Three decades ago, visionary Venezuelan musician and politician José Antonio Abreu founded El Sistema, a national system of music education designed as a model for social improvement. Today, some 265,000 Venezuelan children and young people are involved in choirs and orchestras around the country, and El Sistema is exporting some of the world’s finest musicians.

El Sistema takes us from the barrios of Caracas and Maracay to the concert hall of the Lucerne Festival, following the lives of children who have found the way to a better future through the model of the symphony orchestra.

This lyrical and moving documentary shows us young children and their families in their home environments. They speak of their everyday hopes and fears: of gang warfare and gunfire, drugs and violence, and the dream of a better life through education and music. “To my mind, our social problems all stem from a sense of exclusion”, says Abreu. “If you look at the world, you see that exclusion in some form or other is to blame for the explosion of social problems everywhere. So we have to fight to bring as many people as we can, everyone, if possible, into our wonderful world: the world of music, the world of the orchestra, of singing, of art.”

El Sistema shows how children as young as two are taken from the dangers of life on the street and taught the rudiments of music. In one of hundreds of “núcleos” created within the communities themselves they are provided with instruments, music lessons, social support and the chance to work as part of an ensemble. Six days a week, four hours a day, children come together and make music in a safe and supportive environment.

Given acceptance, encouragement and inspiration, they quickly develop into capable musicians. For some, that means better tools for future study in other fields. Others go on to play in the world’s top orchestras. Gustavo Dudamel, now in demand on the world’s best stages, conducts the flagship Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra in Caracas and talks of his own experience as a child growing up with El Sistema. His is just one of many stories of transformation and hope.

Quirky, exuberant, honest and heart-warming, El Sistema is both an unlikely journey and an exceptional success story. Paul Smaczny and Maria Stodtmeier have created a joyful portrait of the power of music as a positive tool for social change.

The film earned several awards like the “Grand Prix” of the Golden Prague Festival, the “Special Jury Prize” in the category “Feature Length Film Awards” and the “Feature Film Competition Award” in the category “The Ecofilms Team Awards” of the Rodos Ecofilms Festival.

Album details…
Catalogue No.: Naxos 8.559304

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This month the Nashville Symphony releases its latest recording on Naxos American Classics, featuring two works by American composer Michael Daugherty. Scheduled for release on September 29, the recording is the Symphony’s first with new Music Director Giancarlo Guerrero.

According to the League of American Orchestras, Daugherty is one of this country’s 10 most performed living composers. His Metropolis Symphony pays tribute to the American comic book hero Superman, with movements devoted to characters such as Lex Luthor and Lois Lane. The London Times has called the work a “Symphonie Fantastique for our times.” Featured performers include Nashville Symphony musicians Mary Kathryn Van Osdale (violin), Erik Gratton (flute) and Ann Richards (flute/piccolo).

The recording also includes the piano concerto Deus ex Machina, which was co-commissioned by the Nashville Symphony and four other American orchestras. Inspired by trains of the past and the future, the piece features award-winning soloist Terrence Wilson.

“I’m a big fan of Michael Daugherty’s music,” Guerrero said. “It’s amazingly rich with color, rhythm and vivid orchestral effects, and I think this recording will appeal to a wide range of listeners.”

“In these pieces, I seek to express the energies, ambiguities, paradoxes and wit of American popular culture,” Daugherty added. “The Nashville Symphony has done a truly remarkable job of bringing this music to life.”

Over the past decade, the Nashville Symphony has become one of the most active recording orchestras in the country. Recorded at Schermerhorn Symphony Center in Nashville, this latest release is the orchestra’s 17th for Naxos. Past releases include Joan Tower’s Made in America, which received 3 GRAMMY® Awards in 2008.

In 2005, composers John Matthias and Nick Ryan received a request for a string orchestral work from the Voices II Festival of Contemporary Music in Plymouth; at the same time, NonClassical Recordings asked if they had material for an album. Cortical Songs began as two songs, on which the composers then elaborated by incorporating results from their experiments on “rhythms and timbres triggered from spiking neuronal models of the human brain.” They noticed that the rhythms created by firing neurons were quite musical and “tend[ed] to repeat themselves over time periods of a few seconds, in what have become known, in scientific literature, as ‘cortical songs.’”

This recording features the String Ensemble of Trinity College of Music, led by Nic Pendlebury. John Matthias performs the violin solo, with interactive programming by Nick Ryan. In addition, the CD features remixes by 12 of the composers’ favorite musicians, including Thom Yorke, Neil Grant and John Fisher, Gabriel Prokofiev, Jem Finer, Marcas Lancaster, David Prior, John Maclean, Simon Tony, Dominic Murcott, Andrew Prior, and Marcus Coates.

The composers’ work with neural patterns was exciting, they explain, because these rhythms are unpredictable but not random. “Neurons,” they note, “are highly connected and trigger each other in a complex and fascinating way.” Matthias and Ryan sought to combine these rhythms with “song-based structures and string arrangements.” Cortical Songs consists of four movements composed for a solo violin and 24-piece string ensemble in which the orchestra is “partially controlled by a tiny computer brain.” Each player follows a written score and flashing LED light, connected to a small computer “brain” consisting of a software network of 24 simulated neurons-one for each member of the orchestra.

“When a neuron in the computer brain fires,” the composers explain, “the LED light to which it is connected flashes once, and the instrumentalist, following that particular light, responds according to a written instruction.” Additionally, they note, the notes played by the orchestra “are fixed in the score, but the times at which they are played are controlled by the flashing of the lights, which in turn are controlled by the firing times of the neurons. These firing times are indeterminate; the piece will never be the same twice.”

“Concerto for Turntables and Orchestra was born out of a passion for two seemingly different strands of music: hip-hop and classical. Throughout the rich history of Western classical music, however, there has always been a cross-pollination of sound between art music and folk/dance idioms, be it in the Partitas and Suites of J.S. Bach or Bartok’s in-depth study of folk song. In fact there was not a distinction between art and popular music up until the 19th century. Therefore drawing on the rhythms, colors and energy of hip hop, the 21st century’s most prolific sound, and more specifically its instrument of choice, the turntable, acknowledges and build on this tradition, addition an urban timbre to a structure that has evolved over the last 300 years.”

-Will Dutta, Executive Producer, Chimera Productions

In his Concerto for Turntables and Orchestra, composer Gabriel Prokofiev questions whether the turntable can work as a classical instrument. He observes that the right DJ can weave musical magic with a turntable: “[It] can be used VERY expressively-the DJ’s hand is [in] indirect contact with the vinyl and every movement shapes the sound.” (Unlike other instruments, however, he admits that turntables don’t have any of their own sounds.) Featuring DJ Yoda and the Heritage Orchestra, Prokofiev characterizes this five-movement work as “polystylistic,” incorporating elements from hip-hop and other DJ-oriented styles like “house and grime” into a classical framework. The recording also features 11 remixes.

Prokofiev began composing the piece knowing that certain “phases and grooves … would work well for the DJ.”  In traditional classical concertos, composers showcase virtuosic solo performance; in this work, Prokofiev does the same for a DJ by utilizing the full potential of the turntable. He explores many techniques used by DJs, from the basic- “just playing back a bit of music, then stopping it, interrupting it, reversing it, slow it down, and cutting it up”-to the more advanced, including “scribbling, planning, hydroplaning, the transformer, echoes and the crab.” He also uses two-turntable techniques such as “beat juggling, mixing, and phasing; pitching and melodic playing.” As in a classical concerto, the soloist performs cadenzas in each movement, displaying refined musical skills.

On September 29th, Opus Arte presents Twin Spirits, the story of the passionate romance and subsequent marriage between composer Robert Schumann and piano prodigy Clara Wieck, available on DVD and Blu-Ray disc. This production from the Royal Opera House brings together nine diverse performers of the highest caliber: Sting, an artist who defies simple classification, joins his wife, actress and producer Trudie Styler to read from the letters between Robert and Clara. Their story, narrated by Sir Derek Jacobi, is illustrated and interwoven with music composed by Robert - whose spirit is embodied by pianist Iain Burnside, baritone Simon Keenlyside and violinist Sergej Krylov - and by Clara, who is evoked by pianist Natasha Paremski, soprano Rebecca Evans, and cellist Natalie Clein.

This subtle and moving piece, a fusion of recital and drama, was devised by the stage director and writer John Caird. His credits include Hamlet and Candide at the National Theatre, Les Misérables and Nicholas Nickleby with Trevor Nunn, and Don Carlos for Welsh National Opera.

“A performance like this is a personal journey,” Sting explains. “You’re forced to share very private thoughts and make them public, and that creates a tension. This love story - the relationship and the tragedy - provides a great introduction for people who don’t normally listen to classical music. Hearing the Schumanns’ music at the same time as telling their story is a very intimate, engaging and emotional experience.”

“When we started on this adventure with Twin Spirits,” adds Trudie Styler, “I was profoundly moved by the richness and power of the narrative. The passion of Robert and Clara’s love transcends the ages. It is a wonderful and moving story which I believe remains fascinating and relevant to today’s world.”
Love began to blossom between Robert Schumann (1810-56) and Clara Wieck (1819-90) when she was a teenager and he was the student of her father, Friedrich Wieck, who made every effort to impede the relationship. She was one of the 19th century’s greatest pianists and herself a composer of note. After a legal battle with her father the couple finally married in 1840. In the 1850s their happiness became compromised by Robert’s increasing mental instability, which resulted in a suicide attempt in 1854; he died in an asylum in 1856. Clara, who lived for another 40 years, devoted her considerable energies to propagating her husband’s music, which is at its greatest in his intimate works for piano, voice and chamber ensemble.

“Twin Spirits tells a great human drama, irrespective of the fact that it’s about two great musicians,” says director John Caird. “It makes us think about love, marriage, relationships, pain, illness and how they influence art and life. Robert and Clara’s chamber music was almost like a diary and listening to it you feel you are looking into the pages of something deeply personal.”

Twin Spirits was recorded before a small audience in a studio space at London’s Royal Opera House shortly before Christmas 2007. All the artists involved donated their talent and time so that everyone buying a copy will be supporting the important work of the Royal Opera House Education Program which provides opportunities for some 90,000 people annually to engage with opera, music and dance. These projects reach people of all ages and backgrounds, including the isolated and elderly, the socially deprived, disabled adults and children, young offenders and for these people they have a very significant and positive impact. The Royal Opera House’s work helps them to become enthusiastic and motivated, learn self-respect, discover the potential within themselves and develop a team spirit. For every performance on the world-famous stage, at least twice as many educational activities are taking place and this work is a vital part of the Royal Opera House’s mission.

The original performance of Twin Sprits took place in June 2005, also at the Royal Opera House. Other charity performances took place at Salisbury Cathedral (to benefit the Salisbury Cathedral Girl Choristers), the New Victory Theatre in New York (to benefit Broadway Cares - Equity Fights Aids) and, at the Prince of Wales’ invitation, Windsor Castle (to benefit the Royal Opera House Foundation, and Soil Association). Among other performers who have participated alongside Sting and Trudie are actors Sir Ian McKellen, Charles Dance, and Jonathan Pryce and violinists Vasko Vassilev and Joshua Bell.

Twin Spirits will be released by Opus Arte on DVD (OA 0994 D) and Blu-Ray (OA BD7043 D) in the US on September 29th, 2009. Preview the DVD and access further information about the Twin Spirits project, Robert and Clara Schumann and the Royal Opera House Education Program at www.twin-spirits.com.

Next morning: full dress rehearsal at the Palace goes surprisingly well. The final movement is still challenging. A fast 3/8 flourish that begins the movement still sounds sloppy and the ending isn’t quite as emphatic as it needs to be. I spent the rest of the day wandering the canals and streets, and drinking espresso, which is a silly thing to do to calm one’s nerves. The musical sites of St. Pete’s are so abundant as to be laughable. I had coffee in a building where Tchaikovsky lived and died. I visited the famous Mariinsky Theatre and the statues of Glinka and Rimsky-Korsakov at the Conservatory. Most important to me of anything I might do in this city was to visit 66 Krukov Canal, which happened to be around the corner from Dima’s, and a rite of pilgrimage I had longed to take for years. This was the home of the Stravinsky’s until Igor’s triumphant Paris premieres with the Ballets Russe. The Revolution would keep him away from his birth country for another 55 years. A Firebird plaque hangs on the entrance to the building. I would return to this spot over and over, as well as to the Shamrock Pub, directly adjacent to it. Old habits die hard.

Arriving in the Palace again was a sobering experience. It was certainly the most glorious setting for my music, and I say this knowing I’ve been blessed with performances at Carnegie Hall, Alice Tully, Steinway and a few smart college campuses. We very nearly had a full house and I was surprised to see Anna, a woman I spoke to on the flight over for no more than 10 minutes and to whom I briefly mentioned the concert. She joined us after the day-long wedding of her sister in Pushkin the day before. Charles, Vladimir and the band gave a strong performance of the Aikman piece, with its wonderfully tuneful middle movement. I’m happy to report that the performance of my Cello Concerto – the product of some six months of labor – went off extremely well. Dima played like someone absolutely possessed and Vladimir held the orchestra together nicely, and created a real sense of pacing. The crowd was more silent than any I had ever experienced, especially in my hushed central movement with its cadenza for cello and percussion. Tempos were as I had them indicated, and the applause for the performers was hard-earned. The US embassy and the St. Petersburg Times sent four officials who I never managed to talk to but I was pleased to hear English spoken elsewhere in the crowd a bit. A bunch of us went out to celebrate afterward to a far-too-hip-for-me club and restaurant. I got a little thrill from seeing my name rendered in Cyrillic on the concert posters. We wandered the streets in the only hour of darkness in the city.

Commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra and premiered in 1996, LA Variations highlights the virtuosity and power of this celebrated American ensemble. In an interview with Allan Kozinn for a 2006 New York Times article, Salonen commented on his breakthrough work: “For me, this was the moment when it all came together; when I finally had the harmonic language that produced the sound I want to hear. I felt free.”

Mr. Salonen provided these notes for LA Variations:
“LA Variations is essentially variations on two chords, each consisting of six notes. Together they cover all twelve notes of a chromatic scale. Therefore the basic material of LA Variations has an ambiguous character: sometimes (most of the time, actually) it is modal (hexatonic), sometimes chromatic, when the two hexachords are used together as a twelve-tone structure.

