Súplica: Music by Domenico Scarlatti, Fernando Sor, Victor Amaral, Alberto Ginastera & Joaquín Rodrigo
Duo Amaral [Mia Pomerantz-Amaral & Jorge Amaral] (Duo Amaral 501592)
Jorge Amaral is on the faculty of the Conservatory at Baldwin Wallace and he and his wife appear regularly in Northeast Ohio recitals. This disc was recorded in 2010 and features music written - or arranged - for two guitars, including two beautiful Scarlatti Sonatas, L’encouragement by Sor, the world premiere recording of Saggio by Jorge Amaral’s father, Victor, and Tonadilla by Rodrigo.
Featured Tue 10/1, Thu 10/10, Mon 10/21, Wed 10/30
Franz Schubert: Symphonies Nos. 3 & 4 “Tragic”
Freiburg Baroque Orchestra/Pablo Heras-Casado (Harmonia Mundi 902154)
The young Spanish conductor (he turns 36 in November) gives us two symphonies written by the teenaged Franz Schubert. The carefree Third of 1815 ends with a Rossinian tarantella while the darker Fourth (1816) looks more towards Beethoven. The subtitle 'Tragic' came from the composer himself but perhaps the real tragedy is that this symphony, like all his others, was never played in public in his lifetime.
Featured Wed 10/2, Fri 10/11, Tue 10/22, Thu 10/31
The Verdi Album
Jonas Kaufmann, tenor; Coro del Teatro Municipale di Piacenza; Orchestra dell’ Opera di Parma/Pier Giorgio Morandi (Sony 549204)
Jonas Kaufmann made his international breakthrough in 2006 when he sang Alfredo Germont in La Traviata at the Met. The Verdi bicentenary this year has him singing works by the great Italian opera composer all over the world. This new album features twelve of Verdi's greatest tenor hits, eleven of which are recorded for the first time by Kaufmann.
Featured Thu 10/3, Mon 10/14, Wed 10/23
Great Works for Flute & Orchestra
Sharon Bezaly, flute; Residentie Orchestra of the Hague/Neeme Järvi (Bis 1679)
Sharon Bezaly's latest disc features the concertos by Carl Nielsen, Carl Reinecke and Cécile Chaminade, along with Charles T. Griffes’ Poem. But there are rarities here, too: Tchaikovsky’s youthful Largo and Allegro for flute and strings, written while the composer was still a student at the St Petersburg Conservatory and Poulenc's Sonata in an unusual version for flute and orchestra, orchestrated by the British composer Lennox Berkeley. And, to round things off, the Flight of the Bumblebee!
Featured Fri 10/4, Tue 10/15, Thu 10/24
Alessio Bax Plays Brahms
Alessio Bax, piano (Signum 309)
"...Alessio Bax proves himself here to be an ideal Brahmsian. The disc’s sampling of Brahms’s early, middle, and late piano music follows an artful sequence that moves from the yearning, gloomy Op 10 Ballades, to the emotionally varied, experimental Op 76 pieces, to the Paganini Variations’ splendid showiness, and into even further levels of exhibitionism with Bax’s doctoring of a Cziffra-transcribed Hungarian Dance." --Paul Orgel in Fanfare
Featured Mon 10/7, Wed 10/16, Fri 10/25
Madrigalian Motets from Jacobean England
Quire Cleveland/Ross Duffin (Quire Cleveland)
These Latin motets are from the reign of James I when the Church of England had no sanctioned Latin liturgy and Catholic services were illegal. This music basically should not exist, and many of the works had to be painstakingly reconstructed by musicologist/conductor Ross Duffin. The composers - some of the best madrigalists of their day - include Byrd, Weelkes, Tomkins, Ferrabosco Jr., Wilbye and others.
Featured Tue 10/8, Thu 10/17, Mon 10/28
Haydn Cello Concertos Nos. 1 & 2 and Myslivecek Concerto in C
Wendy Warner, cello; Camerata Chicago/Drostan Hall (Çedille 142)
Pity cellists who want to explore 18th century concerto repertoire. Historians say the two Haydn concertos that survive represent a fraction of his output; several others are lost. The work by Josef Myslivecek on this new disc was not even written for the cello; it’s an arrangement of one of the composer’s violin concertos. Camerata Chicago was formed in 2003 by conductor Drostan Hall.
Featured Wed 10/9, Fri 10/18, Tue 10/29