Rachmaninov’s Études-tableaux explore a plethora of colours, textures and sonorites and demonstrate the emotional range of the composer’s expression. Howard Shelley gives authoritative performances of these studies and tackles the technical challenges with an easy brilliance. ‘In Shelley’s Rachmaninov series, I think this the finest achievement among them’ (Gramophone) ‘The performance, to say nothing of the sound, is transcendental’ (Acoustic Sounds Catalog, USA) ‘Peerless command and inimitable insights’ (Hi-Fi News) ‘The refinement of the playing reminds one of Rachmaninov’s own classic interpretations: few contemporary pianists can equal Shelley’s elegant phrasing in pianissimo passages or his imaginative and resourceful use of the pedal. Strongly recommended’ (The Monthly Guide to Recorded Music)output reveals him to have been a far more complex artist than such a superficial description suggests. The emotional range of his expression was, in fact, surprisingly wide, and his objectivity—the very antithesis of subjective Romanticism—marks him out as an exceptional composer, doubly so for one of his generation and nationality. As a late nineteenth-century Russian, Rachmaninov exhibits some curious features: he had nothing to do with the nationalist movement and he was a world-famous composer whose influence was negligible. A further paradox is that although he was one of the most popular composers of all time the majority of his works remained virtually unknown for decades after his death. Consequently, his work was—and still is, in some quarters—frequently misunderstood. A clue to his true artistic character can be found in one of the rare interviews he gave, for The Étude in 1941, when he said:In my own compositions, no conscious effort has been made to be original, a Romantic, or Nationalistic, or anything else. I write down on paper the music I hear within me, as naturally as possible. I am a Russian composer, and the land of my birth has influenced my temperament and outlook. My music is the product of my temperament, and so it is Russian music; I have never consciously attempted to write Russian music, or any other kind of music …Romanticism in music centres upon extra-musical thought, and reached its zenith in the nineteenth century with a kind of obsessive self-regarding individualism, a state of mind utterly alien to Rachmaninov’s restrained and profoundly civilized art. Rachmaninov knew that he was not, at heart, a Romantic composer, as were his great pianist-composer predecessors Schumann and Liszt, yet he did not remain entirely aloof from the movement.Although it is tempting to consider the Études-tableaux as the epitome of Rachmaninov’s Romanticism in piano music, he was reluctant to reveal any extra-musical programme to them. Such reticence is foreign to the true Romantic, and in Rachmaninov’s case amounts almost to an anti-Romantic stance.The use of the word ‘tableaux’ is misleading in the present context. Although we know Rachmaninov was inspired by extra-musical subjects in some of them, he said: ‘I do not believe in the artist disclosing too much of his images. Let them paint for themselves what it most suggests.’ The programmes he supplied in 1930 to the Italian composer Ottorino Respighi, who orchestrated five of the Études-tableaux for Serge Koussevitsky and the Boston Symphony Orchestra, seem contrived and full of post hoc justification, without being entirely inappropriate. The ‘tableaux’ are not first and foremost ‘pictures’ in the Musorgskian sense, rather are they successors to Chopin’s Ballades in that they permit poetic interpretation whilst at the same time being composed entirely from musical (and also technical) ideas. The ‘character’ of each piece is dictated by the material, and it is the ‘character’ which is the ‘tableau’.The first set, Op 33, followed immediately upon the thirteen Préludes of Op 32, being written before the Préludes were premiered. Thus they follow a succession of large-scale masterpieces: two operas, the first piano sonata, second symphony, the symphonic poem The Isle of the Dead, the third concerto, the Liturgy of St John; and after this exclusive concentration upon big works during almost the whole of the previous ten years, Rachmaninov doubtless felt the need to express his compositional mastery and newly developed artistic strength in works of the smallest scale. He found the task exceptionally difficult, as it ‘presented many more problems than a symphony or a concerto … after all, to say what you have to say, and say it briefly, lucidly, and without circumlocution is still the most difficult problem facing the creative artist.’ Rachmaninov composed nine Études-tableaux in 1911, but they were not published until 1914, when three were removed—the original No 3 in C minor, No 4 in A minor and No 5 in D minor. Of these, No 4 was revised in 1916 and incorporated (as No 6) into the second set (Op 39), which was written between September 1916 and February 1917. Nos 3 and 5 from the first set remained in manuscript and were found after Rachmaninov’s death, being ultimately published in 1948 when they were reinstated as parts of his Opus 33. As a result, the form in which we hear the first set of Études-tableaux today is one which was unknown to the composer, and goes against his express wishes. Whilst it is generally conceded that Rachmaninov’s first thoughts are almost invariably preferable in regard to those works which he subsequently allowed to be cut (second symphony, The Isle of the Dead, third piano concerto—consecutive works), his Opus 33 presents an insoluble problem: do we restore the C minor and D minor pieces to their original place, or do we play the set in the first published form? As the question did not arise during Rachmaninov’s lifetime, we have no direct evidence, but there is a curious connexion between the two previously unpublished Études: they both use material from other works.In April 1914 Rachmaninov revealed he was working on a new concerto (his fourth). It was uncharacteristic of him to announce work in progress. The war interrupted the concerto, and the work did not appear until 1926. The opening of the concerto, and a subsidiary theme in the slow movement of the same work, were both—as Geoffrey Norris has pointed out—taken from the discarded C minor Étude. The D minor Étude is based on material from the first movement of the first piano sonata (1907). At the suggestion of Konstantin Ignumnov, Rachmaninov excised fifty bars from the movement before publication: it must have been that Rachmaninov constructed this Étude from the music he discarded from the sonata. And so it is likely that the two unpublished Études-tableaux, using material already in hand for other works, were withdrawn by the composer for this very reason. A further point is that the six as originally published give the impression of a Schumannesque organic unity, akin to the procedures of Schumann’s Études symphoniques: there are melodic-cellular connexions between the six which the C minor and D minor do not share.It is possible to discern a more elliptical, laconic manner in Rachmaninov’s post-Revolutionary works, and this change of emphasis is already apparent in the Études-tableaux. As we have seen, Rachmaninov admitted that such brevity presented him with considerable compositional problems, but, apart from their brevity, these pieces are virtuosic in the extreme. They make cruel demands of unconventional hand positions, immense physical strength and energy from the player and, combined with the impacted character of each piece and the often wide leaps for the fingers, such problems place these works outside the scope of any but the most formidable virtuoso technique. Rachmaninov’s Études-tableaux mark the virtual end of the nineteenth-century tradition of virtuoso writings of the great composer-pianists.In addition to their unique qualities must be mentioned their unusual harmonic language, already foreshadowed in parts of the third concerto: modal harmonies and melodic characteristics can be frequently found in the Études, together with the absence of the third in the traditional major and minor modes; the flattened seventh, and Rachmaninov’s use of thick chordal clusters in contrary and parallel motion. These features account for the less obviously ‘Russian’ nature of the music, placing the composer more firmly in the Central and East-European tradition. The Études-tableaux of Opus 39 were the last works Rachmaninov composed in Russia.Detailed comment on each piece is unnecessary, but note particularly the modal aspect of the melody in Op 33 No 1, and how the quiet ending of this piece is echoed in the opening of No 2, being a variation upon it, and how this is carried through the remainder of the set. The final C sharp minor is almost a parodia of the most famous of Rachmaninov’s Préludes. Op 39 can also be perceived as a hidden set of variations on this composer’s idée-fixe, the Dies irae, parts of the plainchant being quoted directly in all of the nine studies, particularly obviously in the first five. The Dies irae is quoted in Rachmaninov’s Isle of the Dead, which was inspired by Böcklin’s painting, and Rachmaninov claimed two other Böcklin paintings, ‘The Waves’ and ‘Morning’, were the inspiration behind the first and eighth respectively.One final point on the entire collection is the vivid rhythmic life of the music: at times virile and commanding, at others subtle and understated, it is an aspect of Rachmaninov’s compositional skill which helps to ensure the immortality of his music.Robert Matthew-Walker © 1983