 
“This ambiguity, combining serial and non-serial thinking, is characteristic of all my work since the mid-’80s, but LA Variations tilts the balance drastically towards the non-serial.

 
“This piece, some 19 minutes of music scored for a large orchestra, including a contrabass clarinet and a synthesizer, is very clear in its form and direct in its expression. The two hexachords are introduced in the opening measures of the piece together in the chromatic phenotype. Alto flute, English horn, bass clarinet, and two bassoons, shadowed by three solo violas, play a melody which sounds like a kind of synthetic folk music, but in fact is a horizontal representation of the two hexachords transposed to the same pitch. Some of the variations that follow are based on this melody, others are the deeper, invisible (or inaudible) aspects of the material. There are also elements that never change, like the dactyl rhythm first heard in the timpani and percussion halfway through the piece.”

On July 28, Naxos presents a new compilation of music by a composer whose career spans eras of history and music: Anonymous. The two-CD recording offers a considerable sampling of her still-growing repertoire. In a mere 48 tracks, Anonymous evokes the many cultures, political turmoil, romantic gestures, and religions he has experienced.

Anonymous was born to the world during the Early Middle Ages. Her compositions were simple, monophonic, and occasionally accompanied by minimal rhythmic accompaniment. Music of this time, and most other periods in history, sheds light on cultural and political happenings of the day. Therefore, in the infancy of his vocation, Anonymous was creating pieces of sacred peacefulness and spiritual love to combat the often unsympathetic world in which he lived.

It was during the High Middle Ages (or around 1150) that Anonymous bore witness to, and became part of, the expansion of music into a polyphonic and much more rhythmically complex art form. It is only natural that sacred music was at the heart of this migration of sound. She was actively involved in the composition of innovative 13th-century liturgical music such as the Mass of Tournai, which some scholars believe was the first mass to be documented as a unified work of polyphonic parts.

The Renaissance era proved to be much less productive for this faceless composer. Instead of passing along their compositions by rote, composers were now able to have their music printed for posterity, including their names, making ascription of authorship a much easier task. Anonymous and her composing brethren of the Renaissance era (Dufay, des Pres, Gabrieli, Palestrina, Byrd) were more focused on secular and complex instrumental music such as madrigals, chansons, and rondeau (set to poetry) than they were in the Middle Ages. It was during this time that Anonymous penned one of his most timeless melodies, Greensleeves. Although once credited to Henry VIII, this haunting tune was rightfully returned to our era-spanning composer’s vast catalog.

On July 28, Medici Arts releases Piotr Anderszewski: Unquiet Traveller (Voyageur intranquille), a film portrait of the iconic Polish pianist by acclaimed French filmmaker and violinist Bruno Monsaingeon (Glenn Gould Hereafter; Nadia Boulanger: Mademoiselle; and David Oistrakh, Artist of the People?). Anderszewski, who will appear on New York’s Mostly Mozart Festival at the end of July and beginning of August, will be present with Mr. Monsaingeon for a special showing of this film at Lincoln Center’s Walter Reade Theater on Saturday, August 1, 2009 at 4:30 PM.

In 1990, Piotr Anderszewski turned heads at the Leeds Competition with his performance of Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations-a work he later recorded and Bruno Monsaingeon filmed. In 2002, this unusual musical thinker won the coveted Gilmore Award. For nearly two decades Piotr Anderszewski has been known for his insightful and skillful performances and recordings of music by J.S. Bach, Szymanowski (he was the winner of the Szymanowski Prize in 1999), Mozart, Beethoven, and Chopin, among others.

In this film, Monsaingeon sought to avoid the typical interview format common to so many documentary portraits. Instead, he found a less conventional method of portraying this complex artist, much as he had done with Glenn Gould in Glenn Gould Hereafter. “This would be a ‘frontier’ film, on the borderline between documentary and fiction,” he remarks. “It would be set against a backdrop of a winter journey across Poland, then to Hungary (the artist’s two home countries), before travelling to Germany, London, Paris and finally to Lisbon, where he has recently settled … Like a modern-day troubadour, Piotr would not travel by airplane or car but in a private railway carriage hired for the purpose, which would be attached to various trains according to an itinerary dictated by places he wished to visit and his concert schedule … Everything that Piotr Anderszewski chose to reveal about himself would be narrated in voice-overs that would punctuate the various scenes we had planned to shoot.”

Of course, it was very important to keep the music center stage, Monsaingeon explained: “We were making a film about a fascinating musician, an enigmatic and multifaceted man; it was inconceivable to consider sacrificing the music for the sake of aesthetic visuals. It was essential that music remained the central theme of this adventure. A skillful combination of all these ingredients would provide the film’s emotional tenor. The musical repertoire selected for the rehearsals and concerts held during this journey consists of essential and often unusual pages by Bach, Mozart, Chopin, Beethoven, Brahms, Schumann, and Szymanowski.”

Peter Ibbetson’s triumphant Metropolitan Opera premiere in 1931 featured an all-star cast that included American baritone (and movie actor) Lawrence Tibbett as Colonel Ibbetson; Canadian tenor-and later the Metropolitan Opera’s general manager-Edward Johnson in the title role; and Spanish soprano Lucrezia Bori as Duchess of Towers. Peter Ibbetson received 22 performances over four seasons from 1931 to 1936, a record for an American opera it held until Porgy and Bess entered the Metropolitan Opera’s repertory in 1985. Peter Ibbetson was such a commercial success in its day that Johnson, after becoming the Metropolitan Opera’s General Manager in May of 1935, commented that the money it generated during the Great Depression helped keep the company afloat.

The story, based on the novel by George Du Maurier, is of two star-crossed lovers who escape together to a mystical “dream world.” Immensely popular in the 1930s, the story inspired several a Broadway play starring John Barrymore and a Hollywood film starring Gary Cooper, in addition to Taylor’s successful opera.

Composer Deems Taylor was one of America’s most prominent musical figures in the 1920s-30s, and served as the president of ASCAP for six years; in 1967, ASCAP established the Deems Taylor award, which honors books, articles, broadcasts, and websites on the subject of music, in his memory. Taylor still is known to millions as the host of the original Disney Fantasia movie.

This is the first-ever commercial release for Peter Ibbetson, recorded in Benaroya Hall in 1999. Additional cast members on this disc include bass Charles Robert Austin, sopranos Terri Richter and Erin Clark, mezzo-sopranos Lori Summers, Emily Lunde, and Carolyn Gronlund, tenor Paul Gudas, baritone Barry Johnson, and bass Eugene Buchholz.

“I felt from this voice-sunshine,” said soprano Grace Bumbry of the great contralto Marian Anderson; she was “the most unpolitical person I know of,” commented the late mezzo-soprano Betty Allen. But it was Marian Anderson who paved the way for Leontyne Price to sing at the 1982 Daughter of the American Revolution (DAR) convention, a performance which she dedicated to Ms. Anderson. Yet despite the progress made in acceptance of opera singers of color since Anderson, Shirley Verrett presciently noted in 1999 “We’re going backward.”

Aida’s Brothers & Sisters: Black Voices in Concert and Opera tells the story of classic black singing against the background of black emancipation in politics and society. This story stretches from the first successes of singers such as contralto Marian Anderson and bass Paul Robeson- who all his life regarded his voice as an instrument of liberation- to the young singing pupils of the Harlem School of Arts, an institution which was founded by black soprano Dorothy Maynor in 1963.

Beginning with Marian Anderson singing “My Country T’is of Thee” on Easter Sunday, April 9, 1939 at the famous Lincoln Memorial performance after Ms. Anderson was denied access to Constitution Hall by the DAR, Aida’s Brothers & Sisters: Black Voices in Concert and Opera traces the struggle of African Americans to gain acceptance on the concert and opera stages of the United States and of the world. Featuring archival footage of legends such as Ms. Anderson, bass Paul Robeson, and soprano Camilla Williams, who in 1946 became the first black singer to appear in a non-black role, the film also includes interviews and musical footage of many great African American singers including Grace Bumbry, Leontyne Price, Betty Allen, Martina Arroyo, Jessye Norman, Reri Grist, George Shirley, Simon Estes, Barbara Hendricks and others; as well commentary by author and historian Roslyn Story, whose book And So I Sang, recounted the rise of black singers.

The film examines many aspects of the black experience in singing from the role of the spiritual, which Leontyne Price called “the black heartbeat” to operas-old and new-which portray the African American experience such as Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess, which Ms. Bumbry deemed an “insult” but pianist-conductor Bobby McFerrin, son of baritone Robert McFerrin, the first African American male to sing at the Metropolitan Opera, thought “should be applauded in trying to understand the black experience”; and Anthony Davis’ 1986 opera X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X, the first opera really about the African American experience and tradition. The film also explores the different struggles faced by black male singers in gaining acceptance on the opera stages and the role of “race” in casting.

Run! The sky is falling!

Or at least, that’s what most of the media would tell you when it comes to classical music. But there is a classical revolution happening right in our back yard. As the older, traditional ways of performing classical music inspire less and less audience participation and subscription, newbies to the scene are bringing classical music to the masses. And not in conventional ways.

Take for example a great article on WBEZ today. Lynette Kalsnes interviewed a group called Classical Revolution and asked them all sorts of questions about playing chamber music in bars and pubs in Chicago. One of my favorite quotes is from Mike Muszynsk, the group’s bassoon player,

“I remember the first time I played, there was some guys watching the Hawks game and they were getting pretty hammered. At the end of every movement that we played, they were the loudest people in the bar, showing their praise for us.”

Classical Revolution isn’t the only classical group bringing their music to the masses. Classical music is also beginning to dominate the New York Club scene. Take for example, Le Poisson Rouge. One of our Naxos artists, Ge Gan-Ru, is actually performing there on July 8, 2009 at 9:00pm. In fact, one of our other artists, Philippe Quint, had an wildly successful CD Release party at Le Poisson Rouge last month, primarily because of all his fans! There are tons of these small, intensely loyal classical music communities bubbling up in major metropolitan areas in the US as well as in the UK. In fact, one of my favorite classical newsletters comes from the UK: DilettanteMusic.

So my Top 5 Reasons for digging the classical revolution taking place in the US are:

1. Combining 2 of my favorite past times: Drinking adult beverages & listening to great music
2. Hanging out with people who also dig classical music in a relaxed environment
3. Clapping, whistling and generally carrying on when a musician does something extraordinary
4. Watching friends faces as it dawns on them that classical music is cool
5. Meeting the musicians afterward and congratulating them on great performances!

Have you gone to any of these kinds of performances before? What was your impression? Would you go again? Who’s been your favorite performer to watch?

I wish I could’ve been at Le Poisson Rouge for Ute Lemper, or for either one of Peter Breiner’s CD release parties. One of my all time favs was the New Amsterdam/Non-Classical Records concert. Talk about wild! That party featured artists such as The Elysian Quartet, John Matthias & Nick Ryan, NOW Ensemble, DJ Gabriel Prokofiev and Sam Z. Solomon. Most of these guys also played at SXSW, which I got to see when I was there back in March. It rocked.

I think opening up classical music to the masses and making it accessible can almost be synonymous with making the Bible available in languages other than Latin. Exposing my friends and family to all the great classical musicians and composers is a great first step, but I’m hoping to turn them into lifelong devotees! Well, at least expand their horizons…for now. .

On June 30, Opus Arte releases Marco Polo, Tan Dun’s first full-length opera, for which the composer won the coveted Grawemeyer Award in 1998.

Marco Polo premiered at the Munich Biennale in 1996, with subsequent performances at the Holland Festival, the Hong Kong Arts Festival, New York City Opera, and Settembre Musica in Turin. When questioned about his choice of subject, Tan Dun replied: “It’s a ripe subject for the times and global culture … My personal experience as a traveler from East to West is similar to Polo’s from West to East. I thought the best thing was to draw on my own experience, on my feelings about culture and about the idea of journey. Marco Polo is a symbol of journey, of travel from past to the future, from external space to internal space, from one medium to another. All crossover journeys excite me, and Polo is a great excuse to explore them.”

Tan Dun and librettist Paul Griffiths designed their opera in many layers and have divided the figure of the Traveler into two parts, Marco and Polo; Marco represents the external figure of the Venetian explorer, whereas Polo is his inner being, his memory. They are united only at the end of their journey, when they fuse together into one person. The opera comprises three parallel journeys: one physical, one spiritual, one musical.

The first new release, Moods, features five piano works by four diverse American women composers performed by Max Lifchitz. The recording takes its title from Marilyn J. Ziffrin’s piano suite of the same name, composed in 2005, and also includes her Sonata for Piano (2006). Also featured is Arecibo Sonata by Elizabeth Bell, deemed “one of our country’s leading composers” by American Record Guide. Ms. Bell composed the sonata in 1968 and revised it in 2005; Mr. Lifchitz premiered it in 2006 and performs it here in honor of Ms. Bell on the occasion of her 80^th birthday. Next, Mr. Lifchitz performs Rami Levin’s short work, Passages (2002), on which the composer remarks: “The music describes the joy of bringing a new life into being, and the mixed emotions of a parent watching an offspring gain independence and go off into the world.” The release concludes with four short melodic works by Rain Worthington: Hourglass, Tangents, Dark Dreams, and Always Almost (1991-2001).

Regarding the highly varied repertoire on this disc, Mr. Lifchitz comments, “The featured works approach the keyboard in diverse ways. Ziffrin combines stylish rhythms and harmonies with easy-to-understand formal structures. Bell’s striking harmonic choices and undulating melodic lines create arresting tension and drama. Levin’s work is an impressive tour-de-force for both performer and listener. Worthington’s musical language—simple and direct—rewards the listener with a seemingly endless chain of surprising melodic discoveries.”

The second release from North/South Recordings features a collection of orchestral works by composer Harold Schiffman (b 1928). In addition to performances in the United States, ensembles have presented Mr. Schiffman’s music in Europe, Latin America, and Asia. Mr. Schiffman studied composition at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the University of California at Berkeley, and Florida State University. His principal composition teacher was Roger Sessions, and he later found an influential mentor in Ernst von Dohnányi. Appointed to the faculty of Florida State University College of Music in 1959, Mr. Schiffman served in this capacity until 1983 and was designated Professor Emeritus two years later. He also was founding director of Florida State University’s Festival of New Music in 1981.

