Very Interesting 2021

This album celebrates a musical rapport that has lasted for twenty years and, above all, a true friendship: ‘We’re like two sisters, on stage and in life’, as Patricia Kopatchinskaja and Sol Gabetta like to say. In parallel with their dazzling solo careers, they have frequently got together for concerts in trio or double concerto formation (like the one written for them by Francisco Coll, recently released on ALPHA580). But they have conceived their new recording for a rather rare combination, the violin cello duo – with the aim of choosing pieces they found interesting either stylistically or for the way they use the instruments.

The saxophone, especially the alto saxophone, is not necessarily a very busy instrument in the symphony orchestra. However, in addition to its formative tracks in jazz, in quite a few cases it has also left sound traces in the field of so-called "classical music" that are worth listening to. These traces are followed by the album "Gravity Groove" by the Finnish saxophonist Joonatan Rautiola. In addition to an interesting arrangement detour to Mozart's Kegelstatt-Trio, it also brings to life impressionistic or neo-classical gems such as Claude Debussy's Rhapsody for Alto Saxophone and Paule Maurice's Tableaux de Provence. With Charles Wuorinen's Divertimento and the title sonata by Tuomas Turriago, Gravity Groove, Rautiola enters contemporary sound spheres with virtuosity and tonal refinement.

Frost* are back in action once more, with their fourth studio album ‘Day And Age’. Formed in 2004 by keyboard player Jem Godfrey, the band have so far released 3 studio albums, and most recently the career-spanning ’13 Winters’ collection. Now the band have returned as the 3-piece of Godfrey alongside longtime collaborators John Mitchell & Nathan King. “We were quite energised by the change to be honest”, says Godfrey, “it gave us a much broader palette of options in compositional terms, we would write a song and say, “Let’s imagine drummer x has joined the band, what would he do here? It led us off in some interesting new directions”. In the end, three drummers became part of the recording project : Kaz Rodriguez (Chaka Khan, Josh Groban), Darby Todd (The Darkness, Martin Barre) and Pat Mastelotto (Mister Mister, King Crimson). “Each musician brought a very different style of playing to the music,” says John Mitchell, “and we tailored the songs to suit them.”

During his lifetime Carl Stamitz, the firstborn son of Johann Stamitz, the famous founder of the Mannheim School, became a violin and viola virtuoso and successful composer. In our Carl Stamitz Edition we are now releasing four more symphonies that were regarded as a practically ideal embodiment of sensibility because his “heart full of feeling left its imprint on his music.” Stamitz’s desire to discover and explore new paths in the composition of symphonies took him to the programmatic pastoral symphony “Le jour variable” (La promenade royale) designed in Versailles in the fall of 1772. What Stamitz presents to the ears in the way of previously “unheard-of” music would completely outshine even the programmatic pieces produced at the end of the nineteenth century. Many experts, including Hugo Riemann, were very much aware of the fact that this program symphony is a particularly interesting and remarkable composition.