Naxos Classical Music Spotlight Podcast: Recent Episodes
Naxos
We invite you to join Raymond Bisha of Naxos, the world's leading classical music label, in exploring the best of today's classical music. New shows will be available each Tuesday (GMT) that explore the latest releases from Naxos and focus on the performers and composers who make our recordings possible.
An interview with Jose Serebrier about his new recording with "The President's Own" United States Marine Band. Serebrier discusses the composers on this disc, including Bizet, Revueltas, Ginastera and Villa Lobos
A podcast introduction to Lise de la Salle's new recording of the first piano concertos by Shostakovich, Prokofiev and Liszt, three concertos that all had their first performances with the composer at the piano
In 1929, Dmitri Shostakovich wrote music for a feature length film called Odna (Alone). Although some of the film has been lost, this astonishing score has been meticulously re-constructed by Mark Fitz-Gerald.
Elliott Carter is the "Dean of American composers". At the age of 99, still actively composing, he has a perspective and depth of knowledge that few can match. In this podcast, Sibbi Bernhardsson of the Pacifica Quartet talks about learning and performing his String Quartets
Elliott Carter is the "Dean of American composers". At the age of 99, still actively composing, he has a perspective and depth of knowledge that few can match. In this podcast, he talks about his string quartets, and the development of his compositional ideas.
Brundibar was first performed in 1943 in the Terezin concentration camp. Of the 15,000 children who passed through this camp, only 132 survived. This podcast features an interview with Ela Stein Weissberger - one of those who survived, and who took part in those original productions of this children's opera.
A brief introduction to Vivaldi's opera Griselda, based on a story that appeared in Boccacio's book The Decameron, that had been published several hundred years earlier.
An interview with American composer James Hartway in which he talks about his new CD, how commissioners affect composers, and the delights of his mother making him take piano lessons
Raymond Bisha interviews Maestro Jose Serebrier about his Grammy nominated CD Shostakovich: The Golden Age
Raymond Bisha discusses Bela Bartok's creepy yet magnificent opera Bluebeard's Castle performed by the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra
Raymond Bisha discusses the importance of Virgil Thomson's score to the film, The Plow That Broke the Plains.
Raymond Bisha chats with Gary Green about his undiminished passion for winds and new comminsioned works from David Maslanka and Thomas Sleeper
Raymond Bisha chats with Gil Shaham about his new label, Canary Classics, and its premier release, "The Butterfly Lovers"
Raymond Bisha chats with Jennifer Frautschi about her most recent performance on, "Stravinsky 125th Anniversary Album."
Raymond Bisha discusses the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra and their recording of Brahms Symphony No. 1
Raymond Bisha chats with former Marine Band Conductor Col. Tim Foley about the music of Charles Ives and the U.S. Marine Band, "The President's Own."
Raymond Bisha discusses the Sonic Rebellion Collection and the composers that comprise this unconventional classical collection
Interview With pianist Allison Brewster Franzetti about the CD she performs on, "20th Century Piano Sonatas"
Raymond Bisha discusses the music of Erich Korngold soundtrack from the film "The Sea Hawk"
Raymond Bisha discusses the life and music of Igor Stravinsky on the 125th Anniversary of his birth
Raymond Bisha chats with Carole Farley about her most recent performance on, "Classic American Love Songs."
Raymond Bisha discusses composer Louis Moreau Gottschalk and the Hot Springs Festival with its conductor Richard Rosenberg.
Raymond Bisha discusses composer Howard Hanson's opera, "Merry Mount" with conductor Gerard Schwarz
Raymond Bisha discusses composer Roberto Sierra's most recent release, "New Music with a Caribbean Accent."
Raymond Bisha interviews composer Joan Tower to discuss her most recent release, "Made In America."
Raymond Bisha discusses the Life and Music of Giuseppe Tartini and Violinist Adriane Daskalakis.
The latest Accentus release features a 40-voice choir performing masterful transcriptions as close to literal as possible of both purely instrumental works.
