Aranjuez - Milos Karadaglic, guitar; London Philharmonic/Yannick Nézet-Séguin (DeutGram 200390)
Our guides across the 20th century musical landscape of Spain offered in Aranjuez are a Serbian guitarist, a Canadian conductor with an orchestra from England! The Concierto de Aranjuez and Fantasía para un Gentilhombre by Joaquín Rodrigo are the bookends that embrace solo guitar pieces by Manuel de Falla along with Rodrigo’s homage to Falla, Invocación y Danza. The young guitarist has achieved a WCLV trifecta: each one of his releases has been a Choice CD! Says Milos Karadaglic, “Aranjuez serves a different reality, where emotions overflow and the string becomes a voice. It is an homage to the music and musicians who changed the course of the history of the guitar.”
Featured Fri 8/1, Tue 8/12, Thu 8/21
Felix Mendelssohn: A Midsummer Night’s Dream Incidental Music; Piano Concertos Nos. 1 & 2; Buy Blas Overture - Saleem Ashkar, piano; Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra/Riccardo Chailly (Decca 4810778)
Riccardo Chailly is the new musical director at La Scala in Milan, but he retains the post of Kapellmeister at the Gewandhaus in Leipzig. And in that position, he is a successor to Felix Mendelssohn, who held the same job in Leipzig from 1835 until his death in 1847. The cornerstone of this album is one of Mendelssohn’s best known works, the music for Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and five instrumental pieces from the incidental music are here. The two Piano Concertos are played by Saleem Ashkar, the Israel-Palestinian artist, who has performed the First Concerto with Riccardo Chailly and the Gewandhaus Orchestra in Leipzig and on tour. The album also includes the world premiere recording of the Ruy Blas Overture in Christopher Hogwood’s critical edition.
Featured Mon 8/4, Wed 8/13, Fri 8/22
Eventide - Voces8 (Decca 20740)
Voces8 is a new ensemble of eight young singers from England who offer here a stunning debut! Their sure expression is given a contemporary edge in original arrangements from plainchant to Saving Private Ryan, as their perfectly blended sound is enhanced by haunting melodies for solo cello, harp and saxophone. The album evokes Eventide, that magical space between day and night, a time for unwinding, for finding the calm and solace. This disc recalls Jan Garbarek and the Hilliard Ensemble’s chart-topping Officium in the 90’s. The album’s track-list embraces everything from medieval plainsong to a transcription of John Williams’s Hymn to the Fallen, plus exquisite arrangements of Emeli Sandé’s Where I sleep and Second Eve by Norwegian composer Ola Gjeilo, as well as Morten Lauridsen’s O magnum mysterium and recent scores by Eric Whitacre and Royal Wedding composer Paul Mealor.
Featured Tue 8/5, Thu 8/14, Mon 8/25
Antonín Dvorák: Symphony No. 8 & Janácek: Jenufa Suite - Pittsburgh Symphony/Manfred Honeck (Reference 710)
The Pittsburgh Symphony’s broadcast season just ended here on WCLV, so here’s a chance to continue listening to this great ensemble, and what a recording! Click through to the ArkivMusic website to read the rave review by David Hurwitz of ClassicsToday.com; he says Manfred Honeck is “…a conductor who loves the music, who has genuine ideas about how it should go and what it reveals, who leads a great orchestra in a performance that makes us listen to the piece afresh, and who reaffirms our belief not just in this particular work but in what it means to be a ‘classic’.” And fans of the music of Leos Janácek (and there must be many more in our audience after the Cleveland Orchestra’s recent production of The Cunning Little Vixen) also have Honeck’s beautiful ‘conceptualization’ of a suite from the opera Jenufa.
Featured Wed 8/6, Fri 8/15, 8/26
Lars-Erik Larsson Orchestral Works, Vol. 1 - Helsingborg Symphony/Andrew Manze (CPO 777671)
English violinist and conductor Andrew Manze has been Principal Conductor and Artistic Director of the Helsingborg Symphony Orchestra in Sweden since 2006. This first volume of orchestral works by Swedish composer Lars-Erik Larsson includes his Symphony No.1 of 1928, music for Shakespeare’s A Winter’s Tale, a three-movement piece from 1949, Music for Orchestra, and the Lyric Fantasy from 1967.
Featured Thu 8/7, Mon 8/18, Wed 8/27
La Valse - Sean Chen, piano (Steinway 30029)
The years between 1901 and 1914 were, according to historian Philipp Blom, a “period of extraordinary creativity in the arts and sciences, of enormous change in society and in the very image people had of themselves.” The works in this recital by rising star Sean Chen, all composed in that era, are emblematic of that creative ferment, poised between the ‘good old days’ and the rapid onslaught of modernity. Ravel’s La valse and Valses nobles et sentimentales and the Sonatas Nos. 4 and 5 by Scriabin are the major works.
Featured Fri 8/8, Tue 8/19, Thu 8/28
Dances by R. Strauss, Liszt, Korngold, Busoni & Schreker - Orchestre de la Suisse Romande/Kazuki Yamada (PentaTone 518)
This is the second CD in a dance music series on the PentaTone label and concentrates on vibrant compositions from the German-speaking countries (Ferruccio Busoni, an Italian, spent most of his life in Germany). Kazuki Yamada, Principal Guest Conductor of the Orchestra of French-Speaking Switzerland, conducts the Dance of the Seven Veils by Richard Strauss, the Mephisto Waltz No.1 by Liszt, a delightful bon-bon called ‘Straussiana’ by Korngold, Tanz-Walzer by Busoni, Franz Schreker’s Tanzspiel and the First Waltz Sequence from Der Rosenkavalier.
Featured Mon 8/11, Wed 8/20, Fri 8/29