Maria Radutu PHOENIX

 

PHOENIX

Yuko Miyagawa / Aki Kuroda HEITOR VILLA-LOBOS Black Swan

BLACK SWAN

 

Bertrand Chamayou GOOD NIGHT!

GOOD NIGHT!

 

Matan Porat CARNAVAL

CARNAVAL

 

Khatia Buniatishvili LABYRINTH

LABYRINTH

 

Gillian Zammit / Frank Camilleri / Britt Arend CANTILENA

CANTILENA

Atsuko Koga / Georgiy Lomakov FLUTE AND CELLO RARITIES

FLUTE AND CELLO RARITIES

Duo Aurore IGUAÇU

IGUAÇU

Raquel Lojendio / Chiky Martín P'RA VOCÊ

P'RA VOCÊ

Tabea Zimmermann / Javier Perianes CANTILENA

                                                                    CANTILENA

Mischa Maisky / Lily Maisky 20TH CENTURY CLASSICS

                                                         20TH CENTURY CLASSICS

Duo Zuber BLACKBIRD REDUX

Patricia Wolf Zuber and Greg Zuber, a husband and wife duo, have been exploring and expanding the flute and marimba duo repertoire for over thirty years. They are passionate about this music, having played countless pieces for this combination and commissioning and arranging over 30 works. They are both winners of numerous Grammy Awards for their performances with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra of New York, Patricia as an Associate Flutist and Greg as Principal Percussionist, a position he has held for more than 25 years.

We have been performing together since we first met in college. Along with busy careers based in New York City, at the Metropolitan Opera, on Broadway, and with other prestigious ensembles, we have continued our duo performances, building repertoire with newly discovered works, commissioned pieces, and adapted and arranged music.

We take inspiration from genius composers whose vocation is to translate ideas of life into form and sound. Our passion has been to present the most inspired, stylish, intelligent, expressive works from which to craft our programs.

We hope this album, with works created over a 60 year span, entertains and inspires listeners everywhere. - Patricia and Greg Zuber

Thibaut Garcia BACH INSPIRATIONS

The 24-year-old Franco-Spanish classical guitarist Thibaut Garcia’s third recording – his second for Erato – revisits the music of Bach and Latin America. But where the first, ‘Demain dès l’aube’, included Bach’s Sixth Partita, BWV830, and the second, ‘Leyendas’, Piazzolla’s Estaciones Porteñas, ‘Bach Inspirations’, as its title suggests, focuses on Bach’s influence on subsequent composers, not just from Latin America but also from Poland and the Balkans.

In his flowing, pellucid interpretations Garcia himself seems to be inspired by Bach’s name, and throughout much of the programme there’s a compelling tension between the rippling enunciation of lighter paragraphs and the precipitous propulsion of more dramatic passages. This is most obvious in Garcia’s thrilling, magisterial performance of Bach’s D minor Chaconne, where he also relishes the ringing campanella effects while injecting a mesmeric fluidity into the rapid scale and arpeggio passages that throw into sharper relief the cleanly etched architecture of the sunlit major section. But it is also there from the beginning, with Barrios’s melancholy La catedral, and later, in the less often-heard Inventions of Alexandre Tansman and Dušan Bogdanović’s superb Suite brève.

An expressive, sweet-toned Elsa Dreisig joins Garcia for the Bach/Gounod Ave Maria and the aria from Villa-Lobos’s Bachianas Brasileiras No 5, while the latter’s Bachian Prelude No 3 looks past the Bogdanović to the most sheerly beautiful takes on Bach’s ‘Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme’ and ‘Jesus bleibet meine Freude’ I’ve heard from any guitarist to date: clear, relaxed and full of feeling. (William Yeoman / Gramophone)

Andreas Woyke FESTAS SURAMERICANAS

The 'Ciclo Brasileiro' by Heitor Villa-Lobos begins with two impressionistic pieces, 'Plantio do caboclo' and 'Impressoes seresteiras'. Then the music does explode in a musical feast and a frenetic dance. With incredible virtuosity and impetuous drive Andreas Woyke ignites electrifying music on his piano that probably would scare the devil in hell. 

But it does even get more dramatic in 'Rudepoema' (Wild poem, also Savage poem), the longest, most virtuoso and most complex piano solo piece by Villa-Lobos. 

Marc-André Hamelin has recorded this work that has often been compared to Stravinsky's 'Sacre du Printemps' on a Hyperion CD in an immensly enthralling way, but Andreas Woyke does surpass him with a fascinatingly passionate, threateningly unrestrained and headily haunting performance. 

The listener always gets the impression Woyke would truly have to take off with his piano and fly out of the hall with this incredible thrust. 

The move to Alberto Ginastera does not give any rest to the pianist. The first movement of the Argentine's First Piano Sonata is thrillingly dramatic and Woyke plays it like in a trance. But that's nothing compared to the presto misterioso and its nervous driving force. Also Ginastera's Adagio is full of passion and eruptions. The movement is in good hands with Woyke, because he seemingly does use it like an elastic spring being wound up to provide slingshot power in the last movement, a Malambo dance. This also can be found in the first and last of the three 'Danzas Argentinas', while the middle dance is very tranquil and allows Woyke to show his sensitivity in finest nuances as well. 

