February at Naxos.com


Soaring melody, striking orchestral colour and soulful Slavic spirit are at the heart of The Russian Symphony .  Begin your exploration of the riches of Russian symphonies with our new release of Sergey Taneyev’s Symphonies Nos. 1 and 3 (8.570336), and a new world of Russian music will open for you.

Welcome the Year of the Rat with our Chinese New Year Spectacular, which includes spring festival music and instrumental classics. 

Want to venture beyond Haydn and Mozart?  Discover hidden musical treasures with 18th Century Classics .  Enjoy music by composers such as Benda, Kraus and Hofmann.  The latest addition to the series features symphonies by Johann Baptist Vanhal (8.570280), a prolific composer who was a string quartet partner of Haydn and Mozart. 

Naxos has the largest and most widely acclaimed catalogue of guitar recordings.  Explore The Guitar Collection. It is, on the one hand, the premiere showcase for international competition winners, who are presented in the Laureate Series.  The National Series offers guitar music in country-specific compilations filled with unique repertoire. Our latest addition to the series is Guitar Music of Chile (8.570341).


For more of Naxos’ new releases available for streaming on the site, click here

Most Streamed Tracks on Naxos.com - January 2008


Click on each track description to view the full album.
  1. Nachts
    From the album PENDERECKI: Symphony No. 8 / Dies irae / Aus den Psalmen Davids 8.570450
  2. Bugler's Holiday
    From the album ANDERSON, L.: Orchestral Music, Vol. 1 8.559313
  3. IV. Finale: Presto
    From the album HAYDN: Symphonies, Vol. 29 (Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5) 8.557571
  4. I. All'Overtura
    From the album SIBELIUS: Scenes historiques I and II / King Christian II Suite 8.570068
  5. The Beginning (Overture)
    From the album SHOSTAKOVICH: Odna (Alone) 8.570316
  6. I. Allegro moderato
    From the album SCHUBERT: Piano Works for Four Hands, Vol. 5 8.570354
  7. Sinfonia
    From the album VIVALDI: Griselda 8.660211-13
  8. I. Maestoso
    From the album CARTER: String Quartets Nos. 1 and 5 8.559362
  9. Alzai le flebili voci al Signor (Chorus, Soprano 1)
    From the album MOZART: Davide penitente / Regina coeli, K. 108 8.570231
  10. Fantasia on Christmas Carols
    From the album VAUGHAN WILLIAMS: Fantasia on Christmas Carols / Hodie 8.570439
Album of the Month

8.570283
R. STRAUSS: Four Last Songs

A year before his death in 1948, Richard Strauss composed his masterpiece, Four Last Songs, expressing a calm acceptance of the inevitability of his own death. Meditations onlife, death, and the transition into ‘ the magic circle of the night’, the songs rank among the most haunting music ever written. In contrast the six Brentano-Lieder are playful, incandescent and virtuosic settings of Clemens Brentano’s deeply romantic poems.

Ricarda Merbeth, soprano; Weimar Staatskapelle; Michael Halász

New Releases

Naxos |   Naxos Japanese Classics   |  Naxos Spanish Classics |  Marco Polo |   Naxos Historical |  Naxos Educational | 

Some releases may not be available on CD in all countries – please contact the Naxosdistributor
in your territory. For a complete list of new releases available, click here

Naxos

8.570381 SCHUBERT: Mass in E flat major

One of a remarkable series of works Schubert wrote in his final year, Mass No. 6 in E flat lay unperformed until a year after his death. With an unusually prominent part fortrombones, this is a powerful and disquieting masterpiece, reconciling the liturgical grandeurand monumentality of the vast fugues that end the Gloria and Credo,with the composer’ snatural lyricism and daring chromatic digressions.
 

Immortal Bach Ensemble, Leipziger Kammerorchester, Morten Schuldt-Jensen

8.570361 J.C. BACH: Six Keyboard Sonatas

The youngest son of Johann Sebastian Bach, Johann Christian moved to Italy and then, finally, to London, where, like Handel before him, he won early success in the opera house. Although he had been a skilled keyboard player, he wrote relatively little for the medium, in which the new fortepiano was assuming importance. His Six Keyboard Sonatas, Op. 17, were written and first published in the 1770s and show the influence his work had on Mozart. The pianist Alberto Nosè was Gold Medal Winner of the 2005 Santander International Piano Competition.


Alberto Nosè, piano

8.570532 KAPUSTIN: Piano Sonata No. 15

Kapustin’s pianistic textures are rich, spanning the entire keyboard, with melodies in every register, sweeping arpeggios, tons of chords, and a fantastic array of runs. Such music is Kapustin’s birthright: Ukrainian born and Moscow trained, he has Medtner, Rachmaninov and Scriabin in his veins. But the jazz side is equally authentic, incorporating the fleet pianism of Oscar Peterson and the harmonic volatility and technical exuberance of Art Tatum. Kapustin’s music also encompasses more modern sounds, such as McCoy Tyner’s quartal voicings and the pop-tinged stylings of Keith Jarrett.


