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The NMC Songbook
Gramophone CD OF THE MONTH
Pitch-perfect Prokofiev from the Pavel Haas Quartet... what comes through above all is a laser-like intensity and youthful brio... In the wondrous Adagio the cello line rises high, ghostly melodic statements in octaves can expose the smallest tuning difficulties and pizzicati needs must sparkle like. The young players pass every test before dispatching the inventive finale with equal aplomb, differentiating a wide variety of moods and timbres within a swiftish frame. Of the small clutch of classic performances of the component pieces, none is more usefully programmed than the present disc, nor so naturally recorded. Why hesitate?Gramophone
BBC Music Magazine - CD OF THE MONTH
Rather than trawl for forgotten manuscripts more widely through Latin America, Ashley Solomon and his group Florilegium prefer to concentrate their efforts on the archives in Bolivia. Solomon has founded a choir there, and both his groups regularly appear at the biennial renaissance and baroque festival in the Jesuit missions of the Chiquitos region. Their latest compilation includes pieces from those missions and from those of Moxos, together with music from the cathedral in La Plata, the present-day city of Sucre. Though the sources aren''t always made clear, it''s a lively, nicely varied sequence, mostly of works showcasing Solomon''s excellent Arakaender choir, interspersed with an anonymous trio-sonatas and organ pieces recorded on a wonderfully gutsy instrument at the mission church of Santa Ana in the Bolivian part of the Amazon basin. The Italian-born Domenico Zipoli is the best known composer represented, appropriately enough, perhaps, for he did at least make the journey from Europe to the Spanish colonies in the new world. The Guardian
Berlioz: Symphonie Fantastique

Though period-instrument recordings of the Fantastic are not uncommon, none that I have heard makes Berlioz’s linear scoring so startlingly different. This, you feel, is how it would have sounded in the 1830s (Erard harps and pianos included). The woodwind and horns, in particular, leap out, but it is the sheer raw clarity of every line and colour in these Flemish players’ performance, and its effect on the rhythms, that strikes you, especially in their revelatory account of the opening movement. Van Immerseel is, otherwise, quite a sober interpreter, resisting the temptation that besets many conductors to whip up the animatos (and setting a rather slow tempo in the Roman Carnival), but only the Scène aux champs seems to me inauthentically heavy-handed. The finale is electric. The Sunday Times
  


Classical - Artists A to Z
   Haydn - Late Piano Works
  • Gary Cooper is now established as one of the foremost ambassadors of the harpsichord and fortepiano - in particular, as an interpreter of Bach’s & Mozart’s keyboard music – and as a director of period performance in concert, and in opera. Gary is ‘Artist in Residence’ of the exciting Belgian period instrument ensemble, B’Rock, directing
  • orchestral and opera productions, recordings, and is guest artistic director of a new festival in Bruges. This coming season, Gary appears at major festivals such as the Flanders Festival, the Bruges, Utrecht, Potsdam and Innsbruck Early Music Festivals and throughout the UK.
  • The Duo partnership of Gary Cooper with Rachel Podger has taken them worldwide. Their recordings, with Channel Classics, of Mozart’s Complete Sonatas for Keyboard & Violin has received countless awards and accolades, including multiple Diapason d’Or awards and Gramophone Editor’s Choices, and hailed as ‘benchmark’ recordings.
    ...Read More >>
       Messiaen - Organ Works (dvd)
    2008 was the centenary of Messiaen’s birth, and this 2 DVD set of a selection of his organ music is a superb introduction for those new to his music and an essential purchase for all organ aficionados. Messiaen wrote in many genres, chamber, orchestral, piano solo, and enriched greatly the organ repertoire of the 20th century.

    Although Debussy and Ravel influenced his earliest works, orientalism and famously the songs of birds were life long influences and a source of fascination to him) Messiaen became a significant influence upon avant-garde composers such as Boulez and Stockhausen.

    You can sample Tanke’s approach to Messiaen, which is influenced by his study of Buddhist faith and philosophy, on YouTube (keywords: Tanke and Messiaen). The technology afforded by DVD allows the listener to view from several angles, including underneath the bench to see Messiaen’s ferociously mobile pedal parts at first feet, as it were. Read More >>

     
    The Knight of the Lute
    Matthew Wadsworth: I used to spend hours in the basement of the library, listening to recordings of one of my great idols, Julian Bream – deciding which piece to write out and learn next. Since then, it has always been a burning ambition of mine to one day record the Varietie of Lute Lessons, and some 15 years after my initial forays into this stunning repertoire, ...Read More >>
     
    Charles Avison - Sonatas Op.1 & 8
    2009 marks the 300th anniversary of the birth of Charles Avison, and The Avison Ensemble plan to record and release all of the remaining orchestral works of Charles Avison, and those of some of his associates and contemporaries, such as John Garth, whose disc of Cello Concertos is our biggest selling title on catalogue (DDA25059).Read More >>