Updates from the world's leading classical music label
Raymond Bisha introduces the fifth and final volume in our series of recordings of guitar music by Agustín Barrios, the virtuoso Paraguayan guitarist and composer who was one of the first guitarists to understand the potential of making recordings. Sometimes referred to as ‘the Paganini of the guitar from the jungles of Paraguay’, his music Read More …
Our January 25 blog featured a brief mix of the history and repertoire of the organ. It highlighted the loud, grandiose and often clichéd sound of which the instrument is capable, one which has served horror film scores and The Phantom of the Opera well. The blog’s reference to early organs in China might also Read More …
Raymond Bisha introduces a recording of orchestral works by Alberto Nepomuceno (1864-1920), a herald of Brazilian musical nationalism. It’s the first release in a significant new Naxos series titled The Music of Brazil. This is a monumental, 5-year undertaking in collaboration with Brazil’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs to produce around 30 releases of some 100 Read More …
Born to actor-singer parents, it’s little wonder that Albert Lortzing (1801-1851) devoted his life and his musical talents to the world of opera. Although little known outside his native Germany, this actor-singer-librettist-conductor-composer’s operas were amongst the most popular productions in German theatres for more than a century, second only to Mozart and Verdi. Raymond Bisha Read More …
Conductor JoAnn Falletta talks with radio host Peter Hall about her recording of Respighi’s Roman Trilogy, her 24th release for Naxos with the Buffalo Philharmonic. Respighi’s tone poems employ a large symphony orchestra and use a myriad of effects to take the listener through time, space and musical styles. The resultant portraits of Roman festivals, Read More …
Organ recitals aren’t the most user-friendly events for getting familiar with repertoire. The instrument is rooted to where it was born, usually a church, where the performer is rarely in the sight-line and the seating is on the Spartan side. So, I thought a blog on introducing organ music to newcomers to the instrument might Read More …
Born in 1887, Florence Beatrice Price went on to become one of the first prominent African-American composers. Following a move to Chicago in 1927, her career as a composer took off, not least following the award of several prizes intended to support black composers. This success brought her to the attention of the director of Read More …
Mozart is reckoned to have posited that silence, paradoxically, is the most powerful element in music. And I once read that, while there’s one particular zone of your brain that is stimulated when an object starts to produce a sound, it’s a different part that reacts when a clock, for example, ceases its tick-tock and Read More …
Franz Liszt was one of music history’s first superstars, whose stunning technique and charismatic stage presence facilitated his development of the solo piano concert format. This release puts his 12 Transcendental Studies centre stage, where they share the spotlight with award-winning pianist Boris Giltburg, an emerging superstar in his own right whose pianism clothes Liszt’s Read More …
We shouldn’t ring out the year without noting that 2018 marked the 350th anniversary of the birth of the French Baroque composer, François Couperin (1668-1733). He was known as le grand to distinguish him from an uncle of the same name, and emerged as the most accomplished member of a large family of musicians, officially Read More …