Naxos of Canada

23/01/2025

As the last symphony in the oeuvre of the Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich, the Fifteenth is a kind of symphonic conclusion. Although the composer set out to write a "happy symphony" and this epithet has since become commonplace, everything cheerful in it has a dimension that is exaggerated into the bizarre and grotesque. The work also contains musical references, for example to Rossini's "William Tell" overture, Wagner's "The Ring of the Nibelung" (the so-called "fate motif") and "Tristan and Isolde," and Alban Berg's "Wozzeck." Quotations from Shostakovich's own earlier works also appear. The symphony was composed in 1971 in Repino, a suburb of St Petersburg. The world premiere took place on January 8, 1972, under the baton of the composer’s son, Maxim. Now on Amazon.ca https://amzn.to/4h1f23H

22/01/2025

The third and final instalment in their award-winning series, the Calidore String Quartet return with a three-disc release of Beethoven Early Quartets. Their previous Beethoven recordings have been described as ‘highly collectible’ by BBC Music Magazine. The first album of Late Quartets won the Chamber Music Award at the BBC Music Magazine Awards 2024, and the second was awarded Recording of the Month by Gramophone Magazine. The contents of this recording project serve as a snapshot of their fourteen years of working, growing, listening, and collaborating together. “Our interpretation speaks to the influences of our teachers and the great traditions associated with this repertoire, but also to that of our own generation, contemporary research, style, and experience. Though this music speaks in a language that is hundreds of years old, its message remains immediate, relevant, and comforting to listeners of today and of generations to come—even, and especially, in the most challenging of times.” Now on Amazon.ca https://amzn.to/3CjRrMA Signum Records

21/01/2025

For its first recording for BIS Records, the Marmen Quartet tackles three major works from the twentieth-century string quartet literature. The two quartets by György Ligeti belong to two different periods in the composer’s output. Written before Ligeti left Hungary and emigrated to the West, the First, subtitled ‘Métamorphoses nocturnes’, represents the peak of his ‘Hungarian’ period. Regarded as a virtuoso exercise, the work reveals the influences of Béla Bartók, particularly from his Third and Fourth Quartets. Ligeti’s Second Quartet belongs to his second period, particularly rich in significant works. Considered by the composer as a response to the works of his illustrious predecessors such as Mozart, Beethoven, Bartók, and Berg, the Second Quartet, with its calculated anarchy, dynamic extremes, and sublime climaxes, is not only one of Ligeti’s masterpieces but also a true classic of modernism. Béla Bartók’s Fourth Quartet, which had a particularly strong influence on Ligeti, is widely seen as one of his most radical; it requires high levels of technical accomplishment from the performers, yet reveals a deep understanding of the instruments, and draws an unprecedented range of colour and character from them. Now on Amazon.ca https://amzn.to/4hbJ45f

20/01/2025

The first collaboration on record of long-time recital partners Viktoria Mullova and Katia Labèque. Ranging from the Schubert Fantasy of 1827 to Stravinsky’s 1933 Suite Italienne, this fascinating programme spans a tremendously exciting 100 years, in which music changed radically, rapidly, and irreversibly. These works demonstrate the massive alterations wrought in those years; the contrast between the Romanticism of Schubert and Clara Schumann, and the innovation of Ravel and Stravinsky. Yet Stravinsky’s use of Baroque music and Ravel’s appropriation of jazz show that the 20th century embraced diverse influences, including those of the past. Viktoria Mullova and Katia Labèque have played this recital together many times, and, as is clear from this recording, relish each composer’s distinctive approach to writing for violin and piano. Pre order on Amazon.ca https://amzn.to/3DZZ2R5

17/01/2025

Developed in collaboration with the Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Naxos’ Music of Brazil series is part of the Brasil em Concerto project, presenting around 100 orchestral, chamber, choral and vocal works from the 19th and 20th centuries, many of which were previously unpublished or simply undiscovered. Such was the case of Francisco Mignone’s (1897–1986) three late violin sonatas that lay dormant for fifty years. Hear how they were brought to life by violinist Emmanuele Baldini and pianist Lucas Thomazinho in Raymond Bisha’s latest podcast.
Catalogue No.: 8.574595
Listen to the podcast here: https://bit.ly/4hjztJ1

17/01/2025

Peter Donohoe’s first album devoted to Busoni was enthusiastically received by the critics and nominated for a BBC Music Magazine award. This second volume offers playing and musicality of the same high standards. His programme opens with two of Busoni’s finest Bach transcriptions, widely seen as a pinnacle of the repertoire for pianistic virtuosity and much more widely played than Busoni’s own compositions. This is followed by the Variations on Chopin’s Prelude in C minor – a work in which Busoni demonstrates his innate skill of re-interpretation and his mastery of counterpoint, and a piece he reworked several times. The following works are ‘all Busoni’ – the first and second sonatinas, and the Fantasia contrappuntistica, in the composer’s later adaptation for two pianos. The first Steinway Artist of Indian origin, Karl Lutchmayer, is equally renowned as a concert pianist, a lecturer, and a broadcaster. He joins Peter Donohoe in the Fantasia and also performs the Second Sonatina. Pre-order now on Amazon.ca https://amzn.to/40kmzDX

