VAUGHAN WILLIAMS & JAMES MACMILLAN Oboe Concertos

“Not only so his [Nick Daniels'] flawless discipline, liquid tone, exquisite chiaroscuro and seemingly superhuman breath control crush the ear, but he also encourages his colleagues to give their polished and raptly committed best ... Excellent sound and truthful balance throughout: this anthology merits a strong recommendation.” --Andrew Achenbach, Gramophone Magazine, May 2015

“[Daniel] tends to let the tempo slacken when the harmonic pulse slows down [on the Vaughan Williams]...it's hard to complain when that leaves more space for his consistently golden tone...MacMillan also conducts his One, a luminously scored monody.” --BBC Music Magazine, August 2015 *****

Britten Sinfonia

Two major British oboe concertos featuring soloist Nicholas Daniel with the Britten Sinfonia. Composer James MacMillan conducts the world premiere recording of his own Concerto (dedicated to Nicholas Daniel), as well as his 2012 composition 'One' and the Britten 'Suite on English Folk Tunes: A Time There Was'. The oboist himself directs the Ralph Vaughan Williams concerto, the work with which he won the BBC Young Musician of the Year Competition at the age of 18.

“He is arguably Britain’s most virtuosic and adventurous instrumentalist and as mesmerising a talent now, at 53, as he was when he won the BBC Young Musician of the Year competition 35 years ago...The oboe writing [in the Macmillan] is insanely demanding throughout; Daniel is stunning.” The Times, 11th April 2015 *****

“A fine showcase for Daniel’s mellifluous playing, the disc is still more than that, ending with a lovely account of Britten’s Suite on English Folk Tunes, and teasing one with a magical, five-minute piece by MacMillan...It is simply (complexly!) a monody passed round the players, glistening as it goes.” Sunday Times, 26th April 2015

“Oboists may feel ruefully that musical history owes them a showpiece. They have one now: MacMillan’s Oboe Concerto turns the soloist into a nimble-footed musical athlete, a star opera singer, a dazzling Highland dancer, all in the space of three varied movements. Nicholas Daniel makes the most of its virtuoso opportunities, raising the elegiac slow movement to intense heights.” Financial Times, 25th April 2015 ****

“On this disc of delightfully summery music, the emphasis is initially on the pastoral: the airborne lyricism of Vaughan Williams’ Oboe Concerto, its liquid lyricism shaped with velvet perfection by soloist Nicholas Daniel and the Britten Sinfonia … MacMillan’s own Oboe Concerto introduces a feistier mood, its nimble virtuosity playfully executed by the same soloist.” The Scotsman, 2nd May 2015

“This is a bravura display by Daniel, with lightly assured playing from the always-rewarding Britten Sinfonia.” The Observer, 24th May 2015 ****

WAGHALTER Orchestral works

"Walker’s interpretation of the music is sturdy, with good rhythmic pulse. The New Russia Orchestra plays with healthy vigor and largeness of gesture…" --American Record Guide, November 2015

" It’s great fun, and conducted with both flair and love by Alexander Walker, who is responsible for the work’s (New World Suite) reconstruction... The New Russia State Symphony Orchestra…plays quite well under Walker’s direction, and the sonics, while perhaps a bit studio-bound, never come between you and the music. A very enjoyable release." --ClassicsToday.com, July 2015

Ignatz Waghalter rose from an impoverished childhood in Poland to become conductor at the newly founded Deutsches Opernhaus in Berlin in 1912. Here, the first performance of his youthful comic opera Mandragola, attended by luminaries such as Richard Strauss, Busoni, and Humperdinck, won him huge acclaim: the Overture and Intermezzo reveal his orchestral mastery.

With the rise of Nazism Waghalter left Europe for America where he strongly identified with the Afro-American cause, and began work on the New World Suite, ten short movements of rich melodic imagination that illustrate his constant desire to write approachable and lively music. Volume 1 in this series [8.572809] was an ICMA (International Classical Music Awards) nominee.

