Bernstein Peter

The long-awaited fourth release from Naama Gerber, a jazz vocalist born in Beersheba, southern Israel, and currently based in New York. This album features a quartet of Peter Bernstein (g) and Glenn Zaleski (p), providing great support. Naama showcases a lovely and sophisticated vocal style that firmly follows the tradition of white female vocalists. This is a classic vocal work in which great standards are delicately interpreted with an elegant voice and clear phrasing.

Leonard Bernstein was a musical titan of the 20th Century as a composer, a conductor and a communicator. This Limited Numbered Edition boxed set is the largest of DG’s suite of beautifully-conceived albums and sets marking the 2018 centenary of a remarkable human being and musical legends.
“The greatest pianist among the conductors, the greatest conductor among composers, the greatest composer among pianists … He is a universal genius” - Arthur Rubenstein.

Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990) was not only a brilliant conductor – having served with the New York Philharmonic for several decades beginning in 1943 – but was also recognized as one of the 20th century's most lauded composers. In that respect, few if any have contributed as significantly to classical music in the context of the American experience. It could likewise be contended that his contributions to the Broadway stage solidified the formerly intransigent chasm existing between symphonic and popular music. In honor of what would have been Bernstein's 85th birthday, Sony Music created a pair of mid-priced sets celebrating the maestro's accomplishments. A Total Embrace: The Composer (2003) offers more than three and a half hours of highlights spanning nearly a quarter-century.

Who better to initiate the rebirth of Impulse! Records than Henry Butler? After all, the first time the label was given a new life in 1986, their first recording was Flyin' Around, his debut album as a leader. Viper's Drag is a collaboration between the pianist/composer with in-demand trumpeter and arranger Steven Bernstein (Sexmob, MTO Orchestra), surrounded by an all-star cast including drummer Herlin Riley, bassist Reggie Veal, saxophonists Michael Blake, Peter Apfelbaum, and Erik Lawrence, violinist Charlie Burnham, clarinetist Doug Wieselman, trombonist Curtis Fowlkes, and guitarist Matthew Munisteri. The set features readings of Fats Waller and Jelly Roll Morton tunes, three Butler originals, and two other classic pre-War numbers…

Here are three 20th-century violin concertos written within a 30-year period in three totally different styles, played by a soloist equally at home in all of them. Bernstein's Serenade, the earliest and most accessible work, takes its inspiration from Plato's Symposium; its five movements, musical portraits of the banquet's guests, represent different aspects of love as well as running the gamut of Bernstein's contrasting compositional styles. Rorem's concerto sounds wonderful. Its six movements have titles corresponding to their forms or moods; their character ranges from fast, brilliant, explosive to slow, passionate, melodious. Philip Glass's concerto, despite its conventional three movements and tonal, consonant harmonies, is the most elusive. Written in the "minimalist" style, which for most ordinary listeners is an acquired taste, it is based on repetition of small running figures both for orchestra and soloist, occasionally interrupted by long, high, singing lines in the violin against or above the orchestra's pulsation.

Classical musicians have always recognized the musicality and originality of The Beatles' songs, Leonard Bernstein declaring the Lennon-McCartney composing team 'the Schuberts of our time'. This sequel to Peter Breiner's multi-platinum Beatles Go Baroque (Naxos 8.555010) takes the original concept even further, keeping 18th-century masterpieces such as Vivaldi's The Four Seasons and Bach's famously stylish and beautiful Violin Concerto No. 1 largely intact, elegantly combining them with The Beatles' most enduring melodies to create a joyously genuine 21st-century mashup. Peter Breineris one of the world's most recorded musicians, with over 200 albums released and multiple streams and downloads.