Po ogromnym sukcesie nagrania tria smyczkowego Hansa Gala i Hansa Krasa, zespół Epomeo obiera nowy kierunek, zwracając się ku kompozytorom wschodnio-europejskimi i rosyjskimi. Cztery potężne utwory obecne na albumie stanowią wybitne dzieła w dorobku muzyki współczesnej. W ich wykonaniu można wyczuć olbrzymie zaangażowanie, a także wielki talent każdego z muzyków.
Tracklista: CD 1 1. Act I 2. Act II CD 2 1. Act III 2. Act IV
A Scarlatti recital with a twist. Joseph Moog has assembled a fascinating survey of Scarlatti sonatas, and included a selection of the 18th-century master’s works as re-composed by some of the giants of the piano keyboard from the 19th and 20th centuries. The drama contained in Scarlatti’s short one-movement sonatas has always exerted a hold over both musicians and listeners since their composition. The development of the piano in the 19th century provided too great a temptation for composer pianist Carl Tausig, a rival of Chopin and star pupil of Liszt (and admired by Brahms and Wagner) to ignore these works. He, along with Ignaz Friedman (1882–1948) exploited drama and poetry in Scarlatti’s music, using the new grand piano to its full extent. Friedman was a pianist of extraordinary gifts, and a musical freedom that some thought bordered on the eccentric. Walter Gieseking’s fantastical composition on a theme by Scarlatti forms the centrepiece of Moog’s recital. Gieseking (1895–1956) was a child prodigy, playing all 32 Beethoven sonatas from memory at the age of 15: "The most difficult part was memorising them," he said, adding "and that wasn’t very difficult." Gieseking’s 'Chaconne on a theme by Scarlatti' is a stupendous work of dazzling virtuosity.
Album został wydany przez wytwórnię Alto (ALC 1414). Tracklista: Mozart 1. Piano Concerto No. 20 in D minor, K466 2. Piano Concerto No. 27 in Bb major, K595 Beethoven 3. Rondo in Bb major, WoO 6
Vaughan Williams completed the Five Mystical Songs, together with the Sea Symphony, in 1911. He was by then almost forty years of age and had but a few years earlier (1908) studied with Maurice Ravel in Paris. Despite their disparate personalities the two musicians became firm friends and, although Vaughan Williams was later to make characteristically flippant remarks about catching ‘French fever’, in truth he learned much of value from the elegant Frenchman, a fact that he was only too ready to acknowledge. That he chose to study with a French master rather than follow the Teutonic studies favoured in his day shows a remarkable degree of discernment on the part of the evolving composer. He was rewarded with much good Gallic advice: to be ‘complex but not complicated’ apropos contrapuntal textures; he was taught to orchestrate in points of colour rather than in lines; also that formal development should be undertaken only to arrive at something better, never just for its own sake. Ravel was revealingly horrified to hear that Vaughan Williams had no access to a piano in the modest Paris hotel in which he stayed. Only with a piano, the French master explained, could one invent new harmonies. Such advice Vaughan Williams accepted with gratitude and he summed up his three months in Paris as a ‘new and invigorating experience’. Two of the English composer’s most loved and enduring masterpieces, On Wenlock Edge and the Fantasia on a theme of Thomas Tallis, followed his sojourn in Paris, and it was in particular the success of the latter which earned Vaughan Williams a new commission to write a work for the Worcester Festival. To fulfil this request the composer decided to complete the settings of five poems by George Herbert upon which he had been working for some time. The poet was himself a musician who associated music with a ‘divine voice’, a view totally in sympathy with the visionary aspects of Vaughan Williams’s art. Herbert died from tuberculosis in 1633 at the age of forty, his early demise the more sad since some of his poems are among