Royal Grand Piano

A high-art concept album about an overwhelming passion between two writers is a bold foundational choice on which to craft one’s debut, but Winnipeg-based duo Heavy Bell is composed of a seasoned indie rock veteran (Royal Canoe’s Matt Peters) and an actor/singer-songwriter (Tom Keenan), both of whom dream a little bigger than some of us.

A younger contemporary of Scriabin and Rachmaninov, Nikolai Medtner, a Russian of distant German descent, studied under Pabst, Sapelnikov and Safonov at the Moscow Conservatoire, graduating in 1900 with the coveted Anton Rubinstein Prize. Admired as a pianist of particularly formidable attainment and inventive imagination, he held important teaching appointments at the Conservatoire (1909/10, 1914/21) before eventually leaving Russia for periods of domicile in Germany, the USA and Paris. In the winter of 1935/36 he settled in England, making his home in the Golders Green area of north London.

Jeremy Denk is joined by The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra for two Mozart concertos—No. 25 in C Major, K. 503 and No. 20 in D minor, K. 466—bookending the composer’s solo Rondo in A minor, K. 511.

The Embassy of Lithuania in Armenia presents a special edition of the collection of works by two outstanding Lithuanian composers entitled Winter Sketches: Eight Preludes, Two Nocturnes, Two Mazurkas, Two Lithuanian Folk Songs, Moment Musicaux, Humoresque by Mikolajus Čiurlionis and Little Suite, Winter Sketches by Balys Dvarionas. The CD was released in July 2014.

This seventh and final installment of the Anthology of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra covers the years 2000 to 2010, a rich period in the orchestra's history largely characterized by the changing perspectives of a new century. Indeed, it was in 2004 that Riccardo Chailly relinquished his position as chief conductor, to be replaced by the Latvian maestro Mariss Jansons, who shifted the orchestra's focus more towards Tchaikovsky, Richard Strauss and Shostakovich. A generation of orchestral players retired and were succeeded by a group of outstanding young musicians, most of them hailing from outside the Netherlands, resulting in a growing internationalization of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. Also in this period, the launch of the orchestra's own in-house record label, RCO Live, breathed new life into its rich recording tradition.