Joly Braga Santos was Portugal’s greatest orchestral composer, and this recording presents eight world premiere recordings including his very first work for orchestra, the Symphonic Overture No. 1. This and the Symphonic Overture No. 2 share a unified structure and lyrical themes, contrasting with the somber Prelude, originally written for an intensely tragic opera. Braga Santos’s characterful four ‘miniatures’ are brought together to form an attractive suite, while his only Piano Concerto is a virtuoso spectacle with a large part for percussion and a gloriously anarchic approach to timbre and tonality. Born in Rijeka in 1981, Goran Filipec studied at the Ino Mirkovich Academy in Croatia, at the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow, the Royal Conservatory in The Hague, and the Conservatoire national superieur de musique et de danse de Paris. During his early career, he was a top prizewinner of several international piano competitions. He performs across Europe, the US, South America and Japan as a recitalist and as a soloist with leading orchestras.
‘As intriguing as it is beguiling’ was how the ‘east-meets-west soundworld’ of Xiaogang Ye was described in the BBC Music Magazine on the release of a previous disc of his orchestral works in 2016. On that occasion Ye’s music was championed by José Serebrier, who returns here, sharing the task with Gilbert Varga. Between them they conduct the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and four international soloists in five works which highlight the beginning of Ye’s career as well as his more recent works. The Brilliance of Western Liang was written in 1983, during Ye’s time as a student at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, and is named after a fifth-century kingdom in northwest China.
Aigul Akhmetshina is the fiery young mezzo taking the opera world by storm. In her debut album Aigul, the illustrious young opera singer Aigul Akhmetshina finds her voice in the role of Carmen and traces a path through her own remarkable journey. Her story is one of determination and perseverance against the odds, starting in a rural village in the mountains of Bashkortostan. She left home aged 14 to pursue her singing career. Despite facing rejection from a conservatory in Moscow, where she was told she lacked the right voice and appearance, at the age of 27 Aigul has already etched her name in history.
Aigul Akhmetshina is the fiery young mezzo taking the opera world by storm. In her debut album Aigul, the illustrious young opera singer Aigul Akhmetshina finds her voice in the role of Carmen and traces a path through her own remarkable journey. Her story is one of determination and perseverance against the odds, starting in a rural village in the mountains of Bashkortostan. She left home aged 14 to pursue her singing career. Despite facing rejection from a conservatory in Moscow, where she was told she lacked the right voice and appearance, at the age of 27 Aigul has already etched her name in history. She has become the youngest artist ever to take on the title role of Bizet’s Carmen at both the Royal Opera House and the Metropolitan Opera, both of whom have created new productions around her. Performing the role all over the world, Aigul feels an affinity with the character.
Jan Boerman (born 30 June 1923) has been a composer working in electronic music studios since 1959. He was born in The Hague. The Delft Polytechnic in Utrecht, from which the Institute of Sonology was developed, housed the first electronic music studio in the Netherlands after the Philips laboratory in Eindhoven, which was not generally open to composers.
Kirill Petrovich Kondrashin was born on March 6, 1914, in Russia. He graduated from the Moscow Conservatory in 1936, and worked as conductor at the Maly Theatre of Opera and Ballet in Leningrad from 1936-1943. He moved to Moscow in 1943 and worked as the conductor at the Bolshoi Theatre for 16 years. In 1960 Kondrashin was appointed the Artistic Director of the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra. He conducted the premiere of the Symphony No. 13 "Baby Yar" by Dmitri Shostakovich and Yevgeniy Yevtushenko in 1961. He left the Soviet Union in 1975 and took a post of principal conductor of Amsterdam's Concertgebouw Orchestra in 1979. Kondrashin is known for his numerous recordings of the music of Soviet composers for Melodiya label during the 60's and 70's.