Ian Koziara - Silenced - Unsung Voices of the 20th Century - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Black Oak Ensemble, a string trio boasting three of Chicago's most enterprising and dynamic chamber musicians, makes it's recording debut with Silenced Voices, an album of intriguing works by six promising, early 20th century Jewish composers originally from Austria-Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and the Netherlands. One survived World War II as a member of the Dutch resistance, the others perished in concentration camps and elsewhere in Nazi-occupied Europe. Silenced Voices includes the world premiere recording of wartime survivor Geza Frid's early Trio a cordes, Op. 1, an inventive work infused with Hungarian folk music influences. Composer-cellist Paul Hermann's Strijktrio, a forward-looking, cosmopolitan work from the early 1920s, shares it's melodies among all three instruments. Dick Kattenburg's youthful Trio a cordes was praised in a 1938 concert review for it's Inchremarkable mastery and a very personal style.Inch Gideon Klein's Trio for violin, viola and cello is notable for it's treatment of a Moravian folk song that serves as the theme of it's middle movement. Hans Krasa's Tanec (InchDanceInch) is a five-minute whirl of dancelike episodes framed by the sonic evocation of trains. His Passagalia is more somber, with it's own train motifs, while it's companion Fuga bears shades of Germanic and Czech influences and occasional grotesque touches. Sandor Kuti's Serenade for String Trio brims with Hungarian folk music and piquant chord clusters. His Franz Liszt Academy classmate, conductor Sir Georg Solti, later proclaimed that Kuti Inchwould have become one of Hungary's greatest composers.Inch Praised for it's Inchflamboyant vitalityInch and Inchexpert performancesInch (Chicago Tribune), the Black Oak Ensemble comprises Swiss-American violinist Desiree Ruhstrat and British-born cellist David Cunliffe of the acclaimed, Grammy-nominated Lincoln Trio and French-born violis

Dating from the years between 1928 and 1948, the recordings in this collection were all made during the lifetime of Jean Sibelius (1865-1957). They can be credited with playing a substantial role in propagating his works around the world and in cementing his international reputation as one of the towering figures of 20th century music. The seven CDs constitute a wide-ranging survey of the composer's music. Rightly, the seven symphonies are at the heart of the collection. Symphonies No.s 1, 2, 3 and 5 are conducted by the Finn Robert Kajanus, whom Sibelius described in 1934 as Inchthe best conductor my music ever had... he worked and studied and sought unceasingly to play my works exactly as I wanted them to sound.Inch Kajanus was Creating a biographical panorama of his career, the British tenor Ian Bostridge has personally selected each track in this 7CD Autograph collection. With a focus on both song (in German and English) and opera (from Monteverdi to Adès by way of Handel, Mozart and Britten), it demonstrates just why he is recognized as one of today's most distinctive, intelligent and compelling singers. The tenor also complements his performances with an exclusive and illuminating audio interview. This is the fourth in the Autograph series, launched earlier in 2015 with collections devoted to Angela Gheorghiu, Thomas Hampson and José van Dam. Each box focuses on a single artist, providing a biographical panorama of his or her career through a series of thematically programmed CDs and fascinating documentation. Each collection is devised in collaboration with the featured artist and includes a newly-recorded exclusive interview, Illustrated with musical extracts and conducted by the distinguished journalist and broadcaster Jon Tolansky, discussing his or her life and work. Bostridge, a former Oxford academic who has written three books and has been described as

New York City native Michael Cohen surprises with a formidable cross section of his oeuvre, the splendidly and mysteriously named A SONG FOR SILENCED VOICES. Narrowly skirting traditional notions of (a)tonality, this selection of works leaps to and fro between collected serenity and impassioned melodicism. The setups are as diverse as the music A SONG FOR SILENCED VOICES includes a string quartet, an excerpt of Cohen's opera Rappaccini's Daughter, a Prelude for Piano, a chamber/vocal work titled I Remember based on works from his musical Yours, Anne, as well as the album's namesake piece, which happens to be not a song, but a duo for cello and piano. And yet, despite the varied instrumentation, the works are coherently tied together by Cohen's compositional aptitude, which has remained remarkably constant across six decades. A true feat.