the finest of the early seventeenth century. They are to some degree reminiscent of those of his great contemporary John Donne, even if they are less vivid and more intimate, a factor which, together with their ‘musicality’, tends to make a successful musical setting more attainable. The orchestration of the first two of the Mystical Songs owes something to the example of Elgar, and the opening song ‘Easter’ establishes the nature of the whole cycle, its ardent religiosity being combined with a wholly acceptable romantic inclination. The second song, ‘I got me flowers’, is a fine example of Vaughan Williams’s ability to express emotion with the simplest arrangement of notes, whilst the third, ‘Love bade me welcome’, has a muted string accompaniment that creates a perfect foil for the words. The use of the Corpus Christi chant, ‘O sacrum convivium’ as a wordless chorus set against the baritone soloist’s words ‘You must sit down … ’ is simply masterful. ‘The Call’, the fourth song in the set, uses a tune that might have come from the distant past but was in fact a typical invention of Vaughan Williams. Its modal treatment lends credence to its apparent antiquity and it provides a remarkable contrast to the ‘Antiphon’ that concludes the set. ‘Let all the world in every corner sing’ rings out with unequivocal conviction and, after its first performance, The Times reported that ‘the spirit of the words is reproduced with extraordinary sympathy, and the words themselves declaimed in a way which indicates a true musical descendant of Lawes and Purcell’. The first performance of Vaughan Williams’s Five Tudor Portraits was given at the Norwich Festival in 1936. ‘I think they thought they’d get “O Praise the Lord”,’ the composer noted, ‘but I sent them the Five Tudor Portraits.’ It was clearly a shock to many since the poems set were by John Skelton, a Tudor poet whose vigorous realistic and earthy verses may be said to have caused consternation among certain members of the audience. Skelton, a one-time tutor to Henry VIII (when Duke of York), used what became known as a ‘Skeltonic line’, a short erratic rhyming verse which may descend from Medieval Latin rhyming prose. The ribald ‘Tunning of Elinor Rumming’ is an excellent example of this and such verses were well-known to Elgar who described the Skelton metre as often being pure jazz. The first performance of the Five Tudor Portraits under the baton of the composer earned wide praise from the critics of the day. Astra Desmond gave ‘the most delicate picture of a drunken hag at the famous brewing’, noted The Times; ‘everyone concerned caught the spirit of the thing, and the composer conducted a brilliant first performance’. Edwin Evans in The Musical Times reported that he had rarely seen an English audience ‘so relieved of concert-room inhibitions’. Despite the enormous initial success of the Five Tudor Portraits, however, the work has not subsequently enjoyed the frequency of performance its musical merits may be said to have earned. The reason for this may well lie in the difficulty of the work, especially in respect of the characterization required, and also because the earthiness of the archaic humour contained in many of the verses is not universally appreciated. As the eminent writer Michael Kennedy has pointed out in his quite excellent The Works of Ralph Vaughan Williams, to some extent the design of the work may be to blame. Three fine short movements appear to be outweighed by the two long ones of which ‘Jane Scroop’ is so good that it tends to overshadow the whole work. The uninhibited setting of ‘Elinor Rumming’ with which Vaughan Williams begins the suite shows the composer’s undoubted delight in the racy Skelton verses. Eventually, the varying rhythms are slowed to accommodate ‘drunken Alice’, whose revelations are tellingly accompanied by piccolo, trumpet and horn. ‘Pretty Bess’ follows, an Intermezzo of great charm in which the soloist’s