This release features two of Mr. Schiffman’s most recent compositions: Symphony No. 2: “Music for Győr” (2008), inspired by the composer’s decade-long love affair with the Hungarian city and its orchestra, and Blood Mountain Suite (2008), the transcription of an earlier song cycle for soprano and piano or orchestra. The disc also includes three earlier orchestral works: Ninerella Variata (Varied Lullaby) (1956); Variations on Branchwater for Guitar and Orchestra (1987), whose namesake is a Schiffman tune inspired by the Southern custom of drinking Bourbon whiskey with water; and Overture to a Comedy (1983), from a planned comic opera project that the composer never completed. Variations on Branchwater features Hungarian guitarist Katalin Koltai. The recording includes comprehensive program notes by the composer himself.

Pianist, composer, conductor, and North/South founder Max Lifchitz was awarded first prize in the 1976 International Gaudeamus Competition for Performers of Twentieth Century Music, held in Holland. The San Francisco Chronicle described him as “a young composer of brilliant imagination and a stunning, ultra-sensitive pianist.” A graduate of The Juilliard School and Harvard University, Mr. Lifchitz has appeared in concerts and recitals throughout the U.S., Latin America, and Europe. In 1994, New York Women Composers, Inc. bestowed upon him its Distinguished Service Award in recognition of his activities on behalf of concert music written by women.

Nino Rota completed four symphonies in his lifetime. Symphonies Nos. 1 and 2 are found on a recording to be released by Chandos on June 30. Performed by Marzio Conti and Orchestra Filarmonica ‘900 del Teatro Regio di Torino, Rota composed his first two symphonies simultaneously in the latter part of the 1930s. At this point in his career, Rota’s style had officially evolved into one that was unmistakably melodic. Rota purposely avoided any sort of musical extremism or experimentation in these two symphonies only hinting vaguely toward well-balanced modernism. The composer’s musical language remains neoclassical throughout while also staying true to his own ability to create a landscape in sound.

Also in June, Concerto presents three rarely-recorded Rota masterpieces performed by director Enrico Bronzi and I Musici di Parmi. The recording includes Rota’s Concerto per violoncello with Enrico Bronzi as soloist and conductor and Concerto per Archi (presented here in the revised version from 1977). The Trio con clarinetto of 1973, features Alessandro Carbonare (clarinet) Alberto Miodini (piano) and Enrico Bronzi (who form the Trio di Parma). 

Founded in 2002, the Chamber Orchestra, I Musici di Parmi, brings together musicians who collaborate with the most important orchestral institutions both in Italy and abroad. Created with the intent of exploring a musical world directed at rediscovering unpublished musical scores and popularizing the work of important musicians, I Musici di Parmi has a wide-ranging repertory that runs from Baroque to Classicism, right up to the best of 19th century chamber music. Working with the I Musici di Parmi both as a soloist and as director, Maestro Enrico Bronzi’s collaboration has become stable over the years. Thanks to the originality of their programs and the musical and artistic quality of their performances, the orchestra has established itself in the Italian musical world, receiving the unanimous praise from critics and public alike.

On June 30, 2009, Naxos releases a new performance of Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s 1945 Violin Concerto performed by Grammy®-nominated violinist Philippe Quint.

Nominated for two Grammy® Awards for his 2001 recording of the William Schuman Violin Concerto (Naxos 8559083), violinist Philippe Quint is widely recognized as a passionate advocate of contemporary American violin repertoire. Significant performances and recordings have included the 2004 world premiere of Lera Auerbach’s Violin Concerto No. 1, written for and dedicated to him - performed with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at Walt Disney Concert Hall. In 2007 and 2008, Naxos released recordings by Mr. Quint and pianist William Wolfram, including the complete works of Miklós Rózsa for violin and piano (Naxos 8570190, 2007); and a world premiere recording of John Corigliano’s Red Violin Caprices (Naxos 8559364, 2008), the latter earning Gramophone’s 2008 “Editor’s Choice” distinction.

Philippe Quint’s commitment to perform and record contemporary American works is demonstrated again with this latest Naxos release of Korngold’s Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 35. He believes, “In two decades, this will be as important as the Mendelssohn or the Tchaikovsky violin concertos.” However, he is not the first violinist to possess such a high opinion of the work. Despite its initial panning by critics for lack of originality and superficial romanticism, the concerto was premiered and championed by none other than Jascha Heifetz, who gave the work its first performance in 1947 with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and frequently performed it thereafter throughout his later career.

Today, the rising success of the violin concerto has undeservedly overshadowed much of Korngold’s other music for films and the concert hall. On the new release, Maestro Carlos Miguel Prieto and the Orquestra Sinfónica de Mineria revisit the expressive, humorous, and spirited qualities of the composer’s style in two additional works: the Schauspiel Overture, Op. 4, composed in 1911 at the age of fourteen, and his 1918 concert piece, the Much Ado About Nothing Suite, Op. 11.

Carlos Miguel Prieto is rising as one of the most dynamic young conductors of his generation, and holds appointments as music director of the Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional de Mexico, the Orquesta Sinfónica de Mineria, the Louisiana Philharmonic, and Huntsville Symphony, in addition to enjoying annual recording opportunities and guest conducting engagements with various orchestras around the world.

Alberto Ginastera’s compositional output included four operas and eleven film scores, as well as numerous orchestral works, concerti, choral and solo vocal pieces, chamber and instrumental works, and incidental music for around a half-dozen dramas. The three string quartets, which date from 1948 to 1973, illustrate three distinct compositional phases in Ginastera’s life.

Premiered in 1949 by the Mozart Quartet in Buenos Aires, String Quartet No. 1, Op. 20 (1948) represents a style to which the composer referred as “subjective nationalism,” and is found in his works dating from 1947-1957. With “subjective nationalism” the composer shed his previous concept of “objective nationalism,” which relied on more traditional ethnic elements, and replaced it, as he noted, with “the creation of an imagined folklore.” In this first quartet, Ginastera incorporates rhythmic and thematic elements from Argentina’s traditional folk-music but uses a varied and dissonant vocabulary.

Completed in 1958 (rev. 1968), String Quartet No. 2, Op. 26 was a commission by the Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Foundation and received its premiere in Washington, D.C. in 1958 by the Juilliard String Quartet. Neo-expressionist in style and breaking with the traditional four-movement structure, the five-movement String Quartet No. 2 features microtones, indeterminacy, and polytonality. The opening of the first movement is based on a twelve-tone row, which Ginastera approaches freely.

Like its predecessor, String Quartet No. 3, Op. 40 (1973) received its premiere by the Juilliard String Quartet in 1974 with soprano Benita Valente as soloist. In this quartet, Ginastera builds upon an idea from Schoenberg’s String Quartet No. 2, Op. 10, which features a soprano voice in two of the movements (in Schoenberg’s work, movements 3 and 4). Here Ginastera has set four poems for voice, leaving only the second movement for the instruments alone. The first movement, Contemplativo, is a setting of Juan Ramón Jiménez’s poem La Música, which celebrates love and the music written about it. The second movement, Fantastico, allows the strings their nocturnal moment. The third movement, Amoroso, is based on Canción de Belisa, a song from Federico Garcia Lorca’s play The Love of Don Perlimplíin for Belisa in Their Garden. The fourth movement, set to Rafael Alberti’s Morir al sol (Death in the Sun), is marked Drammatico, and opens with the lyrics “The soldier has fallen / The woods weep each morning for him.” In this movement, the mood intensifies to the point that the singer is almost shouting with grief. Rounding out the quartet is the fifth movement, marked Di nuovo comtemplativo, for which Ginastera selected another poem by Juan Ramón Jiménez, Oscaso (Twilight; sunset).

Internationally acclaimed American soprano Lucy Shelton is the only artist ever to have won two Walter W. Naumburg Awards. She has worked closely with some of today’s most important composers, including Elliott Carter, Pierre Boulez, György Kurtág, Kaija Saariaho and Oliver Knussen, many of whom have written expressly for her. She has given premieres of more than 100 works, and her discography includes over 50 recordings. Though contemporary music is her specialty, Ms. Shelton is a distinguished performer of music spanning four centuries. A quintessential collaborative artist, she has appeared with nearly all of the major orchestras in the United States and Europe and is a frequent guest-with her vast repertoire of vocal chamber music-at festivals such as Tanglewood, Ojai, Santa Fe, Aspen, Salzburg, Kuhmo, Aldeburgh, and the BBC Proms. Lucy Shelton’s primary mentor was the legendary American mezzo-soprano Jan de Gaetani.

Since its inception in 1999, the United States-based Ensō String Quartet has won acclaim for their vibrant and passionate performances in major concert halls throughout North America, as well as in Europe, Central America, Australia, and New Zealand. In addition to audience appreciation and critical acclaim, the quartet has earned its place in the chamber music world with top prizes in the Banff International String Quartet and Concert Artists Guild International competitions. The members of the Ensō String Quartet also are sought after as teachers and chamber music coaches; the quartet has served as faculty for the Boston University Tanglewood Institute and as Lecturers in Music at the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University. The instruments used in this recording are a matched set made in 2006 by London-based luthier Nigel Harris, generously on loan to the quartet by Christopher Marshall. This is the Ensō String Quartet’s second recording for Naxos, following its release of the string quartets of Ignaz Pleyel (8.557496 & 8.557497). To learn more, please visit www.ensoquartet.com.

In 1983, Ge began work on his String Quartet No. 1 - Fu (Prose-Poem), but before he could complete it, he relocated to New York City, recruited by Chou Wen-chung at Columbia University. While supporting himself as a restaurant deliveryman, Ge managed to complete the piece, and the Kronos Quartet-celebrated for its commitment to new music-soon made it part of their repertoire. Fu and Yi Feng are both milestones in Ge’s canon, as they represent the development of his individual style: “They are the first of their kind in China, exploring individualism and the essence of Chinese music characteristics while avoiding sentimental melodies then prevalent in China … Fu in Chinese refers to descriptive prose interspersed with verse. In this piece, I tried to express some of the most basic aesthetic feelings typical of Chinese classical poetry and calligraphy, such as subtlety, free form, and masterly strokes.”

The interval of the minor second figures prominently in Fu and generates much of its musical content. Unorthodox means of tone production dominate this work (though instruments are conventionally tuned), including snap pizzicato, harmonics, glissandi, tremolos, and various combinations of these techniques. Moreover, throughout the work, unmeasured, rhythmic passages alternate with more regularly-patterned music.

Some of the same sounds from Fu are prominent in the introductory measures of Angel Suite - String Quartet No. 4 (1998). And, interestingly, the minor second also figures significantly in its second, third and fourth movements. The composer writes: “Of all my works, this piece is the closest to the Western classical music tradition, and it offers a contrast to my other music … The title comes from my interest in Christianity … In this work, I try to express my curiosity in, and observation of, various aspects of Christianity. The titles of the movements (Cherub, Gnomes, Prayer, and Angel’s March) refer to the subjects that I wanted to represent musically. For instance, in the first movement, the harmonic glissando represents a cherub; the second movement focuses on dance rhythm … In the prayer movement, I use contrasting consonant and dissonant chords to draw out feelings of purity and sincerity in praying. In the middle section, I also use the beginning few notes from Schubert’s Ave Maria. For the last movement I chose to write a march, as I always imagine an angel as young and vibrant.”

Fall of Baghdad - String Quartet No. 5 is at once a tribute to George Crumb’s Black Angels for electric string quartet (1970) and an expression of the composer’s own feelings about the war in Iraq. Like Crumb’s work before it, the music comprises three long sections divided into thirteen shorter ones. “Hair-raising squeals” produced by “applying pressure to the strings behind the bridge to create a scraping sound of indefinite pitch” open the work. In this quartet, Ge uses extended techniques neither as cultural relics, as in Fu, nor as suggestions of ethereal spirits, as in Angel Suite, Instead, he uses his unique musical language to symbolize the devastation and despair associated with war. (For contrast and relief, the middle section, “Music from Heaven,” incorporates light percussion; the “Heaven” to which this movement refers, incidentally, is a different paradise than the one Ge depicts in Angel Suite.) Ge employs microtonal inflections to suggest Middle Eastern music (which shares some of its idioms with the music of his native country) and also makes use of (as he explains): “glissandi and distorted sound to create the ‘hellish’ effects; playing col legno (striking the strings with the [wooden part of the] bow) both in front of and behind the bridge for the Caliph’s drum and using extreme high notes on low strings for ‘moaning’ sounds.”

ModernWorks
Called “a dynamic new music ensemble” (The New York Times), ModernWorks was formed in 1997 by cellist and concert producer Madeleine Shapiro. Though its core is a string quartet, the ensemble also performs repertoire in numerous other combinations: string duos and trios, as well as works with accordion, percussion, voice, and multiple cellos. ModernWorks gives an annual New York concert series and has presented over 30 New York or United States premieres by both young, emerging composers and an international roster of established composers. Active in the commissioning of new works, ModernWorks is proud to have been the recipient of two commissioning grants from Meet the Composer USA to commission new works by American composers. The ensemble has appeared in such diverse New York venues as The Knitting Factory and the Museum of Arts & Design, has held a residency at New York University, and has been a regular on the prestigious Sonic Boom Festival. In addition to its NY series, ModernWorks tours both nationally and internationally. (www.ModernWorks.com).

Cedille Records’ titles are produced through its parent organization, the non-profit Chicago Classical Recording Foundation, founded in 1989 by James Ginsburg (son of US Supreme court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg). Mr. Ginsburg’s vision was to produce and promote recordings by Chicago musicians, performing important repertoire, overlooked by the major labels. With several prestigious awards and numerous award nominations to its credit, Cedille’s roster of artists includes violinists Rachel Barton Pine and Jennifer Koh; cellist Wendy Warner; mezzo-soprano Jennifer Larmore; conductor Carlos Kalmar; the Chicago Symphony Orchestra; the Chicago Baroque Ensemble; the Vermeer Quartet; contemporary music ensemble, eighth blackbird; and the choral group, the William Ferris Chorale, among many others. Celebrating its partnership with Naxos, Cedille proudly announces the release of three diverse new discs in May 2009.

Under the direction of conductor and music director Paul French, the William Ferris Chorale leads the May releases with an album of World Premiere recordings of nine sacred works by diverse contemporary American composers. The disc, entitled American Choral Premieres, introduces the first recordings of settings of Biblical, liturgical, and poetic texts by Alan Hovhaness, Egon Cohen, Paul Nicholson, Paul French, Easley Blackwood, Robert Kreutz, William Ferris, William C. White, and Robert Rochberg. 

