An ambitious and inventive take on Tchaikovsky’s chamber music, a Wynton Marsalis symphony, piano reimaginings of music of Sondheim, and the multifaceted Abel Selaocoe.
Plus, selections from contemporary operas without singing, and a vocal exploration on the theme of light.
The Dudok Quartet Amsterdam completes its two volume project of recording Tchaikovsky’s complete String Quartets on gut strings with this new release, featuring the posthumous Quartet Movement in B-flat and the Third String Quartet.
When the artists told their coach Dmitri Ferschtman, a pioneer in historically informed performance practice, that they wanted to perform Tchaikovsky on gut strings, he asked: isn’t this music already difficult enough to play with a modern setup? The quartet argued that there is a raw naturalness to the sound together with an intimacy steel strings cannot match. Ferschtman’s final verdict was, with a sense of understatement: “I must say: it sounded considerably less terrible than I was expecting!”
The Dudok’s arrangements of four of the solo piano works from Tchaikovsky’s The Seasons round off this album.
For their second album, Ensemble Altera led by Christopher Lowrey explores light in all its forms: the light of morning and evening, sacred light, light as a symbol of Christ, light as the conqueror of darkness and even (thanks to the James Webb telescope) the light of distant galaxies.
This program includes works primarily from the 20th and 21st centuries, with music by John Rutter, Jonathan Dove, Matthew Martin, Toby Young, Charles Wood, Ko Matsushita, Sir William Harris, Eric Whitacre, Thomas Tallis, Michael Garrepy and David Hill. There is also an evening prayer by English composer Joanna Marsh, a work by South African composer Motshwane Pege, the winner of Altera’s third composition competition, and John Cameron’s arrangement of Edward Elgar’s “Nimrod” from the Enigma Variations.
Many works on this album are new to the WFMT library.
In his second album for Warner Classics, cellist, vocalist, and composer Abel Selaocoe celebrates his South African heritage with traditional Bantu music played alongside cello-centric “Western Classical” baroque or baroque-inspired works. Much of the album features Selaocoe original compositions or arrangements on which he sings and plays both percussion and cello with a full band that includes string ensemble (the Manchester Collective), piano, drums, and electric bass. The more conventionally “classical” works on the album include an arrangement of the Sarabande from Bach’s Cello Suite No. 6 and Giovanni Sollima’s L.B. Files (an homage to Luigi Boccherini), both performed by Selaocoe as cellist with the Manchester Collective. The album includes an improvisation on Marin Marais’s “Les voix humaines,” originally for viola da gamba, but here as an austere and mysterious song with Selaocoe accompanying himself on the cello.
All works apart from the Bach Sarabande are new to the WFMT library.
Anthony de Mare’s landmark commissioning project, Liaisons: Re-Imagining Sondheim from the Piano, reaches Volume II with a roll call of contemporary composers from the worlds of classical, jazz, film, indie, pop and musical theatre, including Jon Batiste, Stephen Hough, Meredith Monk, Max Richter, Conrad Tao, and de Mare himself. Sondheim, the ever-eloquent wordsmith, proclaimed he was “thrilled” with the music composed for the acclaimed first volume of Liaisons (2015): “I think the new pieces are terrific,” he wrote in October of 2021, simultaneously praising de Mare: “I also like how they show off your piano-playing chops.”
Timed to coincide with the 95th anniversary of Sondheim’s birth, Liaisons II: All Things Bright and Beautiful stands as a celebration of the life and enduring legacy of the exceptional musical theatre giant.
The Detroit Symphony Orchestra presents Wynton Marsalis’s Blues Symphony. The work is a triumphant ode to the power of the blues and the scope of America’s musical heritage. With a blend of influences from ragtime to habanera, the seven-movement work takes listeners on a sonic journey through America’s revolutionary era, the early beginnings of jazz in New Orleans, and a big city soundscape that serves as a nod to the Great Migration. Detroit being one of the most vibrant melting pots of musical cultures in the U.S., the Detroit Symphony Orchestra is an ideal advocate for this original contribution to the symphonic repertoire. The recording is also the DSO’s first with its 18th music director Jader Bignamini, who began his role in 2020.
This album of world-premiere recordings is inspired by opera but without singing. As conductor Timothy Redmond says, it is “a distillation of the theatrical experience heard through the voice of the orchestra.”
The repertoire includes Jonathan Dove’s Stargazer, subtitled “an opera for trombone and orchestra,” featuring virtuoso trombonist Peter Moore. This year marks the 30th anniversary of Thomas Adès’s opera Powder Her Face. The revised Three-piece Suite from that opera has entered the repertoire of orchestras worldwide but until now lacked a commercial recording. The orchestral suite from Matthew Aucoin’s opera Eurydice was co-commissioned by Timothy Redmond along with fellow-conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin. A sketch for Heath, an as-yet-unwritten opera by Aucoin is also included. Finally, the Liar Suite from Nico Muhly’s Marnie rounds out this operatic album. Redmond declares that “the dramatic orchestral suite [Muhly] draws from it stands up as its own compelling drama.”
All works are new to the WFMT library.
