Chinese Music

VA - Chinese Music Of The Han People (1987/1991)  Music

Posted by Rtax at July 29, 2023
VA - Chinese Music Of The Han People (1987/1991)

VA - Chinese Music Of The Han People (1987/1991)
EAC Rip | FLAC (tracks, cue, log) - 269 MB | MP3 CBR 320 kbps - 152 MB
1:06:01 | Folk, World | Label: Seven Seas

This disc is a collection of traditional instrumental solos of the hans of China. The repertory performed here is extremely popular in China.
Claude Delangle, Taipei Chinese Orchestra, En Shao - Harmonious Breath (2011)

Claude Delangle, Taipei Chinese Orchestra, En Shao - Harmonious Breath (2011)
EAC | FLAC | Image (Cue&Log) ~ 298 Mb | Artwork included
Classical, Chinese | Label: BIS | # BIS-CD-1790 | Time: 01:14:33

On his several discs for BIS, the French saxophonist Claude Delangle has shown himself to be a hugely diverse musician: along with his recordings of core repertoire, he has recorded some of the earliest saxophone works, composed for the instrument’s inventor Adolphe Sax, as well as uncompromisingly contemporary music by composers such as Scelsi, Berio and Hosokawa. Here, Delangle visits Taiwan, and with the Taipei Chinese Orchestra playing traditional Chinese instruments, performs works including two saxophone concertos by the prominent Taiwanese composer Yiu-Kwong Chung (b.1956), as well as Open Secret, a work composed for Claude Delangle and the orchestra by the young composer Leilei Tian (b. 1971). This disc also includes arrangements of two traditional Chinese pieces, which in Claude Delangle’s own words formed a musical entryway for him ‘into the great tradition of Chinese music’.

Jie Chen - Chinese Piano Favourites (2007)  Music

Posted by Designol at June 21, 2023
Jie Chen - Chinese Piano Favourites (2007)

Jie Chen - Chinese Piano Favourites (2007)
EAC | FLAC | Image (Cue&Log) ~ 235 Mb | Mp3 (CBR320) ~ 179 Mb | Scans included
Genre: Classical | Label: Naxos | # 8.570602 | Time: 01:06:23

While the piano is a western invention, it has come to occupy a special position in Chinese musical life. The earliest Chinese piano pieces date from the first half of the twentieth century; many remain popular in the concert hall today. This latest release in Naxos' Chinese Classics focuses on piano works from the Republican period (1911-1949), featuring Jie Chen, Bronze Medal Winner of the 2005 Santander Piano Competition. The music draws on well-known ancient melodies or folk-tunes, as reflected in the titles.
Joshua Bell, Tsung Yeh, Singapore Chinese Orchestra - Butterfly Lovers (2023)

Joshua Bell, Tsung Yeh, Singapore Chinese Orchestra - Butterfly Lovers (2023)
EAC | FLAC | Image (Cue & Log) ~ 248 Mb | Total time: 51:19 | Scans included
Classical | Label: Sony Classical | # 19658810972 | Recorded: 2018

It is not clear what took Sony Classical five years to issue these performances, recorded by violinist Joshua Bell and the Singapore Chinese Orchestra in 2018. Having had it in the can, it would have made ideal pandemic-era listening. However, better is certainly late than never, and the recording is a real find. It made classical best-seller lists in the summer of 2023. Most musical fusions have one tradition or the other at the core, but in this one, the trips between Western and Chinese are so numerous that one loses track.

Stephen Coombs - Anton Arensky: Piano Music (1998) Reissue 2011  Music

Posted by Designol at March 19, 2024
Stephen Coombs - Anton Arensky: Piano Music (1998) Reissue 2011

Stephen Coombs - Anton Arensky: Piano Music (1998) Reissue 2011
EAC | FLAC | Image (Cue&Log) ~ 211 Mb | Mp3 (CBR320) ~ 160 Mb | Artwork included
Genre: Classical | Label: Helios (Hyperion) | # CDH55311 | Time: 01:09:24

Teacher of Rachmaninov and Scriabin, Anton Arensky (1861-1906) divided his life between metropolitan St Petersburg and provincial Moscow – during the second half of the 19th century, as Stephen Coombs points out in his excellent notes, ‘a city of sharp contrasts, fiercely religious, noisy and mournful… [of] sober days… followed by riotous nights’. A contemporary recalled him as ‘mobile, nervous, with a wry smile on his clever, half-Tartar face, always joking or snarling. All feared his laughter and adored his talent.’ Rosina Lhevinne remembered him being ‘shy and rather weak’. Tchaikovsky, like Prokofiev and Stravinsky, had time for his art, but Rimsky (whose pupil he’d been) thought he would be ‘soon forgotten’. Maybe Arensky, drunkard and gambler, was no genius, and he was demonstrably lost among the elevated peaks of Brahmsian sonata tradition. But that he could turn a perfumed miniature more lyrically beautiful than most, more occasionally profound too, is repeatedly borne out in the 27 vignettes of this delicate anthology (Opp. 25, 41, 43 and 53 in full and excerpts from Opp. 36 and 52 ).
Ars Nova Copenhagen, Paul Hillier - A Bridge of Dreams: a cappella Music from the Pacific Rim (2011)

