NAXOS CD OF THE MONTH | 8570716 | CD | 747313071678
Mussorgsky Pictures at an Exhibition
Mussorgsky Pictures at an Exhibition, Liszt Piano Concerto No 1
Peng Peng, Nashville Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, Leonard Slatkin (conductor)
An increasing number of recordings (Stokowski’s characteristically daring transcription is available on Naxos 8557645) now feature orchestrations of Mussorgsky’s Pictures other than Ravel’s popular warhorse. Leonard Slatkin’s eclectic selection, some more outlandish than others, invites us to bask in the high spirits and ingenuity of no fewer than fifteen different composers. The Chinese pianist Peng Peng, who was fourteen at the time of this recording, has won many competitions, including first prize in the 2002 China National Youth Piano Competition.

NAXOS | 8570321 | CD | 747313032174
Brahms, Schumann Violin Concertos
Brahms Violin Concerto in D Major, Schumann Violin Concerto in D minor
Ilya Kaler (violin), Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, Pietari Inkinen (conductor)
One of the most popular concertos in the repertoire, Brahms’ Violin Concerto was completed in 1878 and dedicated to his friend Joseph Joachim, whose cadenza is heard on this recording. An essentially lyrical work, the Concerto includes a slow movement of great beauty, which gives way to a Hungarian-style finale of mounting excitement. Schumann’s thoughtful and poetic Violin Concerto was not performed until 1937. In spite of the enthusiastic advocacy of Yehudi Menuhin, who saw in the Concerto a link between Beethoven and Brahms, it remains to this day an underrated work with many passages of great beauty.

NAXOS | 8570800 | CD | 747313080076
Bazzini Works for Violin and Piano
Etudes, Calabrese, Morceaux, La Ronde des Lutins
Chloe Hanslip (violin), Caspar Frantz (piano)
Antonio Bazzini, born in Brescia in 1818, was one of the great violinist-composers of the 19th century. After encouragement from Paganini following an encounter in 1836, he lived the life of a touring virtuoso for many years. He is best remembered as the composer of numerous salon pieces for violin and piano, the most famous being La Ronde des lutins (The Dance of the Goblins), but also including many character pieces of various descriptions. As director of the Milan Conservatory, he was a teacher of Mascagni and Puccini.

NAXOS | 8572033 | CD | 747313203376
Petrit Ceku Guitar Recital
Bach Sonata No 2 BWV1003, Regondi Etudes, Asencio Suite Valenciana, Rodrigo Homage To The Guitar
Petrit Ceku (guitar)
This recital by one of the leading guitarists of the younger generation, the Croatian Petrit Ceku, begins with an ambitious transcription of one of J.S. Bach’s most demanding solo works. Studies from the 19th century master, Giulio Regondi, and Vicente Asencios’s Suite Valencia, reveal the expressive and technical heights to which the classical guitar aspires.

NAXOS | 8557400 | CD | 747313080076
Maxwell Davies Naxos Quartets Vol 5
Naxos Quartets Nos 9-10
Maggini Quartet
Peter Maxwell Davies is universally acknowledged as one of the foremost composers of our time, and is currently Master of the Queen’s Music. His musical idiom has been described by The New York Times as a combination of ‘medieval mysticism, modernist rigour and happy accessibility’. This fifth and final installment of Maxwell Davies’s 10-quartet cycle commissioned by Naxos opens with Quartet No 9, dedicated to Dame Kathleen Ollerenshaw, mathematician and sometime Lord Mayor of Manchester, both of which attributes have influenced the content of the work. Encouragingly, the composer has written of Quartet No 10, ‘in no way must this be a last quartet. I needed to leave the door open: I had enjoyed writing the Naxos Quartets so much, and perhaps even learned a thing or two, that more could, in theory, eventually flourish’.

NAXOS | 8557567 | CD | 747313256723
Schubert's Friends Vol 3
Music set to works by Mayrhofer, Schlechta, Senn
Rainer Trost (tenor), Ulrich Eisenlohr (piano)
Schubert set the poetry of over 115 writers to music. He selected poems from classical Greece, the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, from 18th century German authors, early Romantics, Biedermeier poets, and even tried his own hand at verse. The Deutsche Schubert-Lied-Edition presents all Schubert’s Lieder, over 700 songs, grouped according to the poets who inspired him. This disc is the third of a series devoted to Schubert’s friends, including Mayrhofer. Volumes One and Two are available on 8554799 and 8557171, while two discs devoted exclusively to Mayrhofer are available on 8554738 and 8554739.