The William Ferris Chorale was founded in 1971 by its namesake, late composer William Ferris (1937-2000) and tenor John Vorrasi. Under the direction of Maestro Ferris, the Chorale was frequently invited to international festivals and presented over 160 world, American, and Chicago premieres of new repertoire. Since 2005, the chorale has been directed by composer and conductor Paul French, whom had a close collegial relationship with the founder as his mentor, and whose continued excellence with the ensemble underscores continuity of purpose and style. As an important voice in contemporary American music, Mr. French has written more than 200 instrumental and choral works, psalm settings, and acclamations in a variety of media including works for choir, voice, organ, brass, and orchestra.

The second new recording from Cedille’s trio of May releases is a significant treatise on music from the early and mid-20th century Jewish diaspora, Jewish Cabaret in Exile by the New Budapest Orpheum. Under the direction of artistic director Phillip V. Bohlman, the ensemble has recorded a collection of songs composed from exile poetry by collaborators Hanns Eisler and Kurt Tucholsky, solo compositions by Eisler, and Viktor Ullmann’s 1944 set of Three Yiddish Songs (Březulinka), op. 53. The group also includes cabaret songs set to texts that reflect a wide spectrum on the human condition of exile and the meaning of survival, written by Edmund Nick and Erich Kästner, and Georg Kreisler. Finally, the disc captures the essence of some of the finest songs lifted from the scores of Yiddish and postwar stage and screen of the period, by Moses Milner, Mordechai Gebirtig, Abraham Ellstein, and Friedrich Holländer.

The New Budapest Orpheum Society is an Ensemble-in-Residence at the University of Chicago and draws upon a wide range of repertories, all poignantly revealing the stories, beliefs, and feelings behind the music from the great tradition of Jewish cabaret.

 Dating from 1978 and 1985, Romantic Music for Piano Four Hands is a May 2009 compilation reissue of two well-received recordings by the Buccheri/Boldrey Piano Duet. The duo made their debut at North Park University in Chicago during the early 1970s, when both members, Elizabeth Buccheri and Richard Boldrey were faculty members. Their residency resulted in continuous sold-out concerts at North Park and launched the team into wider performance, as they appeared regularly on “Live from WFMT” broadcasts and Dame Myra Hess Memorial Concerts in downtown Chicago. From 1978, the duo recorded over half of the works reissued on this disc (the first Onslow Sonata, and works by Balakirev, Liszt, and Wagner). A second set of masters were captured in 1985 (Onslow Sonata No. 2, and works by Reger and Grieg). About the first original LP of Romantic Music for Two Pianos, Fan fare magazine wrote, “This record is a winner…. Boldrey and Buccheri don’t just play the notes. They enjoy the music, and convey that enjoyment tangibly….”

Missa Latin ‘Pro Pace’ is suffused with Mr. Sierra’s experience of growing up a Catholic in Puerto Rico. He notes: “I still recall vividly hearing the Mass in Latin in my hometown when I was a child. These memories created a strong impression-one that has only deepened through the years: a sense of mystery combined with power and compassion in hearing Gregorian chant intoned by the priest in a ritual involving this ‘dead’ language.” He explains that the work’s title “has dual meaning. On the one hand it refers to the traditional Latin text, while on the other hand the work is infused with a ‘Latino’ character: full of Caribbean gestures that allude to my own Hispanic heritage, and which are present in so many of my works. These sounds can be heard particularly in the Laudamus te of the Gloria and the Pleni sunt caeli of the Sanctus.”

Serebrier, who met Khachaturian when he was working with Leopold Stokowski, explains:

“I had the pleasure and privilege of having lunch with Khachaturian in New York, with Leopold Stokowski, when Stokowski invited him to conduct a concert of his music with the American Symphony Orchestra at Carnegie Hall. He had a wonderful sense of humor, and obvious charm and modesty. He stayed on after one of his rehearsals to watch me rehearse the orchestra for one of my own concerts, and sat in the hall next to Stokowski.”

Of this particular repertoire, the conductor remarks: “While the Violin Concerto is a staple of the repertoire, the Concerto-Rhapsody is very rarely performed, and has enormous difficulties for the soloist. In some ways, it’s more interesting and imaginative than the concerto, certainly more original.”

This “audacious plan” (New York Times) has brought Bertolozzi sustained international attention. As part of the 400th anniversary celebration of Hendryk Hudson’s voyage up the river that now bears his name, Bridge Music is available free to the public, beginning in June 2009, through Listening Stations on the towers of the Mid-Hudson Bridge and FM transmitters in waterfront parks along the Hudson River.

International interest has brought this project far beyond the borders of the Hudson Valley. In addition to feature stories in the Associated Press (AP) and NY Times, the project has been reported around the world in places like China, Sweden, Italy, Argentina, England, the Mid-East, Africa and Australia.

The bridge’s 1920s designer, Ralph Modjeski, was a highly skilled pianist and a classmate of Paderewski. He ultimately chose engineering as his profession, and became one of the 20th century’s greatest bridge designers. “Both as a pioneering engineer and as a musician who loved the music of his own time, I think he would be intrigued to experience this boundary-shattering synthesis involving his beloved bridge and the music of our own time” Bertolozzi writes in the liner notes to this album.

On May 26, Naxos releases a recording by pianist Xiayin Wang-her first for the label-featuring works by Alexander Scriabin. For this recording, the artist has selected a program of compositions spanning the composer’s early, middle, and late periods, including two of his earliest surviving compositions: two waltzes he wrote at age 14-Valse in D flat major, op. posth.; and Valse in F minor, Op. 1. From the later period, Ms. Wang has selected Deux Danses, Op. 73, one of the composer’s final piano works (the only other piano work from this period was Five Preludes, Op. 74) and the celebrated Vers la Flamme, Op. 72.

Ms. Wang, who has graced the stages of Carnegie, Weill and Zankel halls, performs a recital at New York’s Alice Tully Hall on Monday, May 18 at 8 PM. Her program, which includes works by Haydn, Chopin, Ravel, Liszt, and Scriabin, also features world premieres of music by American composers Richard Danielpour (The Enchanted Garden, Preludes, Book II), and Sean Hickey (Cursive).

Ms. Wang began piano studies at the age of five in her native China. She came to New York in 1997 and was awarded the 2000 “Certificate of Achievement” by the Associated Music Teacher League of New York, winning an opportunity to perform at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Hall. She also pursued studies at the Manhattan School of Music and won the school’s Eisenberg Concerto Competition in 2002, as well as the Roy M. Rubinstein Award. Xiayin Wang holds Bachelor’s, Master’s and Professional Studies degrees from the Manhattan School of Music.

For more information, please visit Xiayin Wang’s website: www.xiayinwangpiano.com.

Iholba’, for flute, orchestra, and chorus, was originally commissioned by the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and the National Symphony Orchestra. Here, flutist Thomas Robertello and the San Francisco Symphony Chorus join the San Francisco Symphony to perform this full-scale symphonic and choral work. Iholba’ sets the text of a poem written by the composer in the native Chickasaw language and is based on a traditional Chickasaw “Garfish Dance Song.” Its two movements are Halbina’ (The Gift) and Iholba’ (The Vision).

Teatro Real’s production of Handel’s vivid tragedy Tamerlano stars a Lear-like Plácido Domingo as the Turkish sultan Bajazet, defeated and taken prisoner by Tamerlano, the Tartar emperor. Displaying the uniquely heroic quality of his voice, Domingo heads a superb cast, including Sara Mingardo, Monica Bacelli, and Ingela Bohlin-all magnificently responsive to Paul McCreesh’s authentic and luminous interpretation. The theatrical staging by Graham Vick provides a splendid setting for the characters and for designer Richard Hudson’s extravagant Baroque-Islamic costumes, emphasizing the brilliance of one of Handel’s finest dramatic achievements.

Baroque opera is a departure from Domingo’s usual repertoire. In a 2008 interview for NPR, he described the role of Bajazet as “ideal for my voice.” And, like many of Domingo’s signature roles, including Verdi’s Otello, the opera “has a great death scene.” He added: “In real life, I like to enjoy. But on stage … I am a masochist! The more I suffer, the better I can deliver on my music, and feelings.”

After the premiere of Part One, West German Radio commissioned Penderecki to compose Part Two, Resurrection, which premiered on May 28, 1971 in Munster, paired with a performance of Entombment. Since then, ensembles have generally (though not exclusively) performed the two parts together. The first Polish performance of the complete Utrenja duly took place in Kraków on September 16, 1971.

Enthusiastically received by audiences, Utrenja stands beside the composer’s Polish Requiem (8557386-87) and St Luke Passion (8557149) among the masterpieces of modern Polish music.

Breiner notes that the project is the first time that selected material from Janáček’s operas appears in purely instrumental form. Regarding the first set of suites featuring music from Jenůfa and The Excursions of Mr. Brouček, previously released by Naxos in February 2009, Breiner remarked: “These are not your regular suites, which would only include the orchestral music from the operas (overture, interludes, preludes, postludes, and intermezzos) … These suites have plenty of material that was originally vocal (solos, duets, choruses) and was ‘converted’ into instrumental music.” Breiner’s challenge was to choose the highest quality excerpts and themes that were most representative from each opera, cautiously editing and revising them to ultimately create fresh orchestral suites that would appropriately reflect the composer’s distinctive style and colorful aesthetic.

Badiou goes on to observe, “the organization of Frauenliebe und-leben is noticeably different, in that the work’s cyclic character was already imposed on it by the poetic text [by Chamisso]…the verse reflects the aesthetic of the Biedermeier period in evoking the successive stages in a woman’s life: burgeoning first love, amorous ecstasy, engagement, marriage, motherhood, and conjugal fidelity that continues after the husband’s death.”

In 2000, at the age of 24, contralto Marie-Nicole Lemieux became the first Canadian to win First Prize as well as the Special Prize for Lieder at the Queen Elisabeth International Music Competition of Belgium. Winning this prestigious award opened the door to an immediate international career, allowing her to perform in recital and in concert with many great orchestras around the world. She has appeared on many naïve recordings including, most recently, Vivaldi’s La fida ninfa, the latest opera release in the label’s landmark Vivaldi Edition. L’Heure Exquise, her recital of French songs by Hahn, Chausson and Debussy, received the highest rating from ClassicsToday - 10/10 for Artistic Quality/Sound Quality:

“Times are great for fans of mezzos and contraltos, especially ones who perform song recitals as well as opera and oratorio roles. And among today’s several young stars, Quebec-born Marie-Nicole Lemieux has the versatility, technique, artistic instincts, and of course, the voice to ensure a long and illustrious career… This is a first-rate recital by a truly extraordinary singer. Accompanist Daniel Blumenthal is a perfect partner, as you never notice a note or dynamic or aspect of phrasing out of sync with Lemieux. Solo singing rarely if ever gets better than this, and the quality of the recording matches the high standard of the performances.”

Lemieux also sang sacred vocal music by Vivaldi in a release last season with Ensemble Matheus under the direction of Jean-Christophe Spinosi. The New York Times observed, “In the more austere Stabat Mater, Marie-Nicole Lemieux sings with a gripping sense of drama, her darkly rich, agile contralto illuminating the text with anguish and passion.”

On April 7, Naxos released Seven Last Words from the Cross by renowned Scottish composer James MacMillan. The recording, which features The Dmitri Ensemble and director Graham Ross, also includes two world-premiere recordings of other works by Mr. MacMillan, Nemo te condemnavit (2005) and …here in hiding… (1993), a work originally performed by the Hilliard Ensemble for four solo voices, performed here by The Dmitri Ensemble in a new arrangement for unaccompanied ATTB chorus. Rounding out the recording is the 1994 Christus Vincit, a double-choir anthem written for St Paul’s Cathedral, London, based on text from the 12th century Worcester Acclamations.

Seven Last Words from the Cross (1993), for SSAATTBB chorus and string orchestra, was commissioned by BBC Television and first screened in seven nightly episodes during Holy Week in 1994. The text is based on a compilation from the four canonical gospels of the last seven sentences uttered by Christ.

The composer has written: “The work begins with a cadential figure from the end of my clarinet quintet Tuireadh (Lament), repeated over and over, upon which the rest of the music gradually builds. Again a repeated cadential figure forms the basis of the second movement, this time evoking memories of Bach’s Passion chorales. Christ’s words are kept until the very end of the third movement, when they are sung by two high sopranos, accompanied by high violins. The rest of the piece is a setting of the Good Friday Versicle Ecce Lignum Crucis.”

MacMillan continues: “In the fourth movement, the music rises from low to high before the choir delivers an impassioned lament, above which the strings float and glide. The movement eventually subsides through a downward canonic motion to end as it began. The two words ‘I thirst’ (fifth movement) are set to a static and slow-moving harmonic procedure, which is deliberately bare and desolate. The interpolated text from the Good Friday Reproaches is heard whispered and distantly chanted. The sixth movement begins with hammer-blows, which subside and out of which grows quiet choral material, which is largely unaccompanied throughout. In the final movement, the first word is exclaimed in anguish three times before the music descends in resignation. The choir has finished; the work is subsequently completed by strings alone. In this final movement, with its long instrumental postlude, the liturgical detachment breaks down and gives way to a more personal reflection-hence the resonance here of Scottish traditional lament music.”
Hailed by The Guardian as “a composer so confident of his own musical language that he makes it instantly communicative to his listeners,” James MacMillan is one of today’s most successful living composers and conductors. His music is notable for its extraordinary directness, energy, and emotional power. References to Scottish folk music imbue his work with a strong sense of the vernacular, while his strongly-held religious and political beliefs, coupled with his concerns for the community, inform both the spirit and subject matter of his music. MacMillan first came to the attention of the classical music world when the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra premiered his The Confession of Isobel Gowdie at the Proms in 1990. His most recent successes have included his second opera, The Sacrifice, a 2007 commission by the Welsh National Opera and winner of a Royal Philharmonic Society Award, and the St John’s Passion, commissioned by the London Symphony Orchestra and conducted by Sir Colin Davis at its 2008 world premiere. MacMillan received the British Composer Award for Liturgical Music for his Strathclyde Motets in December 2008.

