Caso / Levin - Spanish Guitar Works - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Haydn's career coincided with changes in the standard keyboard as the fortepiano, and then the pianoforte, replaced the harpsichord and clavichord. This album reflects these changes. Haydn probably wrote the charming 5 Variationen in D major for the harpsichord around the mid-1759s while the Fantasia in C major, with abundant hand crossings and effects, was intended to exploit the particular sonority of the fortepiano. In 1792 he wrote new dances for a Viennese masked ball and the Empress herself asked for keyboard arrangements which Haydn provided in the shape of the sparkling Deutsche Tanze and Menuetti. Hungarian pianist Jeno Jando has won a number of piano competitions in Hungary and abroad, including first prize at the 1973 Hungarian Piano Concours and a First Prize in the chamber music category at the Sydney International Piano Competition in 1977. He has recorded for Naxos all the piano concertos and sonatas of Mozart. Other recordings for the Naxos tag include the concertos of Grieg and Schumann as well as Rachmaninov's Second Concerto and Paganini Rhapsody and the complete piano sonatas of Haydn and Beethoven. Album Tracks 1. Fantasia (Capriccio) in C Major, Hob. XVII 4 (1789( 2. Adagio in G Major, Hob. XV 22/Ii (1794) 3. 5 Variationen in D Major, Hob. XVII 7 (C. 1750-55) 4. 12 Deutsche Tänze, Hob. IX 12 (1792) (Version for Keyboard) 5. 18 Menuetti, Hob. IX 20 - Aria, Hob. XVII F1 (?1780) 6. Zwei Märsche, Hob. VIII 1-2 (1795) (Version for Keyboard) 7. 12 Menuetti, Hob. IX 8 (?1784)

Reinecke wrote his Grand Romantic Opera in Five Acts, King Manfred, between April and December 1866 in Leipzig, using a libretto by Friedrich Roeber. The work received it's first performance on 26th July, 1867, at the Royal Court Theatre in Wiesbaden under the direction of Wilhelm Jahn and was published in 1868 by Breitkopf and Härtel. The opera deals with the fate of the war-like King Manfred of Sicily (1232-1266), an illegitimate son of the Hohenstaufen Emperor Frederick II, who had half Europe against him and fell in battle against Charles of Anjou. Reinecke chose this unfortunately Wagnerian subject in accordance with the taste of the time. Although critics of the day recognized the value of the work, it was to disappear from the repertoire within a few years. Only the splendid Overture and the Preludes were to retain a place until the turn of the century. The Overture is one of the most important works of Reinecke, constituting a character-sketch of Manfred, in the manner of Beethoven's Leonora, Schumann's Genoveva and Manfred and Wagner's Faust, rather than relying on the musical content of the opera. Here are all the ingredients of Romantic stage music, lyrical melodies for horn or cello, the sounds of the minstrel's harp, agitated running notes for the strings and massive chords for the brass, all handled with an assurance that makes it difficult to understand the present neglect of the piece. The Prelude to Act V deserves special mention. A short introduction presages the coming disaster, the death of Manfred, before a melodic line of lyrical intensity, a cogent demonstration of the creative power of the composer. It is with this music in mind that we may read Reinecke's assessment of his own achievement, in a letter to Ferdinand Hiller on his choral work Belsazar Inch... you know that no brilliant, original inventiveness is at my disposal... , but I believe

With his characteristic wit and quirkiness, Grammy-nominated Danish composer Poul Ruders has summed up his mission as a composer as being InchTo entertain, to enrich, and to disturb, not necessarily in that order.Inch Born in Ringsted, Denmark in 1949, Ruders achieved international fame with his opera The Handmaid's Tale (1996-98), a work whose aching tenderness, grotesque irony, despair and timeliness has established a permanent place in the repertoire. Ruders' own intuitive development as a composer has enabled him to create works which manage to be strikingly modern, yet avoiding any the clichés of European modernism, but above all, imbued with the power to speak to the emotions of an audience. The current program features works spanning 30 years, beginning with the elliptical Throne (1989) for clarinet and piano and two major chamber works, the Clarinet Quintetand Piano Quartet, dating from 2014 and 2016 respectively. The Rudersdal Chamber Players, founded in 2017 by violinist Christine Pryn, are the ideal interpreters for Ruders stylistically fluid scores, finding the classical InchrootsInch in works like the Clarinet Quintet (beautifully performed by Jonas Frølund, one of the most talented clarinet players of his generation in the world today) as well as the surprising intimacy of the Piano Quartet.