16/01/2025

Francisco Mignone was a leading figure in the Brazilian music scene of the 20th century, with a free-flowing style and gift for melody that instantly communicated with audiences. He was part of the first generation of modernist Brazilian composers that included Villa-Lobos and Guarnieri. Mignone’s two early unnumbered sonatas emulate the French influence of Fauré and Debussy, but it was not until the 1960s that he returned to the genre. The First and Second Sonatas share a fragmented, experimental character that juxtaposes varying forms of tonality and metre, while the Third Sonata features national rhythmic and melodic elements. These sonatas represent some of the most significant works for violin and piano to come from Brazil. Stream or buy here: https://naxos.lnk.to/8574595Na

15/01/2025

In November 2021, even before taking up his post as chief conductor of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Simon Rattle began a cycle of Mahler symphonies with a performance of the Ninth (BR-KLASSIK 900205). The Sixth followed in September 2023 (BR-KLASSIK 900217), and the conductor is now tackling the composer’s Seventh Symphony. This cycle marks the beginning of a new chapter in Mahler interpretation, as Rattle is just as passionate a Mahler admirer at the helm of the orchestra as his predecessors Jansons, Maazel, and Kubelík. BR-KLASSIK has already released the live recording of the current concert with Mahler's impressive Seventh Symphony from November 2024. Pre order now on Amazon.ca https://amzn.to/40cgJ7s

14/01/2025

Carmina Burana, the staged cantata by Carl Orff, is a work unique in musical history, claims conductor Paavo Järvi: “The convergence of medieval texts with such daringly original orchestral colours creates a soundworld that is both archaic and yet beyond time, in which chorus, orchestra and soloists vie in splendour.” The work also has an unusual history: composed shortly after the N**i takeover of Germany, it was at first rejected because of its Latin texts and the erotic character of some of its songs; yet Orff and his work subsequently became highly prized by the Reich. The composer (who was secretly “a quarter Jewish”) did not support the regime but made the best of his success… Orff was 42 by the time he experienced this breakthrough with his Carmina, which he designated as his Op. 1, disowning all his previous compositions. Departing from the Romantic style, he now wanted to create music linked to rhythm, simple repeated melodies, and non-complex forms. This work’s popular success confirmed that decision. Alpha Classics Outhere Music Pre-order now on Amazon.ca https://amzn.to/3DMfzYE

13/01/2025

Sergio Gallo performs this selection of earlier and lesser-known versions of Liszt’s masterpieces. The majestic Paralipomènes à la Divina Commedia ‘Fantaisie symphonique’ is included alongside other pieces that shed light on spiritual aspects of the final version of Années de pèlerinage. The relatively unfamiliar Fantaisie romantique, with its evocations of the Swiss Alps, is also featured. Stream or buy here: https://naxos.lnk.to/8574565Na

10/01/2025

This podcast features conductor Sir Simon Rattle in conversation with Raymond Bisha as they reference his new recording of Mahler’s Seventh Symphony with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra. Sir Simon outlines his personal history with the work, from being overwhelmed at hearing it for the first time as a young schoolboy to his mature understanding of the symphony as “the point at which Mahler decided to start writing the music of the future.
Catalogue No.: 900225

Listen to the podcast here: https://bit.ly/3DOiIY4

This podcast features conductor Sir Simon Rattle in conversation with Raymond Bisha as they reference his new recording of Mahler’s Seventh Symphony with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra. Sir Simon outlines his personal history with the work, from being overwhelmed at hearing it for the first...

10/01/2025

This programme spotlights Gabriel Fauré’s orchestrated songs and his music for the stage, of which his suite from the incidental music for Pelléas et Mélisande includes some of his best-loved music. Performances of Fauré’s spectacular Wagnerian drama Prométhée are a real rarity, while the eloquent Shylock suite, based on Shakespeare, contains some of his most elaborate symphonic music. Fauré orchestrated only a small number of his more than 100 songs, but these include the transcendentally beautiful love song Les Roses d’Ispahan, with its harmonic subtleties and gorgeous coda. Available now https://naxos.lnk.to/8574619Na

09/01/2025

Leonard Bernstein conducted regularly in Munich from the 1980s onwards. It was then that he learned to appreciate and love the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra in particular. In October 1976, Bernstein had appeared with an all-Beethoven programme, and in 1983, he began a series of annual concerts with the orchestra. This CD from BR-KLASSIK presents the live recording of the Beethoven concert on October 17, 1976, in which Bernstein conducted Beethoven's Fifth Symphony and the Leonore Overture No. 3. The programme of the Munich concert in October 1976 included Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, which can be seen as a stroke of liberation in the sense of "per aspera ad astra" ("through hardships to the stars" or "through darkness to light") and also a symphonic piece that he had written for his only opera "Fidelio": the Third Leonore Overture, with its lone trumpet signal announcing the arrival of the minister Don Fernando – and thus the rescue of Florestan from arbitrary violence and imprisonment. Joachim Kaiser, Munich's leading music critic at the time, said: "Bernstein demonstrated to a spellbound Munich audience how much he is filled with Beethoven; the man is full of a freedom and fire that can be produced and reproduced. Even if Bernstein's leaps, crouches, and crescendos may seem violent to anxious listeners, the inner rightness of the music – which sounds natural, powerful, wonderful, and relaxed – is overwhelming." The live recording was made on October 17, 1976, at the Deutsches Museum in Munich. Available on