protestations are echoed by the male chorus. It is also the male chorus that sings the ‘Epitaph on John Jayberd of Diss’ the eponymous subject of which Skelton had known—and obviously disliked since he revels John Jayberd’s demise; Vaughan Williams echoes these sentiments in some brilliant choral writing. The section ends with a parody of the Office for the Dead. The following Romanza is no parody but a real requiem for a pet sparrow killed by a cat. Tender innocence is marvellously portrayed in both verse and music in this lament by a lady for her lost pet. Little Jane and her friends carry the minute coffin to its interment, chanting words from the Requiem. The sensitivity of orchestral writing in this movement is one of Vaughan Williams’s most remarkable achievements. The air is full of the sound of birds and, at the climax, Jane’s voice can be heard intoning the Miserere. The chorus, in a glorious passage, sings of the approaching night and for Philip Sparrow’s soul. Here Vaughan Williams is truly inspired; avoiding sentimentality he unerringly evokes an emotional response of genuine depth. To be successful the final song could only be a complete contrast to ‘Jane Scroop’, and so it is. ‘Jolly Rutterkin’ is a delightful Scherzo that uses cross-rhythms in an exciting and masterly fashion. It brings a fine work to an eminently satisfying conclusion. Nearly thirty years after his time in Paris with Ravel was not Vaughan Williams still reaping the benefit of his studies there? There are many pointers to that conclusion in the Five Tudor Portraits. Peter Lamb © 1999
Tracklista:1. Overture 00:04:22 2. ACT I: Terzetto: La mia Dorabella capace non e 00:02:11 3. Terzetto: E la fede della femmine 00:01:19 4. Terzetto: Una bella serenata 00:02:37 5. Duetto: Ah guarda, sorella 00:04:53 6. Aria: Vorrei dir, e cor non ho 00:00:58 7. Quintetto: Sento, o Dio 00:04:10 8. Bella vita militar! 00:01:43 9. Terzetto: Soave sia il vento 00:03:15 10. Aria: Smanie implacabili 00:02:01 11. Aria: In uomini, in soldati 00:02:59 12. Sestetto: Alla bella Despinetta 00:05:00 13. Aria: Come scoglio 00:04:32 14. Aria: Non siate ritrosi 00:01:49 15. Aria: Un'aura amorosa 00:05:10 16. ACT II: Aria: Una donna a quindici anni 00:04:15 17. Duetto: Prendero quel brunettino 00:03:22 18. Quartetto: La mano a me date 00:03:19 19. Aria: Ei parte... senti... ah no! 00:08:56 20. Aria: Donne mie la fate a tanti a tanti 00:03:32 21. Duetto: Fra gli amplessi 00:06:32 22. Finale: Fortunato l'uom che prende 00:01:38
Tracklista:
Tracklista:1. Minuet in C Major 00:03:48 2. Spanish Dances, Op. 37: No. 5, Andaluza (arr. P. Casals) 00:02:58 3. Cello Concerto No. 2 in D Major, Hob.VIIb:2: Adagio 00:04:43 4. Cello Concerto in A Minor, Op. 14: Cantilena 00:02:56 5. Song without Words: Spring Song 00:02:15 6. Cello Sonata in A Major, G4: Allegro 00:04:10 7. Tannhauser, Act III: O du, mein holder Abendstern 00:04:28 8. Abendlied, Op. 85, No. 12 00:03:13 9. Clarinet Quintet in A Major, K. 581: II. Larghetto (arr. for cello) 00:04:19 10. Clarinet Quintet in A Major, K. 581: II. Larghetto (arr. for cello) 00:04:29 11. Chanson Louis XIII and Pavane in the Style of Dittersdorf 00:04:13 12. Allegro appassionato in B Minor, Op. 43 00:03:10 13. Kinderszenen (Scenes of childhood), Op. 15: VII. Traumerei (Dreaming) (arr. for cello and piano) 00:03:23 14. Carnival of the Animals: XIII. Le Cygne (The Swan) 00:02:47 15. Abendlied, Op. 85, No. 12 00:03:44 16. Serse (Xerxes), HWV 40: Ombra mai fu (Largo) (arr. for cello and orchestra) 00:04:07 17. Melody in F Major, Op. 3 (arr. D. Popper) 00:03:17 18. Liebestraume, S541/R211: No. 3: Nocturne in A - Flat Major (arr. for cello and piano) 00:03:57 19. Tannhauser, Act III: O du, mein holder Abendstern 00:04:0020. Thine Eyes So Blue 00:02:35 21. Overture (Suite) No. 3 in D Major, BWV 1068: II. Air, "Air on a G String" 00:03:42
Wolumen szósty kompletu kantat włoskich Jerzego Fryderyka Haendla w wykonaniu artystów włoskich.
