Bernstein’s MASS performed by Marin Alsop and the Baltimore SO & Ravel’s L’Enfant Et Les Sortilèges performed by Alastair Willis and the Nashville SO, both Naxos recordings, earn nominations for Best Classical Album
Two Naxos recordings received Best Classical Album nominations: Marin Alsop’s widely-acclaimed recording of Leonard Bernstein’s MASS performed by the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra featuring Jubilant Sykes, the Morgan State University Choir and the Peabody Children’s Chorus (Steven Epstein, producer; Richard King, Engineer); and Alastair Willis’s recording of Ravel’s L’Enfant Et Les Sortilèges performed by the Nashville Symphony Orchestra featuring Julie Boulianne, the Nashville Symphony Chorus, the Chicago Symphony Chorus and the Chattanooga Boys Choir (Blanton Alspaugh, producer; Mark Donahue & John Hill, engineers).
Conductor Antoni Wit and the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra received a Best Orchestral Performance nomination for their Naxos recording of Szymanowski’s Symphonies Nos. 1 & 4. Antoni Wit also earned a Best Choral Performance nomination for his Naxos recording of Penderecki’s Utrenja with the Warsaw Boys’ Choir and the Warsaw Philharmonic Choir & Orchestra. Dennis Keene and the Voices of Ascension were also nominated in the Best Choral Performance category for Song of the Stars, their Naxos recording featuring the works of Granados, Casals & Blancafort.
Renowned violinist Philippe Quint was honored with a nomination for Best Instrumental Soloist Performance with Orchestra for his Naxos recording of Korngold’s Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 35, and Ursula Oppens earned a nomination for Best Instrumental Performance without Orchestra for her album Oppens Plays Carter from Chicago-based Cedille Records.
The ENSO Quartet received a nomination for Best Chamber Music Performance for their Naxos recording of Ginastera’s Complete String Quartets.
Two Opus Arte DVD productions earned nominations for Best Opera Recording: Messiaen’s Saint François D’Assise(Ingo Metzmacher, conductor; Armand Arapian, Hubert Delamboye, Rod Gilfry, Henk Neven, Tom Randle & Camilla Tilling; Karin Elzendoorn, producer; The Hague Philharmonic; Chorus Of De Nederlandse Opera) and Tan Dun’s Marco Polo(Tan Dun, conductor; Stephen Bryant, Sarah Castle, Zhang Jun, Nancy Allen Lundy, Stephen Richardson & Charles Workman; Ferenc van Damme, producer; Netherlands Chamber Orchestra; Cappella Amsterdam).
Best Classical Contemporary Composition nominations went to Roberto Sierra for his work Missa Latina ‘Pro Pace’ (Naxos) and to Jennifer Higdon for her Percussion Concerto (London Philharmonic Orchestra).
Award-winning sound-pioneers from 2L earn two Best Surround Sound Album nominations: for the album Flute Mystery (Morten Lindberg & Hans Peter L’Orange, surround mix engineers; Morten Lindberg, surround mastering engineer; Morten Lindberg, surround producer; performed by Emily Beynon, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Fred Johnny Berg, Catherine Beynon & the Philharmonia Orchestra) and for the album Treble & Bass (Morten Lindberg & Hans Peter L’Orange, surround mix engineers; Morten Lindberg, surround mastering engineer; Morten Lindberg, surround producer; performed by Daniel Reuss, Trondheim Symfoniorkester, Mariann Thorsen & Göran Sjölin).
Blanton Alspaugh, Steven Epstein and David Frost each earned Producer of the Year, Classical nominations for work including Naxos recordings. Blanton Alspaugh as producer of Menotti’s Amahl And The Night Visitors(Alastair Willis, Chicago Symphony Chorus, Nashville Symphony Chorus & Orchestra); Ravel’s L’Enfant Et Les Sortilèges (Alastair Willis, Chicago Symphony Chorus, Chattanooga Boys Choir, Nashville Symphony Chorus & Orchestra); Schubert’s Death And The Maiden (JoAnn Falletta & Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra); Roberto Sierra’s Missa Latina ‘Pro Pace’(Andreas Delfs, Nathaniel Webster, Heidi Grant Murphy, Milwaukee Symphony Chorus & Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra). Steven Epstein as producer of Bernstein’s MASS(Marin Alsop, Jubilant Sykes, Morgan State University Choir, Peabody Children’s Chorus & Baltimore Symphony Orchestra); Corigliano’s A Dylan Thomas Trilogy (Leonard Slatkin, George Mabry, Sir Thomas Allen, Nashville Symphony Chorus & Orchestra); Fauré’s Piano Quintets (Fine Arts Quartet & Cristina Oritz). David Frost as producer of Korngold’s Violin Concerto; Schauspiel Overture; Much Ado About Nothing (Philippe Quint, Carlos Miguel Prieto & Orquesta Sinfonica de Mineria).
