering a blend of ethnic music and avant-garde techniques. The symphonic tragedy María Sabina, one of his best-known works, tells the extraordinary story of Sabina, a Mexican Indian mushroom-cult priestess who meets fierce resistance from her people when endeavoring to open the holy rituals to the outside world. Some of the text in Balada’s work is based on her incantations, of which the composer has written: “While composing the work, the power of the text was so extraordinary that I felt inspired by it. I recall composing the music even when I was travelling, in airports or hotels.”

The cantata Dionisio: In Memoriam is an homage to Dionisio Ridruejo, a poet and politician from Soria, Spain, on whose ideological, philosophical and descriptive writings the work is based.

Born in Barcelona on 22nd September 1933, Leonardo Balada graduated from the Conservatorio del Liceu there and in 1960 from The Juilliard School in New York. He studied composition with Vincent Persichetti and Aaron Copland and conducting with Igor Markevitch. Since 1970 he has taught at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburg, where he is University Professor of Composition. Some of his best-known works were written in a dramatic avant-garde style in the 1960s, including Guernica (Naxos 8557342), María Sabina, and Steel Symphony. Balada is credited with blending traditional cultural music and avant-garde compositional practices to create his personal, influential style.

Karol SZYMANOWSKI
Symphonies Nos. 2 and 3; Symphony No. 2 in B flat major, Op. 19;
Symphony No. 3, Op. 27, ‘Piesn o nocy’ (Song of the Night)
Ewa Marczyk (violin solo), Ryszard Minkiewicz (tenor),
Warsaw Philharmonic Choir and Orchestra (Chorus-master: Henryk Wojnarowski), Antoni Wit
Naxos 8570721

Composed in 1910, when Szymanowski felt the influences of Richard Strauss, Reger and Scriabin, the unusually structured Symphony No. 2 is a work of power and invention, with passionate and varied contrasts in its use of solo instruments, especially the violin.

Szymanowski’s Third Symphony, completed in 1916 after two years’ work, received its premiere in London in 1921. The work, in which orchestra and singers are subtly blended in a continuous web of intoxicating sound, contains hints of Debussy’s influence. Its central theme is the composer’s reinterpretation of the thoughts and words of the great medieval Persian mystic Mevlânâ, our Master, Jalal ad-Din, founder of the order of “whirling dervishes.”

2008 marks the 50th anniversary of the death of British composer Ralph Vaughan Williams. In Tony Palmer’s new film, “O THOU TRANSCENDENT”: The Life of Ralph Vaughan Williams (TPDVD106), he pays tribute to this remarkable composer and
humanitarian whose music has become an indelible part of our culture. O Thou Transcendent features rare footage of Vaughn Williams, as well as interviews with important musical figures like composers John Adams, Harrison Birtwistle, Mark-Anthony Turnage, Sir Michael Tippett, and André Previn, conductor David Willcocks, and many others. The film also features commentary from the composer’s second wife, Ursula Vaughan Williams, who died in 2007.

In the film, Sir Michael Tippett admits that he “hated everything Vaughan Williams stood for with ‘all that folk waffle.’” However, after Vaughan Williams died, Tippett realized that he had made “[an] appalling misjudgment because it was Vaughan Williams, ‘rather than any of his contemporaries,’ who had ‘made us free.’” Composer John Adams recalls the first orchestral concert he attended as a child and hearing the Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis, which made such an impression on him he decided to become a composer. British composer Mark-Anthony Turnage explains how he was deeply affected by his “encounter with the darkness, even hopelessness” of Vaughan Williams’ vision of mankind.

Superb musical excerpts from almost every important period in Vaughan Williams’ work are featured and contextualized in the time period in which they were composed. Excerpts consist of both historic and modern performances and include such musical luminaries as Sir Adrian Boult (shown leading the “Romanza” from Vaughan Williams’ Symphony No. 5), Simon Keenlyside, Thomas Allen, Sarah Walker, Nicola Benedetti, Jordi Savall, The National Youth Orchestra, the BBC Chorus, The English Chamber Orchestra, The London Philharmonic Orchestra, and many others.

Palmer has said: “My intention is not hagiography. It is simply this: to explode for ever the image of a cuddly old Uncle, endlessly recycling English folk songs and to awaken the audience to a central figure in our musical heritage who did more for us all than Greensleeves and The Lark Ascending …”

Virtuoso Violinist is a heartening story of the triumph of talent, determination, character, and tenacity over seemingly insurmountable odds—producing spectacular art along the way. Richard Somerset-Ward, who supervises music and arts coverage on BBC-TV, remarks that “it is the general view of people in the television service … that [the] film is one of the finest music programs to have been shown on BBC Television for years.”

Christopher Nupen, described by Gramophone as “king of the music documentary,” is the recent recipient of myriad awards, including ‘DVD of the Month’ from both Classic FM and Gramophone; three German Record Critics’ Awards; the Diapason d’Or (France); and, most recently, the ‘DVD of the Year’ Award (documentary category) from Midem at the Palais des Festivals et des Congrès in Cannes for Jacqueline du Pré - A Celebration. This is Nupen’s third Midem ‘DVD of the Year’ Award in four years, an unprecedented achievement; it is the top international classical DVD prize awarded by the institution.

Founded in 1968, Christopher Nupen’s company Allegro Films has produced significant documentaries on Vladimir Ashkenazy, Evgeny Kissin, Nathan Milstein, Franz Schubert, Andrés Segovia, Jean Sibelius, and Pinchas Zukerman. Through close relationships with these artists, Allegro Films has produced a series of intimate portraits recognized as classics, with a longevity rarely achieved in television programming.

In 2007 the Berlin Philharmonic chose to celebrate its 125th anniversary year by highlighting a previously unknown chapter in its history—the years 1933-1945. Financed by the German Reich and held accountable by the Reich Ministry for Popular

Enlightenment and Propaganda, the Berlin Philharmonic was not only Germany’s flagship orchestra, but also an ambassador for the National Socialist regime, particularly on foreign tours.

In this new documentary by Enrique Sánchez Lansch (RHYTHM IS IT!), the spotlight is on the orchestra itself: the musicians, the people, their individual destinies. Although its members were much less exposed than their principal conductor, Wilhelm Furtwängler, they, like him, moved in circles close to the powers that bestowed privilege, and thereby encouraged people to shirk individual responsibility. The unique and microcosmic world of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra proves a fascinating subject; its former members give first-hand accounts of life in and around the orchestra. The film examines a wealth of previously unevaluated archive material, provide a highly authentic glimpse into the period under the swastika. It brings to life, in a manner as fascinating as it is sensitive, this chapter in the history of Germany and its capital, exploring the question: How does one tread the fine line between independence and individual responsibility?

The Reichorchester also includes special-feature footage of Wilhelm Furtwängler conducting the Prelude from Wagner’s Die Meistersinger, taken from a 1942 AEG Worker’s Concert.

