L'alta Fantasia

What the world needs more of is intelligently planned, stupendously played, and brilliantly recorded collections like this one. These two discs contain all the piano works of Michael Tippett, works that come from every period of the composer's very long life except his very last. It includes the youthful, tuneful Piano Sonata No. 1 written between 1936 and 1938 and revised in 1941, the massive Fantasia on a Theme of Handel from 1941, the exuberant Piano Concerto from 1955, the experimental Piano Sonata No. 2, the gnomic almost Beethovenian Piano Sonata No. 3 from 1973, and the gnarly post-Beethovenian Piano Sonata No. 4. It features a bravura performance by pianist Steven Osborne that makes the best case for all the music, no matter how outré or recherché its harmonic proclivities or rhythmic audacities.

Duduka Da Fonseca - Samba Jazz Fantasia (2008) {Anzic ANZ-3101 rec 2000}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 461 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 165 Mb
Full Artwork @ 300 dpi (jpg) -> 19 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 2000, 2008 Anzic Records | ANZ-3101
Jazz / Brazilian Jazz / World Fusion / Percussion

"Fantasia" aptly describes this exuberant debut by drummer/percussionist Duduka Da Fonseca. Many tracks feature him with his partners in Trio da Paz (guitarist Romero Lubambo, bassist Nilson Matta), but there's also a rotating cast of jazz heavyweights: guitarist John Scofield, trumpeters Tom Harrell and Claudio Roditi, saxophonists Joe Lovano, David Sanchez, and Billy Drewes, pianists Kenny Werner and Marc Copland, and more. The results are upbeat, melodic, and richly textured, with ample and inspired improvisations – the above names virtually guarantee it.

The unpublished CD features the pianist Pierpaola Porqueddu in a tribute to the immortal art of Franz Joseph Haydn: 4 Piano Sonatas, n. 31 in A-flat major, No. 33 in C minor, No. 47 in B minor, no. 53 in E minor; Andante with Variations in F minor; Fantasy in C major.

Superstar violinist Anne Akiko Meyers is one of today’s most in-demand classical performers. Beloved by audiences around the world, with a reputation for groundbreaking recital programs and important commissions, Fantasia marks her 35th studio album and is one of her most important projects to date.

John Ogdon was one of the great interpreters of Ferruccio Busoni's keyboard music in the first stage of its latter-day revival, and his EMI Angel recording of Busoni's Piano Concerto, Op. 39, can be said to have "made" that work as a viable, if impractical, concert staple. Between that triumph in 1967 and the recordings on Altarus' Busoni: Piano Works, made in 1988 – the last full year of Ogdon's short life – there were a host of detours and disappointments for the pianist. A nervous breakdown or two, long hospitalizations, longer absences from the concert stage, and a comeback received lukewarmly by critics were all hallmarks of a career that would have stopped lesser men cold.