Early Music For Meditation

Both Daniel and Carey Domb started their musical careers with the cello. After her experience in the Montovani Orchestra, Carey developed a penchant for lighter classical music, which was also shared by Daniel. The guitar and cello duo they subsequently formed evolved from a heartfelt desire of the Dombs to play together. A simple framework of acoustic guitar seemed to bring out the haunting beauty of the cello and create a special atmosphere for the music the Dombs love to play.

The booklet for this fine disc from Montreal includes a wonderful characterization of Alessandro Scarlatti's music, especially of the cantatas recorded here. "His music's eloquence," wrote French pedagogue Ennemond Trillat, "does not implore; it stems from that spiritual intoxication which is the very essence of the Baroque. And this music sings without phraseology. It is free of all extrinsic intent, and its lyricism produces perfect forms. Its fluid grace is essentially melodic, but without a trace of exuberance."

British Light Music Classics 1 (CDA66868) was one of the best-selling CDs of 1996 and put lots of smiles on people's faces. In fact it is still—late January—in the charts. Its success has inspired this second disc which contains another 20 well-known favourites spanning the century, the earliest being Bucalossi's Grasshopper's Dance from 1905 and Herman Finck's In the Shadows from 1910. Once again many of the pieces will be familiar as radio and TV signature tunes—to 'Down Your Way', 'Dr Finlay's Casebook', 'TV Newsreel', 'The Archers' and, from the 1940s, 'In Town Tonight', the first broadcast of which brought tens of thousands of requests to the BBC for the name of the introductory music, Eric Coates's march Knightsbridge.

Ensemble Avantgarde's 2013 release on MDG presents six pieces that sum up the ideas and techniques Giacinto Scelsi employed in his late semi-improvised works. Three are solos and three are duets, so the forces are small and limited in their potential for creating dense sonorities. Yet Scelsi's music wasn't always about microtonal drones played by large ensembles, or vast durations that made time seem irrelevant. Here, the strands of Scelsi's textures are exposed and clarified by isolating the instruments. Ko-Lho (1976) is transparent in its counterpoint, though the rapid changes between the flute and clarinet in register and gestures sometimes suggest the presence of a third unwritten part.

Giorgio Koukl’s survey of Tcherepnin’s inventive piano music continues with two 1950s collections that reflect a synthesis of his earlier technical and expressive innovations—the virtuosic Eight Pieces and the beguiling Expressions. These two cycles bracket a varied group of scores, from the youthful Feuilles libres through the restrained lyricism of the Préludes, and the quirky modernism of the Intermezzo and Tanz, to the relaxed songfulness of the Etudes, written following a concert tour of the Far East.

The piano music of the American composer Phillip Ramey (b. 1939) is rooted in the motoric athleticism of Prokofiev and Bartók, seasoned with sober lyricism, spicy modernist dissonance and a fresh approach to the grand Romantic gesture. Covering a span of half a century, this third Toccata Classics album includes the vivacious early Suite, the sparkling Toccata Giocosa, the atmospheric Slavic Rhapsody, the parodistic Burlesque-Paraphrase on a Theme of Stephen Foster and the exotic Djebel Bani (A Saharan Meditation), concluding with the virtuosic, highly dramatic Sixth Sonata.

Eroica Trio - The Best Of Eroica Trio (2005)
Composer: Tomaso Albinoni, Antonio Vivaldi, Ludwig van Beethoven, Antonin Dvorak, Johannes Brahms, et al.
FLAC+CUE+LOG | 324 MB | no scans
MP3 CBR 320kbps | 165 MB
Classic/Chamber | EMI Classics | 74:58

This generous album (nearly 75 minutes long) contains 14 selections from the award-winning trio's other CDs. Thus, the range of music is quite wide. The artists (Erika Nickrenz–piano, Adela Pena-violin, & Sara Sant'Ambrogio–cello), though accomplished soloists, meld their playing beautifully. Most of the pieces are very lively–not too relaxing or useful for meditation–but great for listening.

The Russian-born American composer Leo Ornstein (1893–2002) lived long enough – an astonishing 109 years – to see his music both fall into and re-emerge from obscurity. His earliest surviving work dates from around 1905; his last was composed in 1990. Not surprisingly, his music embraces a range of styles, ranging on this first CD – in the first extended series devoted to his piano works – from the atmospheric impressionism of the Four Impromptus via the fiery virtuosity of the Fourth Piano Sonata to the Rachmaninov-like Romanticism of the Cossack Impressions and In the Country.