The work that gives this disc its name, Michael Colgrass' Winds of Nagual, was inspired by the writings of Carlos Castaneda and his experiences with a Yaqui Indian sorcerer, delving into the secrets of Columbian wisdom. No Shadow of Turning by David Gillingham is based on a hymn, Great is Thy Faithfulness, and is dedicated to the memory of Lois Brock, secretary of the Ohio State University Bands. It was the Dvorak Serenade for Winds, Op. 44 that led conductor Russel Mikkelson to arrange the lovely Serenade for Strings for wind band. Donald Hunsberger's arrangement of Rimsky-Korsakov's evergreen Bumblebee was originally written as a solo for jazz trumpeter Winton Marsalis. In the present transcription, he assigns the solo trumpet line to various instruments of the band.
In his lifetime Wenzel Pichl was esteemed as one of the foremost European composers of the age. A friend of Dittersdorf, whose works exerted a strong influence on his development, Pichl wrote symphonies that rank among the most interesting of the period. The symphonies featured on this recording, all of which were composed in the 1760s and take as their subject mythical figures from classical antiquity, reveal a composer of flair and technical resourcefulness.
John Adams vast and varied output has earned him a wide audience, uncommon among contemporary classical composers. The works on this disc span his entire career to date, and illustrate his many different styles of writing for the piano. Phrygian Gates and China Gates could be regarded as his first minimal works, but are more tonal and expressive than the music of his contemporaries such as Steve Reich and Philip Glass. As a teenager Adams had played clarinet in his father's marching band, and his Hallelujah Junction reflects his love of jazz and popular music. His most recent piano work, American Berserk, recalls the fractured boogie woogie style of Conlon Nancarrow, and has been described by the composer as a short, manic, bipolar scherzo.
Although he remains best known for the works he wrote for his own ensemble, orchestral music has been at the forefront of activities for PHilip Glass for much of the last two decades. Having achieved success in 1993 with his Low Symphony, a reworking of David Bowie and Brian Eno's classic rock album Low, three years later Glass repeated the experiment with another Bowie,Eno collaboration, Heroes, an album that drew its inspiration from the then divided city of Berlin. The six movements of Heroes Symphony function as independent pieces that between them build into a self sufficient musical work. The Light has its inspiration in a very different source, the Michelson Morley experiment confirming the uniform speed of light. Seeking a musical corollary, Glass' piece has an expressive introduction followed by an energetic main movement a before and after mirroring the onset of modern scientific research.
Of Armenian and Scottish extraction, the American composer Alan Hovhaness was a trend setting pioneer who absorbed a variety of archaic and modern influences from East and West. He once said My purpose is to create music, not for snobs, but for all people, music which is beautiful and healing. Khrimian Hairig, with its trumpet solo, recalls the heroic Armenian priest of the title. Hovhaness virtuoso and romantic Guitar Concerto was written for the Bolivian guitarist Juan Calderon. The Symphony No. 60, expresses the composer's love of the music and folk poetry of the Appalachians.
Written for the striking contralto Clara Butt, who gave the work's premiere in a dress said to resemble a mermaid, Sea Pictures is Elgar's only song cycle with orchestra. These exquisite miniatures depict the sea in all its guises, peaceful and storm tossed by turns. The heartfelt Where Corals Lie is perhaps the most remarkable three minutes in all of Elgar. Inspired by the notion that artists are the real creators and the true makers of history and society, The Music Makers is a largely intimate and nostalgic work, which quotes several times from other compositions by Elgar.
Mahler's Fifth Symphony, a work of huge emotional and structural range, was his first purely orchestral work since the First Symphony of 1888, and his first orchestral work to dispense with both the human voice and overtly programmatic elements. The second most recorded of Mahler's symphonies, it includes the ravishing Adagietto, a love poem for the beautiful Alma Schindler, his future wife, and subsequently made famous by its use in Visconti's film Death in Venice.
A look at Christmas Music through the ages with the Elora Festival Singers and Oxford Camerata.
From plainchant via simple 9th-century harmonies and the virtuosic duets of Master Leonin, known as organum, this hauntingly beautiful sequence charts the birth of polyphony up to the first music in four independent parts composed by Master Perotin and sung during the liturgy at the new Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris. From the official laying of the cornerstone in 1163 to the completion of the famous Western facade almost a hundred years later, Notre Dame was the fertile home of singers and composers whose extraordinary handiwork has come down to us in the magnus liber organi, the "Great Book of Organum".
