Radio Radio

We are very happy to announce the release of our CD - WIND DANCE with the music of the extremely inspirational trumpet player, composer and arranger Alex Sipiagin. Our collaboration with this amazing artist has brought us a big musical satisfaction, and the opportunity to work with and discover a great rhythm section comprising of Misha Tsiganov as pianist and exquisite arranger for big band, the extremely lyrical bassist Makar Novikov and the versatile and magician-like drummer Sasha Mashin. A big thank to Will Vinson who is featured as guest soloist and who's solos up-lift us. We wish to thank Liliana Staicu, Gilda Radulescu, Tiberiu Comandasu Editura Casa Radio, Radio România for all their support and our sound team - Florin Tudor, Andrei Barbu and Dan Popescu who worked with us on recording, mixing and mastering the material.

This CD box set from BR-KLASSIK combines Mendelssohn's twelve string symphonies, his 'Symphoniesatz' in C minor (No. 13) and his early violin concerto in D minor in the form of studio recordings made by the Münchner Rundfunkorchester under its leader Henry Raudales.

Guilty of allowing the sacred fire to go out while declaring her love to the general Licinius, the Vestal Virgin Julia is sentenced to be buried alive. But her execution is averted by a divine intervention, which rekindles the altar flame and absolves the victim. The simple plot of Gaspare Spontini’s La Vestale achieved resounding success in 1807 thanks to the highly skilled treatment of the characters’ psychology and the transparency of the political allusions – Licinius is an allegory of Napoleon Bonaparte himself. Yet the work is more than a mere piece of propaganda: it represents one of the links between the tragédie lyrique of the Ancien Régime and the future grand opéra à la française, even anticipating Bellinian bel canto.

The protagonist of Saint-Saëns’ Proserpine, premiered at the Opéra-Comique on 14 March 1887, is no reincarnation of the ancient goddess, but a Renaissance courtesan well versed in culpable amours. According to the composer, she is ‘a damned soul for whom true love is a forbidden fruit; as soon as she approaches it, she experiences torture’. Yet for all the innocence of her rival Angiola, the unexpected happens: ‘It is the bloodthirsty beast that is admirable; the sweet creature is no more than pretty and likeable.’ Visibly enraptured by this delight in horror, Saint-Saëns indulges in unprecedented orchestral modernity, piling on the dissonances beneath his characters’ cries of rage or despair. He concluded thus: ‘Proserpine is, of all my stage works, the most advanced in the Wagnerian system.’ The least-known, too, and one which it was high time to reveal to the public, in its second version, revised in 1899.

At a time when many of his contemporaries were exploring more fluid structures, Franz Schmidt while perhaps stretching tonal harmony to its limits, continued to embrace 19th-century form and achieved a highly personal synthesis of the diverse traditions of the Austro-German symphony. His language, rather than being wedded to a narrative of dissolution and tragedy is radiant and belligerently optimistic and reveals this scion of largely Hungarian forebears as the last great exponent of the style hongrois after Schubert, Liszt and Brahms.

After Franck, Debussy and Strauss, Mikko Franck and the Philharmonic Orchestra of Radio France here continue their collaboration with Alpha Classics, this time with the spotlight on Igor Stravinsky. The programme begins with two pieces from his so-called ‘neo-classic’ period: his Capriccio and Octet. In the first, in which Stravinsky sets up a dialogue between piano and orchestra, the soloist is one of the great stars of the new generation, the French pianist Nathalia Milstein. Then the mood darkens, with the primitive rhythms and ferocious chordal attack of The Rite of Spring , a work that Mikko Franck has long since wanted to immortalize on CD: a major masterpiece of the 20th century and an essential milestone for every orchestra. Every single player seems to be on fire in this recording, which puts the seal on seven years of collaboration and achievement with its Finnish Music Director.

The German-French composer Mark Andre (b.1964) is one of the most important representatives of New Music. His twelve "Miniatures" for string quartet were composed in 2014/17 as a commission from the Arditti Quartet, Bavarian Radio's "musica viva", the Festival d'Automne à Paris and the ProQuartet-CEMC, funded by the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation. Andre created his organ work "Himmelfahrt" (Ascension), funded by the Siemens Music Foundation, in 2018 on behalf of the Evangelical Church in Germany. The orchestral work woher…wohin was written between 2015 and 2017 as a composition commission by BR's "musica viva" in conjunction with the Happy New Ears prize for composition from the Hans and Gertrud Zender Foundation. The live recordings of all three works are now being released in the CD edition of Bavarian Radio's "musica viva" concert series on BR-KLASSIK.

Australia's All India Radio is an Ambient Electronic/Post-Rock project helmed by songwriter/producer Martin Kennedy whose sound straddles the line between '60s psychedelia, '70s Krautrock, and contemporary styles from downtempo to chillgaze. All India Radio first gained attention issuing a series of evocative, often cinematic recordings in the 2000s, including The Inevitable, Permanent Evolutions, and The Silent Surf. All India Radio's music has been used on TV shows like CSI: Miami, One Tree Hill, The Lying Game, and Emmerdale, among others. Kennedy has also played with the Church's singer Steve Kilbey for a series albums, including 2014's sci-fi soundtrack The Rare Earth and 2017's Glow and Fade.