NAXOS | 8559272 | CD | 636943927229
Ives Complete Songs Vol 4
Majority, Memories, Mists, My Native Land, A Night Song
Jennifer Casey Cabot, Lielle Berman, Sara Jakubiak (sopranos), Matthew Plenk, Ryan MacPherson (tenors), Ian Howell (counter-tenor), Eric Trudel (piano)
When, in 1922, Charles Ives published a volume entitled 114 Songs, he was indirectly drawing attention to the fact that the genre had played a central part in his output. 85 years on and, for all that his wider reputation rests on his orchestral, chamber and piano music, the songs still represent the heart of his creative thinking. Nor was that initial volume comprehensive; Ives having written almost 200 songs, of which this present edition includes all of those he completed. The expressive variety encountered is accordingly vast: indeed, the gradual evolution of Ives’s songwriting, from those which draw overtly on the Austro-German Lieder and English parlour-song tradition to ones that evince anarchic humour as keenly as others do profound vision, is analogous to the evolution of American music over the last quarter of the nineteenth and first quarter of the twentieth centuries

NAXOS | 8559330 | CD | 636943933022
McKay Epoch An American Dance Symphony
University of Kentucky Symphony and Women's Choir, John Nardolillo (conductor)
George Frederick McKay composed Epoch, which has lain forgotten for virtually 70 years, as ‘An American Dance Symphony’. This new art form was to express in colourful music, costumes and dance scenes, utilizing the latest techniques in lighting and stagecraft, the spirit of four great American poets: Edgar Allan Poe, Sidney Lanier, Walt Whitman and Carl Sandburg, as well as the flow of history through romantic, pastoral, pioneering and industrial episodes. Epoch was first performed in 1935 during the Great Depression, with severe social-political turmoil brewing on many fronts, and McKay’s music, like the 1927 silent movie Metropolis, warned of a dawning robotic and polluted modern industrial society, in contrast to a peaceful, natural existence. The lyrical Pastoral depicts idyllic nurturing hillsides, streams and bays, while Machine Age Blues expresses a dark prospective future, with explosive, sardonic mechanical fury.

NAXOS | 8559331 | CD | 636943933121
Corigliano Mr Tambourine Man, Seven Poems of Bob Dylan, Three Hallucinations (from Altered States)
Hila Plitmann (soprano), Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, JoAnn Falletta (conductor)
John Corigliano is one of America’s leading contemporary composers, producing hugely popular works both for film and concert hall. This recording features the world premiere of Mr Tambourine Man for soprano and orchestra, Corigliano’s bold settings of lyrics by fellow American trailblazer Bob Dylan. Dylan himself enthusiastically endorses this musical reimagining of his insightful, iconic poetry. Corigliano has said of the work, "these would be in no way arrangements, or variations, or in any way derivations of the music of the original songs, which I decided to not hear before the cycle was complete … I intended to treat the Dylan lyrics as the poems I found them to be. Nor would their settings make any attempt at pop or rock writing. I wanted to take poetry I knew to be strongly associated with popular art and readdress it in terms of concert art – crossover in the opposite direction".

NAXOS | 8559381 | CD | 636943938126
Anderson Orchestral Music Vol 4
Irish Suite, Scottish Suite, Alma Mater, Summer Skies
Kim Criswell (soprano), William Dazeley (baritone), BBC Concert Orchestra, Leonard Slatkin (conductor)
Leroy Anderson etched out his own unique place in American music – a composer rigorously trained in the classical tradition whose records topped the pop charts, a meticulous arranger of music whose own melodies were crafted with inventive precision. Here, in the first complete cycle of Anderson’s orchestral music, the Anderson family has made available several pieces that the composer did not release, with some first recordings scattered among the familiar and not-so-familiar titles. Volume 4 concentrates on Anderson’s many arrangements, as well as revisions or alternate versions of his own works, including Alma Mater, a reworking of his 1939 suite Harvard Sketches.

