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 | Missa Christi Resurgentis, The New York Collegium
Andrew Parrott, Music Director and Conductor
Heinrich Ignaz Franz Von Biber
"...Parrott`s performance is never less than elegent, and it certainly offers the best sonic picture of the marvelous invention Biber brought to the composition of his own sacred music." American Record Guide - September/Ocotober 2005 |  | |  | 18th Century Basoon Concertos, John Heard, Bassoon
…John Heard hails from the faculty of Miami University in Ohio, but judging from this recording, he should be hailing from the Vienna Philharmonic. This is quality bassoon playing by any standards: lustrous tone, unfaltering technique, and intense communicative skill. Truly, his Mozart ranks right up there with the best…
…The Kiev Chamber Orchestra ("Camerata Kiev") plays with a rich warmth and dark, richly burnished tone - quite a change from how this music is played today…
American Record Guide - July/August 2003 | | |  | CONCERTANTE CHAMBER PLAYERS
STRAUSS: Metamorphosen; Capriccio Sextet Concertante Chamber Players Kleos 5111--64 minutes. (American Record Guide, November 28, 2001)
Lucky Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, to have such a superb chamber group based there! They're graduates of Juilliard who in 1995 decided to stay together. And judging by this album, warmly recorded at New York City's Academy of Arts and Letters by Max Wilcox, they've got it all. This is as good a recording of the string sextet version of the Schoenberg as I know. Technically the players are superb. So are balances, which allow each line to function effectively, whether about harmony, tone color, or degree of intensity. The flow and shape they give the piece is natural and ungimmicky. Often I became keenly aware of how well they listen to one another as they capture the work's broad range of emotions. The players' instruments too are quite special, each with its own unique tone color yet blending so well with all the others. Only in the grand climaxes of the fourth and fifth stanzas (the indexes correspond to the stanzas of the poem, printed in the liner notes) did I wish for a bit more ecstatic lingering. The Strauss Sextet again confirms Concertante's superb balances, tone colors, functional lines, dramatic shaping, and grasp of flowing form. Metamorphosen is presented here in Strauss's original version (which predates the standard version for 23 strings by about a week) for two violins, two violas, two cellos, and string bass. It's amazing how like Transfigured Night it is in form, line, and emotion. And here the players have no trouble whatever lingering a bit as they fully sustain the slow progression of the work. Overall, though, I find the version for 23 strings harmonically richer and more satisfying. Also, I wish the sole string bass had been captured with a fuller, less boxy sound. | | |  | Farewell to Boheme -- Volume Two of Cabaret Songs
Farewell to Boheme: Cabaret Songs from Paris & Berlin Jody Karin Applebaum, s; Marc-Andre Hamelin, Kleos 5108--70 minutes (American Record Guide, August 14, 2001)
This is the third of Jody Applebaum's recordings of cabaret songs to come our way. Her collection of Berlin cabaret songs by Friedrich Hollaender was praised by Charles Parsons (Mar/Apr 1998). Here we have a mixed collection of French and German songs by Satie, Weill, Hollaender, Wolpe, Eisler, and several others most of us have probably never heard of. Mr Parsons described Applebaum's voice as tiny but amazingly agile. I wouldn't go so far as to call it tiny, but hers is a very light voice. Nonetheless, it's a clear, steady voice, one that's ideally suited to this sort of repertory.
Applebaum and pianist-husband MarcAndre Hamelin, whose numerous recordings are well known to our readers, make a terrific team in this most enjoyable music. Ordered chronologically, we begin with Aristide Bruant's (1851-1925) tuneful and often sentimental songs from 1884 and finish in 1939 with Hanns Eisler. In between we can trace the development of the cabaret song as its style changed from those that would have been at home (musically, anyway) in the Paris dance halls of pre-Dreyfus Paris to the more immediately recognizable style that Kurt Weill and other Berlin composers would bring to it in Weimar Germany. But while the musical style evolves, we readily see that the subject matter does not. During this long flowering the cabaret song remained a vehicle for social protest and commentary.