Tracklista:CD 11. Ouverture2. Récit : « Amour, charmant Amour, dieu de la volupté… » (La Volupté)3. Air et choeur : « Aimable enfant de la fille de l’onde… » (La Volupté, choeur)4. Prélude et récit : « Ah ! J’entends que l’Amour en ces lieux… » (La Volupté)5. Récit : « C’est la Volupté qui m’appelle… » (L’Amour, la Volupté)6. Premier Air pour les Plaisirs 7. Second Air pour les Plaisirs8. Récit : « Si vous voulez, belle Jeunesse… » (L’Amour)9. Choeur : « Amour, tu prétends… » 10. Annonce et récit : « Ciel ! La Nymphe s’avance… » (La Volupté)11. Prélude pour la Mode12. Récit « Ne cesserez-vous point d’abuser les mortels… » (L’Amour) 13. Récit et air : « Quand je ne viens ici qu’abréger vos mystères… » (La Mode)14. Pantomime15. Air gai16. Récit : « Les bizarres concerts, qu’en ce jour vous m’offrez… » (L’Amour)17. Air et choeur : « L’Amour nous cède la victoire… » (La Mode, choeur)18. Ouverture (reprise)19. Air : « Désirs toujours détruits, et toujours renaissants… » (Isbé)20. Récit : « Bergère, est-ce le temps de chercher le repos… » (Coridon, Isbé)21. Récit : « Je sais que sur notre rivage… » (Isbé, Coridon)22. Air gai23. Air et choeur : « Le tendre Amour, dans les cieux… » (Une Bergère, choeur)24. Récit : « Par l’ordre d’Adamas je préside à vos jeux… » (Iphis)25. Duo : « Nous goûtons le plaisir d’une égale tendresse… » (Clymène, Tircis)26. Air : « Lorsque l’amour est sans alarmes… » (Iphis)27. Air : « À quoi sert-il d’être fidèle… » (Charite)28. Air : « Un regard de vos yeux, par son attrait vainqueur… » (Iphis)29. Récit : « Et vous, charmante Isbé, braverez-vous toujours… » (Iphis)30. Récit : « Si l’Amour sur mon âme exerçait sa puissance… » (Isbé)31. Récit : « Trop heureux le berger, digne de ce mystère… » (Coridon, Iphis)32. Air : « Ne vous alarmez pas de vos tristes soupirs… » (Iphis)33. Air et choeur : « Triomphez, et rendez hommage… » (Iphis, choeur)34. Premier Menuet35. Second Menuet36. Air : « Venez petits oiseaux… » (Charite)37. Premier, deuxième et troisième Tambourins38. Air et choeur : « Triomphez, et rendez hommage… » (Iphis, choeur)CD 21. Air : « Amour, dieu séducteur, dieu toujours redoutable… » (Adamas)2. Récit : « Hé bien ! Iphis, quels bergers dans vos jeux… » (Adamas, Iphis)3. Récit : « Belle Isbé, je prends part à la douce victoire… » (Adamas, Coridon, Isbé)4. Air : « Nos tranquilles hameaux… » (Isbé)5. Récit : « Allez, laissez-moi seul dans ce lieu solitaire… » (Adamas)6. Prélude et air : « Arbres, dont les rameaux s’élèvent jusqu’aux cieux… » (Adamas)7. Air et choeur : « Dieux qui protégez nos boccages… » (Adamas, choeur)8. Trio : « Nous quittons le séjour de nos asiles sombres… » (Les trois Hamadryades)9. Air pour les Divinités des bois et choeur « Chantons, dansons… »10. Loure11 Récit : « Un trop flatteur et dangereux poison… » (Adamas)12. Trio : « Les traits puissants, que l’Amour lance… » (Les trois Hamadryades)13. Tambourin14. Récit : « Du succès de mes voeux dévoilez le mystère… » (Adamas)15. Air : « Le Destin répandra des fleurs sur ta carrière… » (Un Dieu des bois)16. Récit : « Qu’ai-je entendu ? Ciel ! Quel espoir charmant… » (Adamas)17. Tambourin (reprise)18. Air : « Pompeux apprêts, que votre aspect m’étonne… » (Isbé)19. Récit : « Ces lieux ornés nous annoncent la fête… » (Coridon, Isbé)20. Récit et air : « S’il se rendait un jour propice à mes désirs… » (Coridon, Isbé)21. Récit : « Arrêtez, Coridon, vous êtes trop discret… » (Charite, Coridon)22. Air : « Doit-on me reprocher de me faire une fête… » (Charite)23. Récit : « Vous êtes jeune et belle… » (Coridon, Charite)24. Air : « Vous seul m’avez encore refusé votre hommage… » (Charite)25. Récit : « Rien ne peut altérer mes feux, et ma constance… » (Coridon)26. Récit et air : « Le pouvoir de mes yeux sera donc outragé… » (Charite)27. Air gai et choeur « Dieu d’amour… » 28. Air gracieux29. Récit : « Vos suprêmes vertus, jeune et belle bergère… » (Adamas, Isbé)30. Air et choeur : « Triomphez, et souffrez l’éclat qui vous étonne… » (Adamas, choeur)31. Air lent « Les Sons harmoniques »32. Air gai 33. Air : « Le plaisir est nécessaire… » (Charite)34. Air gai (reprise)35. Récit : « Partagez, belle Isbé, les transports de ma flamme… » (Adamas, Isbé)36. Récit : « Après que le chêne sacré… » (Adamas)37. Choeur : « Charmante Isbé, que votre sort est doux… »CD 31. Air : « Laisse-moi soupirer, importune grandeur… » (Isbé)2. Duo : « Voyez couler mes larmes… » (Coridon, Isbé)3. Récit : « Le cruel m’abandonne au trouble qui m’agite… » (Isbé, Iphis)4. Prélude et récit : « J’ose vous confier mon affreux désespoir… » (Isbé, Céphise)5. Symphonie et air : « Enfants des airs, peuple volage… » (Céphise)6. Premier Air pour les Zéphyrs7. Second Air pour les Zéphyrs et reprise8. Récit : « Aimables ennemis de la tendre constance… » (Céphise)9. Choeur : « Le feu qui tourmente… »10. Air gracieux11. Air : « Imitez-nous, imitez les Zéphyrs… » (une Nymphe)12. Air pour les Zéphyrs et les Nymphes des fleurs13. Récit : « Le charme est fait. Goûtez un sort rempli d’appas… » (Céphise, Isbé)14. Air et choeur : « Pour nous venger, abandonnons son coeur… » (Céphise, choeur)15. Prélude et récit : « Coridon ne vient point. Quelle est ma peine extrême... » (Isbé, Iphis)16. Marche17. Récit : « Avant que notre hymen couronne mon amour… » (Adamas)18. Choeur : « Que l’on s’apprête à célébrer la fête… »19. Air lent et piqué20. Récit : « Présent des dieux, trésor inestimable… » (Adamas)21. Tonnerre et choeur : « Tous les dieux contre nous s’unissent-ils ensemble… »22. Récit : « Peuples, rassurez-vous, si quelquefois la foudre… » (Adamas, Coridon, Isbé)23. Récit : « Qu’entends-je ? Ô ciel ! Eh ! Qui l’aurait pu croire… » (Adamas)24. Air : « Cruel dépit, jaloux transports… » (Adamas)25. Récit : « Que dis-je ? Quels projets ? Est-ce à moi de punir… » (Adamas, Isbé, Coridon)26. Choeur : « Adamas est comblé de gloire… »27. Duo : « Je jure de garder, jusque dans le tombeau… » (Isbé, Coridon)28. Air marqué29. Air : « Triomphez à jamais du pouvoir de l’amour… » (Coridon)30. Prélude pour les Bergers 31. Duo et choeur : « Je n’aimerai que vous… » (Isbé, Coridon, choeur)