Album Reviews

In The Shadow of WAR

“Isserlis's spellbinding advocacy of Bridge's raptly compassionate masterpiece in particular has acquired an extra richness of experience and plangent intensity...both performances [the Hough and the Bloch] really are tremendously compelling in their articulate composure, nourishing intelligence and clear-sighted purpose.” --Gramophone Magazine, May 2013

“this profoundly engaging reading [of the Bridge] sets a new standard. [in Schelomo] nothing is forced or overdone, no rhetoric or posturing gets in the way of the work's own soulful expression...What he has achieved in this beautifully balanced recording with Hugh Wolff is a breathtaking new fluency and freedom.” --BBC Music Magazine, June 2013 *****

Steven Isserlis (cello)

This programme is well conceived and draws some truly moving playing. The coda to Bridge’s Oration makes a serious challenge for the title of ‘most beautiful ending to a cello concerto’ Isserlis.

Schelomo is an extraordinary work where Bloch seems to have created a new musical language inspired by Jewish music dating back thousands of years. Often mistaken for film music, Schelomo’s immediacy and descriptiveness has influenced many film composers.

Isserlis plays the ‘Marquis de Corberon’ Stradivarius of 1726, formerly owned by Zara Nelsova who was the first to record Bloch’s Schelomo with the composer conducting.

“Bloch’s famous Schelomo is given a superb performance, with Isserlis on inspired form. This is music that can seem overblown in the wrong hands, but here everything goes marvellously...This is an outstanding disc of glorious music, superbly played and recorded.” --MusicWeb International, 31st July 2013

PFITZNER The Cello Concertos

“Gerhardt holds it all together with his sustained singing lines, while Weigle and his Berlin band provide vividly pointillist backing.” --BBC Music Magazine, April 2014 ****

“Gerhardt, a composed and elegant player...is at one with these scores and takes them all in his stride...The excellent Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin under Sebastian Weigle earns top marks as a constantly sympathetic partner.” --MusicWeb International, 14th May 2014

Alban Gerhardt (cello) - Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin, Sebastian Weigle

Hyperion’s Romantic Cello Concerto series continues to bring new works into a repertoire currently dominated by Dvorák and Elgar. Alban Gerhardt performs the three concertos by Hans Pfitzner, a composer remembered most for his opera Palestrina.

Pfitzner’s early Cello Concerto in A minor, Op posth., was scorned by his teachers (although liked by the composer himself) and the manuscript disappeared during his lifetime. It was first performed in public on 18 February 1977 and published the following year. His Cello Concerto in G major, Op 42, was written almost half a century later. Completed in 1935, this richly melodic single span was composed for the cellist Gaspar Cassadó (1897–1966), one of the finest cellists of his generation. This beautifully constructed concerto derives its material from the lyrical cello solo (heard over a quiet timpani roll) at the very start of the work.

The orchestration is deft and often delicate, never submerging the solo instrument, but full of attractive surprises, not least the tumbling trumpet fanfares that introduce the first of the faster sections. The Cello Concerto in A minor, Op 52, is dedicated to Ludwig Hoelscher (1907–1996), a pupil of two giants of German cello-playing: Hugo Becker and Julius Klengel. It was completed in 1943 and published in 1944. Also included is a Duo for violin, cello and small orchestra.

“they belong, somewhat anachronistically, to Hyperion’s Romantic Cello Concertos, and Gerhardt plays them with enough conviction to make cello buffs want to give them a try.” --Sunday Times, 30th March 2014

“Gerhardt is an unfailingly charismatic soloist, finding a sense of purpose where others might lapse into aimlessness, and the orchestral support is first-rate.” --Gramophone Magazine, May 2014

SORABJI 100 Transcendental Studies, Volume 4

Composed between 1940 and 1944, Kaikhosru Sorabji’s 100 Transcendental Studies has a total duration of at least seven hours, making it by far the largest collection of concert études in the repertoire. Most of the pieces, in particular in the beginning of the cycle, are typical studies in the sense that essentially a single technical or structural idea is explored. But later on Sorabji inserts pieces that are on a much larger scale, and three examples of this are to be found on the present disc, the fourth in Fredik Ullén’s traversal of the set. The disc opens with En forme de Valse (No. 63), a 17 minute waltz in which Sorabji envelops his melodies with a jungle of serpentine embellishments, covering the entire keyboard. Release date: 5th May 2015

