I have always dreamt of playing it in concert and recording it, and from the bottom of my heart I would like to thank all those who made this album possible, starting with my friend Frédéric Chaslin, the key figure in this project, firstly for conducting the Elgar Concerto, then for arranging a highly original instrumentation of the Delius Suite, and also for playing its piano part.– Nicolas Dautricourt

“If you want to know who, for me, is the greatest living composer, I’ll tell you without hesitation – it’s Elgar, whom I place on the same level as my idols Beethoven and Brahms!” So said the great virtuoso Kreisler.’ Nicolas Dautricourt continues: ‘This Concerto, with its unbridled lyricism and unique proportions, is an Everest for any violinist.’  In Elgar: Violin Concerto & Salut d’amour (Greetings of Love) and Delius: Suite his first recording for Channel Classics, the French violinist brings together three works by two English composers.

In 1888, in the same year Elgar wrote the famous Salut d’amour for his fiancée Caroline Alice Roberts, Frederick Delius composed his Suite for Violin and Orchestra, one of his very first works. The Suite, which only received its premiere in 1984, is heard here in this insightful arrangement by Frédéric Chaslin for violin, piano and string quartet.

Nicolas Dautricourt, Violin
Frédéric Chaslin – Piano & Direction
BBC National Orchestra of Wales
Capriccio Quartet

The post Elgar: Violin Concerto & Salut d’amour (Greetings of Love) and Delius: Suite appeared first on NativeDSD Music.

Rhorer tells us that his interpretation pays close attention to the question of tempi, which have often become progressively slower and heavier since the post-Romantic period. The tempi have ‘a direct bearing on the vocal comfort of the singers, since breath control is one of the great difficulties of this work’, he says.

For this recording, he has called in a quartet of top-flight soloists along with the Audi Jugendchorakademie, a remarkable German youth choir founded in 2007. In conjunction with his period-instrument orchestra, soon to celebrate its twentieth anniversary, they offer a passionate vision of Beethoven’s masterpiece.

Audi Jugendchorakademie
Le Cercle de l’Harmonie
Jérémie Rhorer, Conductor

The post Beethoven: Missa Solemnis appeared first on NativeDSD Music.

Goodbye, Mr. Chips is a Double Album in Stereo and 5.1 Channel Surround Sound DSD that is Gordon Getty’s fourth opera. This is a new studio recording featuring Nathan Granner, Melody Moore, Lester Lynch, and Kevin Short, as well as the San Francisco Boys Chorus and Barbary Coast Orchestra, under the baton of Dennis Doubin.

Based on the popular 1934 novella Goodbye, Mr. Chips and other stories by James Hilton, the opera tells the heart-warming story of a teacher at Brookfield, an all- boys English boarding school to which “Chips” dedicates most of his adult life. The opera chronicles Chips’ story of love, loss and learning over his decades-long tenure at Brookfield. Along the way, we’re reminded of the difference one good teacher can make as we watch Chips and his children, “thousands of them, and all boys,” enrich each other’s lives.

Writing both the music and libretto of his opera, Getty has shaped Hilton’s cherished story into a memory play, in which the protagonist looks back on important episodes of his life. The score encapsulates the intimacy of the plot and the nuances of its characters. Just like Chips, Getty treats each personality with a profound understanding of – and love for – the human spirit, with all its strengths and flaws. For Getty, after decade of fascination with the character and story of Mr. Chips, the completion of this opera is the realization of a long-held dream.

Gordon Getty is a PENTATONE artist with a vast discography. Goodbye, Mr. Chips is his fourth opera recording on the label, after Plump Jack (2012), Usher House (2013) and The Canterville Ghost (2015). Melody Moore, Nathan Granner, Lester Lynch and Kevin Short have been featured on many PENTATONE recordings. Conductor Dennis Doubin and the San Francisco Boys Chorus make their label debut.

