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Gramophone Awards 2011 - Chamber and Recording of the Year Award

“The Pavel Haas Quartet play with plenty of feeling and they also relish the rhythmic cut and thrust of the Molto vivace third movement, capturing to perfection the more relaxed Trio''s sunny spirit.The final opens to a gentle smile then keys up for some dancing exuberance...there''s an abundance of varied drama” Gramophone Magazine, December 2010
Gramophone Awards 2011 - Contemporary Award Winner
“In a welcome if rare excursion into contemporary music, and recorded with tinglingly immediate atmosphere, the Hallé under Ryan Wigglesworth sound on top form throughout” Gramophone Magazine, October 2011
Collegium Vocale Gent
Bach: Motets – Collegium Vocale Gent/Herreweghe


So fast has the early music movement grown that it is difficult to believe that it''s 30 years since Philippe Herreweghe''s fresh-voiced choir first recorded the Bach motets. They now revisit these peerless masterpieces with young voices and a very varied approach to scoring. These days, directors tend to choose between one singer to a part, or a larger choral approach, sometimes doubling voices with instruments; Herreweghe does all three here with different motets. Jesu, meine freude with just five soloists and continuo is perfectly poised, while Singet dem Herrn (which Mozart so revered) and Der Geist hilft burst into life with more singers and instruments. Throughout, Herreweghe achieves a supremely flexible responsiveness to the texts.

The Observer, Sunday 14 August 2011
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Classical - Artists A to Z
FEATURED RECORDINGS
- Bach - Complete Edition - 2010 edition

Complete works on CD

MANY NEW AND PERIOD-INSTRUMENT RECORDINGS
Includes Diapason award-winning recordings
NEW EDITION INCLUDES MARKUS-PASSION
DVDs of Matthäus Passion & Johannes-Passion
COMPLETE SCORES ON DVD-ROM
Sung texts and translations booklet notes & biographies


 
- Beethoven - Symphonies 4 & 6
Two fundamentally different symphonies: both works explore feelings from an entirely different point of view.
The Fourth is about human feelings and moods: obsession, love (what a melody in the second movement!), happiness, fun, wit, (Beethoven's most humorous finale!).  The Sixth is about feelings that nature awakens in us: calmness, meditation, thankfulness. It has been an especially creative process to work on these masterpieces. We discovered that the Fourth Symphony sounds better with natural horns and trumpets. In the Pastorale we used a different seating arrangement, with the winds scattered among the strings, so that each soloist was surrounded by musicians playing the flow of Beethoven's nature music. After the storm, when we hear the first tentative call of the clarinet, answered by the horn from a different mountain, as it were, we found it appropriate to use a solo violin, which is gradually joined by the whole orchestra.
Iván Fischer

 
- Berlioz - Symphonie Fanstastique

This monumental work of French Romanticism is one of the essential landmarks in the career of any conductor. The quality of Berlioz’s orchestration and questions of timbre and the ideal instrumental forces lie at the core of the approach of Jos van Immerseel and Anima Eterna Brugge, who are increasingly drawn to French composers and especially to their precise, shimmering orchestral textures.


 
- Britten; String Quartets nos 2 & 3, Three Divertimenti
· The Quartet was formed in 1998 at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, working regularly with the late Dr. Christopher Rowland, and subsequently studying at the Hochschule in Cologne with the Alban Berg quartet.

 

· The Quartet received second prize and the Sidney Griller prize at the 9th London International String Quartet Competition in 2003 and were finalists in the Paolo Borciani Competition in 2005.



 
- Dvorak - String Quartets Op. 106 & 96 American
•    I’m satisfied. It went quickly... Antonín Dvořák jotted down at the end of the sketch for his String Quartet Op. 96. The work, one of the most beautiful quartet pieces in the history of music, originated in America hard on the heels of the “New World” Symphony. I wanted to write for once something very melodious and simple, and I always kept Papa Haydn before my eyes. The American critics lavished it with praise: “Why didn’t Dvořák come here earlier, since he can write such great music in America.” The “American” quartet, and, perhaps to an even greater extent, the subsequent quartet, Op. 106, the first composition Dvořák created after his return from America, are a heartfelt matter for the youthful Pavel Haas Quartet.

