Mendelssohn / Schumann - German Duets - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Widor / Enz,Winfried - Die Albert Schweitzer-Orgel [COMPACT DISCS] date 10/20/2010

The composer Juan Arriaga was born in Bilbao on 27 January 1806. He studied and worked in Paris from his mid-teens, and died there just short of his 20th birthday. According to his father Arriaga composed his first piece at the age of 11, and his Op. 1 an Overture was written in 1818, scored for a wind and string nonet. In 1819 Arriaga's opera Los esclavos felices appeared, of which only fragments remain. There were additionally some piano pieces, motets and patriotic hymns, amounting to about 20 works by 1821. In September of that year Arriaga left Spain. He met the Spanish ambassador in Paris, and the composer Cherubini, at that time one of the inspectors of the Paris Conservatoire. There he was admitted to the counterpoint class of a newly appointed professor Francois-Joseph Fétis (1784-1871), and to the violin class of Pierre Baillot. His Conservatoire prizes included those for counterpoint and fugue in both 1823 and 1824 - the year that Fétistook him as a teaching assistant. During these years Arriaga revised, and perhaps destroyed, several earlier works as well as producing a regular flow of new compositions. The three string quartets, probably written before 1822, were published in 1824. This exploration of his works was recorded in 1954 by The Aeolian Quartet.

There are few choirs in Poland that have as distinct repertoire as the Choir of Maritime University of Szczecin. An absolute hallmark and specialty of the choir, led by Sylwia Fabianczyk-Makuch, is the performance of maritime themed pieces. However, obviously they do not exhaust their repertoire, which includes sacral and folk music as well as arrangements of popular music. Polish maritime-inspired choral music has a very long history. Feliks Nowowiejski is considered to be the father of the genre. However, it is an undoubtedly unexploited topic, demanding new, fresh and original ideas. The Choir of Maritime University of Szczecin regularly commissions works from Polish composers and is always met with great enthusiasm on the part of the authors. It is caused by the fact that it is very hard to find a better apparatus to mimic the spirit and sounds of the sea, as is an a cappella choir. The sound of the choir homogeneous like water, in which an infinite number of droplets merge into one, waves, flows, individual voices emerge from the sound mixture and plunge back into it, and sonoric vocal effects can suggestively transport the listener into the world of the noise of waves and screaming gulls. The composers, whose work can be found on the Sound of the Sea album, represent three different generations there is the sage of Polish choral music, Marek Jasinski, recognized and experienced artists such as Milosz Bembinow or Janusz Stalmierski, and promising composers of the younger generation, such as Zuzanna Koziej or Katarzyna Danel. The common stylistic denominator for the album is the maritime theme. But is the titular Sea defined in any way? Is it the Baltic Sea, the 8 Mediterranean Sea, the Red Sea, or maybe some general, undefined sea, the archetype of which lies somewhere in our subconscious?