NAXOS | 8559383 | CD | 636943938324
Winkler Piano Concerto, Elements Concerti
Anna Rabinova (violin), Orchestre de Chambre Francais, Ivan Meylemans (conductor)
David Winkler has composed some two hundred works to date, including operas, symphonies, concertos, chamber music, choral music and song cycles. In recent years, he has developed a unique and powerful style which at once connects with traditional architecture while looking forward through a new kind of thematic and harmonic vocabulary. This is the composer's first commercial recording for Naxos and features his first Piano Concerto and Elements Concerti, a four-movement concerto for violin and string orchestra.

NAXOS | 8559393 | CD | 636943939321
Moravec Cool Fire, Chamber Symphony, Autumn Song
Marya Martin (flute), Jeewon Park (piano), Erik Ralske (horn), Ayano Kataoka (vibraphone)
Recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 2004, the prolific American composer Paul Moravec writes in a musical idiom that offers an underlying romanticism tempered by distinctively modern discipline, qualities evident in the three works collected here. Chamber Symphony was commissioned for the Bridgehampton Chamber Music Festival’ twentieth-anniversary season in 2003 and is dedicated, writes the composer, ‘with admiration to its wonderful artists’. Autumn Song is a gentle song without words while Cool Fire, also commissioned by Marya Martin and the Bridgehampton Festival, is a chamber concerto unusually scored for flute and piano quintet.

NAXOS | 8570178 | CD | 747313017874
Stamitz Oboe Quartets Op 8 Nos 1, 3, 4, Haydn Divertimento in C Major P115
Alessandro Baccini (cor anglais, oboe), Luca Stevanato (double bass), Nuovo Quartetto Italiano
Michael Haydn spent much of his career in Salzburg and won a considerable contemporary reputation as a composer, since overshadowed by the achievement of his elder brother, Joseph Haydn. Carl Stamitz had his early training in Mannheim, home then of one of the most famous orchestras in Europe, before establishing his reputation as a composer and performer in Paris, in London and elsewhere. He is valued in particular for his chamber music. The Opus 8 Quartets are notable for the virtuoso demands made of all four instrumentalists.

NAXOS | 8570445 | CD | 747313044573
Vivaldi Sacred Music Vol 3
Magnificat, Nisi Dominus, Kyrie, Salve Regina
Lynn McMurtry (mezzo), Carla Huhtanen (soprano), Eve Rachel Mcleod (soprano), Aradia Ensemble, Kevin Mallon (director)
Vivaldi’s sacred music occupies a place of honour in his vast output, dovetailing passages of great tenderness and sombre beauty, rich in cantabile expressiveness, with highly operatic movements of colourful and exciting virtuosity. Volume 3 of the complete sacred music features the final and expanded version of Vivaldi’s G minor setting of the Magnificat, his setting of the Vespers Psalm 126, Nisi Dominus, with its strongly characterized instrumental accompaniment, and the dramatic yet poignant Roman motet, 'In furore iustissimae irae' (In the fury of most righteous anger Thou showest thy divine power).

NAXOS | 8570464 | CD | 747313046478
Alwyn Piano Music Vol 2
12 Preludes, Contes Barbares, Movements, Two Irish Pieces
Ashley Wass (piano)
Alwyn’s approach to writing for the piano was essentially that of a romantic, born out of the tradition exemplified by Liszt and Rachmaninov, through to the impressionism inherent in the music of Debussy and Ravel. Influences aside, however, Alwyn found his own individual way in writing for the piano, as can be heard from the works presented here. His intuitive writing for the instrument resulted not just in virtuoso pieces for the concert hall, but also sensitive miniatures of a highly expressive nature, along with many educational pieces for examination purposes. As with the previous volume of piano music (8570359) examples of all these will be found on this recording.

NAXOS | 8570542 | CD | 747313054275
Lindberg Complete Piano Music
Piano Pieces, Play 1, Jubilees, Etudes Nos 1-2, Tre Pianostycke
Ralph van Raat (piano)
Magnus Lindberg is one of Finland’s most important living composers. The differences between his piano works from the late 1970s and early 1980s and those composed in the early years of the 21st century, following a break of 12 years, can seem quite stark. Whereas works such as Musik for Tva Pianon (1976) and Klavierstuck (1977) are based strictly on serial procedures, the emergence of a vibrant, more approachable and less extreme style can be heard in Jubilees (2000) and the two Etudes (2001/2004), which even share harmonic, textural and stylistic parallels with Chopin, Liszt, Debussy, Rachmaninov, Scriabin and Messiaen.

