Updates from the world's leading classical music label
September’s list of new releases again boasts a wide spectrum, from big-hitting orchestral performances to intimate solo recitals. I’ve taken a small-is-beautiful focus for the overview of this month’s line-up, highlighting solo performances, works for chamber ensembles and music for chamber orchestra. And I’m going to start with a large-scale work for chorus and orchestra Read More …
Raymond Bisha introduces a new recording of music by Austrian composer Hanns Eisler who, in his late years, concentrated increasingly on adapting his film scores for the concert hall. He also began his Leipzig Symphony during this period, but it was left unfinished at the time of his death. Thilo Medek, a young composer at Read More …
For some woodwind instruments, their close cousins sound markedly different. Take the closing bars of Beethoven’s Egmont Overture, for example. When the shrill piccolo slices through the texture, there’s no way you would mistake it for the sound of an homogenous flute. And when the bulky contrabassoon enters in Ravel’s Mother Goose Suite, it’s a Read More …
This podcast introduces Vol. 2 in our ground-breaking The Music of Brazil series, a five-year project to record around 100 mostly orchestral works by 19th and 20th-century Brazilian composers, many in world premiere recordings. Released in February, Vol. 1 (8.574067) featured works by Alberto Nepomuceno. Gramophone declared it “urgently recommended”. We follow up with chamber Read More …
This podcast from the Naxos Sounds Interesting series aims to create a bit of a buzz by putting a few musical bees in your bonnet, specially hived off from the Naxos catalogue. The presenter is Richard Kennedy.
The Creatures of Prometheus was Beethoven’s only full-length ballet score. The work premiered in March 1801 and the composer’s own version for piano solo was published later the same year. The work relates the story from Greek mythology of Prometheus, a lofty spirit who endeavoured to lift human beings from a state of ignorance into Read More …
I’m going to select from this month’s crop of new Naxos releases the names of nine composers that might be new to many readers. Introducing audiences to little–known music and its creators is just one of the reasons that Naxos has earned its worldwide reputation, so here goes in putting flesh on the bones of Read More …
Raymond Bisha and composer Derek Bermel discuss the latter’s Migrations, a 3-work programme that observes the universal phenomenon of human transit through an eclectic mix of styles: Migration series depicts the movement of African Americans from the south to the north of the United States in search of a better life during the first half of the 20th Read More …
I was at a party recently, celebrating a friend’s 60th birthday. There was plenty of Bollinger chilling, popping and fizzing to set the amiable mood that soon took hold. But the birthday boy and one if his guests were soon sounding a little exasperated by the way in which their conversation kept hitting the buffers. Read More …
Last month’s New on Naxos list of recordings enabled a look at the various roles an orchestra plays in its repertoire. This month, we go small-scale and dip into programmes for both solo keyboard and chamber ensemble; we’ll follow them roughly in chronological order to give a historical and musical perspective. There’s no better place Read More …