Being released just in time for the 84^th anniversary of its first performance, Ravel received the script for L’enfant et les sortilèges from French novelist Colette in 1917 but did not complete the work until 1924. The opera tells the story of an ill-behaved child who meets a rude awakening when the inanimate objects in his nursery and garden come to life and turn on him. The libretto offers many opportunities for the soloists to provide witty depictions of the various objects that seek their revenge on the young child, such as the damaged grandfather clock, the belligerent teapot, the Ragtime singing teacups, the personification of arithmetic (a crazed professor), and the duet by the amusing cats.

Ravel told his friend Hélène Jourdan-Morhange that L’enfant contained many musical styles: Massenet, Puccini, Monteverdi and American musical comedy. In creatively weaving these many moods, Ravel surely found a lighthearted way to convey that message that actions have consequences and that a civilized society would not exist without care for the world around us.

Shéhérazade is actually the title of two works by Ravel. The first is Shéhérazade, ouverture de féerie, written in 1898 for orchestra. The second (Shéhérazade), which is heard on this recording, was written in 1903 as a song cycle for orchestra after three poems by Tristan Klingsor: Asie, La flûte enchantée, and L’indifférent.

On January 27, Naxos releases the final recording in a series of orchestral transcriptions (and syntheses) by Leopold Stokowski led by Stokowski’s protégé, the GRAMMY-winning conductor and composer José Serebrier, and the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra.

Serebrier also comments:

“The Bournemouth musicians and I had so much fun recording these four volumes of Stokowski orchestrations, that we are sorry that the series is now finished, but I look forward to recording other repertoire with this wonderful orchestra. The 4th CD includes some works that were all time best sellers in the early part of the Twentieth Century. The Toccata and Fugue was included after we received numerous letters from listeners and critics asking for it. That is a very challenging work, and I had avoided it before because it is so closely identified with Stokowski and his wonderful numerous versions, but now I am delighted to have included it, and given my own personal view of this masterful, brilliant orchestration. I recently gave a concert in Israel in which I included several original Bach works on Baroque instruments, followed by orchestrations by Mitropoulos, Stokowski and others. The orchestrations and the originals are not exclusive of each other. Thanks to these colorful orchestrations Bach became known to entire generations.”

Bach-Stokowski Transcriptions 1 (Naxos 8557883), was released in June of 2006. It followed the 2005 release of Stokowski’s Mussorgsky and Tchaikovsky Transcriptions (Naxos 8557645), a recording universally praised by critics and receiving two Grammy® nominations. ClassicsToday.com assigned the CD its highest rating, and called it “spectacular, sensational … this is the real deal.”

In 2007, Serebrier’s recording of Wagner: Symphonic Syntheses by Leopold Stokowski (Naxos 8570293) led Gramophone to remark: “It would be hard to imagine a more sumptuous disc. Stokowski, in these ‘symphonic syntheses,’ enhances Wagner’s already opulent orchestration with shrewdly added instrumental lines and with the vocal parts usually given to the strings. José Serebrier conducts the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra in thrilling performances, passionate in a genuinely Stokowskian manner…” MusicWeb International chose this CD as a “Recording of the Year,” commenting: “José Serebrier invests a fragrant and voluptuous sensuality to match the unbridled passion of the celebrated Liebestod that follows where its mounting excitement is literally edge-of-the-seat stuff.”

The idea for the Naxos recordings of Stokowski’s transcriptions originated from the Leopold Stokowski Society itself, which approached Serebrier in 2003. After graduating from Curtis, while still in his teens, Serebrier enjoyed a close working association with Stokowski, serving for many years as the Associate Conductor for the American Symphony Orchestra, which Stokowski founded. Stokowski also premiered a number of Serebrier’s own compositions, including his First Symphony, when the composer was 17 years old.

About the film

Made for the 1939 World’s Fair (”The World of Tomorrow”), The City is a classic documentary film distinguished for its organic integration of narration (scripted by Lewis Mumford), cinematography (by Ralph Steiner and Willard Van Dyke), and music (by Copland). The resulting tapestry is astonishing for its vibrance and originality. Because filming outdoors with sound was so difficult and expensive, the story is told without dialogue, relying solely on its imagery, narration, and music. It is the absence of dialogue that makes it possible to create a new soundtrack - and for the first time do justice to the symphonic detail and depth of Copland’s score.

Depicting in sequence a New England village, a milltown, a “city,” and a “new town,” The City illustrates how the frantic pace of city and milltown living destroyed the quality of life formerly found in rural America-but which could be recaptured in “planned communities of modest size.” In the opening sequence, Mumford (an early critic of “urban sprawl,” whose seminal 1961 book, The City in History, explored the development of urban civilization) has the narrator rhapsodize: “The town was us, and we were part of it.” The culminating “new town” sequence was filmed in Greenbelt, Maryland, site of the first federal experiment using Mumford’s model of a small, planned community that provided Americans with jobs they could walk to, along with social services, schools, and shops-in short, a self-sustaining community. This historic city exists today and appears in the bonus film Which Playground for Your Child: Greenbelt or Gutter?, which features its original inhabitants (including those in The City), as well its next generation of residents.

Aaron Copland as Film Composer

Aaron Copland’s desire to broaden his audience in the 1930s and ‘40s attracted him to film; The City was his first soundtrack. His works were the antitheses of the lush, Romantic scores by his Hollywood contemporaries Erich Korngold and Max Steiner, leading famed composer, conductor, and pianist André Previn to comment that “what Copland represented in Hollywood was ‘fewer notes.’ ” Copland followed the example of Virgil Thomson, who, in The Plow that Broke the Plains (1936) and The River (1937), created a new style of film music Copland considered “fresher, more simple, and more personal” than most Hollywood movie music-”a lesson in how to treat Americana.”

The City’s structure permitted Copland to explore a gamut of iconic American locales. Sounds such as sirens, a taped emergency call, and typewriters become part of the musical score, evoking Varèse’s Amériques and Ionisation.

The City was Copland’s ticket to Hollywood, where he later composed the soundtracks to Of Mice and Men (1939), Our Town (1940), The North Star (1943), The Red Pony (1948), and The Heiress (1949), among others. He won an Academy Award for The Heiress, but director William Wyler’s insistence on bringing in another composer to soften his score soured him on working in Hollywood.

DVD Extras:

The City with the original soundtrack (43:40)
Featuring Morris Carnovsky (narrator) and an orchestra conducted by Max Goberman.

Which Playground for Your Child: Greenbelt or Gutter? (15:09)
A film produced in 2000 by Video Art Productions for the Greenbelt Museum. These interviews with three “pioneers” who lived in Greenbelt, Maryland, beginning in 1937 and 1938, include the reminiscences of Bob Sommers, who recalls the filming of The City and is the boy with the flat tire in the film.

George Stoney in Conversation with Joseph Horowitz (29:15)
This conversation with the legendary documentary filmmaker, who is also a historian of the genre (and, at age 91, an eyewitness to the New Deal and the 1939 World’s Fair), begins with a discussion of why 1930s documentaries such as The City eschewed dialogue-and the artistic consequences.

The DVD is produced with the support of the National Endowment for the Arts, the Aaron Copland Fund, and the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center at Maryland and is distributed in the United States by Naxos of America.

The River and The Plow that Broke the Plains brilliantly illuminate the ideology of the New Deal. They are also masterpieces of the documentary film genre and a treasured part of America’s cultural patrimony. I salute Naxos for reissuing these two great films. The Post-Classical Ensemble’s new recording of Virgil Thomson’s soundtrack and the fascinating supplementary materials all enhance the historic value of this wonderful DVD.

-Paul S. Boyer, Editor-in Chief, The Oxford Companion to United States History

SCREENINGS AND OTHER EVENTS FOR THE CITY:

Saturday, January 24 at 1 PM;
Politics & Prose Bookstore and Coffeehouse
5015 Connecticut Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC 20008
A screening, with Angel Gil-Ordóñez, Benjamin Pasternack, and Joseph McCartin.

Saturday, Jan 31 7:00 PM;
The Post Classical Ensemble: Copland And The Cold War
Georgetown University, Washington, DC
Davis Performing Arts Center Gonda Theatre
37th and O Streets
Washington, DC 20057
For further information: www.post-classicalensemble.org
Post-Classical Production features Benjamin Pasternack, pianist; Georgetown University Concert Choir and Chamber Singers, actors from Georgetown’s Theater & Performance Studies Program, and Joseph Horowitz. Program includes Aaron Copland’s Cat and Mouse; Piano Variations; Scherzo (from Piano Sonata); Piano Fantasy Copland:” Into the Streets May First” (audience sing-along). Plus a re-enactment of Copland’s testimony before Senator Joseph McCarthy’s Subcommittee on Special Investigations; and excerpts from the classic 1939 documentary film The City, with music by Aaron Copland.

Wednesday, February 11 at 6 PM;
New York Public Library, Main Branch,
Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street
New York, NY 10018
Room: South Court Auditorium
This screening will be followed by a conversation between Joseph Horowitz, Angel Gil-Ordóñez, and documentary filmmaker/scholar George Stoney.

Friday, February 13, 2:30 PM;
Library for the Performing Arts
Bruno Walter Auditorium
40 Lincoln Center Plaza
New York, N.Y. 10023-7498
The City (screening only; no program)

Tuesday, May 19, time TBA
The Greenbelt Museum
Greenbelt, MD
A screening, with Angel Gil-Ordóñez, Joseph Horowitz.

3rd Parties’ Reviews:

• At Ubiquitous Surveillance Society, Utopian urbanism by David
• At BaltimoreSun.com, “The City” shines again on DVD by Tim Smith

Recently nominated for a Grammy® Award in the category of Best Composition for Mr. Tambourine Man,
Mr. Corigliano has written:

“For the past three decades I have started the compositional process by building a shape, or architecture, before coming up with any musical material. In this case, the shape was influenced by a desire to write a piece in which the entire work is conceived spatially. But I started simply wondering what dramatic premise would justify the encirclement of the audience by musicians, so that they were in the center of an arena. This started my imagination going, and quite suddenly a title appeared in my mind: Circus Maximus.

The Circus Maximus of ancient Rome was a real place-the largest arena in the world. 300,000 spectators were entertained by chariot races, hunts, and battles … The shape of my Circus Maximus was built both to embody and to comment on this massive and glamorous barbarity. It utilizes a large concert band, and lasts approximately 35 minutes. The work is in eight sections that are played without pause.”

In January, Naxos also releases Vittorio Giannini: Piano Concerto and Symphony No. 4 (Naxos 8559352), featuring world-premiere recordings of his 1934 Piano Concerto and the Symphony No. 4. Giannini completed the latter in 1959, and it received its premiere in 1960 by the Juilliard Orchestra, led by Jean Morel. This recording features Daniel Spalding, founder and conductor of the Philadelphia Virtuosi, Romanian-born pianist Gabriela Imreh, and the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra.

The American composer and teacher Vittorio Giannini was born in Philadelphia in 1903. He studied the violin from an early age, won a scholarship to the Milan Conservatory, and, in 1925, entered The Juilliard School. In 1932, he won the first of three consecutive Prix de Rome. During the 1930s, several of his works-notably his operas Lucedia (1934) and The Scarlet Letter (1938) and his Requiem (1937)-enjoyed critical success in Europe. Giannini is, however, perhaps best-known for his popular song, “Tell me, Oh blue, blue Sky!”, a collaboration with poet Karl Flaster, who also provided the libretti for both of the aforementioned operas. When Giannini returned to the United States, he joined the teaching staff at Juilliard and Manhattan School of Music and also taught at Curtis. (Notably, Giannini was one of Corigliano’s teachers, possibly at Manhattan School of Music.) In 1963, he founded and became the first president of the North Carolina School of the Arts.

Considering many of his American contemporaries were exploring neo-classicism and twelve-tone composition, Giannini’s adherence to a late neo-Romantic style, more in line with Wagner and Puccini, was remarkable. Conductor Daniel Spalding notes that his search for his Piano Concerto required a great deal of detective work: “The first time I learned about the existence of Giannini’s Piano Concerto was about 10-11 years ago in 1997, while researching him in the vast and impressive Fleisher Collection of Orchestral Music of the Philadelphia Free Library. At that time Giannini’s work wasn’t known much with the exception of his band music and his Concerto Grosso for strings, which I have conducted before … Out of one of the very few Giannini manuscripts that the library has, his obituary from The New York Times fell out and it happened to mention the existence of the Piano Concerto.”

Spalding’s search for the elusive Piano Concerto eventually took him to the libraries at Juilliard, Curtis, Manhattan School of Music, the New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, and the Library of Congress, among others, with little success. Finally, a librarian at the North Carolina School for the Arts (Gianinni’s last position) pointed him in the right direction, leading him to Wachovia Bank’s headquarters. After many months and calls, Spalding relates, “we were sitting in a large, icy cold office in Winston Salem, North Carolina, waiting anxiously to have the box brought up. And, as an added bonus, in a totally different box was a two-piano reduction, professionally copied in Rome and much more legible. I knew by then that the Piano Concerto, completed in 1934, was premiered in 1937 at Carnegie Hall in New York. Rosalyn Tureck was the pianist with the National Orchestral Association, [with] Leon Barzin conducting.”

Initial reviews for the work were positive; Francis Perkins, in the New York Herald Tribune, commented: “The opulence and expansiveness of Mr. Giannini’s score proved welcome.” Likewise, Robert Simon of The New Yorker enjoyed its “juicy melodies” and “healthy virtuoso bounce.”

This performance, featuring Spalding’s wife, pianist Gabriela Imreh, restores the original and extremely difficult octave passagework possibly edited out by Ms. Tureck due to “pencilled in tempo markings,” which, Spalding comments, “seem much faster than the composer’s own” and which might have been the choice of Maestro Barzin.

In 1978, Brian Eno composed his revolutionary ambient masterwork Music for Airports. 20 years later, in what seemed like a perfect marriage of barrier-breaking music and innovative musicians, Bang on a Can released a new interpretation of Music for Airports on Philip Glass’ POINT Music label. The piece was arranged by composer Evan Ziporyn and Bang on a Can founders and composers Michael Gordon, Pulitzer Prize-winner David Lang and Julia Wolfe. It was performed live for the first time by the Bang on a Can All-Stars during the Holland Festival accompanied by Frank Scheffer’s digitally shot images of Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport.