The three full-length ballet scores that Dmitry Shostakovich wrote between 1925 and 1935 remain among his least known works. The Golden Age revolves around the visit of a Soviet football team to a Western city at the time of an industrial exhibition, only for its heroic sporting and social endeavours constantly to be undermined by hostile administrators, decadent artistes and corrupt officials. Even before its premiere Shostakovich had prepared a suite, including the famous Polka (Naxos 8.553126), which barely hints at the dissonant harmonies and intricate contrapuntal designs to be found elsewhere in the ballet. This recording is the first to present the work complete with all repeats observed, enabling listeners to assess the ballet in all its exhilarating and, at times, anarchic intensity.
Much admired by Aaron Copland, the Argentine composer Alberto Ginastera is widely regarded as one of the most important and original South American composers of the 20th century. The two ballets featured on this recording belong to the early period ofGinastera when he was eager to promote an authentically national voice in his work through the use of Argentine folk and popular elements. The exotically scored Panambi is based on a romantic and supernatural legend of love and magic from the Guarani Indians, a tribe from the headwaters of the Rio Parana in northern Argentina. Estancia ,a farm or cattle ranch, is a powerful and passionate evocation of the vast and enigmatic Argentine pampas and the spirit of the "unlucky gaucho, who has no one to call to, with no place of his own in all that space, and in all that darkness".
Vivaldi's universally popular Four Seasons has become one of the most recorded pieces of classical music. The four concertos, with their virtuoso part for solo violinist, depict the changing seasons in a pastoral landscape with dazzling variety. Vivaldi evokes not only the changing atmospheric conditions, for example the dripping rain represented by the pizzicato violins in the second movement of Winter, but bird calls and animal cries, swaying grass, bubbling brooks, and human events such as drunkards, sliding and slithering, and a man walking on ice. Formally known as International Sejong Soloists, Sejong is a group of virtuoso string players including many well known young soloists.
The ballet Dybbuk was Bernsteins fourth and final collaboration with choreographer Jerome Robbins, written to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the state of Israel. The plot concerns a spirit that seeks to enter the body of a living person, and the battle between good and evil is represented musically by the conflict between atonality and tonality. Different in every respect is the symphonically conceived ballet Fancy Free. It follows three sailors on shore leave in New York for 24 hours, and when it was premiered in 1944 it brought Bernstein his first major public success as a composer.
This unique recording sets out to give a flavor of American ragtime through the medium of the mandolin. It is now believed that many of the original early twentieth-century rags were regularly performed by American-Italian mandolin orchestras whose numbers were swelled by Italian immigrants. Highlights on this disc include three of Scott Joplin's best known rags, Julius Lenzberg's Operatic Rag, a syncopated take on works by Leoncavallo, Mascagni, Wagner, Bizet and others, That Italian Rag by the Tin Pan Alley composer Alfredo Piantadosi, and the Neapolitan two-step A'Frangesa by Edward George.
Monumental Works for Winds is a collection of some of the greatest pieces ever written for wind band. Persichetti's 1956 Symphony for Band, Op. 69 is not only one of his greatest works, but has become one of the most frequently performed original American works for wind band. Stravinsky's strikingly original and rhythmically vital Symphonies of Wind Instruments is one of his most adventurous pieces in neo-classical style. Copland's technically challenging Emblems, is the composer's only work for band, its eleven minute span bursting with folk melodies, dissonance, waltzes and elements of jazz.
A unique look at the group of six orchestral works known as the Brandenburg Concertos, commissioned by and dedicated to the Margrave of Brandenburg, are among the greatest works of Johann Sebastian Bach. These are consummate examples of the art of Baroque composition, frequently using groups of solo instruments in a more complex and virtuoso fashion than ever before. The Concerto No. 5, with its prominent and dazzling harpsichord part, is almost a Harpsichord Concerto in its own right.
The 153 piano pieces of Bela Bartok's "Mikrokosmos" are a milestone in piano literature. Drawing on a wide range of sources, from musical terms and technical procedures to indications of regional provenance and folk derivation, they are arranged in order of increasing technical and musical difficulty, while encapsulating Bartok's maturing sound-world during the period 1926-1939. When asked, near the end of his life, about the meaning of his chosen title, Bartok explained that "'Mikrokosmos' may be interpreted as a series of pieces in many different styles, representing a small world. Or it may be interpreted as 'world of the little ones, the children'".
