Naxos Classical Spotlight

Raymond Bisha summons the seasonal spirit with a comprehensive 5-CD collection of music for Christmas on the Capriccio label. He makes his selection from the release’s one hundred classical Christmas titles, many featuring world-renowned choirs and orchestras from musical centres located throughout Europe, and notably Germany, including Dresden, Cologne, Vienna, Leipzig, Berlin and Regensburg. From Christmas oratorios by J. S. Bach and Camille Saint-Saëns to traditional favourites and all stops in between, this is a rare programme of both familiar and not so familiar works that represents a Christmas collection that will last for many years ahead.

This latest release in Naxos’ ongoing series The Music of Brazil features chamber works and concertos by Heitor Villa-Lobos, one of Brazil’s best known and most prolific composers. He wrote more than two thousand pieces and was a major figure in the development of classical music in Brazil. Raymond Bisha introduces a colorful program that includes two works for chamber ensemble, in which new and daring sonic combinations enhance the composer’s seductive lyricism. Two larger-scale works provide musical contrast: the Concerto for Guitar and Small Orchestra, premiered by the legendary soloist Segovia, was Villa-Lobos’ last work for the instrument; and the Concerto for Harmonica explores the instrument’s full harmonic and chromatic possibilities.

Beethoven certainly has the wind in his sails with this tremendous release of music for wind ensemble, a genre that formed a regular part of entertainment in the composer’s day. Included on the recording, for example, is his Sextet for winds in E flat major that was well received by a critic at the time for its “splendid melodies, leisurely harmonic flow, and wealth of new and surprising ideas.” The works on the programme have never before been recorded by such a distinguished line-up of players. With professorships at leading institutions such as the Yale and Manhattan Schools of Music, the Juilliard School, Adelphi University and others, this is as influential a team of wind players as you could imagine. The recording, of course, forms part of the Naxos 90-CD box set of Beethoven’s complete output (8.500250) that marks next year’s 250th anniversary of the composer’s birth.

If playlists had been available in the 18th century, Magna Sequentia IIwould undoubtedly have enjoyed an enthusiastic reception, with its varied track list embodying a theme of music by association. In her second of three Magna Sequentias, pianist Sonia Rubinsky leads with J. S. Bach’s Overture in the French Style and follows by building around it a grand suite of Bach’s dances for keyboard. The programme of 17 movements illustrates the different styles and expressive moods of Bach’s dance writing. Taken together, the collection is an international potpourri that blends the ornate and sophisticated French style, the more straightforward and virtuosic Italian style, and the stricter contrapuntal writing of the German style, with a touch of England thrown in for good measure. Raymond Bisha presents the introduction to this release.

The internationally respected artists on this release are well known to Naxos followers: pianist Boris Giltburg (whose recordings of Beethoven, Liszt, Schumann and Rachmaninov have been universally acclaimed); and conductor Vasily Petrenko (whose edition of the complete Shostakovich symphonies has been recognised as a historic recording milestone). They come together now in Beethoven’s first two piano concertos with their exuberant energy and abundance of lyric and virtuosic qualities. Raymond Bisha presents.

Raymond Bisha introduces a new recording of music by Austrian composer Hanns Eisler who, in his late years, concentrated increasingly on adapting his film scores for the concert hall. He also began his Leipzig Symphony during this period, but it was left unfinished at the time of his death. Thilo Medek, a young composer at the time, stepped in to complete the symphony with a number of extracts from Eisler’s film scores. The compilation of Funeral Pieces of Motion Picture Scores was realised by Tobias Faßhauer and Jürgen Bruns in 2015. The scores use film music from the 1947/48 Hollywood movie So Well Remembered. Eisler wrote the music for the KZ Documentary Nuit et brouillard (Night and Fog) in 1955 for the French movie director Alain Resnais (1922–2014). After many successful concert performances (with and without the moving images), this album now represents the world premiere recording of the score.

Leopoldo Miguez and Glauco Velásquez were both leading figures in Brazil’s classical music scene at the turn of the 20th century, bringing back influences from Europe to a homeland in a state of enormous social upheaval. The lyrical character of Miguez’s ambitious Violin Sonata, Op. 14 is developed in a far more sophisticated and contrapuntal manner to anything previously experienced in Brazil, while Velásquez’s two sonatas are even richer in nuance. The tropical Romanticism of these three works marked an important change in Brazil’s chamber music. The music is presented here by host Raymond Bisha. 

The Creatures of Prometheus was Beethoven’s only full-length ballet score. The work premiered in March 1801 and the composer’s own version for piano solo was published later the same year. The work relates the story from Greek mythology of Prometheus, a lofty spirit who endeavoured to lift human beings from a state of ignorance into ways of right conduct; correspondingly, two statues in the ballet are brought to life through a state of harmony. Raymond Bisha presents pianist Warren Lee’s new release of the piano solo version of the original orchestral score.

Raymond Bisha and composer Derek Bermel discuss the latter’s Migrations, a 3-work programme that observes the universal phenomenon of human transit through an eclectic mix of styles: Migration series depicts the movement of African Americans from the south to the north of the United States in search of a better life during the first half of the 20th century; Mar de Setembrounites the composer’s experiences of Brazil and Portugal through settings of melancholy poems reflecting the countries’ sea cultures; and A Shout, a Whisper, and a Trace is an orchestral work that embodies Béla Bartók’s experience of New York, his place of refuge during World War II, presenting an alternative view of the city through the eyes of an immigrant.

As Naxos reaches Vol. 19 of its 23-volume edition of the music of John Philip Sousa, Raymond Bisha talks with the musical director of the project, Keith Brion, a world authority on Sousa’s music, who conducts throughout.