The closing study, No. 71 has a duration of 13 minutes, and was dubbed Aria by Sorabji, even though the piece in reality is highly polyphonic with a multitude of cantilenas, and with rhythmic structures that are sometimes remarkably complex. The most expansive piece, however, is No. 69, with a playing time of close to 26 minutes. Throughout this study, La punta d’organo, the note A appears as a pedal point. In the opening, it is heard as a softly tolling bell under falling chordal motives, without doubt an allusion to Ravel's Le Gibet from Gaspard de la Nuit.

But the piece grows into a vast, trance-like meditation, with the ever-present A appearing in different registers. All the studies in the cycle have had to wait for decades before their first performance – No. 69 was premièred as late as 2014 – and Fredrik Ullén is a true pioneer of this repertoire, both live and on disc. His endeavours have been duly acclaimed, for instance in BBC Music Magazine (‘Ullén… expounds Sorabji's studies with utter textural clarity and jaw-dropping virtuosity.’) and the German magazine Fono Forum (‘Ullén negotiates the music of Sorabji with stunning mastery.’)

SHOSTAKOVICH The Cello Concertos

“Gautier Capucon is too consummate a musician to opt for pale imitations. Working hand in glove with Valery Gergiev and the Mariinsky Orchestra, he delivers passionate and rhythmically incisive accounts…[there is] much to admire here, particularly in the way both soloist and orchestra ratchet up the emotional temperature throughout the course of the second movement [of the Second Concerto]” --BBC Music Magazine, December 2015

Gautier Capucon (cello) - Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra, Valery Gergiev

“Capuçon and Gergiev deliver some grand and glorious moments” wrote Gramophone when the French cellist Gautier Capuçon and the Russian conductor Valery Gergiev last collaborated on a disc of Russian music for Erato – works by Prokofiev and Tchaikovsky, released in 2010. The Daily Telegraph found that: “Capuçon [plays] with a blend of impeccable taste, Romantic ardour and technical aplomb ... Whether quizzical, rapturous, pensive or demonstrative, Capuçon has full measure of [the music] here in a performance of impressive stature.”

Now, the two musicians -- whose collaboration, again in Gramophone’s words, “was bound to strike sparks” – have come together for two live recordings, made in December 2013 at Paris’s Salle Pleyel and June 2014 at St. Petersbourg’s Mariinsky Thetre with the Mariinsky Orchestra. The works in question are Dmitri Shostakovich’s cello concertos Nos 1 and 2, both of which were written for Mstislav Rostropovich. The first was composed in 1959 (a year after the Central Committee of the Communist Party admitted that in 1948 there had been unjust condemnation of Shostakovich and other composers as ‘Formalist’), the second in 1966. The two concertos are different in spirit and shape: the first is often assertive and energetic, and features a huge cadenza for the cello that is almost a movement in its own right, while the second is introspective and enigmatic.

When Capuçon played the Concerto No.1 in New York in early 2014, the New York Times said: “Mr Capuçon played the work beautifully, negotiating its difficulties with seeming ease ... his elegance paid dividends ..., especially in the meditative Moderato and the brooding opening of the cadenza.” When he took the piece to Montreal, also in early 2014, the news website Pieuvre.ca reported that “[his] sensitive, virtuosic interpretation was rewarded with a long ovation.”

