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8.570482 HAYDN, J.: Trumpet Concerto / Horn Concerto No. 1 / Keyboard Concerto in D major / Double Concerto in F major (Bruhl)

Haydn’s popular Trumpet Concerto is best known for its thrilling first movement cadenza and brilliant and inventive Rondo finale.  The Horn Concerto No. 1 is also notable for the technical demands made on the soloist, not least the large octave leaps in the lower range of the instrument. The Harpsichord Concerto in D major is one of a group of such works apparently designed initially for the organ. The relatively extended and rarely recorded Double Concerto for Harpsichord, Violin and Strings is Haydn’s only surviving concerto for two solo instruments.

Dmitri Babanov, Horn • Harald Hoeren, Harpsichord/Fortepiano • Ariadne Daskalakis, Violin • Jürgen Schuster, Trumpet • Cologne Chamber Orchestra, Helmut Müller-Brühl

8.570736 LISZT: Preludes (Les) / Orpheus / Mazeppa / Die Ideale (arr. for 2 pianos) (Liszt Complete Piano Music, Vol. 29)

This 29th volume in our ongoing Liszt Edition features the composer's two piano transcriptions of some of his most popular Symphonic Poems: Les Préludes, Orpheus, Mazeppa and Die Ideale. This virtuoso music is filled with passion, and the duo of Tami Kanazawa and Yuval Admony are up to the challenge. The Jerusalem Post wrote of the team, "The duo plays with astonishing coordination...never a dull moment.”

Tami Kanazawa and Yuval Admony, Pianos

8.570067 SCHUBERT: Lied Edition 27 - Romantic Poets, Vol. 4

Schubert set the poetry of over 115 writers to music. He selected poems from classical Greece, the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, from eighteenth century German authors, early Romantics, Biedermeier poets, and Heine. The Naxos Deutsche Schubert-Lied-Edition presents all Schubert’s Lieder, over 700 songs, grouped according to the poets who inspired him. Thanks to Bärenreiter’s Neue Schubert-Ausgabe (New Schubert Edition), Tübingen, which uses primary sources, the performers have been able to benefit from the most recent research of the editorial team. This disc is the fourth part of the Romantic Poets series. Volumes One, Two and Three are available on 8.554797, 8.557831, and 8.557832.

Florian Boesch, Baritone  •  Burkhard Kehring, Piano

8.570765 BRANCO, L.F.: Orchestral Works, Vol. 1 (Cassuto) - Symphony No. 1 / Scherzo fantasique / Suite alentejana No. 1

Luís de Freitas Branco was a pre-eminent figure in Portuguese music of the first half of the twentieth century. This first disc of a four-volume series of Freitas Branco’s orchestral works features the First Symphony, in which the influence of César Franck, Brahms and French musical impressionism is assimilated into his own musical style. The Scherzo Fantastique is a short single movement work, brilliantly orchestrated yet extremely controlled in its use of the orchestral forces. The Suite Alentejana No. 1 is based on the rich musical folklore of the Alentejo, a region of Portugal south of Lisbon where Freitas Branco spent many of his summers.

8.570570 Cello Recital: Kosower, Mark - BARTOK, B. / DOHNANYI, E. / KODALY, Z. / LISZT, F. / (Hungarian Music for Cello and Piano)

This anthology of Hungarian music for cello and piano ranges widely from Liszt’s haunting The Nonnenwerth Cloisters and two salon pieces by the great 19th century cello virtuoso Popper, to composers of the 20th century. Bartók’s First Rhapsody is an original folk-song arrangement intended to popularise the composer’s music as part of a lighter genre. Dohnányi’s Sonata in B flat, Op. 8, for cello and piano, is a formidable work in four movements written in the tradition of the great Romantic sonata. Rósza’s Toccata capricciosa, a fantasy on Hungarian themes, is a virtuosic tour-de-force for solo cello.