 
- Dvorak - Symphonic Poems

The recordings on this CD are interpreted by the Czech Philharmonic, conducted by Sir Charles Mackerras, a paramount musician and connoisseur and champion of Czech music. The poems round off his legacy in Dvořák’s symphonic oeuvre, from which he has recorded for Supraphon, for example, Symphonies Nos. 6, 8 and 9, Slavonic Dances and SymphonicVariations.


 
- Handel & Croft - Peace of Utrecht
PEACE IN 1713.... WITH HANDEL AND CROFT

The Treaty of Utrecht, which established the Peace of Utrecht, comprises a series of individual peace treaties, rather than a single document, signed in the Dutch city of Utrecht in March and April 1713. The treaties among several European states, including Great Britain, France, Spain, Savoy, and the Dutch Republic, helped end the War of the Spanish Succession. The treaties were concluded between the representatives of Louis XIV of France and Philip V of Spain on the one hand, and representatives of Queen Anne of Great Britain, the Duke of Savoy, the King of Portugal and the United Provinces on the other.



 
- Hume; Fischer - Poeticall Musicke
Marianne Muller - fierce player of viola da gamba, recently applauded for her outstanding interpretation of Folies d’Espagne of Marin Marais on Zig-Zag Territoires - brings us solo and consort pieces of Tobias Hume - captain and eccentric English composer of XVIIe century. Committed to her instrument, Marianne Muller commissions to contemporary composers new pieces for viola di gamba... Eric Fischer created a piece dedicated to Tobias Hume.

Little is known of  Hume’s life. Some have suggested that he was born in 1569 because he was admitted to the London Charterhouse in 1629, a pre-requisite to which was being at least 60 years old, though there is no certainty over this. He had made his living as a professional soldier, probably as a mercenary. He was an officer with the Swedish and Russian armies. His published music includes pieces for viols (including many solo works for the lyra viol) and songs. They were gathered in two collections, The First Part of Ayres (or Musicall Humors, 1605) and Captain Humes Poeticall Musicke (1607). He was a particular champion of the viol over the then-dominant lute, something which caused John Dowland to publish a rebuttal of Hume's ideas.



 
- JS Bach - Violin Concertos
Rachel: ‘The opportunity to spend three intensive days recording four Bach concertos is an uplifting experience. Each piece encompasses a unique expressive world where discovering the real essence of every movement becomes a kind of obsession! The concertos in A minor and E major are old friends. I’ve grown up with them and I played them a lot when young. The other two, in G minor and A major, were very familiar (as harpsichord concertos or in various transcriptions) – relations I knew reasonably well but not such close friends. It has been a delight to explore these pieces and renew acquaintance, first hand.’

 
- JS Bach: Easter & Ascension Oratorios
•    This, the second release of the highly anticipated Retrospect Ensemble series, features the Easter Oratorio, one of Bach’s best-known oratorios and a monumental work, as well as the Ascension Oratorio.
•    Retrospect Ensemble employs large-scale forces for this recording including four-part choir and orchestra (including timpani), and is joined by Carolyn Sampson (soprano), Iestyn Davies (countertenor), James Gilchrist (tenor) and Peter Harvey (bass).
•    This dynamic recording highlights the skill and brilliance of Bach's writing through the inspired story telling of its star soloists and the passion of the Ensemble.


 
- NONcertos and Others

“Ayres studied composition, electronic music, and trombone. He moved to Den Haag to study with Louis Andriessen on the postgraduate composition course at the Royal Conservatoire. He settled in Holland permanently and since2006 has taught at the Amsterdam Conservatoire. Ayres’ postmodern style is eceletic, comic and theatrical.

When asked what inspires his writing he replied ‘... consonance, dissonance, melody, texture, elephants, clouds, snowballs, anything, from any time andwhenever it is needed – bound only by the borders of my limited imagination’!



 
- Smetana - Ma Vlast
The most recent Supraphon recording of My Country dates back to the halcyon days of 1990. In the first year of freedom, at the euphoric opening concert of the Prague Spring festival the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra was conducted by the 76-year-old Rafael Kubelík, who had just returned from exile. Twenty years on, the festival entrusted this honourable task to the 28-year-old conductor Jakub Hruša, who emulated the legendary Václav Neumann in becoming the youngest conductor in history to open the festival.