This year, artists from Naxos of America’s family of distributed labels were nominated for three awards, including BestClassical Album nominations for pianist Sonia Rubinsky for her Naxos recording Villa-Lobos: Piano Music; Guia Pratico, Albums 10 and 11; Suite Infantil Nos. 1 and 2 (Naxos8570504); and renowned cellist Andrés Díaz, for his Azica recording of Bach Cello Suites (ACD-71252).

Composer Clarice Assad also was nominated for the Best Classical Contemporary Composition award for Danças Nativas, from the Chandos recording Spirit of Brazil (Aquarelle Guitar Quartet; CHAN 10512).

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 Created with the intent of exploring a musical world directed at rediscovering unpublished musical scores and popularizing the work of important musicians, I Musici di Parmi has a wide-ranging repertory that runs from Baroque to Classicism, right up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.

Garnering two nominations this year, the Naxos world premiere recording of John Corigliano’s Mr. Tambourine Man picked up a Best Classical Contemporary Composition nomination for the Pulitzer, Oscar, Grammy®, and Grawemeyer award-winning composer. The album, which features conductor JoAnn Falletta and the Buffalo Philharmonic, also brought in a nomination for the recording’s soloist, Israeli-born soprano Hila Plitmann, who received a nomination for Best Classical Vocal Performance.

The Pacifica Quartet, recently named 2009 Ensemble of the Year by Musical America, was honored with a nomination for Best Chamber Music Performance for its acclaimed Naxos recording of Elliott Carter String Quartets Nos. 1 & 5. The second volume of this series is due for release in February 2009. Renowned producer Judith Sherman picked up a nomination for Producer of the Year for her work on the Carter String Quartets on Naxos and 4 additional albums.

A Choral Performance nomination went to chorus master Henryk Wojnarowski and conductor Antoni Wit for the Naxos recording of Karol Szymanowski’s Stabat Mater with the Warsaw National Philharmonic Orchestra and Choir. A Best Engineered Album (Classical) nomination went to engineer John Newton for his work on the Naxos recording Respighi: Church Windows, Brazilian Impressions, Rossiniana, which featured conductor JoAnn Falletta and the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra.

NAXOS OF AMERICA DISTRIBUTED LABEL ARTISTS NOMINATED FOR GRAMMYS®

Artists from British-based label Chandos received 5 nominations in multiple categories this year. Spotless Rose: Hymns to the Virgin Mary featuring the Phoenix Chorale, conductor Charles Bruffy, and produced by Blanton Alspaugh, was nominated for Best Classical Album (Awards to Artists and Producer). Additionally, Mr. Bruffy and the Phoenix Chorale were nominated in the Best Small Ensemble Performance category for this recording. Another Chandos choral recording, Rheinberger: Sacred Choral Works, conductor Charles Bruffy (with the Kansas City Chorale and Phoenix Bach Choir) earned nominations for Best Surround Sound Album and Best Choral Performance. Finally, a Best Orchestral Performance nomination went to conductor Rumon Gamba and the Iceland Symphony Orchestra for their Chandos recording D’Indy Orchestral Works, Volume 1.

A EuroArts production earned two nominations in the categories of Best Classical Album (Award to Artists and Producers) and Best Opera Recording (Award to Conductor, Producer, and Principal Soloists) for their DVD recording of Kurt Weill’s Rise and Fall of The City of Mahagonny. The performance featured conductor James Conlon, soloists Anthony Dean Griffey, Patti LuPone and Audra McDonald; the Los Angeles Opera Orchestra and Chorus; and was produced by Fred Vogler. This is the first Grammy® Awards in which DVD recordings of operas are eligible for nomination. Only the audio portion of the DVD is considered in the nominating process.

Also in the category of Best Opera Recording nominations went to conductors Paul O’Dette and Stephen Stubbs for their CPO recording of Jean Baptiste Lully’s Psyché with the Boston Early Music Festival (Mr. O’Dette and Mr. Stubbs also were nominated last year for their CPO recording of Jean Baptiste Lully’s Thésée with the Boston Early Music Festival).

