Cambini: Sei Trii concertanti Op. 26

It is quite likely that Giuseppe Cambini influenced the Parisian milieu with his typically Italian originality. He is regarded as a pre-Romantic composer, not only because he anticipated the era of Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann and Chopin, but above all because of his search for expression. This is the “Italian-style Romanticism” that Boccherini had forestalled in his isolation at the Spanish court.

Cambini wrote 110 quintets, 149 string quartets, and a varied quantity of other works now generally neglected in spite of their contemporary popularity.

Britten: Complete Works for Piano & Orchestra

“Steven Osborne and Ilan Volkov launch into the Piano Concerto's opening 'Toccata' at a headlong pace… For all the remarkable velocity, the playing has weight and incisiveness too, and Osborne's way with the two central movements is equally sure. Diversions... a beautifully devised single-movement set of variations presents Britten's inventiveness at its most elegant. Osborne and the orchestra do this neglected jewel excellent justice.” --BBC Music Magazine, September 2008 ****

Gramophone Awards 2009 Best of Category - Concerto

“…throughout the disc, Osborne and his colleagues make the best possible case for pieces which have tended to be placed on the outer fringes of the Britten canon.” --Gramophone Magazine, October 2008

“Osborne exults in Britten’s dazzlingly pianistic writing, and we get to hear the original 1938 version of the concerto’s third movement, a dazzlingly beautiful Recitative and Aria … a thrilling disc” --Sunday Times

“Commissioned as a 24-year-old to compose and perform a piano concerto for the 1938 Proms, Britten played safe. None of the edginess he might have filched from Bartók or Stravinsky, no Bergian angst: instead, the models are Prokofiev, Shostakovich and Ravel, and in these terms he doesn't miss a trick, at least before the finale's rather perfunctory final gallop. Most of the piece takes a genuinely fresh look at pianistic conventions, and Steven Osborne yields nothing to the great Sviatoslav Richter in the punchiness and fine-tuned filigree of his playing. No skating over the surface here, with Ilan Volkov and the BBC Scottish SO adept at teasing out the music's symphonic subtext, as well as its piquant orchestral effects.

Britten replaced the original slow movement in 1945, possibly because it spent too much time in waltz-like regions already visited in the second movement. This disc adds it anyway, alongside two other scores for piano and orchestra.
Young Apollo (1939) was not heard for half a century after its premiere, perhaps discarded by Britten because its fanfare-like material was more effectively deployed in Les illuminations (also 1939). It's a quirky piece, difficult to programme, a euphorically unguarded response to Keats's vision of male beauty in Hyperion.

Diversions is on a much grander scale, its style making even clearer those debts to Mahler which Britten had allowed to surface now and again in the concerto. The multifarious challenges to the single-handed soloist create moments of strong emotional depth and, as throughout the disc, Osborne and his colleagues make the best possible case for pieces which have tended to be placed on the outer fringes of the Britten canon. The recordings, made in Glasgow's Henry Wood Hall, have ample depth of sonority and vividness of colour.” --Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

Piazzolla: Adios Nonino

The brilliant Argentine musician Astor Piazzolla, who revolutionised the traditional tango through his use of jazz elements, counterpoint, extended harmonies and dissonance, has constantly appealed to wide audiences, as well as fascinating classical musicians. Here Astoria (string quintet, piano, accordion), led by Christophe Delporte, gives a delightfully lively rendering, capturing the rhythm and all the lyricism and charm of Piazzolla’s tango nuevo.

Radolt: Viennese Lute Concertos

Wenzel Ludwig Edler von Radolt’s collection of lute music entitled ”To my most true and confiding friend”, inclined both to the merry and to the sad humors, herewith in the company of other faithful vassals of our innermost sensibility’ was printed in 1701 in Vienna by J(oh)ann Michael Nestler and bears a dedication to the then‚ Roman King’ Josef I. Radolt was of Austro-Italian aristocratic descent. He was born and died in Vienna. According to his own account, he spent his life ”so allured by the beguiling countenance of most pleasurable music, as to dedicate the course of my life to her“. 

The ‘Most true and confiding friend’ is the only work of Radolt that survives today. Unusual in the part books are Radolt’s meticulous fingerings for the right hand that give us a precise insight into the style of lute playing current in the imperial city of the period. This extensive collection of 12 so-called ‘Concerti’ contains much that is remarkable about the Viennese Lute Concerto, a popular genre of the day comprising violins, lute and bass. The variety of scoring is striking, from four-part string writing with three obligato lutes of various sizes, to the relatively intimate combination of single violin, obligato viola da gamba (viol), lute and bass. In another concerto the composer suggests the addition of a wind instrument.

Veracini: Sonatas

“Veracini was part of a European constellation of virtuoso violinist composers which included Vivaldi, Leclair, Locatelli and Pisendel during the first half of the 18th century. John Holloway plays with all his customary understanding of Baroque style and is sympathetically underpinned by his excellent continuo partners.” --BBC Music Magazine, December 2005 *****

 Gramophone Magazine Editor's Choice - April 2006

“John Holloway's… playing is as intelligent and free-flowingly musical as ever, with each movement thoughtfully characterised, and he is backed by a first-rate continuo team who really come into their own in the almost orchestrally rich diversity of textures in the Op 2 sonata (the muted fiddle, pizzicato cello and lute-stopped harpsichord of the Andante moderato are a delight). A Baroque-violin must.” --Gramophone Magazine, April 2006

Albinoni: Double Oboe Concertos & String Concertos Volume 1

"...Simon Standage’s survey of oboe and double-oboe concertos on Chandos is top choice in this repertoire. Anthony Robson plays all eight solo concertos from Op 7 and 9 using a period oboe. His tone is most appealing and his phrasing and musicianship are second to none. Simon Standage provides alert accompaniments, also using original instruments, and creates bright, athletic string timbres. Catherine Latham joins him to complete the Collegium Musicum 90 sets of Op 7 & 9, including the works from strings. The artistic results are very lively and refreshing." --The Penguin Guide - 1000 Greatest Classical Recordings 2011-12

A Second Of Silence

The Knights are an orchestra of friends from a broad spectrum of the New York music world who cultivate collaborative music-making and creatively engage audiences in the shared joy of musical performance. This is the Knights second album for Ancalagon Records, and follows their 2011 Juno Award-winning recording of Mozart with Scott & Lara St. John. The album features music of Schubert, Satie, Glass, and Feldman, composers who either influenced or were influenced by the great playwright Samuel Beckett.

"The future of classical music in America." --Los Angeles Times

The starting point for this intriguing programme from young US ensemble The Knights is Morton Feldman's suggestion that part of the magic of Schubert is "that kind of hovering, as if you're in a register you've never heard".

Accordingly, The Knights have sought to intersperse works by Schubert amongst subsequent pieces reflecting that hovering characteristic, from Debussy's arrangements of two of Satie's "Gymnopédies" to Philip Glass's four-part "Company". It's a daring conceit which works beautifully, particularly the section which elides between Satie's "Gymnopédie II", Schubert's 3rd and Feldman's "Madame Press Died Last Week At Ninety", a sequence which seems to erase time within a single fluid flourish.