Recorded in 2007, this live performance of “The President’s Own” Marine Band is led by GRAMMY-winning conductor-composer José Serebrier, who recently was nominated (along with and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra) for a Best Orchestral Performance nomination for his Naxos recording of Shostakovich’s The Golden Age.

Having orchestrated Gershwin’s piano works (at the request of the composer’s family), numerous Grieg songs, and, more recently, a symphonic synthesis of Janácek’s The Makropulos Case, Serebrier compiled a sequence of orchestral interludes from Bizet’s Carmen to extend its magic to the concert hall. Carmen Symphony—unlike the well-known Carmen Suites—follows the thread of the opera.

José Serebrier has always been fascinated by the music of Mexican composer Silvestre Revueltas, and this Mexican Dance is his homage to this imaginative composer. Mexican Dance and Serebrier’s own Night Cry are world-premiere recordings. Alberto Ginastera’s Estancia Suite, Op. 8a and a rousing encore performance of
John Philip Sousa’s The Stars and Stripes Forever round out this disc.

The United States Marine Band was established by an Act of Congress in 1798 and is America’s oldest professional musical organization. Members of “The President’s Own” are active duty members of the United States Marine Corps who enlist under a contract of service with the Marine Band only.

Mark-Anthony TURNAGE: Twice Through the Heart; Hidden Love Song;
The Torn Fields;
Marin Alsop, conductor; London Philharmonic Orchestra; Sarah Connolly, mezzo-soprano; Gerald Finley, baritone; Martin Robertson, soprano saxophone

Three works by the London Philharmonic Orchestra’s Composer-in-Residence Mark-Anthony Turnage offer strikingly different glimpses of the human interface: a chilling first-person account of marital murder, a touchingly titled musical gift, and an acerbic view of the destruction of war. Marin Alsop - renowned conductor, Naxos recording artist, and Music Director of the Baltimore Symphony - captures the emotions and drama of the work.

Born in 1960, Mark-Anthony Turnage’s teachers included Oliver Knussen, John Lambert, and Gunther Schuller. His unique sound-world is influenced by jazz composers like Miles Davis (his penchant for wind instruments is well-known, and many of his orchestral scores feature saxophone) as well as the music of Stravinsky, Bartók, Britten, Tippett, and Vaughn Williams (an early influence). Turnage’s many works include the powerful Blood on the Floor, Three Screaming Popes, Kai, Momentum, Drowned Out, Scorched, Scherzoid (commissioned by the LPO and New York Philharmonic), and the operas Greek and The Silver Tassie. In addition to his residency with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, Turnage was appointed Mead Composer-in-Residence with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, 2006-2008.

Turnage has never been afraid to confront social issues: he came from a modest background and lost his younger brother Andy to drugs. Twice Through the Heart (1997) is set to a text by Jackie Kay and tells the story of a woman who stabbed her husband with a kitchen knife after years of physical and emotional abuse. Turnage commented in 1997 that writing this piece was “more difficult than anything else I’ve done.”

Kay, who met the subject of her text while doing education work in prison, was profiled in a BBC film about her poetry - which Turnage saw. The composer himself had experience working with prisoners: “I’d done education work with prisoners, particularly lifers [prisoners serving life sentences] and felt great empathy with them, as well as an attraction to the solitude.”

Initially, the work was conceived as an opera, but Turnage and Ms. Kay later realized that the “strength lay in the poetry, and so it became a ‘dramatic scena,’ from the woman’s point of view.” Twice Through the Heart features mezzo-soprano Sarah Connolly, who recently received a GRAMMY nomination for her Naxos recording of Elgar’s Sea Pictures (8557710).

Turnage composed Hidden Love Song for soprano saxophone (2005) when he became the London Philharmonic Orchestra’s Composer-in-Residence. It is a brief ‘song’ for soprano saxophone and chamber orchestra with harpsichord. It was the first collaboration of his residency, commissioned by the Orchestra with Norwegian and German partners. The work was written for both the soloist on this recording, Martin Robertson, and Turnage’s wife (then fiancée), Gabriella Swallow.

The disc’s final offering, The Torn Fields, features superb Canadian baritone Gerald Finley. The cycle consists of five First World War poems written by Rudyard Kipling, Isaac Rosenberg, Wilfred Owen, Charles Sorley, and Siegfried Sassoon “that savagely attack the sweeping loss of war, often spiked with acerbic, critical humor.”

For more information on Mark-Anthony Turnage please visit the composer’s page on Wikipedia and the site for the London Philharmonic Orchestra: lpo.co.uk

Gennadi Rozhdestvensky: Conductor or Conjuror is a portrait of the conductor Gennadi Rozhdestvensky himself: born in 1931, he made his début at the Bolshoi a year before Stalin’s death in 1953. He was deeply committed to contemporary music and was a close friend of great composers including Shostakovich and Schnittke. He also championed Prokofiev’s later works, which had been banned. This documentary also examines the art of conducting. Filmed from 1991-2002 in Moscow, Zurich, and Paris, it features Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 7 in master classes with students at the Moscow Conservatory, rehearsals with Zurich’s Tonhalle Orchestra, and performances of Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet and Schnittke’s Dead Souls. An extensive bonus film also includes the Tchaikovksy and Schnittke performances along with Zdravitsa, a cantata by Sergey Prokofiev composed in 1939 for the celebration of Stalin’s 60th birthday.

This is the second time in three years that a Naxos recording has won GRAMMY® Awards in three major categories; in 2006, William Bolcom’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience won three GRAMMY® Awards (Best Classical Album, Best Choral Performance, and Best Contemporary Classical Composition). In addition, Tim Handley won Producer of the Year, Classical for his work on five Naxos albums, including Songs of Innocence and of Experience.

Made in America began when 65 small U.S. orchestras pooled their resources to commission a new work by a major American composer. With the help of the American Symphony Orchestra League, Meet The Composer, and Ford Motor Company Fund, the project evolved into the phenomenon known as Ford Made in America, bringing Tower’s piece to towns nationwide.

NAXOS OF AMERICA-DISTRIBUTED LABEL ARTISTS WIN THREE GRAMMY®AWARDS

The Best Opera Recording of the Year (Awarded to the conductor, producer, and principal performers) went to the Chandos* recording of Humperdinck’s Hansel & Gretel, conducted by Sir Charles MacKerras, produced by Brian Couzens; featuring Rebecca Evans, Jane Henschel, Jennifer Larmore, Sarah Coppen, Diana Montague, and Sarah Tynan; the New London Children’s Choir; and the Philharmonia Orchestra. Additionally, Sound Engineer John Newton was honored with the Award for Best Engineered Classical Album for his work on the Chandos recording of Grechaninov’s Passion Week.

*Naxos of America currently manages Chandos’ digital distribution and will begin physical CD distribution of Chandos recordings on April 1, 2008.

Violinist James Ehnes took home the Award for Best Instrumental Soloist Performance with Orchestra for his CBC Records recording of violin concertos by Barber, Korngold, and Walton, with Bramwell Tovey conducting the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra.