On January 27, 2009 Medici Arts releases this unique and revelatory film featuring a new arrangement of Brian Eno’s Music for Airports enhanced by Scheffer’s “out of focus” illustrations. The release also includes the landmark Frank Scheffer documentary In the Ocean in which the complicated contemporary classical music scene of the past, present and future is discussed by composers such as Brian Eno, Steve Reich, Louis Andriessen, John Cage, and the founders of Bang on a Can.

Pioneering composer, conceptual artist, non-musical pop star, Grammy-winning record producer, writer and philosopher Brian Eno created and recorded his “ambient music” masterpiece Music for Airports to diffuse the irritating atmosphere of airport terminals. An atheist who turned to art because it existed in God’s absence, Eno developed an almost unhealthy obsession for sound. Eno believed that music was the noblest art. “I had wanted a tape recorder since I was tiny. I thought it was a magic thing’, said Eno of his first musical instrument. His fascination with capturing, experimenting with, and using sounds led him to musical collaborations with artists and composers such as U2, Talking Heads, Cluster, Devo, David Bowie, Genesis and Philip Glass, among many others. Scored for voices and instruments including acoustic piano and synthesizer, Eno’s Music for Airports was composed after he was bedridden from a car accident in 1975. The concept of ambient music was born from Eno’s inability to walk across his bedroom to change the volume on his radio. The low sound of what was coming out of the speakers weaved in and out of the beating of the rain outside of his window created calming and time-passing music. Described by Eno as music that “must be able to accommodate many levels of listening attention without enforcing one in particular: it must be as ignorable as it is interesting,” his work Music for Airports is the culmination of Eno’s varied and colorful journey to his goal of ambient perfection.

Frank Scheffer’s documentary In the Ocean offers the experiences and opinions of some of the world’s greatest contemporary composers and performers who have never before appeared together on film. The composers discuss the complex “establishment” that is contemporary classical music; what it means to compose this music, the inspiration of one continent on another; the influences they have on one another, and the new and ever-evolving face of the art-form. The story of Bang on a Can is used to illustrate many of these points as well as to convey this inimitable music to a wider audience.

Formed in 1987 by composers Michael Gordon, David Lang and Julia Wolfe, Bang on a Can is dedicated to commissioning, performing, creating, presenting and recording contemporary music. With an ear for the new, the unknown and the unconventional, Bang on a Can strives to expose exciting and innovative music as broadly and accessibly as possible to new audiences worldwide. And through its Summer Festival, Bang on a Can hopes to bring this energy and passion for innovation to a younger generation of composers and players.

The Idil Biret Archive contains all of the pianist’s professional recordings and many of her radio and television recordings

In December 2008 the Idil Biret Archive (IBA) will join the Naxos family of labels, IBA recordings will be distributed worldwide as well as digitally on major websites including Naxos Music Library, ClassicsOnline, iTunes, eMusic and Amazon.

Biret is a prolific recording artist whose repertoire includes mastery of music from the classical to modern era. Since she began her recording career in 1949 she has made over 80 recordings for nine labels, as well as countless radio and television recordings. Many of these recordings have never been available commercially and will debut on IBA.

First four recordings will be released in December 2008. Four volumes from the 19 volume Beethoven Edition will be released first. The Beethoven Edition includes the 32 Piano Sonatas, Five Piano Concertos, Choral Fantasia, and Liszt’s transcriptions of the Nine Symphonies. The Sonatas and Piano Concertos (with the Bikent Symphony Orchestra conducted by Antoni Wit) are new recordings. The Liszt transcriptions were originally issued by EMI in 1986.

Starting in February 2009, remaining recordings in the Beethoven Edition will be released on a monthly basis. Biret is the only pianist to have performed all of Beethoven’s Piano Sonatas, Concertos and Liszt transcriptions of the Nine Symphonies in public concerts. She is now the first pianist to have recorded them all. A DVD film, “The Making of the Beethoven Recordings” will also be available shortly.

Major Concertos Newly Recorded
For future release, Biret has also recorded new versions of concertos by Tchaikovsky, Liszt, Grieg and Schumann. In addition to the newly recorded CDs, the legendary and long unavailable recordings Biret made for Atlantic/Finnadar in the 1970s will be released.

Awards and Publications
In 2006, “Idil Biret, A Turkish Pianist in France,” a book about Biret’s life and musical philosophy, was published by the French publisher Buchet-Chastel. Turkish and German language versions of the book are now available. English, Polish, Russian and Greek translations will be available shortly. In 2007, Biret was awarded the Distinguished Service Order - Cavalry Cross by the Polish President for her service to Polish culture through her Chopin recordings. Biret is now preparing a new edition of Chopin’s piano music for the New York publisher IMC.

Euryanthe, J.291
Peter Schmoll und seine Nachbarn, J.8
Oberon, J.306
Der Beherrscher der Geister, J.122
Turandot: Overture and Act II March, J.75
Preciosa, J.279
Silvana, J.87
Jubel-Ouvertüre, J.245
Abu Hassan, J.106
Der Freischütz, J.277

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra
Antoni Wit

Naxos ▪ 8.570296 ▪ 1 CD ▪ DDD

Die Werke, die Karl Maria von Weber für die Opernbühne oder als Zwischenmusiken komponierte, kombinieren durch ihre Klarheit die Prinzipien der Klassischen Epoche mit einer einzigartigen Lyrik und meisterhaften Orchestrierung. Diese Qualitäten machte Webers Musik auch zur Inspirationsquelle für viele Komponisten der Romantik. Auf dieser CD sind die Ouvertüren seiner berühmtesten Opern

Der Freischütz, Euryanthe, Oberon und anderer

Sinfonia in G major (Eisen G8) Berchtesgadener Musik ‘Kindersinfonie’ (’Toy Symphony’)
Sinfonia in D major (Eisen D15)
Sinfonia in A major (Eisen A1)
Sinfonia in G major ‘Neue Lambacher Sinfonie’

Toronto Chamber Orchestra • Kevin Mallon
 
Naxos ▪ 8.570499D ▪ 1 CD ▪ DDD

Normalerweise stehen die Kinder prominenter Eltern oft im Schatten Ihrer Mütter und Väter. Im Falle von Leopold Mozart war es genau anders herum. Der Glanz seines Sohnes Wolfgang Amadeus, des musikalischen Genies, überstrahlte alle künstlerischen Fähigkeiten des Vaters Leopold, in dem man bis heute mehr den Pädagogen als den Musiker sieht. Leopold Mozart war jedoch, wie es seine Musik und der Erfolg seines Sohnes zeigen, beides: Er war aufmerksamer und kritischer Beobachter, ein Musikpädagoge und ein hervorragender Komponist, dessen Werke weit über die Grenzen Salzburgs hinaus bekannt und geschätzt waren. In seiner Kindersinfonie, die diesen Namen wohl erst 1813 erhielt, arbeitete Leopold Mozart neben der üblichen Orchesterbesetzung sieben typische Kinderinstrumente aus dem Berchtesgadener Land in das Instrumentarium ein: Kuckuck, Wachtel, Trompete, Trommel, Ratsche, Orgelhenne und Cymbelstern.

JOSEPH HAYDN

(1732-1809)
Sämtliche Sinfonien Vol. 34 Sinfonien Nr. 62 D-Dur
Nr. 107 B-Dur .
Nr. 108 B-Dur
Ouvertüre zu La vera costanza (List & Liebe).
Ouvertüre zu Lo speziale (Der Apotheker)
Toronto Chamber Orchestra
Dirigent: Kevin Mallon
(Letzte Folge der Gesamteinspielung)
Naxos ▪ 8.572130 ▪ 1 CD ▪ DDD 

Die letzte Ausgabe der NAXOS-Serie mit den kompletten Sinfonien von Joseph Haydn

enthält die relativ unbekannte Sinfonie Nr. 62, die von ausgesprochener Schönheit und Dramatik ist und in Haydns mittleren Schaffensphase entstand.

Haydn schrieb dieses Werk im Jahre 1780 auf Schloss Eszterházy, für dessen Hausherrn er mehr als 30 Jahre lang arbeitete und eine Fülle von Werken komponierte. Zu dieser Zeit entstanden auch zahlreiche Bühnenmusiken, die Haydn ebenfalls für seine Sinfonien adaptierte.

Die Sinfonien Nr. 107 und Nr. 108 sind nicht – wie es die Werkezählung vermuten lässt, frühe Werke Haydns, sondern sie entstanden tatsächlich schon in den 1750er Jahren, zu einer Zeit als Haydn noch nicht als Hofkomponist im Dienste des Fürsten Eszterházy stand.

Beide Sinfonien sind für zwei Oboen und zwei Hörner, Streicher und Cembalo-Continuo komponiert.

On November 18, Opus Arte releases the world-premiere DVD of Sir Harrison Birtwistle’s latest opera, The Minotaur, recorded live at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, on April 25 and 30 and May 30, 2008. Also included is a bonus documentary film, Myth is Universal.

This gripping new work by Birtwistle and librettist David Harsent brings the monstrous creature from Greek mythology to the operatic stage. The Minotaur, part man, part beast, trapped in his labyrinth and constrained by his bloodthirsty existence, longs to discover his true identity and his own voice. Athens must pay a blood sacrifice to Crete, and among the innocents is Theseus, who has come to challenge the violent Minotaur. He attracts the attention of Ariadne, half-sister and keeper of the monster, and it is with her help that he succeeds.

Winner of the Grawemeyer Award for his opera The Mask of Orpheus, Birtwistle’s inspiration for The Minotaur goes back over two decades; he felt that “the mythic beast was lurking” in his orchestral work Earth Dances (1985). David Harsent, who had provided the libretto for Birtwistle’s 1990-91 opera Gawain, was charged with the task of “[finding] a language for the characters.” The Minotaur received its premiere at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, in April 2008.

Born in 1934, British composer Harrison Birtwistle studied clarinet and composition at the Royal Manchester College of Music. His 1968 opera Punch and Judy, together with his Verses for Ensembles and The Triumph of Time, firmly established him as a leading voice in British music. Among Birtwistle’s many works are Exody, premiered by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Daniel Barenboim, Panic, and The Shadow of Night, commissioned by the Cleveland Orchestra and Christoph von Dohnányi. His work The Last Supper received its first performances at the Deutsche Staatsoper in Berlin and at Glyndebourne in 2000. Pulse Shadows, a meditation for soprano, string quartet, and chamber ensemble on poetry by Paul Celan, was released on disc by Teldec and won the 2002 Gramophone Award for best contemporary recording. Birtwistle has received many awards and honors, including the Grawemeyer Award (1986), the Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres (1986), a British knighthood (1988), the Siemens Prize (1995), and a British Companion of Honour (2001). He is currently Director of Composition at the Royal Academy of Music in London.

On November 18, just in time for the holiday season, Opus Arte presents the 2007 San Francisco Ballet production of Tchaikovsky’s beloved holiday favorite, Nutcracker. Recorded live at the War Memorial Opera House on December 19 and 20, 2007, the production features choreography by SF Ballet artistic director Helgi Tomasson, scenic design by Tony Award-winner Michael Yeargan, costume design by Tony Award-winner Martin Pakledinaz, lighting design by James F. Ingalls, and projections by Wendall K. Harrington. PBS stations across the country will air this production on December 17 on “Great Performances”.

This visually-stunning all-new production of Nutcracker is set in early-20th-century San Francisco and includes more than 200 colorful characters, larger-than-life scenery, and magical surprises that will mesmerize and delight adults and children alike. Each breath-taking scene from the Waltz of the Flowers to the Snowflake Waltz is a reminder that this adored ballet offers a nostalgic musical journey while transcending all generations. Bonus features include an illustrated synopsis and cast gallery, interviews with Tomasson, Yeargan and Pakledinaz and a documentary on the 1915 World’s Fair.

As America’s oldest professional ballet company, San Francisco Ballet has enjoyed a long and rich tradition of artistic “firsts” since its founding in 1933, including performing the first American productions of Swan Lake and Nutcracker, as well as the first 20th-century American Coppélia. San Francisco Ballet is one of the three largest ballet companies in the United States. Guided in its early years by American dance pioneers and brothers Lew, Willam and Harold Christensen, San Francisco Ballet currently presents more than 100 performances annually, both locally and internationally. Under the direction of Helgi Tomasson for more than two decades, the Company has achieved an international reputation as one of the preeminent ballet companies in the world. In 2005, San Francisco Ballet won the prestigious Laurence Olivier Award, its first, in the category of “Outstanding Achievement in Dance,” for its 2004 London tour. In 2006, San Francisco Ballet was the first non-European company elected “Company of the Year” in Dance Europe magazine’s annual readers’ poll. This year, San Francisco Ballet celebrates its 75th anniversary.

On November 18, Naxos releases Gian Carlo Menotti’s beloved 1951 Christmas classic Amahl and the Night Visitors, paired with My Christmas (1987), a short choral work with a libretto by the composer (Naxos 8669019). This recording features the Nashville Symphony, led by Alastair Willis; members of the Nashville Symphony and Chicago Symphony choruses, led by directors George Mabry and Duain Wolfe; and soloists Ike Hawkersmith (Amahl), Kirsten Gunlogson (Mother), Dean Anthony (King Kaspar), Todd Thomas (King Melchior), Kevin Short (King Balthazar), and Bart LeFan (Page to the Kings). This recording marks the third in two months featuring the Nashville Symphony; the other releases are Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition (Naxos 8570716) and John Corigliano’s A Dylan Thomas Trilogy (Naxos 8559394).Menotti’s Amahl and the Night Visitors, the first opera written for television, enjoys over 500 performances annually around the world and is immensely popular with amateur groups. A disabled boy, Amahl, and his mother encounter the three Kings who seek the newborn Jesus. After deciding to give his crutch to the Christ Child, Amahl is miraculously healed, and he joyfully accompanies the Magi to Bethlehem to give thanks. Sung in English, the opera is a humorous and poignant Christmas classic, beloved by audiences of all ages.

