Joshua Rubin's debut solo recording, "There Never is No Light" (TUN 002) features landmark works representing forty years of electronic exploration in contemporary music. The album highlights music by Suzanne Farrin and Olly Wilson, newly commissioned works by New York-based composer/performer Mario Diaz de Leon and Mexican composer Ignacio Baca Lobera, alongside world-premiere recordings of computer music pioneer Mario Davidovsky and a new electroacoustic work co-composed with pianist Cory Smythe.
In his final performances with the Lucerne Festival Orchestra in August 2013, Claudio Abbado conducted Anton Bruckner's unfinished Symphony No. 9 in D minor, and this recording is drawn from the best takes from those concerts. Considering that this rendition came near the end of Abbado's life and stands as a worthy testament to his achievements, it's easy to read too much into the interpretation, and to view it as a mystical or transcendent reading because of the circumstances. On the one hand, Abbado's understanding of this symphony was as thorough as any conductor's, and the Lucerne musicians played with seriousness and dedication, offering a version that has impressive power and expressive depth. On the other hand, there are many competitive recordings that either match Abbado's for strength and feeling, or surpass it in purely technical terms of sound quality and reproduction. Certainly the sound is exceptional, according to Deutsche Grammophon's high standards, and this stereo recording is exceptionally clean and noise-free.
In Anton Bruckner’s 7th Symphony, the listener encounters a music characterized by great spaciousness and profound solemnity, a music which speaks of grief and lamentation, but also of their transcendence. With its monumental architecture and intensity of sound, the symphony has moved listeners ever since its triumphal premiere in 1884. The Guardian calls Daniel Barenboim’s London interpretation “Tremendous … Barenboim and the Staatskapelle seem to have this work in their systems, and the overall impression was of music unfolding organically at its own pace rather than of a work being self-consciously interpreted or led.”
The instrumental concerto occupies a very prominent place in the music of Krzysztof Penderecki. This fact is related to the great life force exhibited by this genre in twentieth century and in contemporary music. It is stimulated by commissions from virtuosos and by audience expectations; also favourable is the composers’ flexibility in approaching the form, whose chief idea continues to be the juxtaposition of the solo instrument and the orchestra. The violin and viola works presented on this CD are not only interesting, concrete realizations of the concertare idea in Penderecki’s music, but also examples of this composer’s sonic language and style in the period of his creativity which Mieczyslaw Tomaszewski called a "time of dialogue with the regained past".