In his seminal book on the composer’s life and music, Debussy, His Life and Mind (London, Dent & Sons Ltd, 1980 revision) Edward Lockspeiser, who spoke with many of Debussy’s own friends and colleagues and thus knew his subject particularly well, called his hero “ a unique artistic phenomenon in the history of music” (Lockspeiser 162). His analysis has clearly stood the test of time.
Das Wohltemperirte Clavier, a collection of preludes and fugues in all major and minor keys completed by Johann Sebastian Bach in 1722, was clearly modelled along the lines of Ariadne Musica by Johann Caspar Ferdinand Fischer (1662-1746, Kapellmeister in Baden from 1715 to 1746) – an organ music anthology published for the first time in 1702 and probably known by Bach in its second 1715 edition. Bach took Fischer’s original layout of 20 keys and expanded it to a total of 24, thereby creating the first self-contained collection of music written for the entire corpus of existing keys.
The Amsterdam-based Schoenberg Ensemble ranks alongside the London Sinfonietta, the Ensemble Modern from Frankfurt and Ensemble Intercontemporain in Paris as one of Europe's most distinguished new-music groups. What began in 1974 when seven student instrumentalists got together with their teacher, Reinbert de Leeuw, to perform Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire has steadily diversified. At first, the group concentrated on the music of the Second Viennese School, but gradually its scope expanded: now the Schoenberg Ensemble has a core lineup of 14 musicians and a repertoire that stretches from the beginning of the 20th century to the present day.
An elegant and sophisticated pianist, his encyclopedic harmonic approach and wide range of his repertory made him one of the most distinctive jazz pianists to come out of Chicago, gaining the respect of local and visiting musicians for his notable mastery of the instrument.
Exaltation is the third recording in a trilogy by singer Yaniv d’Or with Ensemble NAYA. It follows Liquefacta est released in 2013, which contained settings of the Song of Solomon, and Latino Ladino in 2015 (8.573566), which focused on music of the Sephardic diaspora after the 1492 expulsion of Jews and Muslims from Spain. Exaltation is an essentially joyful album celebrating the spirit that binds the wandering communities, the gods they worship and the hopes they share for loving co-existence.