Singapore Symphony Orchestra Shui - Symphonies & Orchestral Music - SUPER-AUDIO CD [Super Audio CD (SACD)]

SAMPA THE GREAT / AS ABOVE SO BELOW - Having started her professional career outside of her home of Zambia, Sampa the Great returned at the beginning of the pandemic to Africa. As Above So Below is the result of this return to her roots, embracing the sounds and themes of her origins. Sampa has reconnected with a different side of herself, one closer to the younger artistry that was nourished growing up. Now, in an age of authenticity, meet a 360 Sampa, a higher version of herself. No mask on, or role to play. Album Tracks 1. Shadows 2. Lane (With Denzel Curry) 3. Never Forget (With Chef 187, Mwané, and Tio Nason) 4. Mask on (With Joey Badass) 5. Bona 6. Can I Live? (With Witch) 7. Imposter Syndrome (With James Sakala) 8. Tilibobo 9. Lo Rain (With Mwanjé) 10. Idgaf (With Kojey Radical) 11. Let Me Be Great (With Angélique Kidjo)

Having spent much of his childhood in Latvia, where he also began his violin studies, Vadim Gluzman makes a return to his roots with this disc of music by Peteris Vasks. The ample programme (+ 84 minutes!) opens with the violin concerto 'Distant Light', which in the two decades since it was composed has become a modern classic. The composer has described it as 'a song, coming from silence and floating away into silence, full of idealism and love, at times melancholy, at times dramatic.' For the concerto, Gluzman found support from the strings of the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra under Hannu Lintu, just across the Baltic See from Latvia. For the other works on the disc he is however joined by Latvian colleagues and friends. These include the violinist Sandis Šteinbergs who appears in the duo Summer Dances, one of Vasks' more carefree and buoyant pieces. This recent work in seven brief movements is, in the composer's own words, the musical equivalent of a naïvist painting. In comparison, the Piano Quartet from 2001 is one of his longest and most imposing chamber works. Beginning with a perfect fifth in the piano, it takes the listener on an emotional roller-coaster, through hectic dances and dramatic songs to a typical 'Vasks ending' with a distant light offering a tempered hope. In the quartet, Vadim Gluzman leads an ensemble consisting of Ilze Klava, Reinis Birznieks, and Angela Yoffe.

The works on this recording were written at various periods in Claude Debussy's life, and reflect different aspects of him from a young man stylistically unsure of himself to the confident maître, from a jobbing composer struggling to fulfill sometimes incongruous commissions to a man worn down by illness and outer events. The disc opens with Printemps - a work originally for choir, piano and orchestra written in 1887 during Debussy's stay in Italy as a winner of the Prix de Rome, but only published 25 years later in an orchestration made by Henri Büsser under the composer's supervision. Three of the works that follow were commissions - the Rapsodie from a lady saxophonist, the Marche écossaise from an American general of Scottish descent and the Deux Dances from the instrument-maker Pleyel wanting to market a new model for a chromatic harp. Chronologically the last work on the programme, Berceuse héroique is Debussy's contribution to a tribute to the king of Belgium at the beginning of the Great War. Having rejected the idea of writing a heroic march in the safety of his own home he instead opted for a lullaby for piano, which he orchestrated the following year. The closing work on the disc, however, is Nocturnes, for which Debussy borrowed the title from a series of atmospheric paintings by James Whistler. Made up of three equally atmospheric movements, it is today one of Debussy's best-loved compositions for orchestra. Nocturnes also forms the end of a trilogy of Debussy albums from the Singapore Symphony Orchestra and Lan Shui. Critical acclaim for the team range from 'superb' (BBC Music Magazine, about La mer) and 'unquestionably world-class' (Klassik-Heute. De, about the orchestra) to 'a magnificent disc' - the French magazine Classica's verdict on the three ballet scores Jeux, Khamma and La Boîte à joujoux.