Jeremy Backhouse - Choral Music of Jeremy Filsell & David Briggs - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Giorgio Koukl - Complete Piano Muisc 5 [COMPACT DISCS] date 02/25/2014

On this new , violist Jesus Rodolfo makes his PENTATONE debut, accompanied by pianist Min Young Kang, with an album showcasing three iconic 20th-century Russian composers Prokofiev, Rachmaninov and Stravinsky. The pieces performed revolve around love, decency, hope and optimism prevailing against mortality, mistrust, injustice and uncertainty. Within the context of a world slowly respiring from a severe pandemic, this has become a recording about the importance of the perseverance of hope, determination, and love in the face of death and uncertainty.

It may seem strange to associate Charles-Marie Widor (the foremost organ virtuoso of his day) with the restrained art-form of the French mélodie. Yet it formed an important part of his output and he played a major part in it's establishment as a serious art-form. He composed nearly a hundred, including the song-cycle Chansons de mer in which the sea's constant ebb and flow, rendering all things transitory, reflects human life in it's ever-changing moods. The remaining mélodies demonstrate the maturation of Widor's style in different ways.