Ars Nova Copenhagen, Paul Hillier - A Bridge of Dreams (2011)
Lou Harrison - Ross Edwards - Jack Body - Liu Sola - Anne Boyd

EAC | FLAC | Image (Cue&Log) ~ 280 Mb | Mp3 (CBR320) ~ 162 Mb | Scans included
Genre: Classical, Vocal Music | Label: Dacapo | # 6.220597 | Time: 01:07:50

The subtitle of "A Bridge of Dreams," a 2011 album with Ars Nova Copenhagen and Paul Hillier, is "a cappella Music from the Pacific Rim," and it includes the works of composers from Australia, New Zealand, California, and China, all of which draws in part, if not entirely, on non-Western musical traditions. Lou Harrison left the accompaniment for his Mass for Saint Cecilia's Day open-ended and here Andrew Lawrence-King provides a discreet undergirding using medieval harp, psaltery, and hurdy-gurdy. It bears a strong resemblance to Medieval plainchant mass in its predominantly monophonic, melismatic writing, and its modal character. The modes, though, are Harrison's own, based on traditional Indonesian and Chinese scales. The mass is a beautifully expressive, immediately engaging piece that reveals a fresh facet of the composer's brilliantly expansive imagination.
Seigen Ono - The Green Chinese Table (1988) {Venture--Virgin CDVE10}

Seigen Ono - The Green Chinese Table (1988) {Venture–Virgin CDVE10}
XLD rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG ->240 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 122 Mb
Full Artwork @ 600 dpi (jpg) -> 33 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 1988 Venture / Virgin Records | CDVE10
Jazz / Contemporary / Post-Classical / Japanese Traditions / Electronic / Experimental

This one is a bit special. Last we heard from Seigen, he was introducing us to his very jazz-influenced take on Japanese New Age music. On the follow up to that epic debut, The Green Chinese Table, we find Seigen dividing his time up between recording sessions in Tokyo and New York City. It’s impossible to stress how that meeting of western and eastern minds really seasons the conditions that make this record sound like it does.
Hsiao-mei Ku, Ning Lu - Ma Sicong: Music for Violin and Piano, Vol. 2 (2010)

Ma Sicong: Music for Violin and Piano, Vol. 2 (2010)
Hsiao-mei Ku (violin) & Ning Lu (piano)

EAC | FLAC | Image (Cue&Log) ~ 291 Mb | Mp3 (CBR320) ~ 150 Mb | Artwork included
Genre: Classical | Label: Naxos | # 8.570605 | Time: 01:04:54

The Chinese composer and violinist Ma Sicong was born in Haifeng in Guangdong (Canton) province in 1912, and was among the relatively few Chinese musicians of his generation to study abroad. He settled in America in 1967. The music on this disc embraces contrasting moods, each imbued with Ma Sicong’s abiding love for his homeland and combining Chinese inspiration with Western musical techniques. Shortly after composing the Rondo No. 4 he wrote this heartbreaking entry in his diary: ‘When can I end my exile? Nobody knows.’

Jenny Lin - Chinoiserie (2000)  Music

Posted by Designol at Feb. 15, 2023
Jenny Lin - Chinoiserie (2000)

Jenny Lin - Chinoiserie (2000)
Works by Rossini, Chasins, Grainger, Arensky, Tcherepnin, Busoni,
Gould, Adams, Ornstein, Jacqueline Waeber-Diaz, Scott, Martinů

EAC | FLAC | Image (Cue&Log) ~ 267 Mb | Mp3 (CBR320) ~ 194 Mb | Scans included
Genre: Classical | Label: BIS | # BIS-CD-1110 | Time: 01:19:43

In BIS' Chinoiserie, pianist Jenny Lin brings one of the most compelling and relevant themed recitals to be heard on disc in years, a collection of pieces by Western composers that attempts to explore the subject of China in some regard, not only musically but culturally.
Duilio Meucci & Marcello Nardis - Britten: Complete Music with Guitar & Voice (2021)

Duilio Meucci & Marcello Nardis - Britten: Complete Music with Guitar & Voice (2021)
WEB FLAC (tracks) - 224 Mb | MP3 CBR 320 kbps - 132 Mb | 00:57:43
Classical, Vocal | Label: Brilliant Classics

The guitar music of eminent 20th-century British composer Benjamin Britten (1913–1976) comprises three works, all of them written with the great guitarist Julian Bream in mind. Two of these are sets of songs for high voice, for which Britten’s vocal model was of course the famous English tenor – and Britten’s long-time personal and professional partner – Peter Pears.