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NEW ON NAXOS
The World’s Leading Classical Music Label
October 2013 |
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Get tuned in to the latest instalment of new releases from Naxos, your boundless source of classical discoveries.
Click here to watch our monthly New on Naxos video to sample some of the highlight releases of the month.
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8.573188
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Dmitry SHOSTAKOVICH (1906–1975)
Symphony No. 4 in C minor, Op. 43
Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra Vasily Petrenko
Completed in 1936 but withdrawn during rehearsal and not performed until 1961, the searing Fourth Symphony finds Shostakovich stretching his musical idiom to the limit in the search for a personal means of expression at a time of undoubted personal and professional crisis. The opening movement, a complex and unpredictable take on sonata form that teems with a dazzling profusion of varied motifs, is followed by a short, eerie central movement. The finale opens with a funeral march leading to a climax of seismic physical force that gives way to a bleak and harrowing minor key coda. The Symphony has since become one of the most highly regarded of the composer’s large-scale works.
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8.573186
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Sergey PROKOFIEV (1891–1953)
Symphony No. 4 (revised version), Op. 112
L’enfant prodigue (The Prodigal Son), Op. 46
São Paulo Symphony Orchestra Marin Alsop
Prokofiev’s imposing Fourth Symphony and his final ballet for Sergey Dyagilev, The Prodigal Son, share common roots but are entirely distinctive in character. The vivid depictions in the ballet’s moral tale include sensual temptations, drunken debauchery, robbery and remorse. The 1947 revision of the Fourth Symphony, lengthened and enriched in orchestration by the addition of a piccolo clarinet, piano and harp, makes extended use of themes from The Prodigal Son as well as unused material. Prokofiev’s Fifth Symphony with Marin Alsop and the São Paulo Symphony Orchestra (8.573029) was described as “an outstanding achievement” by BBC Music Magazine.
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8.572276
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Pablo SARASATE (1844–1908)
Music for Violin and Orchestra, Volume 4
Fantasies on Don Giovanni and Der Freischütz
Tianwa Yang, violin
Orquesta Sinfónica de Navarra Ernest Martínez Izquierdo
This volume concludes Tianwa Yang’s internationally acclaimed series of recordings of Pablo de Sarasate’s works for violin and orchestra. This stunning programme includes the popular Introduction et Tarantelle and two delightful jotas. Sarasate’s scintillating flying staccato technique is heard in the Fantaisie on Weber’s ‘Der Freischütz’, while Le Rêve is a remarkable work in every way. “Yang is splendidly equipped as a Sarasate violinist, with her clear tone, pure intonation, impressive dexterity and light touch … startlingly beautiful.” (Gramophone on Volume 3, 8.572275)
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8.573251
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A TALE OF TWO CELLOS
Arrangements by Julian Lloyd Webber
Julian and Jiaxin Lloyd Webber, cellos
Good original music for two cellos is quite rare to find and over the years arrangements have greatly enriched the classical repertoire. In this recording internationally celebrated cellist Julian Lloyd Webber has taken music from Monteverdi to Arvo Pärt – much of it originally written for two voices – and adapted it to the medium of two cellos and accompanying piano, sometimes including other instrumentation. These unique arrangements, which he performs with his wife Jiaxin Lloyd Webber, allow their cello voices to blend together as they explore music of lyricism, quiet melancholy and tuneful energy.
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8.573271
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Dmitry SHOSTAKOVICH (1906–1975)
Violin Concerto in A minor, Op. 77 *
Wolfgang RIHM (b. 1952)
Gesungene Zeit (Time Chant) †
Jaap van Zweden, violin
Netherlands Radio Philharmonic * Edo de Waart *
Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra † Zoltán Peskó †
Composed in 1947-48 but unperformed until 1955, Shostakovich’s First Violin Concerto is one of the great concertos of the twentieth century. The wide emotional range of its four-movement structure encompasses an opening of brooding, elegiac melancholy, a manic scherzo, a harrowing and deeply felt passacaglia, and a brilliant, concluding burlesque. Wolfgang Rihm has been described as ‘one of the most approachable, engaging and profound composers writing music today’ (The Guardian). The solo violin in Gesungene Zeit (Time Chant) plays one long fine-spun melody, the work creating a maximum of expression with a minimum of means.
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8.573201-02
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Paul HINDEMITH (1895–1963)
The Complete Piano Concertos
Idil Biret, piano
Yale Symphony Orchestra Toshiyuki Shimada
Hindemith wrote much varied music for the piano with orchestral accompaniment. He intended his Theme with Four Variations (The Four Temperaments) as an experimental ballet, and it was first performed in this way in 1946 with choreography by George Balanchine. The manuscript of the Piano Music with Orchestra was found amongst pianist Paul Wittgenstein’s papers after his wife’s death in 2001. The Concerto for Piano and Orchestra is astutely conceived, whilst the Concert Music for Piano, Brass and Two Harps reveals Hindemith’s constant search for varied sound colour in his instrumentation.
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* Not Available in the United States due to possible copyright restrictions |
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Lady Windermere’s Fan: Audiobook App
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Little Tchaikovsky App
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Key developments
4 October, 2013
Rather than a theme and variations for piano, let’s take a look at some variations on the theme of the piano itself.
Early keyboard instruments that were largely capable of just a single dynamic level, such as the virginal, clavichord, harpsichord and organ, are familiar enough. Generally regarded as the inventor of the piano, Bartolomeo Cristofori’s early 18th-century creation of one that could produce gradual variations in sound was just one of the extended family of cousins that the keyboard has spawned over the centuries.
Read more…
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Also check out the latest edition of the New On Naxos presenter, featuring details of every new release of the month
Click here to download (PDF)
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Naxos October 2013 Sampler
9.00184
was USD 9.99
Discounted Price USD 2.99
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