“Gautier Capucon immediately shows that his are interpretations to be reckoned with. His account of the first movement of the First Concerto brings to bear an exceptional variety of articulation where lesser players storm through regardless.” --Gramophone Magazine, November 2015

My ARMENIA

“Komitas’s glory lay in his choral arrangements of folk songs, but is represented here by the two arrangements for violin and piano and seven for piano solo: each has a truthful simplicity and charm, suggesting voice and rudimentary accompaniment with bare octaves and skipping rhythms...The other pieces do at least reflect the excellence of Armenia’s conservatoire culture, as do Sergey and Lusine Khachatryan…The pleasure of their musicianship is this CD’s real selling point.” --BBC Music Magazine, Christmas 2015

Dedicated to the 100th Commemoration of the Armenian Genocide, My Armenia offers a very personal, touching and brilliant tribute to Armenian music by Sergey and Lusine Khachatryan. Sergey and Lusine are regular duo partners. Together, they have given recitals at London's Wigmore Hall, Konzerthaus Dortmund, Paris Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, Madrid Auditori Nacional, Amsterdam Concertgebouw, Brussels Bozar, Luxemburg Philharmonie and New York Carnegie Hall.

'My Armenia' offers a large and heartstretching overview of the finest Armenian composers, especially those who have successfully mixed Western Europe and folk influences, such as Komitas or Khachaturian.

SCHUBERT, BRITTEN & SHOSTAKOVICH Mysteries for Viola

Rachel Roberts is one of Europe’s leading violists and performs internationally as soloist and chamber musician.

Prizes for her chamber music recordings include the Diapason D’or, the ‘Supersonic Award’ of Pizzicato magazine, Luxembourg, CD of the month in Fonoforum Magazine, Germany, and BBC Chamber Choice in Gramophone Magazine. Rachel Roberts has recorded chamber music for labels Hyperion, Champs Hill Artists, Signum Classics, cAVI in Germany and Deutsche Rundfunk.
Release date: November 27, 2015

MOTHERLAND

“soothing, intimate and reflective. Buntiashvili roduces the most ravishing, velvet-toned pianissimo, beautifully captured in Berlin's Jesus-Christus-Kirche. The trouble is that, after 20 minutes or so of ravishing, velvet-toned pianissimo, one begins to wonder if that is all this pianist is going to reveal of herself” --Gramophone Magazine, September 2014

“Behind the flowers, butterflies and soulful photos there lies some very classy piano-playing...Buntiashvili's playing is eloquent indeed: her voicing is expertly balanced in the opening Bach transcription and the Ravel Pavane, the phrasing sings wonderfully in the Tchaikovsky, Chopin and Scriabin...on the whole these are performances that get under your skin.” --BBC Music Magazine, October 2014 ****

Khatia Buniatishvili (piano)

Following the success of her Chopin album on Sony Classical, Khatia Buniatishvili now reveals a new, highly personal side on her album ‘Motherland’.

The CD is an intimate quest encompassing solo piano works from Bach to Pärt and from Brahms to Kancheli, in which the themes of longing for home, the merriment of a folk dance and the eternal cycle of growth and decay are apparent.

Spanning a broad stylistic and historical range, the album celebrates the works that have accompanied Khatia Buniatschvili’s personal path in life, including pieces from her Georgian homeland.

Motherland juxtaposes the happy lightness of a ‘Slavonic Dance’ by Dvorak and the melancholy of Grieg’s lyrical ‘Homesickness’, and contrasts the elegant gaiety of Mendelssohn’s ‘Song without Words’ (op. 67/2) with the graceful introspection of Liszt’s ‘Lullaby’. Classics of the Romantic piano repertoire such as Chopin’s Étude in C-sharp minor (op. 25/7) and Brahms ‘Intermezzo’ (op. 117/2) are embedded between Bach’s cantata ‘Sheep May Safely Graze’ and Arvo Pärt’s musical dedication ‘For Alina’.

Khatia Buniatishvili has been described by The Independent as “the young Georgian firebrand”. At the age of only 26 years, this Tblisi-born pianist has already achieved an exceptional maturity of interpretation and a distinctive artistic approach that make her playing unmistakable.