Chandos, which celebrates its 28th anniversary this year, is one of the finest independent classical labels in the world, celebrated for its world-class artists, unusual repertoire, and superb sound and engineering. It has pioneered the idea of the ‘series’; its catalog features an impressive roster of British composers and artists, as well as a masterful film music series and the critically-acclaimed “Opera in English” series. Chandos is also dedicated to the SACD format, in which it has released over 40 discs.

“We are very excited to take on distribution for Chandos in North America. Chandos is one of the most respected classical music labels in the world and we consider them a very important addition to the Naxos family of distributed labels. We look forward to a long and productive working relationship,” said Jim Selby, Naxos’ CEO. Chandos’ Managing Director Ralph Couzens commented, “I am delighted that we have agreed a deal with NoA for physical distribution in the US. The move ties in very well with distribution of our digital catalog which NoA is also handling for us. This is a new era for Chandos and we look forward with anticipation to a successful and mutually beneficial relationship.”

Since its founding in 1979, Chandos has championed rare and neglected repertoire, filling in many gaps in record catalogues and exposing audiences to the music of British composers, including Alwyn, Bax, Dyson, Moeran, and Rubbra. Today, Chandos’ richly diverse catalogue contains over 1500 titles and includes recordings of music, ancient and modern, by composers from around the globe. Chandos issues at least five new recordings a month—together with re-issues of back catalogue material—rivalling major classical companies.

This year, Chandos earned six GRAMMY® nominations as well as numerous citations in Gramophone, including “Editor’s Choice.” Chandos’ impressive artist roster includes American opera singers Christine Brewer, Jennifer Larmore, and Bruce Ford, as well as esteemed conductors Richard Hickox, Neeme Järvi and Gianandrea Noseda. In addition, the following artists are associated with, or exclusive to, the label: Matthias Bamert, Rumon Gamba, Sir Charles Mackerras, David Parry, Kathryn Stott, Louis Lortie, Jean-Efflam Bavouzet, Howard Shelley, Simon Standage, Lydia Mordkovitch, Yan Pascal Tortelier, Vernon Handley, the BBC Philharmonic, the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, the City of London Sinfonia, the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the Danish National Choir and Symphony Orchestra, the Iceland Symphony Orchestra, Opera Australia, the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, the Phoenix Bach Choir, The Purcell Quartet, I Fagiolini and Collegium Musicum 90.

Chandos has received numerous awards from Gramophone: 2001 Record of the Year for Richard Hickox’s recording of the original version of Vaughan Williams’ A London Symphony; Best Choral Recording of 2003 for a rediscovered Mass by Hummel; Best Orchestral Recording of 2004 for a set of Bax’s Symphonies; and Editor’s Choice of 2006 for Stanford: Songs of the Sea/Songs of the Fleet. The Chandos recording of Britten’s Peter Grimes, conducted by Richard Hickox, received an American GRAMMY® Award.

In October, Naxos of America began worldwide digital distribution of Chandos on iTunes. The Chandos catalog became available on major digital music retailers, including eMusic.com and Amazonmp3.com, on January 1, 2008.

Composer’s note:

I probably decided to write what was to be the First Quartet when I read about a composition prize in Liege, Belgium, because there were many ideas swarming around in my imagination about expression, rhythm, and harmony, mostly derived from my Cello Sonata. I read through all the Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Debussy, Ravel, Bartók, Berg, and Ruth Crawford Seeger quartets to find a way of using the four instruments to present my ideas. As I began to compose, with a Guggenheim Fellowship, in Tucson, Arizona, I soon realized that the work would make such demands on performers that it might never be performed, yet I continued. To my surprise it won the Liège Prize and the Walden Quartet became the first of many to play it. Then my Second, Third, and Fourth Quartets developed my imaginings in different ways until I began to realize that soon I would exhaust this direction, and so my Fifth Quartet became a farewell to the previous four and an exploration of a new vision. All the quartets were written about ten years apart. Now the Pacifica Quartet has had the courage and mastery to present all of them on the same program, which is amazing.

—Elliott Carter

Beginning with his Cello Sonata (1948), Carter began to develop a new aesthetic, synthesizing the techniques of the European modernists like Berg, Bartók and Debussy with those of the American “ultra-modernists”: composers like Conlon Nancarrow and Henry Cowell. Carter’s String Quartet No 1 (1950–1951) was written during the year he spent in the Arizona desert, and it was the first work in which he blended his most advanced techniques—i.e. rhythmic contrast, based on complex polyrhythms and proportional tempo changes—on such a large scale. And while the use of proportional tempo changes was not new—Stravinsky had already utilized them—Carter expert and composer David Schiff has noted that “the scale of tempos is larger, their ratios are more complex and, most importantly, changes in notated tempo often happen within rather than between phrases.” Carter’s music from this point forward became known for this unique rhythmic innovation, to which he referred as temporal modulation (and theorists later called “metric modulation”).

Of his String Quartet No. 1 Carter has commented:

The first thing that struck me about contemporary music in general had been that there was not much interest in rhythm. Stravinsky was maybe the only one that experimented, and only in certain works like the Rite of Spring. Also, Schoenberg had looked at it in that he wanted to make music sound like talking. It had the irregular rhythms like the way we talk. I felt that I would like to find a way of making music that developed the rhythmic side more than these people had done. I really tried to do that, and also at that time began to find various chords that interested me. My First String Quartet uses one of these chords very frequently. Finally I wrote this piece that had all kinds of rhythmic innovations in it. It had a last movement in which every theme gets faster each time it comes in. There is a counterpoint of themes, some of them are getting faster at one rate, and some are getting faster at another rate. It was a very interesting kind of thing to figure out how to do that. I think it worked quite well to my surprise…The whole piece is built on this system of constantly switching from one speed to another, not suddenly, but like shifting gears in a car. You don’t know you’ve gotten into a new speed until something defines it more clearly, but at the transitional moment, you don’t know that it’s changing.

In his liner notes for the disc, Bayan Northcott writes: “The quartet is organized in a quasi-Classical four-movement sequence: Fantasia, Allegro scorrevole (a kind of scherzo), Adagio, and Variations, with only two short pauses in its 45-minute unfolding, occurring not between, but within movements; the first pause is in the middle of the Allegro scorrevole, and the second shortly after the beginning of the Variations. Moreover, Carter begins with a jagged solo cello recitative that is only completed by the violin at the end of the quartet, as if to suggest that everything that happens in between is a gigantic parenthesis in time.”

String Quartet No 5 (1995) consists of six short movements and five interludes and, in direct contrast to Quartet No. 1, displays a playful freedom that borders on improvisation. Mr. Northcott continues, “The even-numbered movements comprise a suite-like series of character pieces, each focused on a particular area of expression or tone color: a nervy, volatile Giocoso; a Lento espressivo of slowly shifting chords; a scurrying, scherzo-like Presto scorrevole; an Allegro energico of forceful rhetoric; a remote Adagio sereno of high string harmonics; and finally, a bizarre pizzicato coda marked Capriccioso. By contrast, the comparatively random-sounding (though exactly notated) Introduction and linking Interludes 1-V evoke those breaks in rehearsal when individual players may be heard simultaneously practicing snippets of a movement just played, or the next to come. The result is a teasing kind of double focus in which the same materials are heard in contexts of order and (apparent) disorder, raising interesting questions about the nature of musical coherence and continuity, and typical of the mercurial lightness of spirit that has increasingly characterized Carter’s later works.”