• Wykonawca Shelley Howard
• Data premiery 2011-06-01
• Nośnik CD

On the penultimate disc in his series of the complete keyboard concertos by C.P.E. Bach, Miklós Spányi completes the set of six concertos (Sei Concerti, Wq 43/1-6) begun on Volume 17. Bach finished working on the set in 1771, but had already advertised its coming publication. In a bid to reach as many potential subscribers as possible, he marketed the works as ‘easy’, and also included optional parts for wind instruments: two horns in all the fast movements, replaced by flutes in the slow movements. Bach’s aim was to make the works appealing to both players and listeners, and the result is a set of highly attractive pieces, with approachable melodies and dance rhythms but also displaying a new freedom with regard to conventional concerto form. With the expert support of the Hungarian period band Concerto Armonico, Miklós Spányi performs the solo parts of Wq 43/5 and 43/6 on a harpsichord, a copy of an instrument from 1745. Inspired by the English harpsichords that were imported in great number to Northern Germany during Bach’s time, this instrument has been fitted with a so-called ‘swell device’, enabling the performer to achieve dynamic shadings and crescendo-diminuendo effects consistent with the instructions in Bach’s scores. Some seven years after the Sei Concerti, Bach composed the concertos in G major (Wq 44) and D major (Wq 45) – two works which, although composed in the same year, are strikingly different in character, evidence of Bach’s continuing desire to give each new work a distinctive identity. This has led Miklós Spányi to choose to perform the Wq 44 concerto on a fortepiano from 1798, by the English maker Broadwood, returning to the harpsichord for the final work on the disc

