Weiss Moskau

The concept that led to The Oberlin Concertos was initially hatched in a conversation between pianist and educator Xak Bjerken and a former student, Oberlin Conservatory composition professor Jesse Jones. It was Jones who suggested writing a chamber concerto to be premiered by his friend and mentor, and it was Bjerken-a former longtime member of the Los Angeles Piano Quartet and a veteran soloist with the L.A. Philharmonic and other ensembles-who was immediately hooked. Their plan gave rise to another commission-for the chair of Oberlin's Composition Department, Grammy Award-winner Stephen Hartke-and then another, for fellow composition faculty member Elizabeth Ogonek. The resulting works were recorded in three sessions over a two-year span, with Bjerken joining forces with Oberlin's Contemporary Music Ensemble and conductor Timothy Weiss in the conservatory's Clonick Hall studio, in addition to presenting the world- premiere performance of each piece on campus.

Natural Selection is the highly-anticipated follow-up to drummer/ composer Dan Weiss’s 2018 release Starebaby, an unconventional compounding of doom metal, electronic music, and improvisation into a dark and mystic brew. The album was named to many best-of 2018 lists, including Rolling Stone, which described it as “an album that creates its own sonic cinematic reality,” while NPR called it “Astonishing… A true convergence of heavy trudge and spontaneous combustion.”

There was a point where the lute sonatas of Sylvius Leopold Weiss were so obscure that Andrés Segovia would play them on guitar thinking he was doing them a favor through reviving them on the "superior" instrument. However, Weiss played a 13-course lute and Segovia's Spanish classical guitar naturally has only six strings; while Segovia considered an instrument like Weiss' as having "too many strings," it is nevertheless the right one to play Weiss' music on, owing to its tone and special resonance. One of the finest players of 13-course lute is Spaniard José Miguel Moreno, who has played in Jordi Savall's group Hesperion XX and leads another, La Romanesca. Glossa's Sylvius Leopold Weiss: Ars Melancholiae consists of two complete Weiss sonatas, two chaconnes, and a little clutch of single pieces placed at the album's center; recorded in 1993, this is one of the finest single-disc collections devoted to Weiss ever.

The musical life in the late 18th centurys Russian metropolises still needs to be researched more extensively: With this recording, the musicians of the Altera Pars ensemble impressively demonstrate what masterpieces are waiting for their discovery. The international ensemble Altera Pars (in English: Other Side) specializes in the performance of baroque and classical music. The musicians are leading soloists of European orchestras on period instruments. This allows for a variation of the line-up from 3 to 9 people and opens up a rich chamber repertoire from the 18th to the early 19th century. In the last four years, the ensemble initiated a much-praised series of concerts in the Oldenburg Palace.