Interview with Chloe Hanslip discussing her views and experiences from the latest recording of the John Adams Violin Concerto
Unlike many of his fellow countrymen, the Russian composer, pianist and writer Dmitry Kabalevsky flourished under Soviet rule, writing music mainly designed to inspire heroism and patriotism. The tuneful Piano Concertos Nos. 1 and 2, clearly inspired by Rachmaninov and Prokofiev, are written in a direct and accessible style. They are performed here by the remarkable young Korean pianist In-Ju Bang, the 2004 winner of the Puigcerda International Piano Competition in Spain.
This wind band arrangement of Carl Orff's "Carmina Burana" is entirely instrumental in concept, the vocal music having been fully incorporated into the band itself. The throbbing rhythms, chaste tenderness and heartfelt simplicity of the original are fully captured in John Krance's exhilarating transcription. Arthur Bird's "Serenade" won the Paderewski Prize as the best chamber work by an American in 1901. Herbert Owen Reed's "La Fiesta Mexicana", subtitled "A Mexican Folk Song Symphony for Concert Band", depicts a religious festival dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary.
Orlando Gibbons' exquisite tunes and rock-solid bass-lines for the first English hymn book, "Hymnes and Songs of the Church (1623)", were written to be sung and played both at home and in church. Specially realized by Antony Pitts and Alexander L'Estrange for this recording, the complete collection is interleaved with new English hymns.
The transcriptions must speak for themselves. Liszt is meticulous in his accurate reproduction of original phrasing and his specification, where necessary, of the original instrumentation. Critics have compared his transcriptions [favorably] with the earlier piano versions of the symphonies by the virtuoso pianist Kalkbrenner, a pioneer in this field. Liszt does not primarily seek for technical display, however demanding the transcriptions may be. He is particularly adept in his solution of problems of balance and sonority, and helpful in the suggested fingerings that are included and in the care taken to distinguish parts in notation.
The Franco-Lebanese composer and poet Bechara El-Khoury was born in Beirut in 1957. A master of orchestration, El-Khoury draws on the rich palette of resources available to today's composers, putting into music, "human nature and its passions". This disc features the brilliant orchestral miniature, "Dance of the Eagles, Op. 9", works inspired by the poetry of Khalil Gibran (Image Symphonique and Suite symphonique), and two panels in a triptych dedicated to the dramatic events of the war in Lebanon, "Lebanon in Flames", and "Requiem for Orchestra".
Marin Alsop discusses the works of Toru Takemitsu. Regarded as one of the most important composers of the second half of the twentieth century, Toru Takemitsu was the first Japanese composer to gain international status. The works on this disc cover Takemitsu's career from early "Solitude Sonore" to "Sprirt Garden" composed two years before his death. Inspired by a dream, "A Flock Descends into the Pentagonal Garden" has passages of randomness, surges of dissonance and delicate melodies.
The four symphonies included on this recording date from an early period of Haydn's career, when he was experimenting with a newly developing form. Nos. 18-20 were written around 1759 when Haydn had his first steady employment as music director to Count Morzin. "Symphony No. 21 in A major" dates from c. 1761 when Haydn entered the service of the Esterhazy family. Scored for oboes, horns, strings, and continuo, all four works are characteristically inventive. "Symphony No. 20 in C major", is unusually scored for additional trumpets and timpani.
With its memorable tunes and dazzling writing for the solo instrument, Bruchs Violin Concerto No. 1 has been described as the quintessential Romantic showpiece. A firm favorite with soloists and audiences alike, it is coupled on this disc with two less frequently heard works for solo violin and orchestra that were originally conceived as possible concertos.
Strongly infl uenced by his native Oklahoma, Roy Harris studied in Paris with Nadia Boulanger, returning to America to establish himself as one of the leading composers of his generation. The backbone of his output is the series of thirteen symphonies, which span his career from 1933 to 1976. Described by the conductor, Serge Koussevitzky, as the first great symphony by an American composer, Symphony No. 3 is remarkable for its broad, sweeping melodies evoking vast landscapes, and for its affecting fusion of plainsong, Renaissance polyphony, hymnody and folk song. In Symphony No. 4 Folk Song Symphony,Harris draws on an eclectic mix of folk material from a variety of regional and ethnic roots that include cowboy songs, frontier ballads, spirituals and marching songs.