For all her understanding of cabaret music from a strictly musical point of view, Applebaum seems off the mark in her notes about its historical place. Art was not, as she argues, considered an entitlement of the wealthy until the 20th Century. It was the 19th Century, almost from the fall of Napoleon, that saw the popularization of the arts as it moved away from aristocratic sponsorship and into commercial support, as witnessed by the ever-larger concert halls and opera houses built in that period or the very popular art exhibits that drew huge crowds in London and Paris. Likewise, her attempt to blame Nazi censorship for the fall of cabaret music misses the point. What really killed it is the subject of the recording's title song: its absorption into popular culture, its popularization and assimilation into the mainstream. One can hardly protest the establishment when one is a part of it.
Applebaum and Hamelin serve up some real gems--even a bit of crossover in the form of Hanns Eisler's 'uber den Selbstmord', perhaps the only piece of true art music on the recording. Also not to be missed is Hamelin's solo in Clement Doucet's 'Isoldina', a two-minute bit of ragtime that skewers Wagner's Prelude and Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde. Hamelin even sings one selection, which curiously ends in applause not heard elsewhere.
Translations of the songs are supplied, but the original-language texts must be obtained from the Helicon web site. They should have been supplied. A word of caution: one of my CD players had great difficulty tracking my copy, though my other unit performed just fine. Translations: French || German | | |  | Classical Cats
Classical Cats: Patrice Maginnis, s; Brian Staufenbiel, t; Boyd Jarrell, bar; William Matthews, cornetto; Hideki Yamaya, Kevin Kishimoto, lute; Joel Schaefer, viol; Lux Musical Linda Burman-Hall Kleos 5110--59 minutes (American Record Guide, August 14, 2001)
... The opening paragraph of the notes says all we need to know about the wisdom and artistic merit of this undertaking: "How many cultures celebrate the natural profundity of the Cat!... Cats, with their quasi-human intelligence,preternatural acuity of senses and superior grace..., positively inspire ritual." | | |  | Wind, Sun and Stars
Wind, Sun, and Stars: Kenneth Little Hawk - "Music for young people"
"The stories are fascinating and the presentation avoids condescension. It is polished but not slick. This CD rings true." - FANFARE MAGAZINE | | |  | Vivaldi - Soprano Cantatas
Vivaldi - Soprano Cantatas: Randall Wong
"Randall Wong has chosen a batch of lilting cantatas on bucolic themes. Vivaldi's melodic gifts were well suited to the voice.... Wong's luminous voice is seamless throughout." - STEREO REVIEW | | |  | The Chicago Clarinet Trio
The Chicago Clarinet Trio:
"All members of the Chicago Symphony. Their ensemble is tight with crisp and animated, yet finely polished and refined playing." - AMERICAN RECORD GUIDE | | |  | Songs of the Berlin Cabaret, 1920-1929 Friederich Hollaender
Songs of the Berlin Cabaret, 1920-1929: Marc Andre Hamelin and Jody Applebaum
"From the opening song to the last, the songs abound in wit and sarcasm and an almost violent musical exuberance. Give yourself a treat." - AMERICAN RECORD GUIDE | | |  | Le Grand Tango - Music of Latin America
Le Grand Tango: Carter Brey, Cello and Christopher O'Reilly, Piano
"This is a winner by all counts. The repertoire has been cleverly chosen. The transcriptions are uncommonly deft and true. The playing is top notch, and the recorded sound is full-bodied and just as the performances." - FANFARE MAGAZINE | | |  | Debussy, Music for Piano
Debussy: Preludes; Images II; Children's Corner: Gregory Haimovsky, Piano
"From the opening measures of Danseuses de Delphes', the transparency of his playing moves beyond the metaphorical and poetic...in light of this transcendent performance...joins Michelangeli, Gieseking and Arrau as definitive." - AMERICAN RECORD GUIDE | | | |
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