December 6, 2007

The Recording Academy announced today that the Nashville Symphony, led by Music Advisor Leonard Slatkin, has been nominated for two Grammys® for their recording of works by American composer Joan Tower. The Naxos recording was nominated in the categories of Best Classical Album and Best Orchestral Performance. Joan Tower’s piece Made in America also received a nomination for Best Classical Contemporary Composition.

“It was an honor for the Nashville Symphony to release a CD of works by Joan Tower, who is by far one of the most exciting composers of our time,” said Alan D. Valentine, President and CEO of the Nashville Symphony. “We are thrilled to be in the company of the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Boston Symphony Orchestra, among others, with these two important GRAMMY nominations.”

Released on May 29, 2007 on Naxos’ American Classics label, the recording includes the world premiere of Joan Tower’s Made in America, as well as her pieces Tambor and Concerto for Orchestra. Made in America was the result of a unique project commissioned and performed by 65 small orchestras throughout the nation as an initiative known as Ford Made in America. With the support of League of American Orchestras, the Ford Motor Company Fund and Meet the Composer, Joseph Schwantner has been selected to write the next commissioned work for the project.

These two GRAMMY® nominations will add to the four the Nashville Symphony has already received for recordings of works by Elliot Carter, Amy Beach and George Whitefield Chadwick.
The Nashville Symphony has received far-reaching acclaim for its 11 recordings on Naxos, the world’s leading classical label, and one on Decca, making the Nashville Symphony currently one of the most recorded symphony orchestras in the country.

The 50th Annual GRAMMY awards will take place on February 10, 2008 in Los Angeles and will air live on CBS.

The Nashville Symphony’s Grammy-nominated Joan Tower CD is available for purchase at the Nashville Symphony Store or on-line at www.nashvillesymphony.org. It is also available through Amazon.com and other music retailers.

The much-acclaimed recording of Joan Tower’s Made in America featuring conductor Leonard Slatkin and the Nashville Symphony Orchestra, produced by Tim Handley, earned three nominations including Best Classical Album (award to Artists and Producer), Best Orchestral Performance (award to Conductor and Orchestra) and Best Classical Contemporary Composition (Award to Composer). Made in America began as an attempt by 65 small orchestras from around the United States to pool their resources to commission a new work by a major American composer. With the help of the American Symphony Orchestra League, Meet The Composer, and Ford Motor Company Fund, it became the phenomenon known as Ford Made in America, a project that brought Tower’s piece to towns nationwide.

Additionally, conductor-composer José Serebrier and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra earned a Best Orchestral Performance nomination for their Naxos recording of Shostakovich’s The Golden Age.

Mezzo-soprano Sarah Connolly took home a nomination for Best Classical Vocal Performance for the Naxos recording of Elgar’s Sea Pictures, Op. 37 with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, Simon Wright, conductor. A Best Choral Performance nomination went to chorus master Henryk Wojnarowski and conductor Antoni Wit for the Naxos recording of Penderecki’s Symphony No. 7 “Seven Gates of Jerusalem” with the Warsaw National Philharmonic Orchestra and Choir.

Performers on two separate Naxos recordings are up for Best Instrumental Soloist Performance with Orchestra and Best Instrumental Soloist Performance without Orchestra: Anastasia Khitruk for her performance of the Miklos Rózsa Violin Concerto, Op. 24, (Dimitry Yablonsky, conductor; Russian Philharmonic Orchestra); and pianist Allison Brewster Franzetti for her recording titled 20th Century Piano Sonatas.

In the Best Small Ensemble Performance category the Swiss Baroque Soloists received a nomination for the Naxos recording of Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos.

Blanton Alspaugh was nominated for Classical Producer of the Year for his work on the Naxos recording of
Stephen Hartke’s The Greater Good, and producers Marina A. Ledin and Victor Ledin were nominated for their work on 20th Century Piano Sonatas (Allison Brewster Franzetti, piano).

NAXOS OF AMERICA DISTRIBUTED LABEL ARTISTS NOMINATED FOR GRAMMYS®

Conductors Paul O’Dette and Stephen Stubbs earned a Best Opera Performance nomination for the CPO recording of Jean Baptiste Lully’s Thésée with the Boston Early Music Festival.

Violinist James Ehnes earned a nomination for Best Instrumental Soloist Performance with Orchestra for his CBC Records recording of Violin Concertos by Barber, Korngold and Walton with Bramwell Tovey conducting the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra. Spanish composer Joan Albert Amargós earned a nomination in the category of Best Classical Contemporary Composition for Northern Concerto, featured on the Michala Petri recording Movements from the label OUR Music.

The 50th annual GRAMMY® Awards will be held February 10th, 2008 at the Staples Center in Los Angeles.

THE RECORDINGS

NAXOS

BEST CLASSICAL ALBUM
BEST ORCHESTRAL PERFORMANCE
BEST CLASSICAL CONTEMPORARY COMPOSITION
JOAN TOWER: Made in America; Tambor; Concerto for Orchestra
Nashville Symphony, Leonard Slatkin
8559328 (636943932827)

BEST ORCHESTRAL PERFORMANCE
SHOSTAKOVICH: The Golden Age (Complete Ballet)
Royal Scottish National Orchestra, José Serebrier
8570217-18 (747313021772)

BEST INSTRUMENTAL SOLOIST(S) PERFORMANCE (WITH ORCHESTRA)
MIKLÓS RÓZSA: Violin Concerto, Opus 24; Sinfonia Concertante, Opus 29
Anastasia Khitruk, violin;
Andrey Tchekmazov, cello; Russian Philharmonic Orchestra, Dmitry Yablonsky
8570350 (747313035076)

BEST INSTRUMENTAL SOLOIST(S) PERFORMANCE (WITHOUT ORCHESTRA)
20th CENTURY PIANO SONATAS
Allison Brewster Franzetti, piano
8570401 (747313040179)

BEST CLASSICAL VOCAL PERFORMANCE
EDWARD ELGAR: Sea Pictures, Op. 37
Sarah Connolly, mezzo-soprano; Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra and Chorus
Simon Wright, conductor
8557710 (747313271023)

BEST CHORAL PERFORMANCE
KRZYSZTOF PENDERECKI: Symphony No. 7 “Seven Gates of Jerusalem”
Warsaw National Philharmonic and Choir; Antoni Wit, conductor
8557766 (747313276622)

BEST SMALL ENSEMBLE PERFORMANCE
J.S. BACH: BRANDENBURG CONCERTOS
Swiss Baroque Soloists
8557755-56 (747313275526)