Khatia’s warm, sometimes sorrowful playing may reflect a close proximity to Georgian folk-music, which, she attests, has greatly influenced her musicality. Critics emphasize that her playing has an aura of elegant solitude and even melancholy, which she does not feel to be a negative attribute. “The piano is the blackest instrument,” she says, a “symbol of musical solitude… I have to be psychologically strong and forget the hall if I want to share it with the audience.” Khatia Buniatishvili speaks five languages and lives in Paris.

SHOSTAKOVICH Symphony No. 7 in C major, Op. 60 'Leningrad'

“Paavo Järvi's Leningrad is the opposite of his father's 1988 epic with the Scottish National Orchestra - light, laconic and sonically lean where Neeme's recording was spectacularly big in every way.” --BBC Music Magazine, August 2015

“Järvi and his engineers offer ruthless clarity and precision, exposing a rogue E flat clarinet with a flash of the theme at one point (never heard that before) and lacerating flutter-tongued trumpets as the shock and awe peaks…there is no denying the excellence of the playing.” --Gramophone Magazine, May 2015

Russian National Orchestra, Paavo Järvi

It is hard to escape the incredible pull of Symphony No. 7, knowing the background to its composition and its general significance. Shostakovich began to work on the actual composition in July 1941 in Leningrad, where he wrote the first three movements under constant attack from the enemy; and after his evacuation from the city besieged by German troops, he completed the Finale and the instrumentation in Kuibyschev in December 1941.

This outstanding work achieves its true dimensions thanks to the sophisticated and polished conductor Paavo Järvi conducting the Russian National Orchestra in this recording. Needless to say he elevates the composition to an even higher level.

The round and open sound of PENTATONE’s multichannel recording on SACD assures an honest yet captivating listening experience.

“Even before the war, hardly a family could be found in Leningrad that had not suffered a loss: the father, the son; and if not a family member, then a close friend. Everyone had someone to mourn. But you had to cry softly, under your blanket. You could not let anyone see you: everyone was afraid of everyone else. We were crushed, suffocated by grief. It choked us all, including me. I had to turn it into music, I felt it was my duty and obligation. I had to write a requiem for all those who had died, for all those who had been tortured.” (Extract from Shostakovich’s posthumously published memoirs: The Memoirs of Dmitri Shostakovich).

SIBELIUS Belshazzar’s Feast

“Segerstam directs all this material with unfailing perception and secures some commendably watchful playing from his excellent Turku band. Sound, too, is undistractingly truthful, full-bodied and atmospheric, and there are useful notes by Dominic Wells. Roll on the next instalment!” --Gramophone Magazine, September 2015

“The lesser pieces here are all attractive...Segerstam has become one of the very finest Sibelius conductors, and his Turku orchestra rightly plays as if these were all major works, making this highly recommendable.” --BBC Music Magazine, October 2015 *****

Pia Pajala (soprano) - Turku Philharmonic Orchestra, Leif Segerstam

Alongside the great symphonies and tone poems, music for the theatre played an important rolê in Sibelius’s development. From exquisite nocturnal tranquility to the macabre ‘Dance of Life’, Belshazzar’s Feast is an exotic tale of seduction and tragedy to which Sibelius responded with some of his most hauntingly beautiful writing for the stage. The early Menuetto and lively Cortège were considered good enough by the composer to be recycled for further stage productions, while the Overture in E and Scène de Ballet started life as Sibelius’s first attempt at composing a symphony.

This is the second of a six-volume set of orchestral works by Jean Sibelius which explores his prolific but infrequently-heard work beyond the core oeuvre of the symphonies, violin concerto and tone poems. Conductor Leif Segerstam has been acclaimed for his many recordings with numerous orchestras, and was awarded the annual Finnish State Prize for Music in 2004 and in 2005 the highly esteemed Sibelius Medal. His recordings for Naxos include a “skillfully and sweepingly paced” Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde (Classic FM on 8660152-54), his conducting of Alban Berg’s Wozzeck regarded as “a giant-killer” (Gramophone on 8660076-77). The Turku Philharmonic is a platinum record-making and award winning orchestra, and we are confident that the sheer quality of this new series will guarantee wide interest in the relatively neglected works of Finland’s greatest and most influential composer.

