Victor

This is a world première production on DVD. Torvaldo merits greater attention than has been previously paid to it; the rich orchestration, preludes of infallible expression and recitative passage of extraordinary clarity deem this an opera of considerable interest.

‘The dreamer! That double of our existence, that chiaroscuro of the thinking being’, wrote Gaston Bachelard in 1961. ‘The old is dying, the new cannot be born, and in that chiaroscuro, monsters appear’, adds Antonio Gramsci. Sandrine Piau has chosen to use these two quotations as an epigraph to her new recording: ‘My family and friends know about this obsession that never leaves me completely. The antagonism between light and darkness. The chiaroscuro, the space in between…’ This programme, recorded with the Orchestre Victor Hugo under its conductor Jean-François Verdier, who is also principal clarinettist of the Paris Opéra, travels between the chilly Rhenish forest of Waldgespräch, a ballad by Zemlinsky composed for soprano and small ensemble in 1895, the night of the first of Berg’s Seven Early Songs (1905-08), and the sunlight of Richard Strauss’s Morgen, which are followed by the Four Last Songs, composed in 1948, the first two of which, Frühling and September (evoking spring and autumn respectively) are also, as Sandrine Piau concludes, ‘the seasons of life’.

Victor Assis Brasil was the best Brazilian jazzman of his generation, having being praised by international critics. Brasil showed early evidence of talent for music, excelling at the harmonica and the drums. At age 12 he gave his first concert at the harmonica. In 1961, at age 16, he was presented with an alto saxophone. In 1965, while already a professional, Brasil recorded his first album, Desenhos, with highly favorable reviews, consolidating his pioneering role as a Brazilian jazz musician. His next conquests were the achievement of third place at the 1966 International Jazz Contest in Vienna, Austria, and of the Best Soloist award in the Berlin Jazz Festival, which granted him a scholarship to the Berklee School of Music (Boston, MA)…

For pianist Victor Rosenbaum's fourth CD on Bridge Records; the artist turns to the last three piano compositions of Johannes Brahms. Rosenbaum's Schubert disc was described as a “powerful and poignant record of human experience”, and much the same can be said of these profound readings of Brahms's late masterpieces.

This is Victor Villadangos’s first recording for Naxos and I hope it is not the last as we are treated to some beautifully clear articulated playing that extracts just the right nuances from this music of the Argentine. Most of the pieces are new to me, although I am familiar with the "Serie Americana" of Hector Ayala, firstly through an early vinyl recording by Narciso Yepes and recently on CD by Eleftheria Kotzia. This rendition by Victor Villadangos, with its firm rhythms and fine clarity, is, I feel, the superior version.

This is a wonderful album of acoustic guitar music. I've always loved the Tango and the so-called "classical" guitar. This album brings them together delightfully. The album transports me to a smoke-filled Argentinean nightclub where the Tango is danced very passionately. If you are into the Tango or guitar music or just want to be transported, in your mind, to a different time and place, buy this disc.

Piazzolla, Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Bettinelli: the fil rouge that unites this apparently anomalous choice is to be sought, first and foremost, in the original character of the repertoire, composed purposely for two guitars, in other words conceived especially for this combination and for its ‘double’ and ‘specular’ sonic possibilities. This exploration of the sonic universe allows us to rediscover a repertoire whose leitmotiv can be found in the element of dialogue, in the capacity of the guitar to become ‘other’ than itself by reverberating in its own identity: the mirror image that reflects a vision that is identical and yet filtered by a reality, that captures the essence of the guitar duo as an extended form of the solo guitar, a vehicle of complementarity and of expression amplified in its sonic potential. But that is not all: the choice of three composers whose expressive forms differ widely from each other, in their genesis, in their syntax and realization, can nonetheless find coherence in their common search for a balance between the voices, in the crystalline clarity of the conduct of the parts and in the sonic representation of a singular unitarity, in an accomplished identity of intent.