The Last Waltz

Shostakovich jazz music? Taken at face value, this CD is nothing of the sort. Shostakovich's lively and endearing forays into the popular music of his time were just that, and light years away from the work of real jazz masters such as, say Jelly Roll Morton or Duke Ellington And yet they do say something significant about Shostakovich's experience of jazz, as a comparison of these colourful, Chaplinesque Jazz Suite Suites with roughly contemporaneous music by Gershwin Milhaud, Martinu MartinJ, Roussel and others will prove.

Franz Lehar - Fata Morgana: Suites, Dances, Intermezzi
Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin / Michail Jurowski
EAC+LOG+CUE | FLAC: 248 MB | Full Artwork: 67 MB | 5% Recovery Info
Label/Cat#: Geffen # 060251714264 | Country/Year: Germany 2003
Genre: Classical | Style: Late Romantic, Early 20th Century, Operetta, Waltz

"…Lehár also was a strongly original voice whose harmonic and textural experiments resulted in the striking Debussyian whole-tone scales toward the end of Altwiener Liebeswalzer ("Old Vienna Love Waltz"), or the Wagnerian snarling horns at the start of the Grützner Waltz. (…) All pieces receive expert and enthusiastic performances by the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra under Michail Jurowski, and CPO's warm, vibrant, and fully-present sound enhances a thoroughly enjoyable program." ~classicstoday.com

The southern American city of Nashville, TN, is primarily identified with country music, but it has always imagined itself a bearer of classical traditions. (Among its most prominent landmarks is a replica of the Parthenon.) The realms of classical and country intersect more often than you might imagine, and over the last few years a quite successful crossover group has coalesced around the indefatigable fiddler Mark O'Connor.

From the Minute Waltz to the Military Polonaise these 25 tracks display the inimitable master composer for the piano at his best in performances from some of the greatest Chopin interpreters: Martha Argerich, Emil Gilels, Maria João Pires, Maurizio Pollini, Yundi and more.

A clever, richly evocative album of electronic music, it deserved more attention when it was first released.
This is minimalist Symphonic/World/Space music at it's best. Not overdone, it is nonetheless well crafted. Using only a sparse assortment of early samplers and PCM synth's, Mr. Clark creates tunes of rhythmic beauty as they follow the nomadic journeys of the imaginary Sun People. I don't like every song on the CD, so I will only give an overview of the 5 outstanding tunes on this 1990 release.

The Pacifica Quartet address the more intimate side of Dimitri Shostakovich, particularly his quartets composed in the fateful years in the Soviet Union, 1952-1960. In 1948, Shostakovich, along with Prokofiev and Miaskovsky, had been excoriated as “formalists” incapable of direct communication with “the people.” Shostakovich, however, employed the string quartet medium as means of personal expression relatively unhampered by “political correctness.”……

Gary Lemco @ Audiophile Audition