Barbary Coast Orchestra
San Francisco Boys Chorus
Dennis Doubin, Conductor

Cast (in order of appearance)
Merrivale – Lester Lynch, baritone
Chips – Nathan Granner, tenor
Kathie – Melody Moore, soprano
Faulkner – Michael Jankosky, tenor
West – Bruce Rameker, baritone
Ralston – Kevin Short, bass-baritone
Rivers – Kevin Short, bass-baritone
Grayson – Kevin Korth, baritone
Maynard – Samuel Faustine, tenor
Linford – Melody Moore, soprano

The post Goodbye, Mr. Chips [Double Album] appeared first on NativeDSD Music.

Bartók is also a dreamer of reality: he takes his listeners into a trance-like state, pushing the limits of the human nervous system to a kind of self-analysis, a psychological abyss. The extreme colours and almost hallucinogenic chords of his music go beyond the art of the French Impressionists. His use of form draws deeply from the classical style, while his voicing recalls the influence of the baroque, most notably Bach.

Bartók’s unique musical world, illuminated by the lantern of a genius, can perhaps be said without exaggeration to be a musical mediation of the constant re-creation of the world. This music captivates the listener again and again.

Márta Ábrahám, Mustang violin (manufactured by Bence Holló)
László Borbély, Steinway Model D Concert Grand Piano, Hamburg

The post Bartók Sonatas for Violin and Piano [Pure DSD] appeared first on NativeDSD Music.

“My love and passion for Chopin came – as is often the case – in my youth, when that wealth of bountiful, romantically beautiful music went straight to my young heart. His melodiousness was irresistible, like a delicious, overflowing box of assorted chocolates. The Polonaises in particular had that certain passionate, fiery appeal which also spoke to my teenage youth, and I have been playing most of these Polonaises and the Bolero for as long as 55 years. I have included them many, many times in recital programs all over the world these past 40 years, including Carnegie Hall in both my performances there. I also performed all six Polonaises in recitals throughout 2010 for the 200th anniversary of Chopin’s birth.

Above all, if no others are, these Polonaises are truly about the most iconic of all Chopin’s works! Indeed, 2 of them – the “Military” and the “Héroïque” are amongst the most universally famous, most recognizable, most beloved pieces of music in the world. From the two Op.26 Polonaises (1834/5) through to Op.53 (1842), we watch them grow in nobility, majesty, and originality, until reaching Op.53 – his ‘late period’, which represents his most perfect, rapturous, and sublime works.”

Gil Sullivan, Piano

The post Chopin Polonaises & Bolero [Pure DSD] appeared first on NativeDSD Music.

The lively “tempo” is interrupted by caesuras, often concluded with expressive trills. The section “calme, doux, chanté” surprises us with prolonged figurations that suspend time. From then on, both types of material are combined until the slow and sustained dissolution of the music merges into silence.

From these five scores, the versatile and rigorous Gaman Ensemble aims to illustrate the fruitful and long-lived sound encounter between Spain and France without losing sight of the musical regionalisms that were forged in the final stages of Romanticism. Basque, Andalusian and Catalan popular references emerge more or less explicitly in the languages of the five composers.

On the other hand, as well as showing its commitment to contemporary creation through Ibarrondo’s work, Gaman Ensemble wants to contribute to the revaluation of the production and legacy of composers not yet sufficiently recognised, such as Nin or Guridi.

And all this, through the original and suggestive formation of the saxophone quartet, a mirror of contemporaneity.

Gaman Ensemble
Jesús Reneses, Soprano Saxophone
Carlos Zaragoza, Alto Saxophone
Daniel Sánchez, Tenor Saxophone
Luisma González, Baritone Saxophone

The post Gaman Ensemble appeared first on NativeDSD Music.

Advent and Christmas are for many people a time for light and hope and warmth. Yet the world around us is cold and turbulent. Wars are being fought. People are fleeing from their homes. Children are dying. Thousands of people lack food and medicine. Our prayers are for peace. We sing “Beautiful is our Earth! Glorious is God’s heaven!” as a protest song for peace and justice, the world being unjust.