Album Reviews

SZYMANOWSKI, DEBUSSY, SCHULHOFF, JANÁCEK & SZYMANOWSKI Chamber Music

As the album title suggests, the repertoire on this collection is centered on the concepts of identity, both personal and national. Written between 1904 and 1927, a time that predates, includes then postscripts the WWI era, the diverse works on this collection examines four early 20th century pioneers: Claude Debussy, Leos Janacek, Erwin Schulhoff and Karol Szymanowski. The duo of Noé Inui (violin) and Mario Häring (piano) illustrate these composers search for new sounds, tone colours and forms at a time of great foment and through the duos nuanced thoughtful performances enable listeners to experience anew the many musical worlds that were created during that time.
Release date: 23rd Oct 2015

RAVEL & SCHMITT Piano Concertos

“the main selling point is the premiere recording of the piano-and-orchestra version of 'J'entends dans le lointain' by Florent Schmitt…the fiercely demanding original piano solo, written on three staves, is the first part of a triptych entitled Ombres…after it. Ravel's Left Hand Concerto comes as light relief” --Gramophone, November 2015

Vincent Larderet’s performance of Ravel’s piano concertos on this recording is marked by careful adherence to the original score and respect for the composer’s markings while, at the same time, liberating if from certain habits of interpretation.

Ravel’s work is supplemented by a piece of Florent Schmitt. Although Schmitt’s reputation as a composer rivalled Ravel’s during his lifetime, his music has, inexplicably and unjustifiably, fallen into obscurity. The restoration of such an extraordinary musical score may contribute to the rehabilitation of one of the greatest French composers of his generation.

COPLAND Billy the Kid & Rodeo

Having taken up the post of music director with the Colorado Symphony in 2013, Andrew Litton has chosen a highly fitting programme for the orchestra's first recording on BIS: the Wild West, its folk music, traditions and legends loom large in Aaron Copland's ballet scores Billy the Kid and Rodeo. The two works were the result of the composer's search during the early 1930's for a new musical language. In the two ballets, this new direction can be felt in the immediacy of the music, but also in Copland's use of cowboy tunes. 

Release date: 27th Nov 2015

A similar approach, but with Mexican themes, characterizes the slightly earlier El Salón México, inspired by a visit to a dancehall in Mexico and the atmosphere he experienced there. Whereas these three works are amongst the most popular in Copland's entire production, the opening piece, An Outdoor Overture, is something of a rarity – especially on disc. Composed in the same year as Billy the Kid, the overture was part of an educational campaign with the slogan 'American Music for American Youth' and its snappy rhythms and colourful orchestration will have made it as successful in its original purpose as it is here, as a curtain raiser.

The Colorado Symphony is obviously enjoying itself in this all-American programme, as is its conductor Andrew Litton, who joins the revelry as honky-tonk pianist in the Celebration section of Billy the Kid and the Ranch House Party in Rodeo, before bringing the disc to a rollicking end in that ballet’s closing section, Hoe-Down.

The ART of Imagination

Works for Flute & Harp from Great Britain & Germany by Bax, Hilse, Doppler/Zamara, Scott

The program of this CD is a compilation of select compositions for flute and harp from the English and German-speaking worlds, the composers of which deliberately explored the pictorial nature of music. Every single one of them has his own pictorial musical language, corresponding to his temporal context and his life’s story. This CD presents a colorful bouquet of emotions with works that were consciously or unconsciously inspired by poetry, theater and the opera. 

Fantasy is the creative ability of man making the creation of inner images and thus of an “inner world” possible. It is the human senses that stimulate our fantasy, and hearing is one of the ?rst senses that develop in the womb. Hearing and listening does not only mean understanding consecutive words and their meaning, but moreover grasping the emotions of what is being said that are expressed through the articulation and the intonation.

The same thing happens when we listen to music. Since its beginnings, music has often been closely connected to dance, theater and poetry, and makes it possible to “paint” reality outside of music, i.e. nature or human emotions. The fact that these are not real pictures from the area of art, but images that originate solely in our fantasy and our subconscious even increases the stimulation of our imaginative and emoti nal lives. The reason for this is that the listener’s fantasy is not bound but rather only stimulated in a certain way and is able to unfold freely.