NAXOS | 8570581 | CD | 747313058174
Buxtehude Harpsichord Music Vol 3
Suites in A major and F major, La Capricciosa, Canzonetta in D minor
Lars Ulrik Mortensen (harpsichord)
Born fifty years after Heinrich Schutz, the ‘father of German music’, and little less than half a century before J. S. Bach, Dietrich Buxtehude provided a link between the founder of Protestant Baroque music and its greatest master. While Buxtehude's organ music is comparatively well known, his harpsichord music has attracted less attention. The third volume of the present series includes two Suites of French dances and the brilliant series of variations on an aria under the title La Capricciosa.

NAXOS | 8570596 | CD | 0747313059676
Russian Oboe
Luft Fantasy on Russian Folk Themes Op 12, Rimsky-Korsakov Oboe Variation in G minor (oboe and piano arrangement), Gliere Pieces Op 35 (excerpts), Asafiev Oboe Sonatina, Tcherepnin Sketches for Wind Instruments Op 45 (excerpts), Dranishnikova Poeme, Gorlo
Ivan Paisov (oboe), Natalia Shcherbakova (piano)
This recording offers a fascinating survey of Russian oboe music spanning over 150 years. Though now widely neglected, Johann-Heinrich Luft held an important position as an oboist in 19th century Russia and was the acknowledged founder of the Russian school of oboe-playing. From music by Rimsky-Korsakov, including a dazzling transcription of Flight of the Bumble-Bee, to the more nearly contemporary, all these compositions bring to the fore the lyrical qualities of the instrument and the virtuosity of the performer.

NAXOS | 8570724 | CD | 747313072477
Szymanowski Stabat Mater
Stabat Mater, Veni Creator, Litany to the Virgin Mary
Iwona Hossa (soprano), Eva Marciniec (mezzo), Ryszard Minkiewicz (tenor), Jaroslaw Brek (bass), Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra and Choir, Antoni Wit (conductor)
Karol Szymanowski’s Stabat Mater, set to a Polish translation of the medieval poem, makes extensive use of traditional Polish musical ideas. His setting of the Veni Creator was composed for the opening of the Warsaw Academy of Music, of which he was the first rector. The Litany for the Virgin Mary is a more meditative work, yet rises at times to a level of rhapsodic intensity. All the choral works on this recording are as firmly embedded in Christian musical tradition as they are recognisably of their period.

NAXOS | 8570761 | CD | 747313076178
Haydn Symphonies Vol 32
Symphonies Nos 25, 42, 65
Sinfonia Finlandia, Patrick Gallois (conductor)

NAXOS | 8570773 | CD | 747313077373
Markevitch Orchestral Works Vol 1
Partita, Le Paradis Perdu
Martijn van den Hoek (piano), Lucy Shelton (soprano), Sarah Walker (mezzo), Netherlands Concert Choir, Arnhem Philharmonic Orchestra, Christopher Lyndon-Gee (conductor)
This first volume of the Naxos Igor Markevitch Complete Orchestral Works Edition, to be followed by the seven volumes previously released on Marco Polo, brings together two relatively early compositions of astonishing technical and aesthetic assurance. The Partita is in effect already his second Piano Concerto, written when the composer was 20. The granitic oratorio Paradise Lost, whose premiere the composer himself conducted at the BBC in London barely three years later, is among the most important of the composer’s works, bearing comparison with Stravinsky’s contemporaneous Oedipus Rex and Persephone, yet of striking individuality of vision.

NAXOS | 8572131 | CD | 747313213177
Eternal Beethoven
Various

NAXOS | 8572132 | CD | 747313213276
Eternal Satie
Various

NAXOS | 8572133 | CD | 747313213375
Eternal Barber
Various

NAXOS | 8572134 | CD | 747313213474
Eternal Penderecki
Various

NAXOS | 855531416 | CD3 | 747313531424
Monteverdi Madrigals Book 7 'Concerto'
Delitiae Musicae, Marco Longhini (director)
The ‘Concerto’ (as Claudio Monteverdi entitled his Seventh Book of Madrigals) was published five years after the Sixth Book had appeared. It represents a clear break with Monteverdi’s earlier publications: here the madrigal is transformed or, perhaps, it would be better to say it has vanished, at least in the form that would have been recognised up to that point. Of 32 compositions there is not a single five-voice madrigal, only pieces for one to four voices, all with basso continuo, some with violins, along with works that might be called ‘experimental’. It was the heterogeneous nature of this collection that led Monteverdi to use the title ‘Concerto’. Marco Longhini’s new complete critical edition, the first since Malipiero’s 1932 edition, was prepared specifically for this recording.