• Wykonawca Spanyi Miklos , Concerto Armonico , Abraham Marta
• Data premiery 2013-03-01
• Nośnik CD

Gwiazda Mystic Festival, fińska grupa Nightwish, prezentuje nowy album! Płyta nosi tytuł „Human.: II: Nature” i ukazuje się 10 kwietnia 2020 roku. Będzie to podwójny album, zawierający 9 utworów na pierwszej płycie i jedną długą, podzieloną na osiem podtytułów, kompozycję, która znajdzie się na dysku drugim. Lider zespołu, Tuomas Holopainen, powiedział kiedyś, że za każdym razem, gdy tworzy nową płytę, ma na celu uchwycenie w muzyce czegoś bardzo wyjątkowego. W 2020 roku z pewnością ponownie osiągnie swój cel. Materiał został zarejestrowany w okresie od sierpnia do października 2019 w Röskö, Petrax Studios i w Troykington, a także w Finnvox Studios przez Tero Kinnunena, Mikko Karmilę i Troya Donockleya. Miksem zajął się Mikko Karmila z Finnvox, wraz z Tuomasem Holopainenem i Tero Kinnunenem. Masteringu dokonał Mika Jussila w Finnvox. Kolejne ambitne dzieło w dyskografii Finów z całą pewnością nie zawiedzie fanów, którzy na albumie otrzymają wszystko to, za co kochają Nightwish. Jak zapowiadają muzycy – na „Human. : II: Nature” nie zabraknie również interesujących niespodzianek. Tracklista: CD1 1. Music 2. Noise 3. Shoemaker 4. Harvest 5. Pan 6. How’s The Heart? 7. Procession 8. Tribal 9. Endlessness CD 2 1. All The Works Of Nature Which Adorn The World - Vista 2. All The Works Of Nature Which Adorn The World - The Blue 3. All The Works Of Nature Which Adorn The World - The Green 4. All The Works Of Nature Which Adorn The World - Moors 5. All The Works Of Nature Which Adorn The World - Aurorae 6. All The Works Of Nature Which Adorn The World - Quiet As The Snow 7. All The Works Of Nature Which Adorn The World - Anthropocene 8. All The Works Of Nature Which Adorn The World - Ad Astra

• Wykonawca Nightwish
• Data premiery 2020-04-10
• Nośnik CD

Coinciding with her 80th birthday, this substantial addition to Sofia Gubaidulina’s discography on BIS presents two recent works by the grande dame of contemporary music. As always with this composer, the music is intimately connected to her religious and philosophical beliefs. In the violin concerto In tempus praesens the numbers 1 and 3 – derived from the Holy Trinity – play an important role, as well as the concept of ‘Sophia’, implying divine wisdom and the creative power of God. The work was premièred by Anne-Sophie Mutter at the 2007 Lucerne Festival, and belongs to the most frequently performed instrumental concertos by a living composer. The soloist here is Vadim Gluzman who has received wide acclaim for his previous discs on BIS (‘Gluzman brings a compelling intensity, the sound firm but unerringly beautiful.’ The Sunday Times). Another pillar of Gubaidulina’s musical thinking is rhythm, as she herself has emphasized: ‘When I considered which of the three fundamental aspects of the musical texture… might represent the “roots”, it became clear to me that it was rhythm.’ It is therefore not surprising that she has written numerous works featuring percussion, the most recent one being the concerto Glorious Percussion which received its first performance in 2008 by an international group of eminent percussionists adopting the work’s title as its name. In this world première recording of the work, the ensemble appears with the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra under the acclaimed conductor Jonathan Nott providing expert support here as well as in the opening work on the disc.

• Wykonawca Gluzman Vadim
• Data premiery 2011-08-01
• Nośnik CD

Chilloutowe rytmy w wykonaniu Morgan Heritage to pochodzący ze Stanów zjednoczonych zespół powstały w 1994 roku. Artyści to przedstawiciele jamajskiego rytmu w postaci muzyki reggae. Zanurzmy się razem z wakacyjnymi rytmami reggae z Morgan Heritage.  Tracklista: 1. Jump Around 2. Ah Who Dem (Feat. Junior Kelly) 3. The Truth 4. Rebel 5. A Man Is Still A Man 6. Everything Is Still Everything 7. A Man In Love 8. She's Still Loving Me 9. Judge Not 10. Works to Do (Pt.1) 11. Nice Up U Medi 12. Anti-war Song (Someone Knows) 13. Meant II Be 14. A Few Words 15. What's Going On 16. In the Ghetto (Feat. Anthony B.) 17. Falling Race 18. Massive Rock 19. Jump Around (Remix)

• Wykonawca Morgan Heritage
• Data premiery 2009-08-03
• Nośnik CD

Fans of Angela Hewitt will be delighted to find her in chamber mode, accompanying Andrea Oliva (described as ‘one of the best flutists of his generation, a shining star in the world of the flute’ by Sir James Galway) in a programme of J S Bach’s flute sonatas (including one by his most famous and talented son, C P E). Of unfailingly remarkable quality, all these works exploit the full potential of an instrument which was only just coming into its own when they were written. Oliva’s lyricism and agility coupled with Hewitt’s musicianship-not to mention her lifelong rapport with Bach’s music-make this an album to treasure.