Grieg was a master of the miniature, an aspect of his genius shown in this collection of works for string orchestra. The popular "Holberg Suite" translates a set of baroque dances into contemporary idiom. The other works are derived by the composer from earlier songs or piano pieces, of which Grieg wrote a very large number. Established in 1998, the internationally renowned Oslo Camerata has its own concert series at the Old Masonic Lodge in Oslo, which dates from Grieg's time.
In keeping with the custom of the day, the scores of each of Brahms' four symphonies were all published in four-hand piano versions, so as to be accessible to a domestic audience. These arrangements reveal the cheerfulness and serenity of the Second Symphony, and those qualities which led the Third Symphony to be dubbed "Brahms' Eroica", in a fresh and fascinating light.
The pre-eminent lutenist of his day, John Dowland was an almost exact contemporary of William Shakespeare. This first volume of his complete lute music, which comprises about one hundred solo pieces, includes the 7 Fantasies, free-form, improvisatory works in which the composer gives free rein to his fertile imagination and wonderful melodic gift.
It was as a young church organist that Leopold Stokowski grew to love the music of Bach. Later,he arranged a number of Bachs organ works for full symphonic forces. The results were a spectacular success and through Stokowskis Bach transcriptions music lovers heard baroque music in a new guise. Some of Stokowskis finest Bach arrangements are newly recorded here in highly enjoyable performances by Jos Serebrier and the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra. As one of the Leopold Stokowski Societys chief aims is to encourage performances of Stokowskis Symphonic Transcriptions we welcome his new Bach-Stokowski selection as a brilliant successor to the disc of Stokowskis transcriptions of music by Mussorgsky.
American-born, John Cage, was one of the most adventurous musicians of the 20th century. Always seeking new musical sounds, he was a pioneer in the technique known as the Prepared Piano. This involved placing screws, bolts, and pieces of rubber and plastic on defined strings in the body of a grand piano. The fascinating range of sonorities created, often akin to music of the Orient, is explored in the Sonatas and Interludes composed between 1946-1948.
Chosen in 1988 as Composer of the Year by Musical America and now recognized as one of the finest song composers in America, Ned Rorem has also written a significant body of music for orchestra,including Three Symphonies. Written in a refined tonal idiom like so much of Rorems music, the 1985 Violin Concerto is notable for its elegiac lyrical invention. The recent Flute Concerto, the first in a series of Philadelphia Orchestra commissions for its principals, was described at its premire as not so much a concerto as a surpassingly imaginative fantasy for flute and orchestra. It is performed on this world premire recording by its dedicatee, Jeffrey Khaner.
With its enormous vocal, choral and orchestral forces, Mahlers Eighth Symphony, later to be dubbed Symphony of a Thousand, is one of the largest and longest symphonies in the active repertoire. Part One, inspired by the Whitsuntide Vesper hymn Veni creator spiritus, is an invocation to the Creator Spirit. Part Two, a setting of the closing scene from Goethes Faust, depicts Fausts redemption through wisdom and love. Try to imagine the whole universe beginning to ring and resound, was how Mahler himself described the impact of the closing pages of the Symphony.
A choirboy in his youth, Healey Willan had a life-long passion for the human voice. Not counting his output for organ, chamber music and orchestral works, the bulk of his almost 800 compositions involved voice in one form or another. Born in England, Willan moved to Canada in 1913, where he dominated the field of sacred music. This anthology includes the most popular choral work by Willan, Rise up my love, a wonderful illustration of the famous words a true church music is beautifully fit and fittingly beautiful.
This disc of music by one of the greatest symphonists of the twentieth century ranges from the rarely heard Five Fragments of 1935, experimental practice runs for the Symphony No. 4, to one of the composers last orchestral works, the vibrant symphonic poem October, which commemorates the 50th anniversary of the 1917 Revolution. The Execution of Stepan Razin, composed in 1964, is based on the 17th century Cossack rebel and folk-hero who led an unsuccessful revolt against Tsar Alexis I, father of Peter the Great. Shostakovichs energetic score displays a mastery of orchestral and choral sonorities, alternating powerful climaxes and heartfelt evocations of Russian folk-song.