Valentina Vanini & Giuseppina Coni – Castelnuovo-Tedesco: Liriche da camera e opera pianistiche (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 02:31:33 minutes | 1,16 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Tactus
The duo formed by Valentina Vanini (half soprano) and Giuseppina Coni (piano) is the protagonist of this recording dedicated to the Florentine composer Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, including chamber lyrics and piano pieces. All the compositions collected in this double CD saw the light in the early twentieth century, and more precisely between 1913 and 1928. A kaleidoscopic panorama of impressions and emotions – from the evocation of the childhood world, to the poetic themes of great breadth up, to the pictorial evocations of the great Italian schools of the past – unravels in the succession of pieces, characterized by a very refined musical style, often not simple but incredibly fascinating and evocative. Not conventionally counted as part of the “Generazione dell’ottanta”, in reality Castelnuovo-Tedesco pursues the same ideals and intentions (because of his studies with Ildebrando Pizzetti), which are fully manifested in these compositions, superbly interpreted by the Vanini-Coni duo.
Read moreThe Tallis Scholars, Peter Phillips – John Sheppard: Missa Cantate (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 01:16:19 minutes | 3,08 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Gimell Records
Recorded to celebrate The Tallis Scholars’ 50th Anniversary, John Sheppard’s exuberant Missa Cantate is an ideal work to highlight their pioneering achievements. The Tallis Scholars first album of music by John Sheppard, released in 1989, created a new icon of English Renaissance polyphony – Media vita. Their second Sheppard album may well do the same for his only Votive Antiphon on a festal scale, Gaude virgo Christiphera.
Read moreThe Choir – Last Call: Live At The Music Box (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 01:54:31 minutes | 1,31 GB | Genre: Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Omnivore Recordings
50th Anniversary live performance recorded at Cleveland’s Music Box the night of September 20, 2019.. In 2018, when Omnivore Recordings released The Choir’s first full length platter in the group’s history, no one knew what impact the release of that recording would have. Sure, the group, in it’s many different manifestations during the ’60s, had released several singles, including a Top 10 smash (“It’s Cold Outside”) in the group’s hometown of Cleveland. The song would reach #68 on the Billboard national charts. But the garage rock band whose many different members went on to form other important bands like Raspberries and James Gang, had never made an album of their own before, just assorted singles from 1966-1968. So, 50 years on, when the tapes of an aborted album were found, mixed and released as Artifact: The Unreleased Album to unanimous critical acclaim, the 1968 version of The Choir suddenly found itself back in the limelight with a weighty decision… to reclaim their vision and perform live… back where they came from, the home of rock ‘n’ roll, Cleveland, Ohio.
Read moreOliver Schnyder – Albert Anker: Malstunden bei Raffael (Piano Music by Edvard Grieg) [Original Motion Picture Soundtrack] (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 58:53 minutes | 820 MB | Genre: Classical, Soundtrack
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Prospero Classical
Oliver Schnyder, probably the most promising Swiss pianist of his generation, has recorded the soundtrack to a film by Heinz Bütler about the Swiss painter Albert Anker. A selection of the most beautiful and popular “Lyrical Pieces” by Edgard Grieg is musically set to the multi-layered portrait of the Swiss artist. The film “Malstunden bei Raffael” (Painting Lessons with Raphael) opens up the work, thinking and life of the great Swiss painter for the first time in a cinematic way far beyond the well-known and often clichéd: In “Albert Anker. Painting Lessons with Raphael”, a “room of wonders” is the starting point of the journey through time to Albert Anker (1831-1910). For the studio in the painter’s farmhouse in the Seeland village of Ins is one of the very few artists’ studios of the 19th century that has been preserved in its original state – a spectacular time capsule “curated” by Anker himself with pictures, photos, books, documents, bizarre items, letters and objects of painterly and everyday use.
Read moreMartin Jones – Piano Music of Radamés Gnattali (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:07:13 minutes | 1,08 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Nimbus Records
Radamés Gnattali (b. Porto Alegre, 27 January 1906; d. Rio de Janeiro, 3 February 1988). Brazilian composer, pianist and conductor. Although classically trained his working life was dominated by popular music. His influence on the arrangements and orchestrations of Brazilian popular music was powerfully felt through his weekly broadcasts on Rádio Nacional which began in 1938, and continued into the mid 1950s. His own compositions are a conscious fusion of classical and popular idioms. Even though Gnattali’s association with popular music undoubtedly prejudiced his reception as a classical composer he was never critical or dissatisfied with Brazilian music. Even towards the end of his life he could say ‘I have never been frustrated with making popular music. I do it gladly and enjoy it very much …If I had gone to Europe, I might have been a great pianist – because I had the qualities for it – but I would never be a Brazilian composer’. This programme is primarily drawn from Gnattali’s earliest works. In this period he is either writing melodies in a popular style, or using folk melodies directly, and the characteristic shape of Brazilian song is never absent for long.
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