Peter Mennin - Moby Dick / Symphonies Nos. 3 & 7 - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Encounter brings together two towering works of contemporary chamber music that speak across cultures, histories, and inner worlds. Osvaldo Golijov's The Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind and Peteris Vasks' String Quartet No. 6 arise from profoundly different traditions-Jewish mysticism and Baltic spirituality-yet meet in a shared search for truth, memory, and transcendence. Both works are intensely personal, rooted in lived experience and belief, and animated by music's power to give voice to what lies beyond words longing, suffering, hope, and illumination. In this recording, these worlds do not merely coexist; they listen to, reflect, and transform one another.Performed by the Arethusa Quartet with clarinetist Chen Halevi, Encounter is also a meeting of artistic journeys. Golijov's ecstatic, ritual-like score unfolds as a spiritual ascent through dreams, prayers, and blindness-understood as deeper inner vision-while Vasks' Sixth Quartet traces a life's arc from farewell and remembrance to a final, hushed encounter with transcendence, illuminated by echoes of Beethoven. Across both works, vulnerability and intensity are balanced by stillness and song, darkness by light. What emerges is an album that feels at once intimate and universal an affirmation of shared humanity, and a reminder of music's enduring ability to connect past and present, earth and spirit, performer and listener.=Curiosa is conceived as a personal Inchcabinet of curiositiesInch by violinist Jorge Jiménez, bringing together music that entered his life through years of travel, collaboration, and discovery. The album spans laments, dances, preludes, fugues, and songs from both renowned and anonymous sources, ranging from the Middle Ages to the Baroque and beyond. Each piece is selected for it's emotional depth, strangeness, and expressive power, forming a living repertoire shaped in rehearsals,

The last of Schumann's Symphonies to be composed, Symphony No. 3 'Rhenish' was most likely inspired by a cruise taken by the composer and his wife down the river Rhine. Alternating between austere splendour, great rhythmic suppleness and soaring lines, the work is an aural depiction of rural life by the river and the majestic cathedral in Cologne, and one that dares to reflect tensions between Classical form and Romantic innovation. So too does Symphony No. 4, cast in four seamless movements that show Schumann's masterly command of interrelated material and of symphonic unity.

Charlie Faye & The Fanimals bring retro sounds to modern themes for kids and their families. The career musician and single mom was inspired by her and her daughter's shared love of soul and pop music from the 60s. InchSeven Days Of FunInch bounces through the days of the week with a classic 60s Motown groove. InchMe & My FamilyInch feels more like something from the early 70s, but with a modern exploration of how different kinds of families might look from a kid's perspective. InchSnack TimeInch feels like a classic Stax record - if Stax were to put out a song about snacks. InchMilo Wears a TutuInch tells the story of one kid bucking convention and wearing what he wants to, all to a playful backbeat reminiscent of a Temptations record. Gotta have fun!!