The music of John R. Williamson, a composer from Manchester, England, is deserving of greater recognition. Murray McLachlan is a champion of Williamson’s music and presents three albums in which his stylistic and virtuosic playing enhances further the individuality of these works.
Includes the following:
Digital downloads include all three booklet in PDF format.
A fascinating and historically consequential recording, which follows the enthusiastic praise of the earlier volumes in this intriguing series. Here, we have firstly the world premiere recording of the ‘Death and the Maiden’ Quartet, transcribed by Robert Franz, better known for his lieder and who was almost contemporary with Schubert (he was 18 years younger).
Even more exciting is the first ever recording of the transcribed version of the ‘Unfinished’ Symphony – but also in its complete new 2014) performing edition; the first two movements were transcribed by Schubert’s friend Hüttenbrenner; the third completed from Schubert’s part-finished movement by Anthony Goldstone, and the finale (also known as the Entracte from Rosamunde), transcribed by Friedrich Hermann with further adaptations by Anthony Goldstone. Essential listening.
ANTHONY GOLDSTONE
All three volumes of the Schubert Piano Masterworks;
Superb recordings, critically acclaimed, by one the foremost Schubert interpreters, and all with a 25% discount if you buy all three together.
(Digital downloads include all the booklets in PDF format)
Explore the volumes:
The Bach Keyboard Concertos are cornerstones of the baroque repertoire, for performance both on modern instruments as here, or on ‘authentic period’ fortepianos, harpsichords or clavichords. Maltese pianist Lucia Micallef is lauded wherever she performs for crisp, articulate phrasing and nuance and this shows through clearly in this beautifully balanced and lively performance. The EUCO under Brian Schembri shine and support perfectly. Among the hundreds of recordings made of these works, this one has a freshness that will make it stand out for a very long time.
This album was awarded a silver medal in the Global Music Awards 2018 for ‘Outstanding Achievement’.
It is always good to welcome to our company a musician of the stature of Burkard Schliessmann, and also to present our first multichannel SACD in luxury packaging.
This album demonstrates once again the sheer genius of Bach but also the individual and highly considered interpretative style of the performer. Schliessmann is not a purist demanding rigid tempi and ‘traditional’ baroque styling but recognises the inner soul of the music and brings it to life in a new way – thus this recording will be welcomed as a new approach even to those who know the works very well.
Also a special inclusion on the disc is BWV 906, which Bach left as a Fantasia and an unfinished Fugue. The Fugue was completed by Busoni who also inserted the Adagio, BWV 968, which was arranged for piano either by one of Bach’s sons or by the publisher Altnickol. It makes for a highly rewarding complete work.
The mazurka is a traditional Polish folk dance in triple time (three beats to the bar). In the very early 1800s. Maria Szymanowska was the first composer to write formal Mazurkas for the piano. They are very short, quite simple and incredibly varied and tuneful. Only a decade or so later, Chopin developed the mazurka into an art-music form and his Opus. 7 and 17 sets are perhaps the best known. While other composers also took up the form, the most notable transformation of the mazurka was by the third Polish composer, Szymanowski, who created a full-blown Romantic style far removed from the simple original. The bright, sunny and cheerful expressiveness of the folk dance is brought out brilliantly by the young virtuoso Russian pianist Alexander Kostritsa and the album is both highly tuneful entertainment and also an insight into how a style can evolve.
After more than thirty years Anthony Goldstone and Caroline Clemmow can lay claim to be regarded as one of the world’s foremost piano duos, displaying stunning precision in their ensemble and remarkable musicality. Following their critically acclaimed Divine Art CDs containing transcriptions of works by Dvorak, Mendelssohn, Tchaikovsky, Schubert and Chopin, they present music by Russian Romantic and exoticist Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov – in the case of his most famous work, Scheherazade, and the little Neapolitan Song (which he unwittingly stole from composer Luigi Denza thinking it was a traditional folk song), the transcriptions are by the composer himself. Antar was transcribed by his wife Nadezhda Purgold, a skilled composer herself who also arranged Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet (DDA 25020).
This is a superbly entertaining program of transcriptions and fantasies on opera themes and arias, presented with style and flair by British pianist Andrew Wright, who also composed three of the fantasies. With well known themes from Verdi, Wagner, Bellini and Meyerbeer, in excellent solo-piano form, this is a tremendous tour-de-force! Also see volume 2 here
A British pianist specializing in the late baroque and classical periods, Jill Crossland has acquired an impressive reputation for her new insights into even the most familiar and hackneyed of ‘core repertoire’ works. Penguin Guide to CDs has said “a natural Mozartean … wonderfully lyrical Beethoven”. Here, Jill gives that special treatment to the ‘Moonlight’ with a beautiful and fresh reading; she presents three Bach-Busoni chorale preludes in full Romantic style and sparkles in delightful Mozart.
In this superb album Anthony Goldstone performs exquisite versions of music from Tchaikovsky’s three major ballets, The Sleeping Beauty, Nutcracker, and Swan Lake. Apart from the piece by Percy Grainger, these are, incredibly, the first ever recordings of these superb transcriptions.
See vol. 1 (transcriptions of opera and orchestral pieces) here
Ronald Stevenson is one of the most original minds in the world of the composition of music. – So said Yehudi Menuhin. This magnum opus set is a magnificent culmination of several years of planning and a great acheivement by Murray McLachlan. Stevenson’s most remarkable work, Le Festin d’Alkan, is given a superb performance as are his incredibly varied transcriptions and fantasies on Bach, Ysaÿe and Chopin (and others) and a number of his other original works.
Stevenson’s other tour-de-force, the 80-minute Passacaglia on DSCH, is played by Murray McLachlan on DDA25013.
Mieczyslaw Weinberg (aka Moisey Vainberg) was in fact born and raised in Poland, but the vast majority of his compositional career was in the Soviet Union and he remained there for the rest of his life, in Moscow. He therefore comes well within the definition of ‘Russian’ for the purpose of this series and was certainly treated as such by the authorities. This and the preceding album (DDA 25105) which includes the first three sonatas, were originally released on the now defunct Olympia label but had a relativley short life and restricted distribution, and are still the only full recordings of these very fine works. This is music which though modern is written to comply with Soviet requirements and is thus also very approachable and melodic without ever being trite or unoriginal.