Mark Kosower, Cello • Jee-Won Oh, Piano

8.559270 IVES, C.: Songs, Vol. 2

This is the second (Volume I, 8.559269, was released in June) of six volumes encompassing the complete songs (183 of them) of Charles Ives. This recording from Yale University features students and alumni from various Yale music programmes, some of whom enjoy careers at the Metropolitan and New York City Operas.

Janna Baty, Mezzo-soprano
Lielle Berman, Soprano
Heather Buck, Soprano
Jennifer Casey Cabot, Soprano
Michael Cavalieri, Baritone
Robert Gardner, Baritone
Sara Jakubiak, Soprano
Sumi Kittelberger, Soprano
Tamara Mumford, Mezzo-soprano
Mary Phillips, Mezzo-soprano
David Pittsinger, Bass
Matthew Plenk, Tenor
Kenneth Tarver, Tenor
Leah Wool, Mezzo-soprano
Frederick Teardo, Organ
Eric Trudel, Piano
Laura Garritson, Piano
J.J. Penna, Piano
Douglas Dickson, Piano

8.559354 EVANS, R.: String Quartet No. 1 / GLASS, P.: String Quartet No. 2 / ANTHEIL, G.: String Quartet No. 3 / HERRMANN, B.: Echoes

This recording gathers four string quartets by American composers who are widely divergent in style and manner, and who have made a distinctive and personal contribution to this endlessly re-inventive format. Ralph Evans is more familiar as a performer than composer. Finally completed in 1995, his First String Quartet is written in a non-derivative style, with tuneful melodies, lively counterpoint and piquant harmonies. Philip Glass has completed five mature quartets, his Second Quartet deriving from a theatrical presentation of Samuel Beckett’s prose poem Company. The self-styled ‘bad boy of American music’, George Antheil wrote three string quartets, the third of which is permeated by a folk-music ambience. Best remembered for his film scores, Bernard Herrmann had not released a concert work for 25 years when he wrote Echoes. Its title applies to the thematic connections unobtrusively linking the ten sections of this one-movement piece.

Fine Arts Quartet
Ralph Evans, Violin • Efim Boico, Violin • Yuri Gandelsman, Viola • Wolfgang Laufer, Cello

2.110508 MUSICAL JOURNEY (A) - FINLAND: A Musical Tour of Helsinki and the Finnish landscape (NTSC)

In the DVD of Finland scenes of the country, its capital Helsinki and landscapes, are intercut with the work of the painter Akseli Gallen-Kallela, who, like his contemporary Sibelius, captured the spirit of his country and its legends in his work. Jean Sibelius is the greatest of all Finnish composers and it is his music that accompanies scenes from his native Finland, its landscape and legends.  He drew inspiration from the ancient stories of his country included in the great collections legends that make up the Kalevala, and from the Finnish landscape.

2.110535 MUSICAL JOURNEY (A) - UZBEKISTAN: A Musical Tour of the Country's Past and Present (NTSC)

The tour of Uzbekistan takes us to Bukhara and to Khiva, former oases on the old Silk Road that joined East and West.  Their great buildings, mosques and medrese, reflect their former importance under successive rulers, with monuments of Islamic architecture and decorative art.  The accompanying music is by the Russian composer Nikolay Andreyevich Rimsky-Korsakov, one of the leading Russian nationalist composers of the nineteenth century.  Music used includes his symphonic suite Scheherazade, based on episodes from The Arabian Nights, and the musical picture Sadko, based on an exotic watery legend that takes the hero of the title into the depths of the sea.

2.110533 MUSICAL JOURNEY (A) - AUSTRIA: A Musical Tour of the Country's Past and Present (NTSC)

The tour of Austria takes us from the historic towns of Stein-Krems and Salzburg to the former imperial country residence at Laxenburg, the Imperial Treasury in Vienna and the vivid contemporary architecture of Fritz Stowasser, better known as Hundertwasser. The music is taken from two concertos by Mozart, who was born in Salzburg but spent the last ten years of his life in Vienna.   His Clarinet Concerto was written a month or so before his death in 1791, and his Oboe Concerto, K.314, in Salzburg in 1777, when the world seemed to offer various opportunities and possibilities.