Saint Saens Carnival

For more than two centuries, the Paris Conservatoire has maintained a glorious cello tradition, which since 2003 has been upheld by Marc Coppey. As a tribute to the spirit of his predecessors, he now presents three of the most famous nineteenth century cello concertos by Camille Saint-Saëns, Édouard Lalo and Léon Boëllmann, all united on one album.

Both works are classics of children's concerts that are enjoying the same worldwide success: the musical tale "Pierre and the Wolf" by Prokofiev and "The Carnival of Animals" by Camille Saint-Saëns, which the latter described – probably with a wink – as a "Great zoological fantasy".

I&K performs The Rite of Spring by Stravinsky, the same version that Stravinsky premiered with his friend Debussy in a private recital for a group of friends before writing the orchestral version.

Music Lab Collective is a series of solo piano arrangements and performances created by Decca Classics record label.

Anders Nilsson: KRASCH!; Mark Engebretson: Compression—Concerto for Saxophone Quartet and Percussion; Stephen Lias: Mount Ranier Search and Rescue; Camille Saint-Saens: (arr. Michael Young): Carnival of the Animals.

The Song of the black Swan” by Heitor Villa-Lobos is the centrepiece of this attractive musical program for flute and harp is conceived around the topics of “water”, “lake”, “ocean” & “rain”. Including the well known piece, “The Swan” from “The Carnival of the Animals” (« Le carnaval des animaux ») by Camille Saint-Saëns, the album features also several songs in arrangements for flute and harp by composers such as Schubert & Mendelssohn. Another key work is Claude Debussy’s “Syrinx”, the first significant piece for solo flute after the Sonata in A minor composed by C. P. E. Bach 150 years before (1763), and it is the first such solo composition for the modern Böhm flute, perfected in 1847.

SOMM RECORDINGS is delighted to announce the release of Natural Connection, a captivatingly lyrical new recording by pianist Leon McCawley featuring music for solo piano inspired by the natural world.

When William Steinberg was appointed music director of the Boston Symphony in 1969 as successor to Erich Leinsdorf, he attained the pinnacle of his career. No previous conductor had headed two top-ten US orchestras simultaneously. It was a condition of his Boston position that he could continue to work in Pittsburgh with the orchestra that he had headed since 1952. Born as Hans Wilhelm Steinberg in Cologne on 1 August 1899, he studied at the local conservatory with the conductor Hermann Abendroth and the pianist Lazzaro Uzielli, a Clara Schumann pupil. On graduating in 1920 he became Otto Klemperer’s assistant at the Cologne opera house.

Currently Head of Piano at the Conservatorium of Music, University of Waikato, in Hamilton, Katherine Austin was the winner of the inaugural New Zealand Young Musician of the Year competition and the New Zealand National Piano Award, both in 1982. Her principal mentors included Janetta McStay, Bryan Sayer and Irina Zaritskaya. She has performed as soloist in New Zealand with all the major orchestras including the NZSO and Auckland Philharmonia, and performs regularly in Europe, Australasia, China and the Americas as the pianist of the New Zealand Chamber Soloists and the Tennant-Austin Duo. Between 2008 and 2016 Katherine and Santiago have performed in over 100 concerts together.

Through a chance meeting on a flight from Berlin to New York, actor Bill Murray and cellist Jan Vogler became fast friends, curious about each others’ artistic worlds and interests. The result of their collaboration is New Worlds, an unexpected and enchanting exploration of the intersection of music and literature. Both the recording and live events feature songs paired with literary readings brought to life with classical music.