Russel C. Mikkelson - Winds of Nagual / Various - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Andreas Hammerschmidt is undoubtedly the most unjustly neglected composer of seventeenth-century Lutheran Germany. Very few recordings have been devoted to him, even though his music was widely published during his lifetime. The fifteen or so published collections offer a great variety of works, which, like those of his famous contemporary Heinrich Schutz, illustrate the fusion between the Lutheran polyphonic tradition and the various stylistic influences of the Italian Baroque. For this musical portrait of Hammerschmidt, Vox Luminis has drawn on several of these collections in order to offer as rounded a picture as possible of the variety of the composer's styles. The entire programme is structured around texts for Passiontide and Easter, introduced by an intensely moving madrigalian motet on the death of Christ, Ach Jesus stirbt.

Classical Winds - Wind Music [COMPACT DISCS] date 01/11/2011

Throughout WINDSWEPT, the Boston-based Arcadian Winds project a storytelling experience that is joyful, moving, and meaningful to hear. The three-movement Woodwind Quintet by Canadian composer Jan Järvlepp starts off WINDSWEPt. The first movement, InchRollercoaster,Inch invokes a childlike whimsy with a noticeable pop influence. This is followed by InchSolitude,Inch a more mature and romantic movement of music. Woodwind Quintet concludes with InchPyrotechnics,Inch a piece rooted in texture. Sonorous Earth, written by Miami composer Ferdinando DeSena, offers a down-to-earth, stable tone. While offering no less lyricism in his compositions, DeSena's storytelling is built from his ability to interweave these instruments in the lower tonal register. Stumpery, the third piece, is also based on this very concept of interwoven melodies. Composed by David MacDonald, the inspiration behind the piece is the complex network of a stumpery, or a type of garden in which the roots of trees tangle around one another. While the roots are represented by the linear melodies of the instruments, MacDonald establishes a unique ambient sound incorporating reverberations of the instruments, emphasizing the space left by the tendrils of the roots. Dirge & Second Line by Craig Peaslee experiments with the dictation of the New Orleans jazz style. Using a classical chamber ensemble, he juxtaposes some of the intricacies of classical notation with the loose, laid-back energies of the jazz music he works with. Concluding the album, Kenneth Kuhn's Variations on a Commoner Theme, No. 1 builds a musical story of the quest of a theme in the lowest class of musical hierarchy seeking to become noble. The wind quintet chronicles the various attempts via varying personalities of tempo, key change, and tone. The mood and melody start from the lowest class, build themselves up with grandiose ambitions, and