But again, the main feature of this SACD is the virtuoso, and Andreas Woyke faces this tour de force with incredible power and technical predominance, making the various pieces sound with an indescribably brilliant verve. 

"Virtuosity is the main characteristic of this Villa-Lobos and Ginastera program, played with a peerless verve by Andreas Woyke" (Remy Franck)

Grupo Encuentros / Alicia Terzian 40 YEARS OF CONTEMPORARY MUSIC

Since composer, conductor and musicologist Alicia Terzian founded Grupos Encuentros in 1978, the six-person group has garnered international acclaim for its success at bringing the music of avant-garde Argentinian and Latin American composers to the world. On 40 YEARS OF CONTEMPORARY MUSIC, their debut recording for NAVONA RECORDS, the group combines compositions from such well-known Latin American composers as Heitor Villa-Lobos, Alberto Ginastera, and Terzian herself with works by an international array of composers that ranges from Anton Webern (Germany) to Luciano Berio (Italy) to Franz Schreker (Austria) to Pierre Boulez (France).

Grupo Encuentros consists of mezzo soprano Marta Blanco, pianist Claudio Espector, flutist Fabio Mazzitelli, clarinetist Matias Tchicourel, violinist Sergio Polizzi and violoncellist Carlos Nozzi.  In this CD, saxophonist Maria Noel Luzzardo, oboist Ruben Albornoz, bassoonist Ernesto Imsand and percussionist Arauco Yepes join Encuentros Group. The program presented on 40 YEARS OF CONTEMPORARY MUSIC originally premiered at the annual Encuentros International Festivas in Buenos Aires and truly highlights the brilliance of these award-winning musicians, who have earned high praise from such media outlets as the Los Angeles Times, where they were lauded as “deeply serious and challenging.” Over their 40 year-long career, the group has performed in more than 300 concert halls and festivals of the main cities of five continents including London’s Royal Albert Hall and New York City’s Merkin Auditorium.

40 YEARS OF CONTEMPORARY MUSIC transcends cultural boundaries with such selections as Villa-Lobos’ Choro No 7, which unites the sounds of Amerindian primitivism with the polkas and waltzes of suburban dance halls in Brazil. Emphasizing her status as a renowned ethnomusicologist, Terzian dedicates her composition Yagua Ya Yuca to the Chiriguano and Chanel peoples, who belong to a lost indigenous northwestern Argentinian culture O King was composed the same year as the assassination of Martin Luther King, a tragedy which deeply affected its Italian composer Luciano Berio.

Grupo Encuentros founder Alicia Terzian has composed over 80 compositions for orchestras, orchestra with soloist, and chamber orchestras with and without soloists, musical theater, dance, and multimedia. She travels the world giving seminars on composition and contemporary chamber music at European and American universities and is often invited to participate on juries at international compositions.

Nadine Sierra THERE'S A PLACE FOR US

Nadine Sierra, 2018 winner of the Metropolitan Opera’s prestigious Beverly Sills Artist Award, has made her first album for Deutsche Grammophon and Decca Gold, having signed an exclusive contract with the labels last year. Recorded with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra under the baton of Robert Spano, There’s a Place for Us is scheduled for international release on 24 August 2018, in time to mark the 100th anniversary of Leonard Bernstein’s birth the following day. The album presents the soprano’s stunning vocal abilities in an eclectic choice of American classical music – as well as works by Bernstein, the repertoire ranges from Stephen Foster and Douglas Moore to Stravinsky and Villa-Lobos, and on again to Ricky Ian Gordon, Osvaldo Golijov and Christopher Theofanidis, with texts in Spanish and Portuguese as well as English. After singing the role of Norina (Don Pasquale) at the Paris Opéra in June and July, Nadine Sierra will perform music from the album at this summer’s major US festivals, including an appearance at Tanglewood’s star-studded Bernstein Centennial Celebration.

America’s founding colonists were sustained by the belief that they were building “a city on the hill”, a place that would serve as a model to all mankind. Countless migrants have journeyed there since to share the American dream. Nadine Sierra’s story stands for the stories of millions whose families have made a fresh start in the United States. The critically acclaimed lyric soprano and Fort Lauderdale native, who celebrated her 30th birthday in May, understands the essential contribution made by migrants to the nation’s growth. Her mother is Portuguese, while her father’s family hails from Puerto Rico and Italy. There’s a Place for Us, Sierra’s Deutsche Grammophon and Decca Gold debut album, pays tribute to the diverse backgrounds and creative energy of America’s classical composers. It also presents a timely reminder of unity and equality, of integration and optimism, at a time when anti-immigrant rhetoric is increasing, and fault-lines are widening between divided communities in the US and beyond.

Duo Cardellino DOUBLE JEU

The origin of duo Cardellino, two passionate twin sisters from an early age through music and the desire to play together. 