08/01/2025

Volume 11 of the 'Next Generation Mozart Soloists' series presents Violin Concerto No. 5 in A Major along with Piano Concertos KV 40 and KV 449. The Piano Concerto No. 3 is a very early work, derived from works by other composers, whereas No. 14 was written in 1784 by a fully mature Mozart, who was moving away from functional music towards expressing his ideas in a more dramatic structure. What links the two, says Swiss-Canadian pianist Teo Gheorghiu, is that they are both "concertos mainly joyful and optimistic in expression." French violinist David Castro-Balbi says, "of Mozart’s Violin Concertos, No. 5 has the strongest operatic character." These two soloists are accompanied by the Mozarteumorchester Salzburg under the baton of Howard Griffiths. Available on Amazon.ca https://amzn.to/3WyOsaj Alpha Classics Outhere Music

03/01/2025

A student of Haydn, a masonic brother of Mozart and a fine composer in his own right, Paul Wranitzky (1756–1808) left behind 45 symphonies that are at long last stepping out of the shadows thanks to ongoing recordings and increased access to published scores. Raymond Bisha introduces Vol. 8 in Naxos’ series of Wranitzky’s orchestral works, which includes the Grand Characteristic Symphony for Peace with the French Republic, completed in Vienna with eager anticipation in 1797. The symphony happily survived, but the peace negotiations sadly failed, and the war resumed in 1799.

Listen to the podcast here: https://bit.ly/41Y23v0

Catalogue No.: 8.574616

Raymond Bisha introduces Vol. 8 in Naxos’ series of Wranitzky’s orchestral works

03/01/2025

Le Cercle de l'Harmonie - Jérémie Rhorer launch a new collaboration with Alpha Classics, with several projects planned, following the Mozart operas released on the label in 2016 and 2017. Here they tackle a monument of the sacred repertoire that is fascinating for its rich, complex, even ‘mysterious’ conception. Rhorer tells us that his interpretation pays close attention to the question of tempi, which have often become progressively slower and heavier since the post-Romantic period: the tempi have ‘a direct bearing on the vocal comfort of the singers, since breath control is one of the great difficulties of this work,’ he says. For this recording, he has called in a quartet of top-flight soloists along with the Audi Jugendchorakademie, a remarkable German youth choir founded in 2007. In conjunction with his period-instrument orchestra, soon to celebrate its twentieth anniversary, they offer a passionate vision of Beethoven’s masterpiece. Pre order now on Amazon.ca https://amzn.to/40bUBeG Alpha Classics Outhere Music

02/01/2025

For this third instalment in his survey of orchestral works by Ruth Gipps, Rumon Gamba, conducting the BBC Philharmonic, is joined by the horn soloist Martin Owen. The album opens with Gipps’s Coronation Procession. The piece depicts the journey of the Crown(s), perhaps as observed from the Royal Coach, culminating in the entry to Westminster Abbey. Written in January 1953, the piece was not used at the coronation and instead was first performed in September 1954 in Melbourne, Australia. Ambarvalia is a memorial tribute of 1988 by Gipps to the composer and colleague Adrian Cruft, who had died in February 1987. Gipps wrote the Horn Concerto in 1968 for her son, Lance Baker. The piece was later championed by Frank Lloyd, who gave a BBC broadcast in 1982. Here, the virtuoso Martin Owen brings the work vividly to life. The Lake District was the inspiration for the ‘Impression’ Cringlemire Garden, a pastoral miniature for string orchestra. Dated September 1942, the First Symphony is a direct reflection of the horrors of war. The work demonstrates Gipps’s personal voice and features some wonderful writing for winds.
Now on Amazon.ca https://amzn.to/4iXMf1n Chandos Records

01/01/2025

By 2014, Éric Montalbetti had amassed 20 years of experience as Artistic Director of the Radio France Philharmonic Orchestra. All the while, he had also been composing, something he had been engaged in since childhood—an activity he did not publicly reveal until 2015. Conscious of the heritage of Debussy and Messiaen (‘my very first heroes’), as well as skilled in the serialism of Boulez—whose teaching courses he attended at the Collège de France—and fascinated by the sonic nuances of spectral music, Éric Montalbetti seeks a point of convergence, a possible synthesis enabling him to blend modality and serialism without rejecting the harmonic contours of composers such as Murail. This new album dedicated to Montalbetti’s work includes a Flute Concerto, whose commission was encouraged by Emmanuel Pahud; its telling title is Memento vivere (Remember that you must live). Pre order now on Amazon.ca https://amzn.to/4gWRe0w Alpha Classics Outhere Music