Catherine

A repertoire gap provided the impetus for a genuine new discovery: there is plenty of repertoire for the flute from the Baroque period and again since the 20th century. However, the productive Romantic era treated this instrument somewhat neglected. The Terragni/Sarasin duo wanted to remedy the situation and resorted to the tried and tested means of adaptation, which has been common in music for centuries. The object of the adaptation to the flute was not a well-known work, but a real trouvaille: the violin sonata by the composer Emilie Mayer, who was sometimes described in her time (although much younger) as the “female Beethoven”. Only a few interventions in the original text were necessary to make this energetic work appear in a new guise. The sonata is complemented by an original suite by Laura Netzel, who is also little known today, and several smaller pieces by the two female composers, which once again impressively prove what repertoire treasures there still are to be unearthed off the beaten track.

Was the golden age of the piano that of a defeat for female composers? If they occupied an important place in ancient and baroque music, the bourgeois society which emerges from the Enlightenment limits their access to the conservatory and to the quarry. Marie-Catherine Girod explores this key moment and reveals to us the talent of the resistance fighters of the classical and romantic periods, and of the first modernism, those whose history has retained the name, such as Fanny Mendelssohn or Clara Schumann, or of whom she is rediscovering it today.

These are wonderful pieces, with only perhaps the Rodrigo at all well-known today, and then only because of his famous guitar concertos. Boieldieu was a very good composer, and his harp concerto is often breathtakingly beautiful; if the theme of the finale isn't the last word in elegant pathos then nothing is. The Villa-Lobos sounds just like–Villa-Lobos: rich, exotic, heavily scored, and voluptuous. It's a big work in four movements. The lively and lovely Rodrigo needs no introduction, save to note that it's one of his very best works in any medium.

A rapacious dragon has been terrorising a Yorkshire village. Gubbins and his daughter Margery, together with Mauxalinda, decide to seek the help of Moore of Moore Hall. Moore needs persuading away from his beer but succumbs to Margery’s pleading, and her promises of love. Unfortunately, he had already promised to marry Mauxalinda, and so the love triangle has to be resolved in dramatic fashion before Moore heads out and defeats the dragon, restoring harmony and prosperity to the village. Following the BBC Music Magazine Opera Award for his recording of Malcolm Arnold’s The Dancing Master, conductor John Andrews returns with the world premiere professional recording of John Frederick Lampe’s operatic comedy The Dragon of Wantley. With librettist Henry Carey, Lampe combines a first-rate score with a quintessentially English plot, told in a tone of earthy satire, pastiching opera’s conventions with skill and affection, but also a razor wit.

Vocalist Catherine Russell's fourth studio album, Strictly Romancin', is a swinging and bluesy collection of standards perfect for laid-back evening of romance or relaxation. Here, Russell frames her sultry, resonant voice with both small and large ensembles that dig into a variety of vintage-sounding arrangements. This is jazz and blues steeped in the kind of classic swing of artists like Bessie Smith, Dinah Washington, and others. Included are such songs as "I'm in the Mood for Love," "Ev'ntide," "Everbody Loves My Baby."