The 52nd GRAMMY® Award Winners will be announced on January 31, 2010.
This will be the first of a sereis of email conversations I’ll be having with pianist (and Naxos recording artist) Ralph van Raat. After contacting Ralph about this project we quickly become friends and found ourselves chatting about more than the music. Here is the first round of questions I had / have for Mr. van Raat. enjoy!
-What do you have going on this summer musically?
Usually, I spend my holidays mostly by learning a lot of new repertoire for the coming concert season. I deliberately (and almost traditionally) reserve a period of several weeks in this period without any concerts or other engagements, to fully concentrate myself at making a good start with all those new works. Obviously, the process of learning new works continues throughout the whole year, but then all the attention has to be divided between many things, such as concertizing, lecturing, and practising. It always turns out to be an absolutely amazing and enjoyable experience to put aside these things for a while and just plunge into all those exciting new projects! Another exciting thing is the recording of two new CD’s for Naxos, right at the end of summer, which I am greatly looking forward to.
-Where will you be taking your Holiday?
Holidays will take me this year to a rather quiet place in southern France – a very small village near Avignon – where there is, in fact, no piano or whatsoever. I used not to take holidays and continue to work for many years, however, retreating into silence, quietness and into your own world of thought for a while, with many books and good food, turns out to be very inspiring and refreshing, too…
-You’re a Pilot? When did aviation start to interest you and how did this interst develop?
It is almost hard to remember when aviation started to interest me, as my interest (like with music) started before I was born (at least – that is the way it feels!!). It had always been a dilemma for me in what area to try and pursue a career – aviation or music. At 14, I took a glider flying course. I was at high school, and mostly had time for my interests (playing the piano and flying) during the weekends. I noticed that, despite my enthusiasm for flying, the passion for music won more often. Unfortunately I had to make a decision how to spend my time, and after two years I chose to spend as much time as I could on a music career. However, the dream of flying never let go of me. Once I studied at the conservatory, I was happy to win some competitions not only because it helped my career, but also because I thought that it would bring the prospect of being able to fly more close: at least as a passenger, travelling to foreign concert venues, but perhaps even for private flying, some day….And sometime ago I decided to make that dream come true and plunge into a PPL course.
I can say, that it is the best of life, combining the worlds of music and aviation. I mutually learn from them: music has to do with a lot of mental and practical preparation; with finding a balance between reason and emotion (i.e. taking passion into control); and with the final performance as a critical moment where all knowledge comes together at once. With flying, I recognize many of the same issues and processes. You prepare your flight carefully, the route, the circumstances such as weather, your fuel etc. Then the flight itself can be seen as the performance, where it comes down to passion, skills and knowledge, like in a concert. During a flight, you have to take many things into account in order to arrive where you want to arrive, such as the action of wind. That is very similar to adjusting your musical performance to the acoustics of the concert hall and the ‘mood’ of the audience, in order to shape the ‘destination’ (or goals) of your concert performance. So in fact, flying for an hour does not feel much different that playing the piano for an hour!
-Do you look at very much art? Do you have any favorites in the world of the Visual Arts?
In fact, I have always been very inspired by the analogies between visual arts and music especially from the end of the 19th century up till and including today. To me it seems that in any period of time in history, there never has been a closer correlation between those two. In fact, especially more “difficult” abstract music (such as the compositions by Webern and Schoenberg) can be much better understood by looking at the visual interpretations of very similar artistic views in works by painters such as Kandinsky. Personally, I am very fascinated by post-impressionism, which is characterized by painters such as Cézanne. They were especially interested in the different emotions and effects of colour, something that interests me in music a lot. Also, they tried (with pointillist techniques) to create a larger whole by using minute streaks of paint. In music, one also strives to make one coherent story of seemingly loose entities, which are the individual notes, until something recognizable appears. It is especially in this perspective that I find ideas for playing and interpreting music in visual arts.
Recorded in Nashville’s beautiful Laura Turner Concert Hall, Naxos presents the latest recording from the Grammy®-winning Nashville Symphony. Joined by the Chicago and Nashville Symphony Choruses, the Chattanooga Boys Choir and conductor Alastair Willis, the Nashville Symphony performs Ravel’s 1925 opera L’Enfant et les sortilèges, and his beloved cycle for soprano and orchestra, Shéhérazade. Soloists include Julie Boulianne, Genevi ève Després Kirsten Gunlogson Philippe Castagner Ian Greenlaw, Kevin Short Agathe Martel Cassandre Prévost and Julie Cox.
Being released just in time for the 84th 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.
To listen to the episodes from the respective Podcast you will need to have Adobe's FLASH player installed. Please use Adobe's web page to choose the appropriate version to install for your platform.
Entries (RSS)