During Advent many of us are fond of the familiar and much-loved Christmas carols as we remember them from our childhood, and as they have been sung for generations. There are carols in these traditional arrangements on this album, but there are others in completely new arrangements, made specially for Uranienborg Vokalensemble and for this recording.

Christmas can be a festival that intensifies our feelings – what is good seems even better, and what hurts feels even more painful. Perhaps we have lost someone close to us: can we then sing “Oh, Christmas, so cheerful”? We know that there are people who look forward to Christmas but at the same time dread it, and we believe that Kjetil Bjerkestrand’s arrangement brings out this element of equivocation and irony. The birth of Jesus – this is the message of Christmas! – a birth that changed the world for ever. May your Christmas be peaceful!

Uranienborg Vokalensemble
Elisabeth Holte, Conductor
Kjetil Bjerkestrand and Øystein Moen, Synthesizers & Samplers
Torun Torbo, Flute
Henriette Viktoria Eide Skagen, Organ

The post Fred Over Jorden (Peace To The World) appeared first on NativeDSD Music.

Busoni’s literary education and keen intellect allowed him to write the text of his operas himself, to correspond with the greatest figures of his time, and to publish some essential works, of which the most significant is the Entwurf einer neuen Ästhetik der Tonkunst (Sketch of a New Aesthetic of Music) (1907), in which he describes pioneering intuitions, such as the dodecaphonic system, microtonality, and new notation systems, and even makes predictions about electronic music. He was the inspirer of a new piano construction, namely the Imperial model of the Viennese piano manufacturer Bösendorfer, which was also used for this recording.

Giuseppe Mariotti- piano

The post Ferruccio Busoni-Transformations and Transfigurations appeared first on NativeDSD Music.

During those years, the arcane disciplines began to exert a significant influence on Busoni. He attended séances and became interested in occultism, spiritualism, and clairvoyance. He developed theories on the ability to see ghosts: humans could supposedly see— for brief moments—into the future or the past. “…It would be nothing more than a fleeting, uncertain glance cast—into the present or the past. Everything proceeds in the form of a circle, and so it must be for clairvoyance. It is a phenomenon similar to what happens at a radiotelegraphic station, which transmits to the same distance in all directions…”

Similarly, he explained his beliefs in extrasensory perceptions: we can therefore reasonably deduce that Busoni believed in the existence of entities and forces that are not rationally or empirically explainable but might nonetheless be known and perhaps mastered, in his case, also through musical experience. During his American tours, Busoni came into contact with Theosophical doctrines developed in the United States at the end of the century. They advocated a path of ethical and spiritual evolution that, through the progressive purification of motives and works, culminates in achieving an ideal of mystical perfection rich in all attributes of wisdom, serenity, beauty, and power: the aesthetic foundations of the “New Classicism” (Junge Klassizität), in other words, the return to simple, clear, and beautiful compositional patterns, are fully expressed in the Sonatina on the Nativity of Christ MCMXVII.

Giuseppe Mariotti- piano

The post Ferruccio Busoni-Tra Mistico e Occulto appeared first on NativeDSD Music.

Arnold Schoenberg, for example, who succeeded him as teacher of the composition class at the Berlin Academy of Music, found great support in his work through Busoni. Busoni’s literary education and keen intellect allowed him to write the text of his operas himself, to correspond with the greatest figures of his time, and to publish some essential works, of which the most significant is the Entwurf einer neuen Ästhetik der Tonkunst (Sketch of a New Aesthetic of Music) (1907), in which he describes pioneering intuitions, such as the dodecaphonic system, microtonality, and new notation systems, and even makes predictions about electronic music.
He was the inspirer of a new piano construction, namely the Imperial model of the Viennese piano manufacturer Bösendorfer, which was also used for this recording.

Giuseppe Mariotti- piano

The post Ferruccio Busoni: Musical Landscapes and Avant-Garde Visions appeared first on NativeDSD Music.