John Salmon, piano


Naxos Japanese Classics

8.570319
SUGATA: Peaceful Dance of Two Dragons / The Rhythm of Life

Isotaro Sugata’s compositions may be viewed as a synthesis of several different kinds of Western music, as well as incorporating elements of traditional Japanese imperial music. Inspired by Hindemith, the polyphonic Symphonic Overture is virtually a single-movement symphony. Calling for an orchestra with triple winds and Japanese traditional percussion, Peaceful Dance of Two Dragons is a free and powerful paraphrase of Nasori, a Gagaku dance. Dancing Girl in the Orient, taken from “Sketches of the Desert” Suite in Oriental Style, is written in the manner of Rimsky-Korsakov and Ketèlbey. The ballet music The Rhythm of Life is an idiosyncratic piece in a primitivistic style, where fragments from Stravinsky’s Le sacre du printemps are combined with Japanese melodies.

Kanagawa Philharmonic Orchestra, Kazuhiko Komats


Naxos Spanish Classics

8.570443 VILLA-ROJO: Concierto plateresco

Jesús Villa-Rojo is one of the most dynamic figures on the Spanish music scene today. Almost all Villa-Rojo’s works of the last twenty years or more feature certain constants originating from Spanish musical tradition, some melodic or modal, others based on specific intervals or colours. In the Concierto plateresco, he filters these through the prism of the Renaissance, a high-point in Spanish cultural and artistic history. Written in 2004 to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the Reina Sofía Chamber Orchestra, the sparkling Serenata too has points of reference in musical history, both past and present. Concierto 2, for cello – here given in its revised version, with string orchestra – is a key work in Villa-Rojo’s compositional career. Dating from 1983, the work is notable for its instrumental virtuosity and pent-up dramatic tension.


Hansjörg Schellenberger, oboe; Asier Polo, cello; Orquesta de Cámara Reina Sofía; Nicolás Chumachenco


Marco Polo

8.225287 Johann STRAUSS I: Edition, Vol. 11

In a career that spanned a period from the 1820s until his death in 1849, the older Johann Strauss established an unrivalled position for himself among composers and performers of dance music in Vienna. His own achievements were continued by his three sons, ensuring the name of Strauss was inextricably identified with the musical pleasures of nineteenth-century Vienna. Several of the works on this recording were written during Strauss’ 1837-1838 fourteen-month tour of Western Europe with his orchestra. They include his celebrated Paris Waltz, which quotes the revolutionary Marseillaise, still unmistakeable in waltz rhythm and banned in Strauss’ own country, and Homage to Queen Victoria of England, which concludes with God Save the Queen played in waltz rhythm, and was performed at the opening state ball at Buckingham Palace on the occasion of the Queen’s accession to the throne.

Slovak Sinfonietta Z˘ilina, Christian Pollack


 Naxos Historical

8.111274 KLEMPERER: Brahms / Wagner

If ‘slow tempos’ were a significant characteristic of Klemperer’s final years as a conductor, in his earlier days, as demonstrated on these 1927-1928 recordings, he could set fizzing tempos, galvanising his performers with electric gestures. Above all, however, Klemperer was a master structuralist, always focussed on the music, its construction and direction. His recording of the Brahms Symphony No. 1, made over seven months, is notable not only for athletic vitality but for ecstatic singing lines and subtle integration of light and shade. The account of the Prelude to Act I of Tristan und Isolde is remarkably rapt while that of Siegfried Idyll is intimate and gentle.


Johannes Brahms, Richard Wagner

 

8.111320-21 VERDI: Otello

Arturo Toscanini was the second cellist in the orchestra of La Scala, Milan, for the triumphant first performance of Verdi’s Otello on 5th February 1887. Sixty years later he led a radio broadcast of Otello spread over two evenings that is considered by many to be the most successful of his opera recordings for NBC. Described by one of Toscanini’s biographers, Joseph Horowitz, as ‘the one that comes closest to recapturing Toscanini’s revolutionary impact in the pit’, this December 1947 recording is remarkable for Toscanini’s dramatic grasp of Shakespeare’s timeless tragedy, and his scrupulous observation of Verdi’s most detailed dynamic markings.


NBC Symphony Orchestra and Choruses, Arturo Toscanini

 

8.111092 SEGOVIA 6: American Recordings, Vol. 4

Volume 4 of Segovia’s 1950s American recordings is devoted in the main to his arrangements of music composed between 1535 and 1750. Although today it is customary to play this repertoire on reproductions of instruments authentically modelled on concepts of musicological research, Segovia preferred the 20th century guitar to all other instruments as an expressive medium. To his interpretations of the 16th century works of Milan, Narváez, Mudarra and Dowland, as well as the Baroque guitar of Robert de Visée and transcriptions from Scarlatti or Rameau, Segovia brings the same application of colour, variety of dynamics and rhythmic freedom as he applied to romantic pieces. This full-blooded approach to early music was greatly appreciated during his lifetime and often provided one of the few opportunities for the general public to become acquainted with this area of the repertoire.


Naxos Educational

8.558186-87 Stravinsky: A Portrait

From the Russian fairy-tale enchantment of The Firebird to the austere ritual at the end of his Requiem Canticles composed over half a century later, Stravinsky’s extraordinary creativity embraces a range of styles and tributes to past composers.  Yet he has always remained himself: he is truly the most comprehensive and wide-ranging musical genius of the twentieth century.

Includes music from The Firebird, The Rite of Spring, Symphony of Psalms, Violin Concerto, Dumbarton Oaks, Requiem Canticles and more.



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