• Wykonawca Oliva Andrea , Hewitt Angela
• Data premiery 2013-02-01
• Nośnik CD

Richard Lea performs works by, among others, Henry Purcell, Franz Liszt and Paul McCartney, on Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral's grand organ.

• Data premiery 2013-01-28
• Nośnik Blu-ray Disc

Along with the two major works for the unusual combination of horn, violin and piano, this disc also brings together a rather incongruous pair of composers: Johannes Brahms, generally regarded as the great traditionalist of the late 19th century, and György Ligeti, born 90 years after Brahms, and one of the most innovative and progressive figures of his time. Why Brahms chose to compose for this previously unheard-of combination of instruments is not known – what we do know is that he himself played the horn in his youth, and that it had also been a principal instrument of his father. It is also generally recognized that although the inspiration for the piece came to him in 1864, the death of his mother the following year had a great impact on the piece, and especially on the elegiac third movement, Adagio mesto (‘sad’), possibly one of Brahms’s most intimate and heart-felt slow movements. Ligeti composed his trio to be performed during the celebrations of the 150th anniversary of Brahms’ birth and gave it the subtitle ‘Hommage à Brahms’, but also commented that ‘the only thing reminiscent of Brahms is perhaps a certain smilingly conservative comportment – with distinctly ironic distance’. There are nevertheless points of similarity – both works are in four movements, for instance, and Ligeti too includes a slow movement, Lamento, of an emotional expressivity unusual for this composer. The two trios frame a substantial, newly composed piece for horn solo written by Kalevi Aho with the present recording in mind. Marie-Luise Neunecker, who performs it and the demanding horn parts of the trios, needs no further introduction: acclaimed as a chamber musician as well as soloist it was for her that György Ligeti wrote one of his last works, the Hamburg Concerto for solo horn and chamber orchestra. On this disc she is in the company of the eminent musicians Antje Weithaas and Silke Avenhaus, both appearing for the first time on the BIS label.

• Wykonawca Neunecker Marie-Luise , Weithaas Antje , Avenhaus Silke
• Data premiery 2012-01-01
• Nośnik SACD

BRUHNS ORGAN WORKS SACD

• Wykonawca Flamme Friedhelm
• Data premiery 2005-10-11
• Nośnik SACD

The Tallis Choir is a chamber ensemble of 36 voices that has earned a reputation for innovative programming and polished performances. Works from Gregorian Chant to contemporary choral music are represented, but the Choir is best known as one of the few Canadian ensembles specialising in the music of the Renaissance, particularly 16th century Italy and England. Founded in 1977, the Tallis Choir has presented annual four-concert seasons including a cappella programmes, small chamber ensembles, organ, and on several occasions, one large scale production with works by Haydn and Mozart featuring choir, hired soloists and chamber orchestra. The choir has made three recordings: Splendours of The High Renaissance, (1983), A Tudor Pageant, (1985), both LPs, and Music of Palestrina & Victoria, available on Cassette and Compact Disc. All have been well received and have aired on the CBC national radio network as well as local stations. In addition, the choir has also been the guest performer on CBC programmes, including “Music Around Us” (1993 and 1994), and was the test choir for “tuning” the Glenn Gould Studio at the CBC Building. Recently, the choir's first two recordings were re-released as a two-CD album. The Tallis Choir also has a long history of collaborating with other arts organizations in the area, including: the York Winds, Hannaford Street Silver Band, Tafelmusik, the Chamber Players of Toronto, Talisker Players, Scarborough Choral Society, and guest artists of Hart House and St. Michael’s College, University of Toronto, the Mozart Society, Music West, and has performed outside Toronto in Peterborough, Port Hope, Hamilton, St. Catharines, Grimsby and Burlington. Over the last five years, in addition to its regular concerts, the choir has appeared at the Mondial Choral Festival in Laval, Quebec, St. James Cathedral, at Trinity College, the HMV Megastore in downtown Toronto, as part of Doors Open Toronto at the new CNIB building, Wild in The City Benefit, and the Richard Bradshaw Amphitheatre at the Four Seasons Centre. The Tallis Choir continues to perform music new to Toronto audiences as part of its mandate, randing from lesser known Renaissance works to contemporary Canadian works.

• Wykonawca The Tallis Scholars
• Data premiery 2006-03-07
• Nośnik CD