Emma Shap

Emma Stevens swaps folk convention that marked her previous records for brighter pop waves. Her fourth studio record, Light Year, out today (April 30), remains earth-bound with her rootsy songwriting style, yet leaps through the stratosphere with starry patterns, decorative synths, and programmed beats. “When I write an album, I don’t tend to specifically set out to make sure all the songs blend well,” she tells American Songwriter. “I really like a lot of different music, and that gets reflected in what I make. This album has a lot of ups and downs, I’ll give you that.”

Champs Hill is delighted to release the debut recording from “viola star in the making” (The Strad) Emma Wernig, following her success at the Cecil Aronowitz International Viola Competition.Wernig explores works for viola and piano by 19th and early 20th century Austrian composers. “The viola’s voice is at its most beautiful bringing hidden gems to life through a uniquely Austrian lens. Growing up in an Austrian/German family in the United States, I always sought to feel a deeper connection to my roots. Exploring these works has allowed me to better connect to my heritage and my instrument and feel closer to my cultural and musical identity. Pianist Albert Cano Smit has joined me on this journey of discovery and offered musical inspiration, collaboration, and friendship in making this personal and deeply special disc.” - Emma Wernig

Here are Emma Johnson's recordings of the three clarinet concertos by Henrik Crusell, all recorded with different conductors and at different times throughout the mid-1980s to 1991. Briefly stated, these are romantic conceptions of music by a composer that was essentially Beethoven's peer. The pearl of this CD is the recording of Crusell's Concerto No. 2 in F minor. Here, Johnson and conductor Charles Groves are of single mind in their pursuit of romance and virtuosity. Indeed, Johnson launches into a lengthy and very individual cadenza in the latter sequence of the first movement I have never before heard in a recording of this music. Groves supports the exhibitionism of the soloist with highly charged orchestral backup where he dots the rhythm with clearly enunciated timpani beats.

Every year or two somebody from the classical world gets the bright idea to record a classical album with a little something extra for the groundlings: some percussion, some sound effects, maybe some strings. Sometimes the result is insulting, sometimes it's just gilding the lily, and sometimes it works. Carmine Meo, however, sidesteps this problematic phenomenon altogether by making up its own classical music and then turning it into pop. That's right, most of the numbers on the album, even though they sound like lush, romantic arias, are originals.

The greater part of Handel's working life as a composer was devoted to writing and performing operas. In many ways this was the genre to which he owed his international renown: performances during his period of study in Venice won him an audience far greater than could be expected in London. Italian opera reached England around 1710, and the staging of Rinaldo in 1711 confirmed Italian as the language of the future for such ventures. This exciting recording from Emma Kirkby presents nine arias, from nine of the most enduring of Handel's Italian operas, alongside four overtures.

Yes indeed, the Divine Miss Em has still got it. It was the late 1970s when Emma Kirkby first became the leading diva of the early-music revival. More than 20 years on, as this disc of mostly lesser-known Handel treats demonstrates–a follow-up to volume I–Kirkby remains a spectacular Handel singer. The pure tone, control over vibrato, astonishing agility, and immaculate delivery that made her world famous are all still in place; if anything, two decades of experience have made her even more brave and imaginative in the way she embellishes a da capo aria. It must be said that Kirkby also retains a somewhat restricted palette of vocal color. As Ted Perry of Hyperion Records has put it, "She sounds like a nice person, and she is."

The title is irresistible, and the compilation is clever. This disc includes duets and arias from the five operas - Alessandro, Admeto, RiccardoPrimo, Siroe and Tolomeo - that Handel wrote for the last three seasons of his opera company, the Royal Academy of Music, from 1726 until 1729. It was a time when those real-life rival queens (they were known by that label), the sopranos Francesca Cuzzoni and Faustina Bordoni, trod the boards in the King's Theatre, Haymarket. It is by no means all jealous fury either. As one would expect of a composer of such subtle insight into character, there are other carefully nuanced emotions in this music.

The source for the songs on this release is a manuscript in the library of Christ Church College, Oxford. Its title page bears the following: “Musica del Signor Angelo Micheli/ Uno de Musici della Capella / de Reyna di Swecia / Uppsaliae Martii 21 / 1653 / a 2 et 3 voce.” The mystery of how a collection of Italian secular songs of the mid 16th century was compiled in Sweden and ended up in England is, fortunately, relatively easy to solve. In 1651, Queen Christiana requested that the bass Alessandro Cecconi put together a company of Italian musicians to reside at the Swedish court.

Happy the couples for whom Bach wrote wedding cantatas! BWV 202 and BWV 210 are two of his most attractive and charming works. BWV 202, the earlier and shorter of the pair, evokes the joys of both spring and true love in a succession of lively dance tunes, while BWV 210’s tongue-in-cheek account of music’s effect on lovers includes five exquisite arias, not least the teasing lullaby ‘Ruhet hie’. Emma Kirkby sings these cantatas – plus three songs from Anna Magdalena’s music-book – with a natural fluency and grace that is always engaging, despite a few uncomfortable moments in the highest registers.