No post-war opera has enjoyed exposure comparable to Amahl and the Night Visitors, commissioned by NBC and first televised on Christmas Eve in 1951. Although it was subsequently staged at Bloomington in February 1952, conducted by Thomas Schippers, with whom Menotti enjoyed a long working relationship, the opera’s television potential has been explored in a number of subsequent presentations. Between 1951 and 1966, it was shown each year on NBC on or around Christmas Eve. In 1963, it was remade by NBC with an all-new cast, a production shown for the next three years. Then, in 1978, NBC filmed another new production, partly on location in the Holy Land. Meanwhile, the BBC commissioned two versions of its own, the first broadcast in December 1955, with the second following four years later. Menotti himself directed another filmed version as late as 1996. All of these productions attest to the appeal that Menotti’s unassuming stage work has exerted over audiences for almost six decades.

On October 28, Naxos released its fourth recording featuring the acclaimed Baroque music ensemble Opera Lafayette, performing Jean-Baptiste Lully’s Armide.

Armide was the zenith of Lully’s long and fruitful career as the most powerful musician at the court of Louis XIV and the first major composer of French opera. Though not his final composition, Armide was his last complete tragédie en musique and the last work he wrote in collaboration with librettist Philippe Quinault. It was an instant and enduring success: a crowd-pleaser at its initial production and a perennial favorite of audiences and critics in the 18th century.

OPERA LAFAYETTE is a period-instrument ensemble dedicated to performances of 17th- and 18th-century operas, particularly of the French repertoire. Founded in 1995 in Washington, D.C. by Artistic Director Ryan Brown, Opera Lafayette has earned critical acclaim and a loyal following for its performances and recordings with international singers renowned for their interpretations of Baroque and Classical operas. The Washington Post called the ensemble “one of the most intellectually exciting fixtures of the Washington music world.” Of their recording of Rameau Operatic Arias with tenor Jean-Paul Fouchécourt, England’s OPERA magazine wrote: “The period-instrument orchestra of the Washington-based Opera Lafayette … in its decade-long existence has done so much to further the cause of 18th-century French Opera.” Upcoming recordings by Opera Lafayette include Rebel and Francoeur’s Zélindor, roi des Sylphes (2009), and Le Déserteur, to be recorded in February 2009.

On October 28, Naxos released The Christopher Nupen Films’ new documentary, Vladimir Ashkenazy: Master Musician. Nupen, dubbed “king of the music documentary” by Gramophone and a three-time winner at Midem in Cannes (2005, 2006, and 2008), has put together a revealing portrait of the Russian-born pianist and conductor. The film includes Vladimir Ashkenazy: The Vital Juices Are Russian (1968); a montage of Nupen’s composer films with Ashkenazy as conductor; and a performance segment featuring Rachmaninoff’s Corelli Variations, released for the first time on this disc. Additionally, the DVD features a short interview with Ashkenazy.

The Vital Juices Are Russian was shot in 1968 when Ashkenazy moved with his wife and son from London to Iceland. The title refers to a statement about the composer’s Russian-ness that he makes during the film. Mr. Nupen comments: “The portrait film was made at an important turning point in Vladimir Ashkenazy’s life and career, a time when everything was changing, much to do and much being done. Some piquancy was added by the fact that our young hero felt that he was struggling to come to terms with the great traditions of the West, because, as he says in the film, he felt inadequately prepared. At that time, the idea that he might, somewhere in the distant future, become an internationally-recognized conductor was not even on the horizon.”

Since the original film was made, Ashkenazy-possibly the most frequently-recorded pianist in history, with a discography of 56 pages-has also become an international conductor. The DVD includes a montage of sequences from Nupen’s composer films featuring Ashkenazy at the podium. Next is a short but revealing interview with the composer on music and musical gifts and, finally, a segment on Rachmaninoff’s Corelli Variations, which Ashkenazy discusses at length. The film concludes with a complete performance of the piece, filmed live at a public concert in Lugano.

Ashkenazy won the Queen Elizabeth of the Belgians Prize at age 18 and later won the Tchaikovsky competition. That was only the start, however; his career has continued to rise steadily from then until now. In 2007, he celebrated his 70th birthday, an event that inspired worldwide press celebrations and an eight-disc boxed set of CDs from Decca; the final disc is an 80-minute conversation between Ashkenazy and Christopher Nupen.

Christopher Nupen 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.

 David Oistrakh, Artist of the People? (Medici 3073178) is the latest film by acclaimed French filmmaker and violinist Bruno Monsaingeon (Glenn Gould Hereafter; Nadia Boulanger: Mademoiselle). One of the greatest violinists of the 20th century, David Oistrakh (1908-1974) was largely self-taught, yet he became the true founder and undisputed master of the Soviet school of violin-playing, the most prestigious school of our times. The film includes rare archival footage (on and offstage) gathered over many years by Monsaingeon, whose fascination with Oistrakh dates back to his childhood. In addition to performances by David Oistrakh, Yehudi Menuhin, Mstislav Rostropovich, Sviatoslav Richter, Igor Oistrakh and Gennadi Rozhdestvensky (among others), the filmmaker spoke at length with Menuhin, Rostropovich, and the violinist’s son Igor.

Some of the stories related by Rostropovich and Menuhin chillingly reveal the exceptionally troubled circumstances in which Oistrakh lived. Despite being Jewish, Oistrakh refused to leave Soviet Russia even when emigration may have been possible. The interviews shed light on a man who, like his contemporary Dimitri Shostakovich, found ways to survive during the dark years of Stalin.

Because of the political climate of the time-Stalinism and the Second World War-Oistrakh’s career in Western Europe, America, and Japan blossomed relatively late. It was not until 1953 that he began to make regular appearances in the West, by which time he was already 45 years old-though his legendary reputation had already made him the subject of endless speculation throughout the Western musical world. His first proper international tours instantly confirmed the legend, and from then until his death in Amsterdam in 1974, he pursued a varied career in the concert hall, as a soloist and conductor, and as a teacher. Oistrakh’s genius inspired numerous composers to write for him. He premiered sonatas and concertos by Prokofiev, Khachaturian and Shostakovich, among others, and performed these works all over the world.

 Tony Palmer writes: “There are always dates which resonate forever in our lives … for me that date is May 30, 1962. By chance, I had been taken to Coventry Cathedral by a friend, John Culshaw, to hear a ‘big new choral piece’ by Benjamin Britten, whose entire works Culshaw was in the process of committing to disc by Decca.” The work to which Palmer refers, of course, is Britten’s War Requiem, one of the most important works to come out of the later half of the 20th century. Palmer went on to make a film in 1967 about the opening of the original Snape Concert Hall called Britten & His Festival. Britten was so taken with that film that after his death, his longtime partner Sir Peter Pears asked Palmer to make another, more substantive film in his memory.

 Benjamin Britten: A Time There Was (1979) is as much a love story as it is a biography. Pears’ commentary and conversation provide the central focus for the film, which also includes numerous musical excerpts from Britten’s operas and other works and features artists who include Leonard Bernstein, Kathleen Ferrier, Dame Janet Baker, Sviatoslav Richter (another Russian champion of Britten’s music), Julian Bream, Peter Glossop, John Shirley-Quirk, and others. The film also highlights the more personal side of the composer, with commentary from Britten’s housekeeper Miss Hudson, Rita Thompson (who nursed him through his final illness), his copyist and musical confidants Imogen Holst and Rosamund Strode, and the Mayer family who housed Britten and Peter Pears when the two left England in 1938 in objection to the war.

Palmer says, “I could never repay my debt to him, but I hoped (and hope) the film would enable others to share something of this strange, haunted man, and his enduring power for us. Humphrey Carpenter once played the Young Person’s Guide on his program In Tune on Radio3. Following the tumultuous fugue at the end, there was a long pause, and eventually Humphrey said: ‘That, ladies and gentlemen, is pure genius.’ Yes, it is.”‘

It’s the night before Christmas and Gabe Snow, a tabloid writer haunted by the Ghosts of Christmas past, is investigating a Yule Tide conspiracy. Gabe knows that Flight 1225 was brought down one foggy Christmas Eve, by a flying creature with a “glowing nose”. Now, a bloodsucking Vampire - Santa Claus - has put Gabe on his list and unleashed the demonic fury of the North Pole. An army of zombie elves, who have no interest in Toys or pointy hats or dentistry, are about to turn Gabe’s white Christmas blood red…

On October 28, ERM Media released the Original Motion Picture Soundtrack to Two Front Teeth with a score composed, orchestrated and conducted by James Guymon. Two Front Teeth, released in October of 2007 has enjoyed critical success at many festivals including Horrorfest UK, Spooky Movie Film Festival, and the Utopia Film Festival and has had feature showings at the Seattle True Independent Film Festival. Written by Jamie Nash (Altered and Seventh Moon) and co-directed and co-produced by Nash and David Sckrabulis, Two Front Teeth is destined to become a horror cult classic.

James Guymon is an award-winning composer for film and the concert stage. He studied composition with Robert Ian Winstin, New Mexican composer Michael Mauldin, and commercial composer Ben Carson. Guymon’s first film of critical acclaim was Jacques Thelemaque’s Transaction (2005), which won the prestigious Grand Prix du Jury Prize at the 2006 Clermont-Ferrand Short Film Festival in the experimental category. This was the first time an American film had ever won the top prize in the experimental category, and the first time in ten years an American Film had won either of the two Grand Prix du Jury Awards. Transaction was also an official selection of the 2005 Sundance Film Festival, London Film Festival, Los Angeles International Film Festival, Santa Fe Film Festival, and a BAFTA award winner at the Mill Valley Film Festival.

To find out more about the Two Front Teeth Original Motion Picture Soundtrack visit http://www.myspace.com/twofrontteethoriginalsoundtrack

On October 28, PentaTone Classics released the debut recording of Sa Chen, marking the beginning of a long-term exclusive contract between PentaTone and the acclaimed Chinese pianist. The SA-CD recording features her performing the two Chopin piano concertos accompanied by the Gulbenkian Orchestra, led by conductor Lawrence Foster. Also included are a bonus PAL-format DVD featuring footage of the recording session of the second movement of Piano Concerto No. 1 and an interview with Ms. Chen by Gramophone’s James Jolly.

Of Ms. Chen’s recent performance of the two Chopin concertos with the Plano Symphony, Scott Cantrell of the Dallas Morning News wrote: “In both Chopin concertos she was as surely attuned to the honeyed romanticism as to the glitters and grand rhetorical gestures.” Ms. Chen’s Hollywood Bowl debut with the Los Angeles Philharmonic in August also brought accolades for the young pianist. Rick Schultz of the Los Angeles Times commented: “The pianist’s chamber music-like dialogues with clarinet and violins, which dominated the eventful opening Allegro, created a memorable poetic intimacy. In Schumann’s nuanced Intermezzo and exuberant finale, the pianist’s sparkling tone was probably as natural-sounding as it could be in an outdoor setting.”

Already a star in China, the Chongqing native first studied at the Sichum Conservatory and the Shenzhen School of Arts. From 1994-2001, she studied with Professor Joan Havill at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama in London and later continued her studies with Professor Arie Vardie at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Hanover. Ms. Chen gave her first major performance at age 16 at the Leeds International Piano Competition, conducted by Sir Simon Rattle and broadcast live on BBC Television. As the youngest contestant in the final round, she won fourth place and captivated British audiences. That successful performance marked the beginning of her international career. Since then, Ms. Chen has won a number of prestigious awards, including the overall fourth prize at the 14th Annual Chopin Piano Competition and the Crystal award at the 12th Van Cliburn International Piano Competition.

Ms. Chen performs regularly throughout Europe, Asia, and the U.S. with celebrated conductors like Leonard Slatkin, Edo de Waart, and James Conlon. In August, she participated in the Piano Extravanganza as part of the cultural events surrounding the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.

On October 28, Naxos releases the world-premiere recording of John Corigliano’s A Dylan Thomas Trilogy (Naxos 8559394), performed by the Nashville Symphony and its Music Advisor Leonard Slatkin. Also featured are the Nashville Symphony Chorus (George Mabry, Chorus Director), renowned British baritone Sir Thomas Allen, Canadian tenor John Tessier, and boy soprano Ty Jackson.

The genesis of this work began in 1959, when the composer, then a senior at Columbia University, first encountered Thomas’ poetry. He called it a “revelation” and composed the first of several settings in the following year using the text of Fern Hill. (The original version was for mezzo-soprano, chorus, and orchestra, but as the work morphed to reflect “the three stages of man,” Corigliano recast the mezzo-soprano solo for boy soprano.) In 1969, Charles Wadsworth of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center asked Corigliano to write a work for the Society’s opening season. He returned to Dylan Thomas, this time setting the bittersweet Poem in October, inspired by the poet’s 30th birthday. This time, the narrator’s voice was that of a tenor, accompanied by flute, oboe, clarinet, string quartet, and harpsichord.

In 1975, Corigliano again revisited Thomas’ poems while dealing with complex professional and personal issues. His discovery of Poem on his Birthday, in which the poet’s 35th year “is not celebrated but ‘spurned,” was an eerie reflection of his own struggles. Unlike the bel canto vocalism of Fern Hill and Poem in October, Poem on his Birthday needed to reflect the character’s midlife crisis. Scored for a baritone and full orchestra and chorus, Corigliano incorporates a broad spectrum of musical styles, “dreaming up an array of sounds (sea winds, bird calls, ghost cries) deciding on their precise shape first, their notation later.” In 1976, the newly-complete Dylan Thomas Trilogy received its premiere in Washington National Cathedral.

Twenty years later, and more at peace with his life, Corigliano asked Maestro Leonard Slatkin if he could finish the trilogy, which no longer felt complete. For the composer the oratorio was about a man “interpreting … his future through his past”; Fern Hill and Poem in October, therefore, needed to be recast to appear as memories rather than actual events. Additionally, Corigliano needed another work to frame the quasi-operatic oratorio, and eventually settled on Author’s Prologue, Thomas’s introduction to Collected Poems. The newly recast oratorio begins with baritone, chorus, and orchestra, presenting the first 51 lines of text from Author’s Prologue (Part I). Fern Hill, scored for chamber choir, orchestra, and boy soprano, follows. The baritone soloist then reappears with the chorus in Part II of Author’s Prologue, preparing the audience for the pastoral Poem in October (also rescored for chamber orchestra). The work concludes with Poem on his Birthday.

