Classical Music 142 Items

“Three Worlds: Music from Woolf Works” is the new album by Max Richter. The album is based on the Woolf Works compositions, originally created for the London Royal Ballet production of choreographer Wayne McGregor. This was production was inspired by the work and life of Virginia Woolf.

Max Richter (1966) is a German-born British composer who has been an influential voice in post-minimalist composition and in the meeting of contemporary classical and alternative popular musical styles since the early 2000s. Richter is classically trained, having graduated in composition from the Royal Academy of Music and studied with Luciano Berio in Italy.

Richter is well known for his prolific output: composing and recording his own music; writing for stage, opera, ballet and screen; producing and collaborating on the records of others; and collaborating with performance, installation and media artists. He has recorded seven solo albums and his music is widely used in cinema.

Brandon Cronenberg’s Possessor is one of the year’s best genre films. If you can handle its face-melting violence, then you are in for a visual and sonic treat.

It’s a visceral and unflinching assault on the senses that centers around Tanya Vos, a skille

Quirine Viersen returns to the cello suites of Johann Sebastian Bach.
She decided she wants to share with you the development she has gone
through after deep inner work. Just as the cello suites were a new journey
for Bach, they signify now the same for her. “Bach gave me, time and again,
life energy. Through his purity he brought me back to my own purity and
closer to the answer on my questions.” Due to the enormous development
in length and size of the structure, Viersen suspects that they have been
an experiment for Bach himself, possibly even study material. “The further
you get into the suites, the larger the intervals and bigger the technical
challenges. It demonstrates that Bach was becoming more and more aware
of the enormous possibilities.
Being awarded the Credit Suisse Young Artist Award, Quirine performed
with the Vienna Philharmonic under Zubin Mehta at the Lucerne Festival
in 2000. Since then, Quirine has played the cello concerto repertoire
with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra under Herbert Blomstedt, Ingo
Metzmacher and Bernard Haitink, St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra/
Valery Gergiev, Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra/Jean Fournet and
many others. After working and recording extensively with Silke Avenhaus
for almost twenty years, Quirine has sought out new duo collaborations.
Recitals with pianist Enrico Pace kicked off with great success at the
Concertgebouw, Amsterdam in 2017.
Bach Cello Suites is available as a limited edition of 500 individually
numbered copies on black vinyl.

Limited to 150 copies with a signed artprint by Lambert.

Patrick Higgins' new album Tocsin is full of thrilling opposites. It is a masterclass of visceral genre-bending sounds that are physical and delicate at the same time. Over the course of three large compositions, the listener is brought on a journey of constant surprise, as when the sound of violins dissolves into a halo of pure noise, more at home in an underground electronics show than anything that appears on a concert stage. The performers include the Wet Ink Ensemble, hailed as the 'Best Classical Ensemble of 2018'; acclaimed pianist Vicky Chow, 'one of our era's most brilliant pianists,"; and the Mivos Quartet, 'one of America's most daring and ferocious new-music ensembles.

Toronto keyboardist R. Grunwald has played on sessions for hundreds of musicians, and has served as bandleader for jazz/pop chanteuse Jill Barber and country/folk songwriter Donovan Woods for the better part of a decade. Now he's ready to step onto the public stage with his own music'alone. Oma is an evocative and deeply personal solo piano record, inspired in part by the life story of his 96-year-old grandmother, a Holocaust survivor and pianist. Drawing from Erik Satie, Nils Frahm and others, Grunwald refers to his intensely melodic compositions as 'extended minimalism.'

'After quitting piano, it was my Oma who inspired me to get back into it. She survived the 2nd world war moving from town to town, hiding from the Nazis, and the Russians in Poland. Music was the one thing that tied her young life together. This music is a tribute to her.'

Enjoy in a quiet environment.

Compilation of our favorite Arvo Pärt pieces. All sparse and beautiful arrangements. Some solo piano pieces, some duets with piano, violin cello and viola and one string quartet. The pieces on this record are all unique to the style of Arvo Pärt - deceptively simple compositions that force you to live in the moment you are listening to them. A Pärt quote from the back of the record - "You can kill people with sound. And if you can kill, then maybe there is also the sound that is opposite of killing. And the distance between these two points is very big. And you are free -- you can choose. In art everything is possible, but everything is not necessary." This record comes in a beautiful "tip on" old school cover with metallic gold foil and features an incredible painting from the 16th century manuscript Kometenbuch.

"In the Understage area of the Alexandra Trianti Hall, the musical saw in the hands of Nikos Giousef, and accompanied by piano, samplers and analog synthesizers, is transformed into a voice. ‘An otherworldly child’s voice’, ‘a Siren’s voice’ or ‘a castrato voice’, as it has been described, it easily climbs to tonic heights that the human voice can only reach with great effort." The pieces chosen for the program reflect this criterion, with works such as the aria “Erbarme Dich, Mein Gott” from the oratorio of J. S. Bach's “St Matthew Passion”, “Ave Maria” from Franz Schubert's “Ellens Gesang Iii”, H. Purcell's “Music for a while” as well as choral works like “Lacrimosa” from W. A. Mozart's Requiem and the First part (Grave) from G. B. Pergolesi's “Stabat Mater”. S. Rachmaninov's “Vocalise” is also a very interesting choice for musical saw, a song without lyrics as it is. The program also includes two works by greek composers, Ioannis Planiteros's “Ina ti”, written in the 17th century and still performed nowadays by local choirs in Zakynthos, and “ The Trawler” from Nikos Skalkotas's popular ballet “The Sea”, as a tribute to the great composer on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of his death. George Katsanos, in three ambient tracks of the album, is really traveling us in the mysterious amazing music world of "Adagios from the Underground". Nikos Giousef soprano and baritone musical saw Irene Tiniakou piano George Katsanos Moog synthesizer, music box, kalimba, effects

Henrik Schwarz and !K7 are proud to announce a collaboration that will bare many different musical fruits. The first of these is a brand new label called Between Buttons, curated by Henrik and focused on acoustic sounds and contemporary compositions. Between Buttons will be in partnership with !K7’s own neo-classical hub 7K!, and will kick off with a new mini LP by Schwarz entitled Works Piano, followed by an EP entitled Aphorisms by Syrian artists Khaled Kurbeh & Raman Khalaf Ensemble. Mixing up old and new technologies, experimental and more classical approaches, the label will see Schwarz forge new paths in his own work, as well as curating material from the peers he has worked with over the last 15 years. Mainly made up of acoustic sounds, piano, string quartets, self-built instruments, percussion and intriguing classicist elements with a modern twist, there will be EPs from piano virtuoso Bugge Wesseltoft, as well as other electronic producers wanting to show themselves in a different, more 'unplugged' light. “In these times of constant turbo mode, likes and thumbs-up, we need to go back to basics,” says Henrik. “We want to move away from the idea that relentless hasty productivity is a must, and instead take time to create space, to let ideas mature and to focus the mind on subtler sounds.”
Works Piano will be a four track mini album that uses a Yamaha Disklavier as the starting point and reimagines it, reworks it and alters it with various digital and recording technologies. One track is a created with a reactive algorithm and one is composed purely from altered and processed piano sounds.

Springing from body of work spanning decades, defined by a rigorously singular and adventurous approach to sound, cellist, composer, and improvisor, Okkyung Lee, returns with ‘Yeo-Neun’. Her first outing with Shelter Press, and arguably her most ground-breaking and unexpected album to date.