PRODUCER OF THE YEAR
Blanton Alspaugh: Stephen Hartke: The Greater Good (8669014-15) 730099691420
Marina A. Ledin and Victor Ledin: 20th Century Piano Sonatas (Allison Brewster Franzetti) (8570401) 747313040179

CPO

BEST OPERA PERFORMANCE
JEAN-BAPTISTE LULLY: Thésée
Orchestra and Chorus of the Boston Early Music Festival
Paul O’Dette and Stephen Stubbs
CPO 777240-2 (761203724024)

CBC

BEST INSTRUMENTAL SOLOIST(S) PERFORMANCE (WITH ORCHESTRA)
BARBER/WALTON/KORNGOLD VIOLIN CONCERTOS
James Ehnes, violin; Vancouver Symphony, Bramwell Tovey, conductor
SMCD5241 (059582524121)

OUR Music

BEST CONTEMPORARY CLASSICAL COMPOSITION
Movements
Joan Albert Amargós: Northern Concerto
Michala Petri, recorders
6220531 (747313153169)

More…
This disc follows the acclaimed Naxos recordings of Stokowski’s Mussorgsky and Tchaikovsky transcriptions (Naxos 8557645), which received two GRAMMY nominations, and his J.S. Bach transcriptions (Naxos 8557883).

Sponsored by the Leopold Stokowski Society, Symphonic Syntheses features Das Rheingold: Entrance of the Gods into Valhalla (ed. Stokowski); Tristan und Isolde: Symphonic Synthesis (arr. Stokowski); Parsifal: Symphonic Synthesis from Act III (arr. Stokowski); Die Walküre: Magic Fire Music (arr. Stokowski); and Die Walküre: Ride of the Valkyries (ed. Stokowski).

From the first days of his conducting career, Leopold Stokowski (1882-1977) championed Wagner’s music: Siegfried Idyll and The Ride of the Valkyries featured prominently in his first performances with the Cincinnati Orchestra in 1909. In addition to live performances, Stokowski brought Wagner’s music to a much wider audience through a series of 78rpm recordings with the Philadelphia Orchestra, for which he wove together extended orchestral excerpts from great Wagnerian operas. He titled these excerpts, which took the form of elaborate tone poems, “Symphonic Syntheses.”

Serebrier has commented:

“During my many years as his Associate Conductor in New York, I had the wonderful opportunity to observe Stokowski’s work first hand. While I had great teachers, Pierre Monteux, Antal Dorati, and was associated with George Szell for many years, I learned a great deal about sound and about orchestral technique from Stokowski. His orchestrations of Bach and Mussorgsky are completely different from what he did with the Wagner operas. Here, he left the original orchestration intact (except for very minor retouches in The Ride of the Valkyries), giving the vocal lines to instruments, and providing links between sections of Tristan, to make true symphonic poems. “

The idea for the recordings of Stokowski’s transcriptions originated from the Leopold Stokowski Society itself, which approached Serebrier in 2003. After graduating from the Curtis Institute of Music, Serebrier enjoyed a close association with Stokowski, serving for many years as the Associate Conductor of the American Symphony Orchestra, which Stokowski founded in 1962. Stokowski premiered Serebrier’s First Symphony and other works when Serebrier was just seventeen. The Stokowski premiere of Serebrier’s First Symphony was a last minute replacement for the Ives 4th Symphony, which was still considered unplayable at the time. Years later, Stokowski and Serebrier premiered the Ives 4th conducting it together, side by side, at Carnegie Hall.

Of Symphony No. 15, Coates has written:

“There are three movements in this symphony. The first is my intuitive use of chords migrating polyphonically to a conclusion. The second movement is based on Mozart’s Ave Verum Corpus, one of my favorite Mozart compositions. Only after I used it, did I discover that it was his last completed work. I then knew it had been the right choice as this symphony was a dedication to him for the 200th year after his death. I used the quotation first disguised backwards and then eventually into the entire texture.

The last movement uses an earlier theme of mine, and expresses the finality and tragedy I feel about Mozart’s life….and then the bitter-sweet triumph of its closure…the end having been reached…the summit … the goal before the endless peace.”

While Coates’ musical thinking has been influenced by European musical trends, her work has always retained a distinctively American feel. This is particularly apparent in her use of musical quotations, which sometimes remind the listener of Charles Ives, who surrounded familiar songs and hymns with orchestral “noise.” The first movement of Coates’ Symphony No. 4 (“Chiaroscuro”), written in memory of her father, uses “Dido’s Lament” from Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas as part of the orchestral texture. Her Symphony No. 14 is based on early American hymns by two New England composers, Supply Belcher (1751-1836) and William Billings (1746-1800).

Coates also loves large-scale forms, canons, mirrors, and palindromes, as well as conventional tonal chorale writing, often quoting other compositions. Above all, she is known for her signature use of glissandi, with which she has had a lifelong fascination. For Coates, glissandi are more than simple coloristic devices; they are integral structures in her music. Symphony No. 15 (“Homage to Mozart”) includes all of Coates’ signature elements: the first movement, entitled Iridescences, features “swooping upward glissandos in the strings”; the second movement, Puzzle Canon, illustrates her love of quotations, and the final movement, which takes its title from the Emily Dickinson poem What are the Stars? (Dickinson’s poetry resonates throughout
Gloria Coates’ oeuvre), is a dialogue between a “chromatically wandering chorale in the brass … and a texture of multilayered glissandos in the strings …”

Gloria Coates’ breakthrough as a composer came in 1978 with the premiere of her Symphony No. 1, (“Music on Open Strings”) at Warsaw Autumn, which was a finalist for the Koussevitzky Prize in 1986. Composed between 1972 and 1974, it was dedicated to her teacher Alexander Tcherepnin. Its original title, “Music on Open Strings,” suggests another of Coates’ interests—unusual tunings—all the strings play in scordatura. Unusual tunings are also evident in her other symphonic works, including her Symphony No. 14, (“Symphony in Microtones”) which uses not only glissandi, but quartertones.

But in Coates’ music these signature elements never become cliché. As composer/critic Kyle Gann has noted, “[t]he essence of Coates’ music is not any one of these elements, but their juxtaposition and combination sometimes even their indistinguishable fusion into some of the strangest textures in recent music …” Further, he points out that it is her ability to “limit her materials and weld a work into a single gesture” which contributes to its power. “She realizes … how much more intense a piece of music can become when it is narrowly focused …”

In addition to her newest release Symphony No. 15 (Naxos 8559371), Naxos has two discs of her string quartets, Naxos 8559091 and 8559152; as well as her Symphony Nos. 1, 7, & 14, (Naxos 8559289). Additionally, Naxos is the distributor for CPO, which features several discs of Coates’ music including Symphonies 1, 4, & 7, and her Symphony No. 2 (CPO Nos. 999-392; 999-590).

