Mieczysław Weinberg flourished as a composer despite working amidst political and personal setbacks. He gained the admiration of Shostakovich, and was championed by the leading Soviet musicians of the day. The soulful Cello Concertino with its Yiddish overtones and melodic eloquence was discovered posthumously, and is effectively a preliminary version of the more elaborate and intense Cello Concerto. The potent Romantic nature of the Concerto has made this one of Weinberg’s most performed largescale pieces. The Fantasia is an appealing early work – expressive and spontaneous. The orchestral piece Polish Melodies, Op. 47, No. 2 recorded during the sessions for this album is available to download and stream (Naxos 9.70381).

9.70381*

Mieczysław WEINBERG (1919–1996)
Polish Melodies

* Only available for download and streaming

INCLUDES WORLD PREMIERE RECORDINGS

César Guerra-Peixe’s compact First Symphony and the colourful Nonet date from his years as part of the Música Viva group – a collective of young composers influenced by Hans-Joachim Koellreutter, the German composer and teacher who brought serial techniques to Brazil. Guerra-Peixe’s relationship with serial composition was intense and short-lived, but both of these earlier pieces were admired internationally and remain two of the finest works produced by this movement. From the 1950s onwards, Guerra-Peixe turned to musical nationalism with many successes including his award-winning and eloquently programmatic Second Symphony.

Visit the ‘Music of Brazil’ mini-site

WORLD PREMIERE RECORDING

Adolphe Adam is famous for the popular ballets Giselle and Le Corsaire, with his stage works being highly influential in the development of 19th-century musical theatre, most especially in the evolution of the Romantic ballet. The colourful and innovative Griseldis, ou Les Cinq Sens narrates the adventures of Elfrid the Crown Prince of Bohemia, on a journey of discovery and growing self-awareness as he travels to meet his prospective bride, Griseldis, Princess of Moldova. Heard here in its world premiere recording, Griseldis is one of Adam’s most important ballets.

WORLD PREMIERE RECORDINGS

Jia Daqun, one of China’s most prolific and respected composers, has written in many forms, including symphonies, concertos, chamber music and song cycles. The symphonic four-concerto cycle, Impressions of Liyuan, is one of his major pieces. It is written for Chinese percussion, bamboo flute, the erhu and suona, with a large symphony orchestra. It offers an evocative aural landscape fusing Western styles with the traditional characteristics of Chinese opera, framed in a contemporary context.

Acknowledged as a definitive model of Italian Romantic melodrama, Lucia di Lammermoor was one of Donizetti’s greatest triumphs, and its popularity led him to produce a French version for Parisian audiences. Lucie de Lammermoor became the ‘other Lucia’, with the opera’s tragic tale of feuding families and doomed romance modified in a way that deepens the characters and makes it an even more brutal and emotional theatrical experience than the original. This new Lucie de Lammermoor made its debut in 1839 with enormous success, becoming a cornerstone of French culture.

Sergey Rachmaninov’s two Elegiac Trios became the pinnacle of Russian musical symbolism, forming an epigraph to the revolutionary upheavals that split Russian civilisation and Rachmaninov’s life in two. The moods of nostalgia and echoes of soulful longing found in these works are infused with ideas of death. The beautiful theme of the Trio élégiaque No. 1 in G minor transforms into a funeral march in the epilogue, while the complex Trio élégiaque No. 2 in D minor is a memorial to Tchaikovsky filled with powerfully prophetic symbols most notably the Dies irae motif.

This diverse programme of works for guitar trio is bound by the common thread of music inspired by stories from literature, stage or screen. With its rhythmic exuberance and tragic beauty, Bernstein’s West Side Story has never lost its freshness and relevance. Ensemble member Luca Isolani’s Note fuori campo is a homage to the versatile Italian composer Nino Rota, who, like Manos Hadjidakis, first shot to international fame with an Oscar-winning film score. Ravel’s Ma Mère l’Oye evokes the poetry of childhood with a refined expressiveness that makes it as popular and unforgettable as Grieg’s music for Peer Gynt.

The music on this recording was written between 1772 and 1782, largely during Mozart’s difficult time in Salzburg employed as Konzertmeister under the regime of Prince-Archbishop Colloredo. Transcribed for keyboard from orchestral originals by Mozart himself, these dances were composed as part of his court duties and they reflect both the tastes of the day, and Mozart’s facility in refining popular genres into stylish pieces with his typical grace and panache. As an exception, the March No. 1 in C major was mentioned by Mozart’s widow Constanze as a piece ‘my husband of blessed memory composed for me’.

By the age of 30 Erich Zeisl was considered one of Vienna’s leading composers. His compositions included chamber works, choral and orchestral pieces, opera and ballet, and Lieder. His settings from Des Knaben Wunderhorn invariably evoke a Mahlerian lineage as Zeisl draws on imagery of light and dark, sunshine and death. In this volume his early songs are juxtaposed with his last, from 1938, a graphic setting of Komm süsser Tod. In exile he wrote no more songs. After the Anschluss, which wrecked his career, Zeisl escaped to America where he endured frustration and ultimately rejection as a film composer at MGM. During this time he composed a piano anthology for his daughter, Barbara, in which he created charming miniatures tailored for the young learner.

Francesco Piemontesi, a BBC Music Magazine award-winning pianist and lauded as a ‘wonderful Mozartian’, has an intense curiosity about his fellow artists – their pianos, the sonorities they cultivate, the secret elements that animate their playing, and what drives them. In this documentary by Jan Schmidt-Garre, filmed over one year, Piemontesi talks with some of the world’s leading performers, including his mentor Alfred Brendel, Maria João Pires, Stephen Kovacevich and Antonio Pappano, in a series of revealing encounters that illuminate their individual approaches to the instrument, its colour and form. The film is complemented by a bonus 60-minute recital by Yulianna Avdeeva, Zlata Chochieva and Francesco Piemontesi, played on Rachmaninoff’s Steinway piano at Villa Senar, his home in Switzerland during the 1930s.

Uniquely inspired by sixteen pristine, biodiverse isles belonging to the territory of her homeland Sri Lanka, Tanya Ekanayaka’s sixteen contrastive and palpable compositions, or ‘Piano Isles’, comprising this album, embody two distinct forms of composition-performance.

Eight works were composed between 2022 and 2024. The remaining eight Extempore Compositions involved simultaneous composition-recording, on a single day of the album recording session in April 2024, each as a whole, and each incorporating a distinct musical motif – a form of artistry never presented through any of Tanya Ekanayaka’s previous work.

The New & Now playlist features all that is new and exciting in the world of classical music, whether it’s new music, new presentations or new performers. With more than 200 new releases each year, and artists from around the world, there is always something new to discover with Naxos.