Josep Kilian

This is a live recording of the recital given by Josep Colom at the Fundación Juan March in Madrid on 10 October 2018. Designed to encourage an original way of listening to music, the programme consists of a linked se- quence of single movements or pieces taken from collections. Together these form an uninterrupted whole that reveals hidden analogies between Schubert and seven other composers: Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Schumann, Brahms and Schoenberg. Josep Colom also revives a once common but now forgotten performing tradition: that of using improvisation to create transitions between fully composed works. His concise extempore interludes lead the listener smoothly from one composition to another, creating a kind of continuum of sound.

It's great to see the music of Nino Rota getting so much attention. He was a wonderful composer, and the ballet suite from La strada may be his orchestral masterpiece (just a quick note: the French language title identifies this as a suite from the eponymous film; it is in fact the more familiar arrangement of the later ballet). There are now four competitive recordings of this piece, the least interesting of which is on Chandos with the Teatro Massimo orchestra: not bad, but not as well played or recorded as either Muti's slightly stiff version with the excellent La Scala forces, or Atma's brilliant recent release featuring the Greater Montréal Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra under Yannick Nézet-Séguin. All of the couplings differ in various ways, though Muti also has the dances from Il gattopardo (The Leopard).

In March of 1908, 27-year-old Johanna Senfter went “on a pilgrimage” to visit Max Reger in Leipzig. Having studied piano and violin at the Hoch Conservatory in Frankfurt am Main, she now wanted to learn composition. Reger, only six years her elder, had been in charge of a masterclass for musical composition at Leipzig Royal Conservatory for only a year.

Clarinetist Ona Cardona and pianist Josep Colom join forces on this recording, performing Brahms’ late masterpieces, the clarinet sonatas op. 120. Superb performances of both sonatas that framed Robert Schumann’s Fantasiestücke, op. 73 and a wonderful arrangement for clarinet and piano of Clara Schumann’s largely neglected Romanzen, op. 22.

Juan García de Salazar was a Spanish Baroque composer from the Basque country who spent most of his career working at Zamora Cathedral; he is so obscure the entry for him in the New Grove doesn't even include a list of his works. Musicologist Manuel Sagastume Arregi has pulled together a number of Salazar's extant movements related to the Vespers service with additional material to create Juan García de Salazar: Complete Vespers of Our Lady in Naxos' Spanish Classics series. It is performed by the Basque ensemble Capilla Peñaflorida and features the period wind group Ministriles de Marsias and the fine baritone of Josep Cabré. There are no stars here, though – everything on Juan García de Salazar: Complete Vespers of Our Lady is done to the service of the music, which is outstanding. Sagastume Arregi's realization of García de Salazar's Vespers service incorporates appropriate plainchant sections taken from a Basque hymnal dated 1692, organ music by García de Salazar's contemporaries José Ximenez and Martín Garcia de Olagüe, instrumental arrangements of García de Salazar's motets, and an arrangement of Tomás Luis de Victoria's Vidi speciosam probably made by García de Salazar himself.

Ritmo, Tribute to Chick Corea was recorded live back in July 2021 at the ADDA Auditorium in Alicante (Spain) during the FIJAZZ Festival. Conceived and produced by conductor/drummer Josep Vicent, ADDA Symphony Orchestra’s Music Director, with arrangements by Argentinian Latin Grammy Award Winner pianist and composer Emilio Solla, RITMO is a celebration of Chick Corea’s music and its tremendous influence in contemporary Jazz and its fusion with Latin music.