Master Music 2013

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.

Lizard is a distinguished prog band that has kept its flame going for a few decades now, releasing a few spectacular albums. Guitarist and vocalist Damian Bydlinski as well as bassist Janusz Tanistra still lead the group from Poland but have added new blood on guitars, keyboards and drums with this rather sparkling album. The inspiration to create a brooding, aggressive and pulsating work is obvious from the get- go, Damian never compromising in singing in his native language which gives their music so much personality and creative merit. Tanistra shows off his considerable bass skills with a trebly sound that harkens back to Squire days but within his very own style. The disc is divided into 5 chapters but must be listened to as a whole, which was clearly the intention. Source material (yeah, its prog!) is the celebrated Russian novel 'The Master and Margarita' by Mikhael Bulgakov…

Bezuidenhout plays Mozart on the fortepiano like no-one else. Here he performs an assortment of solo works with all the sensitivity, expressivity, flair and stylistic integrity that has marked him out as a supreme master of the early keyboard…and the genius of Mozart is brilliantly and eloquently served.

Here is Death in Venice in high Visconti style, ravishingly designed in greys and silver blues, and inimitably Italian in the classical elegance of its settings. No other production of this opera has so successfully transported the audience through a series of fully conceived sets – starting out from a graveyard built of piles of books, along the Grand Canal, checking in to a black-and-white marble hotel, and then out on to the beach, where the games of Apollo take place under the gaze of the god’s giant statue.

In Siegfried, the “Second Day” or third evening of the Ring Cycle, we meet the pivotal hero of the epic tale. The energetic drive from Die Walküre is pursued here while Siegfried finally recaptures the mighty ring from Fafner the Dragon and awakens Brünnhilde from her penal sleep on the great rock.

We know now that Purcell's three Funeral Sentences were not written for the funeral of Queen Mary in 1695. Following the tradition of the English court, it was pieces by Thomas Morley, originally written for the funeral of Elizabeth I, that were sung there. Purcell's only contribution to the ceremony was the composition of two pieces for slide trumpets (March and Canzona), and the anthem in the archaic style Thou knowest, Lord. During the funeral procession to Westminster Abbey, a band of oboes played two marches written by John Paisible and Thomas Tollet. This recording assembles the music composed for the funeral of Queen Mary and that used at the funeral of Elizabeth I in 1603.