The production features a cast of operatic and musical theater luminaries, including the Los Angeles Opera debuts of Tony Award winners Audra McDonald (as Jenny) and Patti LuPone (as Leocadia Begbick). Critically acclaimed tenor Anthony Dean Griffey also makes his LA Opera debut in the role of Jimmy. The performance is conducted by LA Opera Music Director James Conlon and is directed by John Doyle, winner of the 2006 Tony Award for Best Direction of a Musical for Sweeney Todd.

Patti LuPone won the 1980 Tony and Drama Desk awards for her portrayal of Eva Perón in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s rock opera Evita. A seasoned stage and film performer, Ms. LuPone recently concluded a critically acclaimed run as Mrs. Lovett in John Doyle’s popular Broadway production of Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd. She made her New York Philharmonic debut in the same role in a concert version of the musical before reprising her performance with the San Francisco Symphony, at the Ravinia Festival, and on a Great Performances telecast.

Audra McDonald has been a beloved staple of the American musical theater scene since making her Broadway debut in The Secret Garden shortly after graduating from Juilliard in 1993. Her career gained momentum as she earned Tony Awards in 1994, 1996, and 1998 for Carousel, Master Class, and Ragtime, and again in 2004 for the revival of A Raisin in the Sun. She has performed with every major orchestra in the U.S. and has released four solo albums. A veteran television performer, Ms. McDonald will appear in the film adaptation of A Raisin in the Sun on ABC on February 25, 2008, the day after the Oscar telecast.

American tenor Anthony Dean Griffey has captured critical and popular acclaim on opera, concert, and recital stages worldwide. Highlights of his illustrious career include performances at The Metropolitan Opera, Chicago Lyric Opera, San Francisco Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Glyndebourne, Opera Bastille, and other major houses. He has sung with major orchestras around the world and has collaborated with many of the most prestigious conductors.

The superb cast also includes Robert Wörle as Fatty the Bookkeeper; John Easterlin as Jack O’Brien, Mel Ulrich as Bank Account Bill, Donnie Ray Albert as Trinity Moses, Derek Taylor as Toby Higgins, and Steven Humes as Alaska Wolf Joe. The production features sets by Mark Bailey, costumes by Ann Hould-Ward, lighting by Thomas C. Hase, sound design by Dan Moses Schreier, and video direction by Gary Halvorson.

Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny, which premiered in Leipzig in 1930, is based on a short musical theater piece called the Mahagonny Songspiel. (If the heart of the Singspiel is its arias, the heart of this ‘Song’-spiel is its cycle of vernacular, thoroughly American tunes.) Weill set to music a collection of poems Brecht had composed about a fictional American city devoted to life’s most illicit pleasures: whiskey, women, horses, and poker. The opera bitterly satirizes the evils of the almighty dollar, recounted in a blend of operatic and music hall songs, including the classic “Moon of Alabama.”

EUROARTS is distributed in the United States and Canada by Naxos of America/Naxos of Canada.

Rinaldo Alessandrini is a noted Monteverdi specialist. His biography of the composer is considered definitive, he is the official editor of the composer’s scores, and his previous Monteverdi recordings have been widely praised (his recordings of Monteverdi’s Vespro della Beata Vergine and the Sixth Book of Madrigals were both Gramophone “Editor’s Choice” selections). The new release is Alessandrini’s first recording of L’Orfeo and it features his new performing version of Monteverdi’s ravishing score. Italian tenor Furio Zanasi sings the title role, which he has performed to consistent acclaim at Europe’s leading opera houses and music festivals (additional cast details follow).

naïve’s new recording of L’Orfeo is presented in a luxurious limited edition 2CD + book that spans a remarkable 172 pages. Highlights include an illuminating introductory text, in which Rinaldo Alessandrini explains not only Monteverdi’s music and its interpretation, but also the mythology contained in the libretto; a fascinating – and hitherto unpublished – short story by the writer Camille Laurens, setting the Orpheus myth in the present day; iconography presenting the faces of Orpheus, from Italian Renaissance representations to those of Edvard Munch and the engravings of Raoul Dufy; and the complete libretto, featuring annotations by Alessandrini.

Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo is based on the ancient Greek myth of Orpheus, who attempts to rescue his dead lover Eurydice from Hades, the underworld. Though Monteverdi wrote eighteen operas, L’Orfeo is one of just three of his operas – along with Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria and L’incoronazione di Poppea – to have survived. Four centuries have not diminished the dramatic power, transcendent beauty, and emotional resonance of Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo, which finds in Alessandrini an advocate of singular authority, insight and passion. Says Alessandrini, “Orpheus, even before being a love story, is a grandiose celebration of the power of music.”

London’s Guardian has recently published a superlative, five-star review of the new recording:

The 400th anniversary this year of the premiere of the first operatic masterpiece has already been widely celebrated, but this recording by Rinaldo Alessandrini’s outstanding group of singers and instrumentalists puts the icing on the birthday cake. It follows on naturally from Concerto Italiano’s superlative cycle of the Monteverdi madrigals, and emphasizes once again the advantage of having a cast of native Italians in an opera in which music and text have equal importance.

Alessandrini puts a vivid, theatrical stamp on the proceedings, from the very first drum beats of the opening Toccata, and shows his preference for fast tempi in the ritornelli that punctuate La Musica’s opening invocation, sung with rapturous intensity by Monica Piccinini. Furio Zanasi is the peerless Orfeo… The rest of the cast, including Sara Mingardo as a wonderfully moving Messenger, is equally fine, and instrumental playing unfailingly deft and loaded with character.”

Antonio Vivaldi: Atenaide (world-premiere recording)
Sandrine Piau, Vivica Genaux, Guillemette Laurens, Romina Basso, Nathalie Stutzmann, Paul Agnew, Stefano Ferrari
Modo Antiquo / Federico Maria Sardelli
3-CD set available in the U.S. October 30, 2007

Susan Orlando, the director for naïve’s acclaimed Vivaldi Edition, calls the label’s new world-premiere recording of Vivaldi’s tour-de-force opera Atenaide “a little miracle,” that rare opera recording where a remarkable work is performed by an equally and uniformly remarkable cast. Orlando explains:

“This work was commissioned from Vivaldi by the Teatro della Pergola in Florence and premiered in 1728. What’s especially exciting about this recording is that when we did the casting for it everything came together perfectly. When you cast an opera you put together a dream list, but you rarely end up with your number one choices. For some reason – pure luck, I suppose – we got all our number one choices – Sandrine Piau [Atenaide/Eudossa], Vivica Genaux [Teodosio], Nathalie Stutzmann [Marziano], Guillemette Laurens [Pulcheria], Romina Basso [Varane], Paul Agnew [Leontino], and Stefano Ferrari [Probo]. It’s an extraordinary cast!

As luck would have it that this happens to be one of Vivaldi’s most spectacular operas. Basically, he took the best arias from his other operas and put them all into this one opera. What you end up with is a collection of great bravura arias with singers who have all of the agility to rise to the demands of this very challenging music. The result is unbelievable – a little miracle! Everything came together perfectly for this recording, and that rarely happens.”

