The Naxos Blog

From composer to transcriber to performer—less instantaneous than modern transmissions, but it’s how many works first came to be known by music lovers before the dawn of the age of technology. Around half of Liszt’s 800 compositions were transcriptions of other composers’ works. In this week’s podcast Raymond Bisha introduces pianist Sergio Gallo breezing through virtuoso transcriptions by Franz Liszt of music by opera composer Giacomo Meyerbeer, from Vol. 40 in Naxos’ ongoing cycle of Liszt’s Complete Piano Music. Album details... Catalogue No.: 8.573235

Canada’s Gryphon Trio was established in 1993 and its founding members remain the same to this day. Indefatigable as performers, teachers and administrators at institutions around Canada, the trio has commissioned over 75 new works since its inception. Raymond Bisha explores their latest recording of works by four distinguished Canadian composers: Brian Current, Andrew Staniland, Michael Oesterle and James K. Wright. Album details... Catalogue No.: 8.573533

Contemporary American composer Richard Danielpour calls them ‘siblings’: two discrete yet connected works that ponder the current endless cycle of brutalization and despair in the Middle East. Raymond Bisha introduces ‘Darkness in the Ancient Valley’ and ‘Toward a Season of Peace’, perfectly channeled subject areas for a composer who describes himself as “a 21st-century American composer with a Middle Eastern memory”. Album details… Catalogue No.: 8.578311-12

Violinist, violist, pianist, conductor, composer, teacher, concert presenter and author—the impact of Paul Hindemith (1895-1963) on twentieth-century music is vast. Critic Paul Bekker said of him: “He doesn’t just compose—he musics!” Hindemith composed seven string quartets between World Wars I and II, and they have all been recorded and released on a highly-acclaimed cycle with the Amar Quartet on the Naxos label. In this podcast, Rick Phillips explores the third and final volume of the series. Album Details... Catalogue No.: 8.572165

Based in the United States, Joan Tower is one of today’s most successful composers. A 2007 Naxos release of her orchestral music (8.559328) won 3 GRAMMY® awards. Rick Phillips introduces the latest disc to feature three more of her fascinating and varied compositions for orchestra: Stroke, the Violin Concerto and Chamber Dance. Tower’s flexible style gives hints of the numerous influences on her colourful imagination, from the rhythmic drive of her native South America to more impressionistic tones. Album details... Catalogue No.: 8.559775

George Frideric Handel: impresario, performer, composer. The Great Bear, as he was referred to in his time, remains an Ursa Major of the musical firmament to this day. Raymond Bisha illustrates Handel’s creative genius with Vol. 2 in pianist Philip Edward Fisher’s recordings of his Keyboard Suites. Album details... Catalogue No.: 8.573397

Raymond Bisha presents a new recording of Couperin’s Les Nations, a truly international affair with the French composer’s genius expertly realised by Juilliard Baroque, a New York-based Who’s Who of early instrument performers. They bring to life the work’s four extended suites which meld French and Italian styles and are dedicated to four major European Catholic powers at the time of the work’s completion in 1726. Album details... Catalogue No.: 8.573347-48

Raymond Bisha introduces us to the eclectic and exuberant imagination of the American composer Aaron Jay Kernis, whose works are inhabited by a host of influences – musical, historical and personal. This new disc of three of his diverse compositions features deliciously titled works in delectable performances by Andrew Russo, James Ehnes and the Albany Symphony Orchestra. Album details... Catalogue No.: 8.559711

Raymond Bisha introduces the latest Naxos recording of the Elora Festival Singers in performances of Poulenc's unaccompanied choral works. Transcending a backcloth of geopolitical and personal turmoil, these gems marry a delicacy of form with harmonic pungency, described by conductor Noel Edison as “like putting a stained glass to song.” Album details... Catalogue No.: 8.572978

Charles Ives, Aaron Copland, Leonard Bernstein – names such as these are familiar friends. But what constituted the musical bedrock from which they sprang? In this week's podcast, conductor JoAnn Falletta discusses with Mark Simmons the vital contribution that composer John Knowles Paine made to the burgeoning roots of American music in the run-up to the twentieth century. Album details Catalogue No.: 8.559748

There’s certainly something impressively expansive about the American composer Alan Hovhaness. The numbers alone command respect: having lived for almost 90 years, he notched up 434 compositions, including 67 symphonies. Conductor Gerard Schwarz weighs in with an equally admirable discography of more than 350 recordings, nine of them thankfully dedicated to Hovhaness’ music. In this week’s podcast Raymond Bisha surveys the latest recording from this artistic pairing, travelling space and time between the art of fugue, the soprano saxophone and a vision of Andromeda. Album details... Catalogue No.: 8.559755

Once in a while you hear such incredibly beautiful music for the first time that you just can't understand why it has remained under wraps for so long. The Violin Concertos Nos. 1 and 2 by the Italian-born composer Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco are a case in point. Originally championed in the 1920s and 30s by no less an artist that Jascha Heifetz, they now have a 21st-century advocate in the brilliant Beijing-born violinist Tianwa Yang. Raymond Bisha introduces us to these hugely attractive concertos that bear the colourful and lyrical hallmarks of a prolific composer and seasoned writer of film scores. Album details... Catalogue No.: 8.573135

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the piano music of Robert Schumann was under-appreciated – viewed as bitty, light and flighty, more like parlour music fare. But today it’s recognised as some of the most creative and original piano music ever composed. To Schumann, music represented a state of mind where mood, atmosphere, colour and suggestion took precedence over form, structure and logic. Schumann's piano music is personal and intimate, often made up of a string of miniatures. It’s difficult for any pianist to pull off – not only technically, but to bring across to an audience. In many ways, the pianist must become the composer. Schumann virtually invented the 19th-century Romantic piano cycle or suite – a large work made up of small pieces that are linked together by a common poetic idea. The Russian-Israeli pianist Boris Giltburg performs three of Schumann's piano suites – Papillons, Carnaval and Davidsbündlertänze – on a new Naxos release. On this Naxos podcast, Rick Phillips supplies a primer on these three great works of the piano literature. Album details Catalogue No.: 8.573399

In this week’s podcast, Raymond Bisha introduces the 4-CD collection of the complete piano works of Mieczysław Weinberg – from teenage mazurkas written in his native Poland through to his last works for the instrument composed in Moscow. En route, Tashkent, Shostakovich and the Head of the post-Stalin KGB all play a part in the fascinating story of this displaced and somewhat forgotten composer. The newly released boxed set from the Grand Piano label represents a significant meeting of minds between Weinberg and his distinctive creativity, pianist Alison Brewster Franzetti and her championing of his forgotten works, and Naxos in its well established role as a facilitator for such invaluable projects. Album details... Catalogue No.: GP698-701

In this week’s podcast, Raymond Bisha introduces a disc of Spanish guitar music that goes to the heart of that nation’s musical culture, presenting four works by the prolific Madrid-born composer Federico Moreno Torroba. This new release is the first of two volumes devoted to the composer’s complete works for guitar and orchestra. It features performances by Pepe Romero, one of the foremost figures in Spanish guitar royalty, and his star student Vicente Coves. Together, they blend classical and traditional flamenco styles with consummate artistry. Album details Catalogue No.: 8.573255