Music For Summer

Ritual music populated by angels and demons, mystical incantations, unheard-of percussions and supernatural harmonies, the work of American composer George Crumb is a spectacular experience that remains etched in the memory of its performers and its listeners. With Black Angels and Music for a Summer Evening, B Records brings together in one album two great moments of the 2021 Deauville Festival and a host of renowned artists: pianists Théo Fouchenneret and Philippe Hattat, artists from the Hanson Quartet and those from the Trio Xenakis…

This precious collection of piano-four-hands works from the foremost musical minds of Portugal in the 20th and 21st centuries can serve as a welcome introduction to the classical music of Portugal for those who may not know it. But there is a greater significance and added value to this thoughtful recital programme, in that it traces back the genealogy of modern Portuguese classical composition – and pianism! – to roots firmly planted in German Romantic soil. It links the living composers to their teacher and inspiration, the great composer–ethnographer Fernando Lopes-Graça who undertook research into Portuguese folk music on a par with what Vaughan Williams and Bartók & Kodály did in their own nations, and then links Lopes-Graça back to his piano professor, the great virtuoso and music educator Joseì Viana da Mota, himself a pupil and disciple of Liszt.

Experience a staple of the Oxford calendar in this set of works inspired by the May Morning tradition, with music spanning from the traditional to contemporary. Starting with The College Clock welcoming in the sunrise, this special recording displays The Magdalen College Choir in radiant form, shining in the glorious acoustics of the Church of St. John the Evangelist, Oxford.

Lawrence Power makes the second of his appearances in this month’s release lists, this time with his regular pianist partner Simon Crawford-Phillips in the chamber music of Shostakovich. The centrepiece is the Viola Sonata, Shostakovich’s last completed work, premiered posthumously, on what would have been the composer’s sixty-ninth birthday. Its ravishing slow finale reworks the opening of Beethoven’s ‘Moonlight’ Sonata—a tribute to a composer he revered. Shostakovich the film composer also takes a bow, in the form of The Gadfly, with its famous ‘Romance’ beloved of violinists everywhere. That this works just as compellingly on the viola is triumphantly displayed in the arrangement made by Vadim Borisovsky (founding violist of the Beethoven Quartet), one of the Five Pieces he recast from Shostakovich’s original. Shostakovich’s 24 Piano Preludes have also proved irresistible to transcribers and here we have the seven brilliantly reworked by a pupil of Borisovsky, Yevgeny Strakhov.

The Deutscher Kammerchor with its conductor Rainer Held present the world's first album exclusively with works by the Swiss composer Markus Fricker (*1943). The album shows the versatility and range of this composer, who is very well known and highly popular in Switzerland and has already won numerous prizes for his works. It contains sacred and secular pieces, arrangements of folk songs from various countries as well as original compositions for mixed choir and men's choir. Fricker does not rely on rhythmic or even arhythmic avant-garde, but wants to create a tangible sense of togetherness with his music, especially for the listeners who sing in a choir themselves.

Bassoonist Eric Van der Veer Varner enjoyed a rich and varied musical career. Varner was the principal bassoonist with the Windsor Symphony Orchestra from 2004 through 2015, appearing as a soloist with them on numerous occasions, his playing with them described as being “of ineffable liquid beauty.” Previously, Varner held positions with the Ann Arbor Symphony, Michigan Opera Theater and Sarasota Opera Orchestra. He performed in numerous summer festivals, including the Bellingham Festival of Music, the Michigan City Chamber Music Festival and the Glickman-Popkin Bassoon Camp.