John Corigliano, among the most honored composers in the United States, was awarded the 2001 Pulitzer Prize in Music for his Symphony No. 2. In March 2000, his third film score, for The Red Violin, won the Academy Award (”Oscar.”) Corigliano’s Symphony No. 1, an impassioned response to the AIDS crisis, won the 1991 Grawemeyer Award for Best New Orchestral Composition; the Chicago Symphony’s recording of it won Grammy® Awards for Best New Composition and Best Orchestral Performance, and it has been played by over 150 different orchestras. A Distinguished Professor of Music at the City University of New York, Corigliano was named in 1991 to the faculty of The Juilliard School and to the American Academy of Arts and Letters, an organization of American’s most prominent artists, sculptors, architects, writers, and composers. Commissioned by The Metropolitan Opera, where it premiered in December 1991, Corigliano’s “grand opera buffa,” The Ghosts of Versailles, sold out two Met engagements in 1991 and 1994, as well as its 1995 production at the Chicago Lyric Opera. It is due for another Met revival in the ‘09-’10 season. Corigliano’s recent works include 2004’s Circus Maximus: Symphony No. 3, for multiple wind ensembles, and Concerto for Violin and Orchestra (‘The Red Violin’), released by Sony in December 2007, with Marin Alsop leading soloist Joshua Bell and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. Corigliano’s catalogue includes three symphonies, seven concerti (for violin, flute, clarinet, oboe, guitar, percussion, and piano), numerous shorter works for orchestra, and an extensive catalogue of chamber works, recorded on major labels. His music is published exclusively by G. Schirmer, Inc.

Leonard Slatkin was appointed Music Director of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra and Principal Guest Conductor of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra in 2008, after completing his 12th and final season as Music Director of the National Symphony Orchestra. The distinguished American conductor continues as Principal Guest Conductor of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Music Advisor to the Nashville Symphony Orchestra, and Conductor Laureate of the Saint Louis Symphony, of which he was Music Director for 17 seasons. He has served as Festival Director of the Cleveland Orchestra’s Blossom Festival (1990-1999), Principal Guest Conductor of the Philharmonia Orchestra (1997-2000), Chief Conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra (2000-2004), and Principal Guest Conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl (2004-2007). Mr. Slatkin’s many recordings have won seven Grammy® awards. He is the recipient of honors that include the 2003 National Medal of Arts, the Chevalier of the Legion of Honour, the American Symphony Orchestra League’s Gold Baton for service to American music, ASCAP awards with both the National and Saint Louis symphonies, honorary doctorates from Juilliard, Indiana University, and the University of Missouri, and the Declaration of Honour in Silver from the Austrian ambassador to the U.S. for outstanding contributions to cultural relations.

Sir Thomas Allen is an established star of the great opera houses of the world. At the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden-where, in 2006, he celebrated the 35th anniversary of his début with the company-he has sung over 40 roles. In 2006, he also celebrated the 25th anniversary of his début at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. A regular guest at the world’s great opera houses, he is particularly acclaimed for his Billy Budd, Pelléas, Eugene Onegin, Ulisse, and Beckmesser, as well as the great Mozart roles of Count Almaviva, Don Alfonso, Papageno, Guglielmo, and Don Giovanni. Equally renowned on the concert stage, Sir Allen has appeared with many of the world’s great orchestras and conductors. He has recorded with distinguished names rhat include Solti, Levine, Marriner, Haitink, Rattle, Sawallisch and Muti. In the New Year’s Honours of 1989, he was created a Commander of the British Empire, and in the 1999 Queen’s Birthday Honours, he was made a Knight Bachelor.

On the international stages of opera, concert, and recital, Canadian tenor John Tessier has gained attention and praise for the beauty and honesty of his voice and his refined style and artistic versatility in the lyric tenor repertoire. He has performed with the major orchestras of Canada and the U.S., as well as in opera house throughout Canada, the U.S., and Europe.

12-year-old Ty Jackson has performed with the Nashville Symphony on numerous occasions, including a recent recording of George Gershwin’s Porgy & Bess. He is a member of the Nashville Boy Choir at Vanderbilt University’s Blair School of Music.

Led by Music Advisor Leonard Slatkin, incoming Music Director Giancarlo Guerrero, and President and CEO Alan D. Valentine, the Grammy® Award-winning Nashville Symphony has a growing international reputation for its recordings and innovative programming. With 140 performances annually, the 84-member ensemble is an arts leader in Nashville and beyond, offering a broad range of pops and jazz concerts, special events, children’s concerts, and community outreach programs.

For over 40 years, the Nashville Symphony Chorus has regularly presented significant works from the classical choral repertoire, from Baroque music to contemporary. During George Mabry’s 10-year tenure as Chorus Director, the Chorus has also been featured in three CDs: Celebration in Song, a collection of sacred music recorded in 2000; Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis, recorded on the Naxos label (8.557060) in 2003; and Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess, released on Decca in 2006. A further Nashville Symphony recording with the Chorus is in progress with Naxos: Gian Carlo Menotti’s My Christmas, a cantata with male chorus to be coupled with Menotti’s popular opera Amahl and the Night Visitors.

“Those lucky enough to be present will never forget that historic evening, when people from two long-divided nations were united through the beauty and power of music. By the end of the final encore, both the audience and the musicians onstage stood waving to each other in a new-found spirit of understanding. We are honored and pleased that through this DVD we can share this transformative experience with new audiences for years to come.” -Zarin Mehta, President and Executive Director, New York Philharmonic

The New York Philharmonic’s historic February 2008 trip to Pyongyang, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, at the invitation of its government, was an unprecedented event that garnered worldwide media attention and was broadcast on PBS’ Great Performances series. The concert, which took place on February 26 in the East Pyongyang Grand Theater, was led by the Philharmonic’s Music Director Lorin Maazel and featured music by Wagner, Dvořák, Gershwin, Bizet, and Bernstein-along with the national anthems of both countries.

On September 16, Medici Arts, distributed by Naxos of America, released this remarkable concert on both DVD and Blu-ray disc. This is the first time a performing arts new release has been offered simultaneously in both formats on street-date.

The New York Philharmonic in Pyongyang (Medici Arts 2056948 and BD2056944) includes, in addition to footage of the historic performance, the never before seen documentary film Americans in Pyongyang: The New York Philharmonic Trip to North Korea, directed by Ayelet Heller. Heller’s film features footage of orchestra members giving master classes, as well as other memorable moments from the trip.

“The piccolo played a long, plaintive melody. Cymbals crashed, harp runs flew up, the violins soared. And tears began forming in the eyes of the staid audience … And right there, the Philharmonic had them. The full-throated performance of a piece deeply resonant for both North and South Koreans ended the historic concert in this isolated nation … in triumph.”
-Daniel J. Wakin, The New York Times

PROGRAM
National Anthem of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea Aegukka
National Anthem of the United States of America The Star-Spangled Banner
Richard Wagner Lohengrin: Prelude to Act III
Antonín Dvořák Symphony No.9 in E minor, From the New World
George Gershwin An American in Paris
Georges Bizet Farandole from L’Arlésienne Suite No.2
Leonard Bernstein Candide: Overture
Traditional Arirang

Documentary: “Americans in Pyongyang”
The New York Philharmonic’s Trip to North Korea
Directed by Ayelet Heller

The New York Philharmonic is the oldest symphony orchestra in the United States and one of the oldest in the world. Lorin Maazel became Music Director in 2002, succeeding Kurt Masur in a distinguished line of 20th-century musical giants that has included Bernstein, Zubin Mehta, and Pierre Boulez; Mahler, Walter, and Toscanini. Since the Orchestra was founded in 1842 it has championed the new music of its time, commissioning or premiering many important works, from Dvořák’s Symphony No. 9, From the New World (1893) and Gershwin’s An American in Paris (1928) to John Adams’s Pulitzer Prize-winning On the Transmigration of Souls (2002, the CD of which received three Grammy Awards), and Esa-Pekka Salonen’s Piano Concerto (2007).

The Philharmonic has long played a leading role in American musical life, and over the last century has become renowned around the globe, having appeared in 420 cities in 58 countries on 5 continents, in capitals such as London and Paris, São Paulo and Buenos Aires, and Hong Kong and Tokyo. Long a media pioneer, the Philharmonic began radio ew York Philharmonic To Perform in Democratic People’s Republic of Korea/4 broadcasts in 1922, and is currently represented by The New York Philharmonic This Week; the program is syndicated nationally 52 weeks per year, streamed on the Orchestra’s Website, nyphil.org, and carried on XM Satellite Radio. In addition, the Orchestra’s concerts are now broadcast throughout Europe on BBC Radio 3. On television, in the 1950s and ’60s the Philharmonic inspired a generation of music lovers through Leonard Bernstein’s Young People’s Concerts, telecast on CBS; its presence on television has continued with annual appearances on PBS’s Live From Lincoln Center, which began with that series’ inaugural episode in 1976. In 2003 the Philharmonic made television history as the first Orchestra ever to perform live on the Grammy Awards telecast, one of the most-watched television events worldwide.

The New York Philharmonic may be the most recorded orchestra in history, with more than 1,500 authorized releases to its credit, starting with its first pressing in 1917. The Internet has expanded the Orchestra’s reach, and in 2006 the Philharmonic became the first major American orchestra to offer downloadable concerts, recorded live, which are available on the DG Concerts label, exclusively on iTunes.

Lorin Maazel, who has led more than 150 orchestras in more than 5,000 opera and concert performances, became Music Director of the New York Philharmonic in September 2002. His appointment came 60 years after his debut with the Orchestra at Lewisohn Stadium, then the Orchestra’s summer venue. As Music Director he has conducted seven World Premiere-New York Philharmonic Commissions, including the Pulitzer Prize- and Grammy Award-winning On the Transmigration of Souls by John Adams; Stephen Hartke’s Symphony No. 3; and Melinda Wagner’s Trombone Concerto. He has led cycles of works by Brahms and Beethoven, and in 2007 led a Philharmonic festival devoted to Tchaikovsky. He also conducted the Orchestra’s inaugural performances in the DG Concerts series - a groundbreaking initiative to offer downloadable New York Philharmonic concerts exclusively on iTunes.

Mr. Maazel has taken the Orchestra on numerous international tours, including the May 2007 Tour of Europe; the November 2006 visit to Japan and Korea; the June 2006 Tour of Italy, sponsored by Generali; and in autumn 2005, the two-part 75th Anniversary European Tour to thirteen cities in five countries. In addition to the New York Philharmonic, Mr. Maazel is music director of the Palau de les Arts Reina Sofia in Valencia, Spain, and Italy’s Symphonica Toscanini. He has served as music director of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra (1993-2002), and has held positions as music director of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra (1988-96); general manager and chief conductor of the Vienna Staatsoper (1982-84) - the first American to hold that position; music director of The Cleveland Orchestra (1972-82); and artistic director and chief conductor of the Deutsche Oper Berlin (1965-71).

“As always, Alison Melville’s playing is exquisitely executed with warmth, wit and tenderness…these airs, dance tunes, variations and sonatas are performed with the grace, humor and touching sensitivity inherent in the music.” - The WholeNote

A collection of Scottish music from the 18th century, She’s Sweetest When She’s Naked is the brainchild of Baroque flutist Alison Melville. The collection and preservation of Scots tunes began during the 17th century following Scotland’s union with England. Scotland wanted to protect its cultural heritage, a large part of which existed in the traditional music that had been passed down through many generations. “It was many years ago when I first began exploring eighteenth-century Scottish music”, said Melville. “Having been steeped in the more typical Baroque repertoire for my instruments, I was always on the lookout for more esoteric musical fare; and as a first-generation Canadian with ancestry in Glasgow and Dundee, perhaps it was genetic.” Ms. Melville’s curiosity resulted in a recording to be released by early-music.com on September 30 that explores how these traditional songs would have sounded when played three centuries ago, on instruments like the flute, recorder, harpsichord, guitar, baroque cello and bodhrán.

Including songs from James Oswald’s Caledonian Pocket Companion (a multi-volume collection of Scots tunes for violin or flute solo published between 1742 and 1759), The Braes of Ballandyne from Edward Miller’s flute instruction method of 1799, Nicola Matteis’ Ayrs for the Violin (1685), and an anonymous 18th century song “Goodnight and God be with you”, from the National Library of Scotland, the music on She’s Sweetest When She’s Naked is true evidence of the virtually non-existent gap between what was 18th century ‘art’ and traditional music.

Now active as one of North America’s leading performers on historical flutes, Toronto-born Alison Melville has performed across Canada and the USA, New Zealand, Iceland, Japan, and Europe. With extensive television, film and radio performance credits, Alison can also be heard on over 40 CD recordings, including four internationally acclaimed solo recordings. She has been Assistant Professor of Recorder at the Oberlin College Conservatory of Music since 1999.

Composer and court harpsichordist to King Louis XIV, J. Henry D’Anglebert also holds the distinction of having the first printed music in France to contain a table of ornaments as well as their realizations. Published by the D’Anglebert in 1689, Pièces de clavecin contains 57 pieces grouped into four suites. The collection remained widely-regarded for years after its publication and its table of ornaments served as a model for many composers in France and abroad. On this early-music.com recording, critically-acclaimed harpsichordist and recitalist Hank Knox performs pieces from three of the four suites on a reproduction of a 1768 Albertus Delin upright harpsichord.After studying harpsichord in Montreal and Paris, Hank Knox went on to become an accomplished recitalist, chamber musician, and continuo player. He is a founding member of Ensemble Arion, with whom he has toured extensively. He also has performed with ensembles such as Tafelmusik, the Studio de musique ancienne de Montréal, as well as with the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal. Hank Knox directs the Early Music program at McGill University, where he teaches harpsichord and figured bass accompaniment, coaches chamber music ensembles, and conducts the McGill Baroque Orchestra. He has been a William Dawson Scholar in recognition of his work in Early Music since 2003, and was awarded the Thomas Binkley prize for an outstanding university collegium director by Early Music America in 2008.

Early-music.com is dedicated to the promotion of the best early music performance artists in the world. Launched in 1998, early-music.com was founded with the intention of encouraging the appreciation of historically informed performance of music written in the 17th and 18th centuries played on period instruments, while also offering a platform on which member artists can communicate biographies and concert schedules on the early-music.com website.

Conducted by Lorin Maazel and filmed live at La Scala during the summer of 2007, this production of La Traviata is a revival of the 1990 production, directed by Liliana Cavani and with sets designed by Dante Ferretti. Cavani’s direction of Traviata has been praised for its psychological and realistic detail. Ferretti’s sets are luxurious and beautiful, perfectly portraying the mid-nineteenth century time period in which the opera occurs.