Modelarstwo Okretowe. №20, 1 2009

Toshio Hosokawa is a Japanese composer born in Hiroshima. This release brings together three concertos written by Hosokawa since his first mature works in the late eighties. They range over a period of roughly ten years, and are each marked by similar musical concerns, concerns treated in different ways according to the particular instrumental forces utilised.

Mozart was still in nappies at the time when Haydn more or less single-handedly invented the string quartet. Nearly half a century later, as he struggled - and failed - to complete his last quartet, Beethoven was already at work on his Eroica Symphony. In the interim, Haydn wrote considerably more quartet masterpieces than Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert put together, raising the medium to a level of sophistication, subtlety and originality that provided a yardstick for all later composers. Mind you, it took him some time to get there: it isn't until the eighth CD of this set that we reach the first of the unequivocally great works, the six quartets which make up Op. 20.

Ivan Fischer tunrs his attention to Brahms following three acclaimed and Award-winning recordings of Mahler. Stunning interpretation of Brahms Symphony No.1 – once again Ivan Fisher forces the the listener to re-appraise familiar repertoire…

Richard Hickox was a fine Holst conductor, and it was typical of his championship of English music and of his enthusiastically exploring mind that he should have left as one of his last records this collection of such-little known works… This is a fascinating record…

ohann Gottlieb Janitsch (1708-1763), was born in Silesia (then under Austria, but Prussia from 1742 and now part of Poland) and followed a normal career path for a musician in Mitteleuropa, culminating as contraviolonist in the Royal Orchestra of the Court of Prussia from 1736 until his death in 1763. Janitsch also composed ballet music for the Royal Court Opera), rehearsed the opera chorus, and composed music for the balls held at the opera house during carnival-time. Janitsch was also called on to participate in the intimate concerts that took place in the king’s private apartments at Sanssouci, alongside a number of instrumentalist-composers including C.Ph.E. Bach and Johann Joachim Quantz.