Yoel Levi - Daphnis Et Chloe - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

The first studio album from Car Seat Headrest in five years, 'The Scholars.' From Shakespeare to Mozart to classical opera, Car Seat Headrest's Will Toledo pulled from the classics when devising the lyrics and story arc of 'The Scholars,' while the music draws, carefully, from classic rock story song cycles such as The Who's 'Tommy' and David Bowie's 'Ziggy Stardust.' InchOne thing that can be a struggle with rock operas is that the individual songs kind of get sacrificed for the flow of the plot,Inch Toledo notes. InchI didn't want to sacrifice that to make a very fluid narrative. And so this is sort of a middle ground where each song can be a character and it's like each one is coming out on center stage and they have their song and dance.Inch While Car Seat Headrest started as Toledo's solo project, the four-piece is now fully a band. InchWhat we've been doing more of in recent years is just taking the pulses of each other.Inch says Toledo. InchIt didn't really feel to me like things got in sync in an inner feeling way until this record, with that internal communal energy. And it's become that band feeling for me in a much more realized way. That's been a big journey.Inch It is a journey that listeners will want to embark on again and again as they absorb and discover the rich depths and clanging resonances of 'The Scholars.'

Almost every pianist, it seems, wants to record Ravel, but virtually all of them have overlooked a treasure trove of music for solo piano the composer's short score for Daphnis et Chloé. Some parts of it are unplayable by a single pair of hands, but with judicious arrangement this working draft can be mined for diamonds. Only a handful of musicians have made their own suites for solo piano; here the Lithuanian pianist Indre Petrauskaite, carefully observing Ravel's original textures, has produced something new a 40-minute concert suite of unsuspected Ravel for solo piano that also respects the dramatic outline of the original ballet. The other, more familiar works here extend the ideas of antiquity and transcription. Indre Petrauskaite recently performed this programme at City University of London for the completion of her DMA degree.

Yoel Levi & the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra give lively yet poetic readings of these popular, spirited works for orchestra. Originally written as duo-piano pieces, the Slavonic Dances are among the most popular of Dvorak's works for orchestra.