Firebird Ensemble Plot in Fiction Italian Music For Ensemble (2002)

In the 1950s and '60s, few American jazz artists were as influential, and fewer still were as popular, as Dave Brubeck. At a time when the cooler sounds of West Coast jazz began to dominate the public face of the music, Brubeck proved there was an audience for the style far beyond the confines of the in-crowd, and with his emphasis on unusual time signatures and adventurous tonalities, Brubeck showed that ambitious and challenging music could still be accessible.

After a string of fine Helmut Lachenmann releases on several labels specializing in contemporary classical music, notably Audivis Montaigne, Schwankungen Am Rand (Fluctuations at the Edge) marks his debut on ECM New Series, and the "notoriously difficult" composer celebrates the occasion by providing an admirably clear introductory essay to his works. The title track, subtitled "Music for Brass and Strings" (somewhat misleading, as percussion instruments, notably two pianos and four specially designed thunder sheets, play a prominent role), was completed in 1975, but has lost none of its power to surprise, both in terms of its sound material…

Say you start a group called the Society for New Music, commission composer-stars-in-the-making and do it for thirty years straight, you might expect your scrapbooks to be quite interesting. What you might not realize is that your efforts now constitute a major segment of the backbone of contemporary American concert music and you have premiered a boatload of chamber works by composers who have gone on to distinguished careers. Such is the case with Syracuse’s Society for New Music founded by Neva Pilgrim, who opened their treasure chest of commissioned works from 1972 – 2002 and has put them together as the 5-CD set entitled “American Masters for the 21st Century.”

This is one of the fine series of CDs which Christopher Page and his Gothic Voices made for Hyperion. The group were founded in 1980 and during the 1980s and 1990s made more than twenty recordings, starting with ‘A feather on the breath of God’ their influential and popular disc of music by Hildegard of Bingen.

The International Forum for Young Composers was conceived and established by the Nouvel Ensemble Moderne. A biennial event, Forum was launched in 1991, organized in collaboration with the Faculty of Music of the University of Montreal as well as the Société Radio-Canada, and sponsored by the International Music Council (UNESCO). Forum’s Montreal roots notwithstanding, we responded enthusiastically to the kind invitation from the Telstra Adelaide Festival to ‘relocate’ the 2000 event to Australia. In 2002, Forum returned to the University of Montreal for its sixth edition.

The Overture seems to have been Telemann's favourite compositional form. His Overtures outnumber the solo concertos by far. These Overtures - or Suites - show a great variety, as this CD amply demonstrates. It starts with one of Telemann's most popular works, the 'burlesque' Don Quixotte and also contains two Overtures with a solo instrument. In some of his Overtures Telemann abondons the traditional dances and replaces them by character pieces, which indicates French influence.

Peter Holman is a conductor known particularly for his interpretations of post-Renaissance English music, but he has also received acclaim for his performances of the works of European masters of the Baroque period, including Handel, Telemann, Vivaldi, and Monteverdi. He has recorded extensively for the English label Hyperion and has established parallel careers as a harpsichordist, organist, teacher (Royal Academy of Music and Colchester Institute), and music journalist.

Italian Baroque composer Alessandro Stradella (1639-1682) is known for his dramatic life, whose watchwords were sex and violence; he was stabbed to death, right under the nose of his bodyguard, by assassins sent out by the husband of a nobleman whose wife he had seduced. His music is just beginning to enter general circulation, and it's as exciting as one might imagine, with plenty of vocal acrobatics to challenge even the best singers. The "serenade" featured on this Italian release, Vola, vola in altri petti (Fly, fly to other hearts), is a work for four singers, about 40 minutes long; it contains recitatives and arias, along with an opening instrumental sinfonia and a dance interlude.

A unique collector's edition is a "climbing on the history of music" for 20 centuries from ancient times (Greece) to the present day. "History of Music", the 20-disc collection. Starting with the ancient music, music of the Middle Ages continued, Renaissance and Baroque music and ending the era of romanticism and modernity.