Eminent Florentine conductor and Vivaldi specialist Federico Maria Sardelli achieves his long-held goal of recording this exotically-set and compulsively entertaining opera not only in his native Florence, but in the very theatre in which it was first performed two hundred and seventy-nine years ago.

Susan Orlando explains the genesis of naïve’s Vivaldi Edition:

“When Vivaldi died in 1741 he had at home the original music scores of most of what he had written during his lifetime, some 450 pieces including 110 concerti for violin, 40 concerti for bassoon, 20 operas, sacred music, and much more. Most of it had never been published. Through an intriguing tale that I won’t go into now, that enormous bulk of music ended up intact in the National Library in Torino (Turin), Italy in the 1930s, and has been there ever since. Specialists have occasionally performed a few of the scores but for the most part this music has remained totally unknown to the greater public. An eminent Italian musicologist living in Torino, Alberto Basso, conceived the idea of recording the entire collection. He divided the works by genre so that you have, for example, theatrical music, sacred music, concerti for violin, concerti for two or more soloists, etc. He presented the idea to naive, they were enthusiastic, and thus in 2000 the Vivaldi Edition began.”

Virgil Thomson’s soundtracks to both The Plow that Broke the Plains and The River rank among the composer’s greatest work and also set the trend in the 1930s and 1940s for a new style of film music. This disc features the world premiere recording of these complete soundtracks with performances by the Post-Classical Ensemble led by conductor Angel Gil-Ordóñez and narrated by Floyd King of the Washington Shakespeare Theater. With liner notes by the renowned music historian Joseph Horowitz, this disc also serves as companion to Naxos’s previously-released DVD of Pare Lorentz’s groundbreaking New Deal-era films (Naxos DVD 211051/January 2007).

William BOLCOM: Complete Works for Cello
Norman Fischer, cello; Jeanne Kierman, piano; Andrea Moore, timpani

This fifth Naxos recording of music by composer William Bolcom, whose Songs of Innocence and Experience (Naxos 8559216-18) won three GRAMMY Awards in 2005, features his complete works for cello performed by cellist Norman Fischer, former member of the Concord String Quartet and member of the music faculty of the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University, and pianist Jeanne Kierman. Works include Capriccio, Cello Suite in C Minor, Décalage, Dark Music and his Cello Sonata.

In addition to Songs of Innocence and Experience and this new album, Naxos has also released three other programs of music by Bolcom, including a collection of songs performed by Carole Farley with Bolcom himself at the piano, as well as his Violin Sonatas Nos. 1-4, with Arthur Greene and pianist Solomia Soroka, and his music for two pianos with Marcel and Elizabeth Bergmann.

Perhaps best known for Ancient Airs & Dances and his Roman Trilogy—Fontane di Rome (The Fountains of Rome), Pini di Roma (The Pines of Rome), and Feste romane (Naxos 8550539), Respighi’s extensive catalog features operas, songs, ballets, works for keyboard, and chamber music, as well as many other orchestral pieces.

This recording includes Vetrate di chiesa, P 150 (Church Windows), Impressioni brasiliane, P 158 (Brazilian Impressions), and Rossiniana, P 148. The four symphonic impressions Vetrate di chiesa (Church Windows) began as Tre preludi sopra melodie gregoriane for piano (Naxos 8553704), with the addition of a fourth movement to make a symphonic suite. Making full use of indigenous melodic and rhythmic shapes, Impressioni brasiliane (Brazilian Impressions) are a musical snapshot of the composer’s 1927 visit to that country, while Rossiniana, Respighi’s orchestration of piano ‘trifles’ by Rossini, is one of his most brilliantly and colorfully scored works, concluding with a wonderfully infectious Tarantella.

Buffalo Philharmonic Music Director JoAnn Falletta has been hailed by the Los Angeles Times as “one of the brightest stars of symphonic music in America” and by The New York Times as “one of the finest conductors of her generation.” Recipient of the Seaver/National Endowment for the Arts Conductors Award and winner of the Stokowski Competition and Toscanini, Ditson, and Bruno Walter conducting awards, she has also received eight consecutive awards from the American Society of Composers and Publishers (ASCAP). A champion of American music, Ms. Falletta has presented nearly 300 works by American composers, including over 70 world premières. In addition to her post as Music Director of the Buffalo Philharmonic, Ms. Falletta is Music Director of the Virginia Symphony and Artistic Advisor to the Honolulu Symphony. In great demand as a guest conductor, she has been invited to conduct many of the world’s great symphony orchestras. For Naxos, Ms. Falletta has recorded works by Aaron Copland, Kenneth Fuchs, Charles Griffes, and Frederick Converse, part of a continuing program of recordings of American music.

Glenn Gould’s broadcast recital from Toronto for the Canadian Broadcasting system in December 1950 was an historic event, resulting in a relationship with the CBC which lasted until his death. All performances on GLENN GOULD: THE YOUNG MAVERICK, with the exception of the Partita No. 5, were taken from radio broadcasts made between 1951 and 1955.

In 1955, Gould signed the recording contract with Columbia Records that catapulted him to worldwide fame with the Goldberg Variations. The Goldberg Variations performed on this set were recorded in 1954, a year before the historic Columbia release. All of the performances on this set reveal an artist of exceptional depth and maturity, who “[turned] performance into composition.”

GLENN GOULD: THE YOUNG MAVERICK also features a selection of Beethoven works that includes two sonatas (Nos. 19 and 28), the Eroica variations, Concertos Nos. 1-3, and a performance of Piano Trio in D Major, Op. 70, No. 1 “Ghost” with renowned violinist Alexander Schneider and cellist Zara Nelsova.

Most importantly, this set includes early recordings of works by Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern, a group of composers who were as close to Gould’s heart as Bach was—and whose work he championed throughout his career. The liner notes cite an interview Gould gave to the CBC Times in 1952, in which he stated that “It in his [Schoenberg’s] music, that we first find the restoration of pure contrapuntal craftsmanship which had surely not existed to the same intense degree in any music since that of J.S. Bach.” But perhaps the greatest testament to Gould’s love of the Viennese school composers came from Schoenberg’s widow, who called his performance of her husband’s Piano Concerto “unmatched.

This special edition 5-CD box set brings together all of the radio documentaries in the CBC Records catalogue, featuring Glenn Gould in a role in which he excelled: radio artist. After his 1950 broadcast debut as a pianist from the studios of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Gould began to develop broadcasts in which he discussed music with others, though he often wrote both sides of the conversation himself. When CBC began television broadcasting in 1952, Gould was among its inaugural performers, becoming a regular figure on Canadian television. By his death in 1982, he had appeared on CBC radio and television nearly 150 times as pianist, interviewer, commentator, and producer.

During the 1950s and 1960s, Canadian philosophers like Marshall McLuhan—whose famous phrase “the medium is the message” still resonates today—explored the psychological, social, and political effects of media. Gould, who knew McLuhan, clearly understood and embraced the power of media. GLENN GOULD: THE RADIO ARTIST features three of Gould’s seminal radio broadcasts: The Idea of North (1967), The Latecomers (broadcast in 1969), and The Quiet in the Land (1977). Broadly speaking, these documentaries explore the isolation and solitude with which Gould is associated; on a more profound level, however, they delve into the “value of singularity”: isolation as a means of expressing individual values and beliefs.

