Palej / Bogdanowicz / Mcgillivray / Wiliford - Norbert Palej: Cloud Light - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Following Great American Sonatas, his admired debut on SOMM RECORDINGS, pianist Nathan Williamson turns to British piano music of the 20th century in Color and Light, a revealing exploration of how the past influences the present and the new. A century-spanning programme from Delius's quixotic 1887 Nocturne (more familiar as An Nacht, the Florida Suite's finale, here in Robert Threlfall's 1986 transcription) to Anthony Herschel Hill's combustible Toccata of 1985 also lights on three other distinctive but highly contrasted composers. Modernity makes itself felt in Elisabeth Lutyens' The Ring of Bone (1975), which strikingly employs the use of spoken text in what Williamson describes in his booklet notes as Incha bold and heartfelt gestureInch. William Alwyn's Twelve Preludes (1958) pay a glancing nod to Lutyens' serialist techniques even while displaying Incha peculiarly English combination of both tonality and modalityInch characteristically his own. Peter Dickinson's Inchpostmodern, poly-stylisticInch Paraphrase II (1967) is the work of a composer open to the broadest influences, it's seven sections inventively re-working an earlier three-part motet and receiving here their first studio recordings. Slowly emerging into the light, Anthony Herschel Hill's Litany (1992) and Toccata (1985) - heard here in first recordings - are the product of a wholly individual compositional voice, boasting, says Williamson, Inchsome of the most gorgeously idiomatic and exhilarating piano writing of any late-20th century composerInch. Delius's Prelude and Duet from his one-act opera Margot la Rouge, composed in 1902 yet un-performed until 1983, are distinctive for their delicate harmonic textures and colors, masterfully transcribed for piano by Maurice Ravel. Featuring music by Bernstein, Copland, Charles Ives and Lou Harrison, Great American Sonatas, Nathan Williamson's 2017 SOMM Recor

Collaborating with composers and commissioning new music is integral to the vocal ensemble's musical identityAs a professional singer and organist Carl Unander-Scharin knows what can be created when the king of instruments is united with the human voice. The Cloud of Unknowing immediately became a favorite a musical challenge with rhythmic vitality, as well as sonorous polytonal sections composed with striking expression and sensitivity to the text. The combination of viola and choir is not common but works very well. The collaboration with the violist Kim Hellgen in the project InchThe Voice of the ViolaInch has resulted in four commissions. The two most recent are Andreas Tarrodi's cinematically beautiful Poppies in October and Fredrik Högberg's unique and clever Why do you Dance? Fredrik Högberg is an important part of the artistic environment of School of Music in Piteå at Luleå University of Technology. Why do you Dance? is his first choral work. Listening to Paula af Malmborg Ward's Solspel - 55 takter före skymningen brings to mind the image of a snow-covered slope beneath a treeless mountaintop and the flickering sun, where everything is still, yet moving - Inchwants to become musicInch. Brett Dean's Was it a Voice begins with a stream of intricate rhythms in the lower voices which builds up to the culminative InchWhy seek yeInch. Solo passages, rhythmic motives, and long architectonic lines are some of the contrapuntal ideas. The close of the piece is at the same time lovely as well as vocally challenging. Jan Sandström has written nearly 20 pieces for the vocal ensemble. Lux Aeterna for double choir is an early work of the composer which has been paired with a new text. It exemplifies Sandström's gift for creating rich choral sounds even as a young composer.

Monteagle - Colorful Moth [VINYL LP] date 06/19/2020