Suite ON Polish Themes

This new release from DUX presents 20th century works for violin duo by Polish composers, performed here by Polish violinists Marta Gidaszewska and Robert Laguniak. Among the composers whose works we can hear on the album, Grazyna Bacewicz occupies a prominent place. Both her Suite for Two Violins (1943) and Easy Duets on Folk Themes for Two Violins (1945), meant for didactic purposes, charm with Bacewicz's typical precision and clarity of structure and interesting melodies. The Sonatina for Two Violins by Tadeusz Paciorkiewicz also refers to Neoclassicism, although the harmony of the piece is more complex, and its expressive values differ from the subdued emotions typical of that era. The next composition, Michal Spisak's Suite for Two Violins, also deviates from the Neoclassical model; despite its declarative title, it is a mysterious work with the narrative element in the dominant role. The last piece presented, Sonata for Two Violins, is a work by Mieczyslaw Weinberg, a Polish composer of Jewish origin whose music is currently being discovered after years of neglect.

Kurt Masur's achievement is defined above all by his relationships with two orchestras exemplifying vastly different traditions. Having spent some 20 years as Kapellmeister of the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, which traces it's roots to the 15th century, he became the transformational music director of the New York Philharmonic, an embodiment of the New World. Through all this, his musical integrity remained consistent. As the New York Times wrote: "He brought to the podium the ardent conviction that music-making was a moral act that could heal the world." Masur himself put things more simply: "My goal is meaningful playing… What counts is to be able to communicate the composer's meaning to the audience… When I conduct Beethoven, I wouldn't like to replace Beethoven. He should be in your mind, not me." This 70CD set consolidates the entirety of the catalogues that Masur built for EMI and Teldec between 1974 and 2009.

Aldo Romano - Complete Communion To Don Cherry (2010) {Dreyfus Jazz FDM 46050369662}
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© 2010 Dreyfus Jazz | FDM 46050369662
Jazz / Post Bop / Contemporary Jazz / Drums

Just released, 15 years after Don Cherry's death, and 45 years after the release of the original "Complete Communion", this French band gives its interpretation of the suite, on the initiative of master drummer Aldo Romano, with master bassist Henri Texier on bass, and with a young horn front with Géraldine Laurent on sax and Fabrizio Bosso on trumpet.

It's a tall order to compile the best classical music of the twentieth century, but EMI has selected its top 100 classics for this six-disc set, and it's difficult to argue with most of the choices. Without taking sides in the great ideological debates of the modern era – traditionalist vs. avant-garde, tonal vs. atonal, styles vs. schools, and so on – the label has picked the composers whose reputations seem most secure at the turn of the twenty-first century and has chosen representative excerpts of their music. Certainly, the titans of modernism are here, such as Igor Stravinsky, Arnold Schoenberg, Béla Bartók, Dmitry Shostakovich, Sergey Prokofiev, Claude Debussy, and Benjamin Britten, to name just a few masters, but they don't cast such a large shadow that they eclipse either their more backward-looking predecessors or their more experimental successors.

This two-CD set is volume 3 in the Landmarks of Recorded Pianism series, and comprises piano solos, concerti, and two spoken reminiscences. Producers Gregor Benko and Ward Marston have selected these recordings because of their intrinsic musical and historic importance, hoping that they will merit the attention of music lovers, scholars, and collectors. Most of the offerings in this set will be completely new to collectors and enthusiasts since they are available here for the first time.