In The Idea of North, Gould uses available technology in innovative ways, featuring the sounds of a train traveling northeast as the piece’s foundation. Voices are woven into the texture almost contrapuntally—sometimes clearly heard, sometimes not. The only “music” featured is Sibelius’ Symphony No. 5, which signals the end of both the train ride and the program. The Latecomers is about the province of Newfoundland, which is both historically and geographically isolated from the rest of Canada. The final work in the trilogy, The Quiet in the Land, profiles a Mennonite community in southern Manitoba. It is presented in five scenes, linked by a church service. It is the most sonically complex of the trilogy, weaving in sounds of speakers, singers, ambient sounds, a choir, and a rock singer.

Gould was perhaps best known for his radio discussions on music. In 1962, he wrote and narrated Arnold Schoenberg: The Man Who Changed Music, which signaled a shift in his career to producer of sound documentaries. GLENN GOULD: THE RADIO ARTIST features musical portraits of conductor Leopold Stokowski and cellist Pablo Casals, recorded between the second and third parts of the trilogy. The Stokowski portrait consists of the conductor’s voice juxtaposed against a montage of his performances. The Casals documentary uses various speakers with a primary narrator “in the contrapuntal manner Gould had developed.”

After Gould gave final performance in 1964, he devoted himself to electronic media. His multi-layered ‘contrapuntal’ structure in documentary-making was ahead of its time and remains unique today.

Bluebeard’s Castle, which premiered in 1918 at the Royal Opera House in Budapest was, according to the composer, “… simultaneously my first stage and first vocal work.” Despite its early date, Bluebeard’s Castle also features some of Bartók’s most expansive orchestral writing, using the entire orchestra to support the singers and illustrate the drama. Composed in the form of a large arc, the music mirrors the progress of the drama and features one of most memorable uses of a C Major chord in 20th opera as Judith opens the fifth door to see the vista looking out over all Bluebeard’s domain. In an instant, a violently dissonant wave of sound transforms to a massive C major chord throughout the orchestra.

Bluebeard’s Castle is Naxos’ fifth major Alsop release this year, following the September release of the final installment of a complete cycle of Brahms’s Symphonies, for which she led the London Philharmonic. Peter Breiner arranged Symphony No. 4 and Hungarian Dances Nos. 2 and 4-9 especially for this recording. Tim Smith of the Baltimore Sun praised Alsop’s recording of Brahms’s Symphony No. 3, released as “glowing music-making, rich in character and atmosphere.”

Critics also praised the first two releases: Adam Baer of the Los Angeles Times described Alsop’s Symphony No. 1 as “Brahms that flows and sings,” while Steve Smith of Time Out New York praised her Symphony No. 2 as “a gorgeous efflorescence . . . The results do conductor and ensemble proud.”

As Korcia explains in his stimulating liner notes for the new album, “To make Béla Bartók, Django Reinhardt, and Michael Legrand rub shoulders might well appear improbable. Not to mention Massenet and Jean-Louis Aubert. But what I wanted to do here was seat such widely contrasting natures at the same table – something unrealistic in concert, but possible on record – and give each of them what seemed to me his appropriate place, while relishing the fact that not everything quite fits.” The result for the listener, however, is a musical experience that rewards on many levels, as Korcia and his guest artists conjure up, by turns, the sexy intimacy of a Parisian café, the cool style of a jazz club, the nostalgia of an old movie house, and the intensity of a top concert recital. A complete track listing follows.

As Korcia further explains in his notes for Doubles jeux: “Scenes from life, perceptions of the human comedy and its expressions – this CD is not a manifesto, but a reflection of what exists, of what we are, of our paradoxes. Tableaux that succeed, but don’t resemble, one another… An album of photos, each of which I wanted to print with the greatest care, surrounded by crasftmen-poets with whom I wanted to set out on a voyage.”

Andrew Lamb enthused over Doubles jeux in Gramophone’s February 2007 issue: “Laurent Korcia is not only an uncommonly accomplished violinist but also an uncommonly original programmer. One would not normally expect to find Debussy, Ravel, and Bartók rubbing shoulders with Wieniawski, Denza, Massenet, Django Reinhardt, Stéphane Grappelli, and Michel Legrand. It’s a tribute to both his technique and his vision that the juxtaposition is so joyfully successful.” The album, which also features a work by Korcia himself, Minor Tango, has already been awarded “Choc du Monde de la Musique” in France.

Korcia’s previous CDs for naïve also showcased his singularly eclectic tastes and tireless curiosity. Danses [V 4978] featured a wide-ranging program of violin miniatures, played with an engaging assortment of accompanists. Reviewing the album for Gramophone, Ivan March reported that Korcia “plays a 1719 Stradivarius with great aplomb and succulent timbre,” adding, “there is no denying the élan or the passionate virtuosity of the playing.” March was clearly captivated with the project, electing to point out something mentioned in the album’s liner notes: “The film director Bertrand Blier tells us in the accompanying note that after he had played it ceaselessly in the middle of the night, his next-door neighbor came by next morning and insisted on borrowing the CD forthwith.”

Korcia is no less convincing, however, in a “traditional” two-disc album surveying violin music by Béla Bartók [V 4991], which was awarded “Diapason d’or” in France. Rob Cowan observed in Gramophone, “Laurent Korcia plays Bartók’s Second Violin Concerto as if he’s known it and loved it since birth. Everything sounds so natural. Aside from drawing a big, demonstrative tone from his instrument, Korcia generates a high degree of tension in the many quieter passages… A sure-fire winner.”

This fall, American audiences across the country will have the opportunity to experience Korcia’s captivating artistry when he appears on a public television special with Ayo, the internationally acclaimed singer/songwriter/guitarist. Ayo: Live From Monte Carlo was shot at the world famous Salle des Etoiles (Hall of Stars) in Monte Carlo this past August, and features the singer performing with such superstars as Sarah Brightman, Andrea Bocelli, and Michael Bublé. She also performs songs from her first album, the multi-platinum selling Joyful, with special guest appearances by Korcia and Les Solistes de Monte Carlo, the string section of the Monte Carlo Symphony Orchestra, directed by conductor Jean-Louis Dedieu. The special, which aired in New York on October 22 and will be broadcast nationally on PBS in December, will also include clips featuring Ayo and Monaco’s Princess Stephanie sharing stories about their mutual involvement in various children’s causes around the world. Joyful will be released in the U.S. on November 20, on Interscope records.

Ayo’s vocal style and poignant lyrics have invited comparisons to Joan Armatrading, Ben Harper, Otis Redding, and Tracy Chapman. She was born to a Nigerian father and a Romanian gypsy mother. She grew up under difficult circumstances in Germany (her mother became a heroin addict), started her career in Paris and London, and was discovered in New York where she was signed worldwide by Universal.

Ithaca, New York.