Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra - Flute Concerto / Violin Concerto - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Japan's best known living composer, Toshio Hosokawa explores the boundaries between Western avant-garde and traditional Japanese culture, and is influenced by the static structures of the Gagaku music of the Japanese court. In the ongoing series of his chamber and solo compositions under the Vertical Time Study and Sen rubrics, Hosokawa's works begin cerebrally but soon erupt with emotion and virtuosity, as displayed by Europe's foremost accordionist, Stefan Hussong on Sen V and Melodia, or the three-piece chamber-ensemble of Michael Riessler (clarinet), Werner Taube (cello), and Yukiko Sugawara-Lachenmann (piano) on Vertical Time Study 1. Vertical Time Study III features Yukiko Sugawara-Lachenmann (piano) and Asako Urushihara (violin). in Die Tiefe Der Zeit features Hussong's accordion, Julius Berger on cello and Chosei Komatsu conducting the Diagonal Chamber Orchestra.

The Estonian composer Mihkel Kerem - born in Tallinn in 1981 and Joint Assistant Leader in the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra since 2015 - used the Covid lockdown to produce no fewer than four symphonies, two of them, his Seventh and Eighth, conceived as a contrasting pair. Kerem's dark and ominous Seventh Symphony, like that of Sibelius, plots a huge sonata-form arch, growing from and back into it's opening material. It's soundworld sits somewhere between Sibelius and Schnittke, combining a sense of natural symphonic growth with dramatic twists of kaleidoscopic textural variety. No. 8, which also nods to Sibelius' Seventh by quoting it's celebrated trombone theme, is a vast, unhurried accelerando, it's three linked movements tapping into the Nordic-Baltic tradition of using the controlled power of the orchestra to suggest the vastness of nature.

An album of dramatic and passionate Preludes and Intermezzos from some of the most popular Italian operas, from Domingo Hindoyan and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra. Translations of works by early French and Russian realists, Stendahl, Pushkin and Balzac among them, crossed international borders to inspire new homegrown styles of literary realism. The trend took hold in Italy in the 1870s where it was promoted by the authors Luigi Capuana and Giovanni Verga under the banner of verismo, the Italian word for realism, and drew inspiration from the naturalism of Émile Zola and his disciples. Verga's short story Cavalleria rusticana ('Rustic chivalry') and the play that arose from it set the foundations for a new wave of Italian operas, with Pietro Mascagni's Cavalleria rusticana serving as the genre's enduring model.