Renowned Italian conductor and Baroque-specialist, Rinaldo Alessandrini was nominated for his Naïve classique recording of Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo.

Finally, violinist Elmar Oliveira earned a nomination for Best Instrumental Soloist Performance with Orchestra for his Artek recording of Violin Concertos by Ernst Bloch and Benjamin Lees with John McLaughlin Williams conducting the National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine.

In this podcast he talks about studying the original scores of Mozart and Handel, about studying with Maestro Vaclav Talich in Prague right after the Second World War, and about the operas of Janacek and Strauss.

Album details…
Catalogue No.: CHAN 3157(2)

	Die Zauberflote (The Magic Flute) CHAN 3121(2)		Handel Julius Caesar CHAN 3072
	Janacek Makropolous Case CHAN 3138		Janacek Glagolitic Mass CHAN 9310
	Smetana Bartered Bride CHAN 3128(2)

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In the past 20 years, he has made an astonishing 280 recordings. In this interview he talks about this relationship, plus his latest project, a recording of Britten’s opera Owen Wingrave.

Album details…
Catalogue No.: CHAN 10473(2)

BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Richard Hickox

The medium of the string orchestra proved significant for Leighton throughout his life and is featured in a number of his important works. The three works in the first volume, each scored for string orchestra, accurately represent his compositional development, complementing one of his earliest student works, the Symphony for Strings, with two of his more mature ones. The Symphony for Strings was premiered by Gerald Finzi and his Newbury String Players while Leighton was still a student. The first major work by the composer for these forces, it was a considerable success, and sparked a friendship between the two composers which lasted until Finzi’s untimely death. Twelve years passed before the composition of the Concerto for String Orchestra. This gap represented a considerable advance in the development of Leighton’s musical language and style as he was exposed to the works of both neoclassical composers and members of the Second Viennese School. However, he retained the lyrical instinct of his earlier years. Completing the disc is one of Leighton’s most enduring orchestral works: the Concerto for Organ, String Orchestra and Timpani. The soloist is internationally-renowned concert organist John Scott, particularly acclaimed for his performances of works by 20th-century composers.

One of the most distinguished post-war British composers, Kenneth Leighton’s works are frequently performed both in the U.K. and abroad. His music maintains a compelling balance between Romantic tradition and early serialism. His lyrical and colorfully orchestrated works not only suggest a lively, if often dark, imagination, but also demonstrate a remarkable scope explored by few of his countrymen. Richard Hickox and the BBC National Orchestra of Wales present the first of two releases devoted to Leighton’s orchestral works.

Claude DEBUSSY (1862-1918)
Piano Works, Volume 3
Children’s Corner / Suite bergamasque / Danse Bohémienne /
Nocturne / La plus que lent / Mazurka / Rêverie /
Deux Arabesques / Morceau de concours / The Little Nigar /
Hommage à Haydn / Berceuse Héroïque / Page d’Album / Élégie

Jean-Efflam Bavouzet (piano)

Jean-Efflam Bavouzet releases the third volume in his critically acclaimed series devoted to the complete works for piano by Debussy. The recording includes the two famous collections: Children’s Corner and Suite bergamasque, as well as two rarities: La plus que lente, which foreshadows the 1915 Études, and Élégie. Élégie was written in 1915 following the composer’s move to the coast. The outbreak of the First World War had initially depressed Debussy into a state of creative sterility, but the move was most productive. The Élégie was written for a charity and dedicated to Queen Alexandra, honoring the role of women in wartime. It is rarely performed nowadays, but Roger Nichols writes, “it is one of the composer’s most extraordinary works …and we are left wondering what on earth Debussy would have written in the 1920s and beyond …”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In this interview, he talks about the Chandos name, the Chandos sound, and what it means to be a classical label in today’s media universe.

Album details…
Catalogue No.: CHSA 5044