Universal Eyes - Four Variations On Artificial Society - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

An unrivalled collection of lesser-known 20th-century piano concertos in both Romantic and modern styles, in definitive recordings by Dutch artists.This survey of Dutch piano concertos actually begins in 1886, with the A minor work by Carl Smulders (1863-1934). Smulders sidesteps convention by opening not with a grand gesture but a slow, expectant build-up, breaking the template for A minor piano concertos established first by Schumann and then Grieg. The piano writing itself has a lyrically Griegian flavour, however, which Ivo Janssen brings out in this 1994 recording. The collection steps confidently into the last century with a glittering 13-minute concerto of 1927 by Willem Pijper, and a punchy neoclassical concertino from 1928 by Henriette Bosmans, who brings sumptuous, Rachmaninoff-style lyricism to the contrasting episodes. The shadows of Bartok and Ravel continue to fall on Kees van Baaren's 1934 Concertino, and Leo Smit's 1937 concerto for piano and wind ensemble. Another chronological leap forward takes the collection to 1964, with a second concerto by Van Baaren, who by now had adopted an angular serial idiom in tune with the times. From the same year, Henk Badings' Concerto for Two Pianos casts a retrospective look at the age of expressionist film scores in a dark and turbulent but conventionally structured work. Coming further up to date, the collection embraces the personal engagements with both modernism and the concerto tradition crafted by Tristan Keuris in 1980, and Ton de Leeuw in 1990. Finally, the 1991 concerto by Jan van Vlijmen encapsulates the musical journey of the 20th century into modernism and then towards an accommodation of it's principles with tonality. Like several other composers in this set, the name of Van Vlijmen deserves to be known far wider than his native Netherlands, and this superbly prepared recording presents the most compel

Julie London - About The Blues + 4 Bonus Tracks [VINYL LP] Bonus Tracks, Ltd Ed, 180 Gram, Spain - Import date 08/11/2017

Acclaimed for it's 'rhythmic verve, spontaneity and riot of splendid colors' (Pizzicato magazine on Giovanni Picchi's Canzoni da Sonar con ogni sorte d'istromenti), Concerto Scirocco now immerses itself in the English musical scene of the Elizabethan era, and more especially the genres of the masque and the fantasia. Great cultural ferment swept through England in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The courts invested huge sums of money in the production of 'masques', entertainments combining music, dance, theatre and stage design in a sumptuous display of grandeur. At the same time, the first public playhouses were founded in the suburban districts of London The Theatre, the Red Lion, the Rose, the Swan, and in 1599 Shakespeare's Globe. Music played a key role in accompanying this eccentric burst of cultural vitality the asymmetrical fantasias of John Hilton, the monumental canzonas and pavanes of William Brade, the impudent, rhetorical masques of Robert Johnson and others, reveal an era of unparalleled musical invention and exploration.