Search Results for "choral" – Page 3
Ronald Stevenson: The Man and His Music
A Symposium
Edited by Colin Scott-Sutherland
Foreword by Lord Menuhin
Extent: 507 pages
Composition: Royal octavo ~ 509p ~ Copiously illustrated ~ List of Works ~ Bibliography ~ Discography ~ Index of Stevenson's Music ~ General Index
Arthur Farwell: Piano Music, Volume One
The American composer Arthur Farwell (1872-1952) is remembered as the leading member of a group of 'Indianists' who used Native American tribal melodies. But Farwell's stylistic range was much wider than is realised today. This CD, the first of two to be recorded by Lisa Cheryl Thomas, herself of Cherokee, Blackfoot and Sioux ancestry, presents first The Vale of Enitharmon, based on the mythology of William Blake, which mixes Romanticism and Impressionism. Impressions of the Wa-Wan Ceremony of the Omahas represents an American Indian ritual so revered that warring tribes would lay down their arms to let the procession pass. And the experimental Polytonal Studies pit two different keys against each other, exploiting the attraction of opposites to generate unusual harmonies and melodies.
Lisa Cheryl Thomas, piano
Ferdinand Thieriot: Chamber Music, Volume Two
The Hamburg-born Ferdinand Thieriot (1838–1919) not only shared a teacher – Eduard Marxsen – with Brahms; both composers use a very similar musical language, one which is richly melodic and effortlessly contrapuntal. The musicologist Wilhelm Altmann wrote that ‘Thieriot’s chamber music is without exception noble and pure. He writes with perfect command of form and expression’ – as the works on this second Toccata Classics volume prove, in their exquisite balance of depth and beauty.
Hamburg Chamber Players
Ian Mardon, violin
Matthias Brommann, violin
Julia Mensching, viola
Olga Dowbusch-Lubotsky, cello
Suren Anisonyan, cello
Clovis Michon, cello
Andrea Merlo, piano
Alexander Bürkle, organ
Humperdinck: A Life of the Composer of ‘Hänsel und Gretel’
by William Melton
Foreword by John Mauceri
Royal octavo (253 mm x 158 mm)
456pp
81 illustrations
61 music exx.
Catalogue of Works
Bibliography
Format: Hardback
Four Questions for Pärt Uusberg
An introduction from Martin Anderson: Toccata Classics has been promoting the music of Estonian composers since its early days, as I personally was, too, as…
Songs of Love, Sorrow and Satire (And Not Forgetting the Baboon!): Recording Hans Gál’s Music for Voices
One of the proudest, happiest and most surreal moments in my singing career to date has been uttering the final notes of a choral concert…
Bernard Rose: Music for Choir and Organ
As conductor, trainer and composer, Bernard Rose (1916–96) was one of the mainstays of English choral music in the second half of the twentieth century. His compositions occupy an honourable place within the mainstream of the cathedral tradition, being both grounded in the past and leaning gently into the future, and speaking its language of stylistic restraint and understated passion – and occasionally flaring into moment of considerable drama. This recording, sung by one of Europe’s leading vocal ensembles and conducted by the composer’s son, makes a good number of his works available for the first time.
Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir
Ene Salumäe, organ
Gregory Rose, conductor
Annike Lohmus, soprano
Karolina Kriis, soprano
Marianne Parna, contralto
Raul Mikson, tenor
Rainer Vilu, baritone
Conrad Beck: Complete Music for Solo Piano
The Swiss composer Conrad Beck (1901–89) wrote a generous amount of music, including seven symphonies, around twenty concertos and concertante works, four string quartets, some large-scale choral works, solo songs and much else, and during his lifetime he enjoyed the strong support of Paul Sacher. But since his death his music has been almost entirely forgotten. This first recording of his complete piano music, recorded by his daughter-in-law, reveals a composer working in a style similar to that of Hindemith and Honegger, with clear contrapuntal textures in a Neo-Classical tradition ultimately derived from Bach – and with a hint of the French accent his music acquired from the years he spent in 1920s Paris.
Gabrielle Beck-Lipsi, piano
Richard Stöhr: Chamber Music, Volume One
Like Korngold, Schoenberg, Zeisl and Zemlinsky, Richard Stöhr (1874-1967) was another Austrian composer driven into American exile by the Nazis. His generous output of music — ripe for rediscovery — includes seven symphonies, fifteen violin sonatas among much other chamber music, songs, and choral and piano pieces. His two works for cello and piano — the four Fantasiestücke of 1907 and a Sonata from 1915, recorded here in the first of a series devoted to Stöhr's music — reveal a composer with a lyrical and expressive language downstream from Brahms and Schumann.
Stefan Koch, cello
Robert Conway, piano
Oleg Komarnitsky: Chamber and Instrumental Music
In his short life the Moscow-born Oleg Komarnitsky (1946-98) produced music in a wide variety of genres — orchestral, choral, chamber, instrumental and more, not least works for children — but almost none of it has been recorded before; it wasn't even heard outside Russia before 1996. Komarnitsky's music is accessible and lyrical, with the Slavic melancholy which colours the string works here (apparently all that survives of his chamber music) balanced by the buoyant and innocent humour of his piano music, with its echoes of Prokofiev and Shostakovich.
London Piano Trio, piano trio
Robert Atchison, violin
David Jones, cello
Olga Dudnik, piano
Percy Sherwood: Complete Works for Cello and Piano
The Anglo-German composer Percy Sherwood, born in 1866, seems to have slipped through the cracks of history, although he has an impressive output of orchestral, chamber, choral and instrumental music to his credit. He was once an important figure in his native Dresden, where he owned an imposing villa, but after moving to Britain at the beginning of the First World War he faded from view and by the time of his death in London in 1939 his music was as good as forgotten. This first CD in a series of Sherwood recordings — the first-ever dedicated to his music — reveals a major lost Romantic, with a style that is both lyrical and passionate.
Joseph Spooner, cello
David Owen Norris, piano
Veljo Tormis: Works for Men’s Voices
The Estonian composer Veljo Tormis (born in 1930) has carved a unique position for himself in contemporary music. By marrying the quasi-minimalist rhythmic vigour of Estonian runic singing – a tradition some 3,000 years old – with the extended techniques of modern choral writing, he has created a body of music tingling with excitement, energy and power. Many of the works on this CD – where the composer, playing shaman drum and anvil, joins one of Scandinavia’s brightest young choirs – draw on folk sources in a reaffirmation of Estonian identity; others evoke the forces of nature as a metaphor for political upheaval.
Svanholm Singers, choir
Sofia Söderberg Eberhard, conductor