NAXOS | 866022526 | CD2 | 730099022576
Wolf-Ferrari La Vedova Scaltra
Orchestra Teatro La Fenice, Martin (conductor)
Wolf-Ferrari’s comic opera La Vedova Scaltra (The Cunning Widow), is among the works he based on plays by Goldoni. It matches closely the conventions of 18th-century opera buffa in its witty if skeptical look at the mechanisms governing the interplay of human relations. Four hopeful suitors, English, French, Spanish and Italian, vie for the hand of Rosaura, the cunning widow of the title, who disguises herself to meet each wooer, eventually choosing the only one who can demonstrate his sincerity. This production was recorded live at the Teatro La Fenice in February 2007 in celebration of the 300th anniversary of the birth of Goldoni in Venice in 1707.

NAXOS AUDIOBOOKS | 88412 | CD22 | 9789626348840
The Woman in White (unabridged)
by Wilkie Collins
read by Glen McCready, Rachel Bavidge and Cast
Wilkie Collins is a master of suspense, but his transfer to audiobook requires a cast of readers to faithfully reflect the eleven different characters who tell the story. Walter Hartright, a drawing teacher to two sisters, wants to marry Laura, though she is betrothed to another. But who is the mysterious woman in white who he encounters? Naxos AudioBooks draws together a strong cast to bring alive the mystery and suspense of The Woman in White.

NAXOS AUDIOBOOKS | 190012 | CD | 9789626349007
The Great Poets - Gerard Manley Hopkins
read by Jeremy Northam
A collection of the best-known poems by Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889). One of the Victorian era’s greatest writers, Hopkins’ reputation has continued to grow since his death. Naxos AudioBooks' Great Poets series, launched in 2007, offers many of the best-loved poems by popular poets in an inexpensive 1 CD collection – and well read by leading actors. This anthology of works by one of English poetry’s most daring innovators will undoubtedly become a best-seller. The collection includes The Windhover, The Caged Skylark, Carrion Comfort, Spring and Fall and Inversnaid.

NAXOS AUDIOBOOKS | 288712 | CD2 | 9789626348871
Under Milk Wood
by Dylan Thomas
read by Richard Burton, Hugh Griffith, Rebecca Bebb
Under Milk Wood is Dylan Thomas’ undisputed and unforgettable masterpiece – an affectionate, hilarious portrait of a small Welsh town. The classic 1954 recording, featuring a perfect cast led by Richard Burton as ‘First Voice’, is rightly considered to be definitive. This collection also includes two earlier radio programmes: Return Journey to Swansea and Quite Early One Morning, read by Dylan Thomas and others. Enjoyable in their own right, they also provide a fascinating insight into the creative process that led towards Under Milk Wood.

NAXOS AUDIOBOOKS | 691312 | CD6 | 9789626349137
The Good Soldier Svejk
by Jaroslav Hasek
read by David Horovitch
Jaroslav Hasek’s world-famous satirical farce, The Good Soldier Svejk, has been translated into over 60 languages and is one of the best-known Czech works ever published. A soldier in the First World War who never actually sees any combat, Josef Svejk is The Good Soldier’s awkward protagonist – and none of the other characters can quite decide whether his bumbling efforts to get to the front are genuine or not. Often portrayed as one of the first anti-war novels, Hasek’s classic satire is a tour-de-force of modernist writing, influencing later authors such as Hemingway, Faulkner and Joseph Heller. In this version, it has been sensitively and carefully abridged.

NAXOS AUDIOBOOKS | 988012 | CD9 | 9789626348802
The Candle in the Wind, The Book of Merlin
by TH White
read by Neville Jason
One of the most inventive and charming retellings of the Arthurian legend, this is the final part of The Once and Future King. In these last two books, the ageing king faces the greatest challenge of his reign, when his own son threatens to overthrow him and destroy everything he has worked for. In The Book of Merlyn, Arthur’s tutor Merlyn reappears, and the ancient magician teaches him that, even in the face of apparent ruin, there is still hope.