Geoffrey Berwer

The "100 Years of Italian Opera" series released by Opera Rara is unique in the annals of opera recordings. However, this installment is especially exciting as it documents the evolution of Italian opera during the 1820's, the decade when romanticism truly began to come into its own on the operatic stage. Opera Rara has lovingly compiled a variety of arcana written by composers famous and forgotten. Included is everything from overtures to arias, duets, ensembles, and entire scenes.

Leading pianist and composer Geoffrey Fiorese has decided to build his Quartet project around the myth of "Terpsichore", the muse of dance. This close relationship between music and dance invites us to receive a sound, a melody, not by simple listening, but through the prism of a global perception, where the whole body serves as a receptacle for sound harmony…

When I started work on Geyser last autumn I had decided I was done composing music that reflected the pain of the pandemic. This new piece was to be instead a celebration – of music, its welcome return and that unique atmosphere created by musicians when they meet to perform. Its mood was to be predominantly joyful and optimistic, while its title was a metaphor for the music’s underlying rhythmic energy, unleashed intermittently in ecstatic outbursts – like explosions of water and steam from a pressurised geothermal spring. (This idea of tension, boiling under the surface, is a theme I return to in a lot in my music.)

This CD is a good one with which to approach Nikos Skalkottas (1904-49) if his music is unfamiliar to you and you prefer orchestral to instrumental music. Unless you are totally allergic to serial music I would also recommend playing the three works in reverse order for an exciting plunge into the deep end! The Ouverture Concertante from the mid-1940s is in Skalkottas's most developed serial method, but there really is no need to bother about that. It is brilliant and exuberant, with solo winds, cello, timpani featured, and a group of four solo violins.

Orkest de Volharding is one of the longest established European new music ensembles, created in 1972 by composers Louis Andriessen and Willem Breuker to perform one work, Andriessen's piece De Volharding. Its sister ensemble, Hoketus, has long fallen by the wayside, but Orkest de Volharding (literally the Perseverance Orchestra) presses on in a prodigious outpouring of concerts and recordings. They remain little known in the United States, despite having recorded works of Andriessen, Julia Wolfe, and Michael Torke for major labels distributed in America.

Sibelius' 20th-century masterpiece is unique in its beauty, and is a favorite in concert halls worldwide, with its Scandinavian Romantic themes. A must for the serious violinist! Includes a high-quality printed music score and a compact disc containing a complete version with soloist, in split-channel stereo (soloist on the right channel); then a second version in full stereo of the orchestral accompaniment, minus you, the soloist.

This is a reissue of the 1993 Chandos recording which was welcomed by Michael Oliver, who heard Prokofiev in the background of the solo piano concertos. The first version of No 1 (1939) was for strings and percussion but three years later Rawsthorne rescored it for full orchestra and in that form the work became popular. The whirligig semiquavers in the fast movements create a scherzo atmosphere and the last movement is a tarantella. In between comes a grave chaconne full of Rawsthorne’s fingerprints.