Curious to discover the abundant repertoire of the duo, they explore the original pieces and write many inedit transcriptions. 
Now soloists in two prestigious French orchestras, they are wanting to develop the Cardellino duo's activity on a regional, national and international level. 
The rich and complementary sounds of flute and cello have already charmed a wide audience at various concerts and festivals: 
Salle de l'esplanade à l'Arsenal de Metz, église de Vézelise, Festival Off Kultur à l'Autre Canal à Nancy, Salle Europa à Montigny-les-Metz, Chapelle Saint-Brieuc, Festival “Musiques’halles” de Dijon, Festival “Les Musicales” de Fontaine-lès-Dijon, Atelier Marcel Hastir à Bruxelles, Griselles, Château de Champlitte, Eglise de Saint-Apollinaire.
The Cardellino duo holds a chamber music diploma from the Royal Conservatory of Music of Brussels

Gerard McChrystal ARIA

This brilliantly devised CD from Gerard McChrystal is a deeply personal album; at times mystical, the music is always beautiful and captivating. Indeed 'Aria' has similar qualities to Jan Gabarek's 'Officium' (which sold 1.4 million copies) and will appeal to this fan-base. Featuring soprano and alto saxophone with a colourful array of different ensemble accompaniments — string orchestra, choir, guitar, piano, solo, string quartet and electronics. Baroque music blends seamlessly with contemporary; Handel resolves into Michael Nyman, Debussy's Syrinx morphs into Ravel's Piece en forme de habanera. All the tracks lead to the next by key or by starting and ending on the same note. Other works include Philip Glass Façades, Faure Les Berceaux, Bozza Aria, as well as original works by Billy Cowie, Karen Tanaka, Andy Scott and Michael McGlynn (from the vocal group Anúna who featured in Riverdance). Accompanying Gerard on this album are some of the UK's finest classical musicians including the Smith Quartet and the No. 1 best-selling classical artist, guitarist Craig Ogden. Gerard McChrystal is a multi-award winning saxophonist who has performed as a soloist in over 30 countries with many of the World's leading orchestras and ensembles.

FHR13 booklet

Nuria Rial / 8 Cellists of the Sinfonieorchester Basel VOCALISE

The two-time ECHO classical winner Nuria Rial is not only one of the most important singers of early music, but has long been thrilled with her velvety and expressive voice also with compositions from the 20th and 21st centuries. These are on the program of their album "Vocalise" with the renowned 8 Cellists of the Sinfonieorchester Basel. 

At the center: Astor Piazzolla's famous cycle "Las Cuatro Estaciones Porteñas" ("The Four Seasons of the Port", meaning that of Buenos Aires), but also one of Villa-Lobos' Bach homages, "Bachianas Brasileiras", in particular the selected elegiac-ariose No. 5 belongs to the most popular compositions of the Brazilian. 

From the Catalan home of Nuria Rial you can hear the legendary folk song "El cant dels ocells" (song of the birds). Legendary because cellist Pablo Casals thus always ended his concerts in exile (after the Spanish Civil War in 1936). Another highlight is the world premiere recording of the work "Vocal Ice", an impressive composition by Spaniard Bernat Vivancos.

Simon Ghraichy HERITAGES

Simon Ghraichy is a 30 year old, Paris-based, Lebanese-Mexican pianist.  He juxtaposes his Latino-American and oriental roots with a European sensibility and history of classical music tradition that he has learned alongside masters such as Michel Béroff and Daria Hovora at the Conservatoire National de Paris (CNSMDP), and Tuija Hakkila at the Sibelius Academy of Helsinki. He’s attracted to traditional classical and romantic European repertoire, as well as lesser-known repertory by Latin American composers such as Villa-Lobos, Ponce, Gottschalk, Guarnieri, Chaves; Finnish composer Sibelius; and Australian and Anglo-Saxon contemporary composers.

Simon Ghraichy’s career took flight in 2010 when critic Robert Hughes of The Wall Street Journal praised his interpretation of the Réminiscences de Don Juan of Franz Liszt. He has performed in recitals, chamber music concerts and as a soloist with orchestras on five continents including the Brazil Symphony Orchestra, State of Mexico Symphony Orchestra, Cairo Symphony Orchestra, Lebanese Philharmonic Orchestra, Cuba National Symphony Orchestra, UniSA international music festival in South Africa, the EXIT festival in Serbia, and the Isang Yun festival in South Korea.  Ghraichy has won numerous prizes and international distinctions at festivals including the BNDES (Banco do Brasil) International Piano Competition, the Manuel M. Ponce International Piano Competition in Mexico City, and the Torneo Internazionale di Musica in Rome. He is a laureate of the Gyorgy Cziffra Foundation with whom he collaborates yearly in Senlis (France) and different partner festivals.   In 2015, Simon Ghraichy debuts at the Festival International d’Art Lyrique d’Aix-en-Provence at the Theatre du Jeu de Paume, and the Bard Music Festival and Carnegie Hall in New York.