Carl Stone Himalaya

The four-part "Nyala" is Stone's first full-length for the Nottingham-based Em:t label, whose usual base of post-rave electronic experimenters is pretty severely shaken by Stone's unflinching, often very dissonant textural sense. The piece works slowly through vague, minimal melodic passages to busier, more antagonistic sections, with repeating elements tweaking and morphing over time.

In his informative review of Michael Kieran Harvey’s excellent CD covering most of this repertoire (Tall Poppies 190), Phillip Scott aptly summarized Carl Vine’s music as “large-gesture Lisztian Romanticism, tempered by the influence of Messiaen, Carter, and other modernists” ( Fanfare 30:5). You might also want to throw Read more Lento middle section of the First Sonata’s second movement).

Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach (1714-1788) was a German musician and composer; and the second of five sons of Johann Sebastian Bach and his frist wife, Maria Barbara Bach. He is considered to be one of the founders of the Classical style, composing in the Rococo and Classical periods.

Are you ready for extreme 18th century keyboard? The typically sparse packaging graphics of this ECM release may indicate only to German speakers what's contained inside: a "Tangentenflügel" is a tangent piano, a rare keyboard instrument of Mozart's time that used hammers, striking the strings at a tangent, but no dampers. The sound combines qualities of a clavichord (its nearest relative, but the tangent piano is louder), a fortepiano, and a harpsichord.

The second installment in Sakari Oramo's superb hybrid SACD cycle of the symphonies of Carl Nielsen on BIS presents the Symphony No. 1 in G minor and the Symphony No. 3, "Sinfonia espansiva," two ruggedly independent works that reflect the composer's late Romantic style yet point to the modernism to come. While the Symphony No. 1 was influenced by Brahms and offers a rich harmonic language, propulsive rhythms, and a fairly homogenous orchestral palette, the Symphony No. 3 is striking for its reliance on unfolding counterpoint and long-breathed lines, and most notable for the use of wordless parts for soprano and baritone voices in the pastoral slow movement. These performances by Oramo and the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra are exceptional for their stunning power and spacious feeling, though the crisp details and focused sound quality will be the biggest draw for audiophiles.