HARTY String Quartets & Piano Quintet

“Piers Lane plays immaculately with great sympathy; and though the Goldner Quartet are not the richest-toned group, they too play warmly to bring out the finest qualities of the music. Altogether a delightful disc of music neglected for far too long.” --Gramophone Magazine, July 2012

“The Goldner String Quartet, joined in the Quintet by fellow Australian Piers Lane, display just the right warmth and spirit to suit this attractive music, much of it written con brio. Jeremy Dibble's notes are rather dry, but Hyperion's succulent recording is a peach.” --BBC Music Magazine, July 2012 ****

Goldner String Quartet

Acclaimed pianist Piers Lane and his fellow Australians, the Goldner String Quartet, reprise their highly successful partnership in these world-premiere recordings of the two String Quartets and Piano Quintet of Irish composer Hamilton Harty. Born in County Down, Harty (1879–1941) was a remarkable, self-taught musician who wrote in a lyrical Romantic idiom, as evidenced in these appealing works, while incorporating a modal astringency and folk-music charm that are reminiscent of Percy Grainger. In particular, the winding, pentatonic melody of the Lento of the Piano Quintet—a lusciously big-boned work worthy of Tchaikovsky—and the delightful 9/8 ‘hop jig’ of the first movement of String Quartet No 2 seem like settings of folk-melodies that have echoed for centuries around the green hills of Ireland. Intriguingly, however, they are entirely Harty’s own invention.

This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council for the Arts, its arts funding and advisory body.

KABALEVSKY Symphonies Nos. 1-4 (complete)

Dmitri Kabalevsky was one of the most important, frequently performed composers of Soviet Russia. He did his utmost to conform to government cultural policy, occupying important positions in the Union of Soviet Composers.

Kabalevsky was not as adventurous as his contemporaries in terms of harmony and preferred a more conventional diatonicism, interlaced with chromaticism and major-minor interplay. Unlike fellow composer Sergei Prokofiev, he embraced the ideas of socialist realism but his works were favoured by the government for being more ‘accessible’ than the works of Prokofiev and Shostakovich. His post-war works have been characterized as "popular, and successful."

This new disc is a complete recording of the four synphonies, including the world première of the third symphony ‘Requiem for Lenin’. Christoph Schlüren, booklet author for this disc writes that the works reveals not a propaganda composer, which was the common preconception of composers of Soviet Russia, but a highly expressive romantic musician full of energy.

FRANCK Violin Sonata & SZYMANOWSKI Mythes

“An early recipient of a Penguin rosette, this classic 1980 recording blazes with a musical incandescence rarely captured in the studio. One of the all-time great sonata discs.” --BBC Music Magazine, May 2006 *****

“Kaja Danczowska's account of the Franck is distinguished by a fine sense of line and great sweetness of tone, and she is partnered superbly by Krystian Zimerman. Indeed, in terms of dramatic fire and strength of line, this version can hold its own alongside the finest" --Penguin Guide Rosette Winner, 1994 edition

MATHIEU Piano Concerto & Orchestral Works

Canadian pianist Alain Lefèvre devotes his new recording entirely to André Mathieu. Rachmaninov pronounced him, "a genius, more so than I am". Recorded live in concert with the Tucson Symphony Orchestra and Choir under the renowned conductor George Hanson. It features the world premiere of André Mathieu's Piano Concerto No. 4, a recently discovered work representative of the composer's "Modern Romanticism,” and perhaps his boldest creation.

ZEMLINSKY Chamber Music for Strings

‘…this is music they [the Schoenberg Quartet] care about with a passion, and their performances convey that belief in ample measure. However well you think you know this fascinating and often inspiring music, do acquire this set.’ --Gramophone Magazine

''this Chandos release, is now recommended as the basic set of Zemlinksy chamber music''
--Fanfare