After the sometimes very densely woven musical sound fabrics and musical structures created with electronic instruments that characterized my previous albums, I turned to reduction, in order to express the same thing with the fewest and most natural means, yet with the least loss. The result of this creative endeavour was the album Why The Wings?

I have removed the virtual spaces from the music, letting go of chanting echoes, even noises that become music, or any form of rhythm section. Instead, there is silence and only one space, the real one. The space in which the sounds were born, as they sounded at the moment of recording.

In the center of Budapest, in the church of the Bartók Béla Unitarian Parish. This space echoed the sound of his own organ, Veronika Szász’s singing and Péter Cseh’s guitar playing, and it is the memory of this music-making that is immortalized on this album. In its original and purest form, it preserves the moment manifested as sound and shows how they interacted there, leaving the silence, condensing into music and returning to the silence.

Veni (Veronika Szász). Vocals
Péter Cseh, Acoustic Guitar

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Miguel Ulla, Countertenor & Percussion
Carlos Cantero, Theorbo & Baroque Guitar

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In addition to being the 100th anniversary, the 2018 Festival marked the final time that Sir Stephen Cleobury, the College’s longstanding Director of Music, would lead the service before his retirement in September 2019. During his tenure, Cleobury introduced the tradition of commissioning a new carol each year, and this release includes the world premiere of O mercy divine, written by current Master of the Queen’s Music, Judith Weir.

Captured in the highest quality and presented in a stunning hardback book with over 50 pages of notes, commentary and photography documenting the festival’s legacy, A Festival of Nine Lessons & Carols: The Centenary Service is the definitive account of the anniversary and the opportunity to experience a once in a lifetime piece of musical history.

Choir of King’s College, Cambridge
Henry Websdale & Dónal McCann, Organ Scholars
Guy Johnston, Cello Soloist
Sir Stephen Cleobury, Director

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But for Christmas Eve 2020, in the face of a global pandemic, this uniquely long-running tradition was interrupted. It was not possible to hold a live service for a congregation in the Chapel or around the world. Instead, a full service, with lessons, carols, organ voluntaries and prayers, was recorded in an empty Chapel with the Choir of King’s College spread out around the stalls. For its millions of listeners, the broadcast meant the continuation of a Christmas tradition in a year when so many were without their friends and family, and without so much of what makes Christmas special.

This album contains music from the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols together with a selection of specially recorded tracks. It marks the beginning of a new era for the Choir of King’s College under the direction of Daniel Hyde, with this his first full album at King’s since his appointment in 2019.

The Choir of King’s College, Cambridge 
Matthew Martin – organ 
Directed by Daniel Hyde 

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2021 NativeDSD Album of the Year Award – Classical Guitar

On Take Me Along (Ta’ Mig Med), guitarist Jesper Sivebæk plays the music of rock musician Kim Larsen on Classical Guitar. Kim Larsen – the much-loved Danish rock musician and multi-artist – captured – in music and words – the Danish soul. With 500 recorded songs and 40 albums he was known by Danes of all ages.

Jesper Sivebæk, Guitarist, and head of guitar department at The Royal Academy of Music in Copenhagen, had two heroes in his youth: Andrés Segovia and Kim Larsen – and they have followed him ever since.

For more than 10 years Jesper Sivebæk has worked on the pieces on this album. With his vast experience he uses the possibilities of the guitar to the utmost and follows the classical tradition of making instrumental versions of folk songs – like in Miguel Llobet’s arrangements of Catalan folksongs, in Benjamin Britten’s English and Chinese folksongs arrangements, and in Bela Bartok’s Hungarian folk songs. Sivebæk is true both to the beauty and the simplicity of Kim Larsen’s songs, and to his instrument – the classical Spanish guitar. In these arrangements, classical guitar players around the globe now have 12 new pieces to discover and put on their concert programs.

Erik Jensen, journalist, and former musical editor at Politiken wrote:
“Kim Larsen was unrivalled at taking the big moments and feelings of existence and converting them into music and lyrics in a playful, direct language that Danes loved. In his songs we were able to mirror ourselves and be precisely the Danes we wanted to be free and brazen, willful, and provocative, but also poetic and elegant, sensitive, and standing shoulder to shoulder with those struggling in society.

It is also striking that because the Danes’ favorite artist had so many roles and forms of expression, people in Denmark often underestimate his most important capacity: that of a composer. Thanks to Sivebæk’s fine versions of some of the melodies, they can now stand beautifully and pure in their own right – without being ‘packaged’ in all the commotion and mythology that surrounded Kim Larsen.”

Jesper Sivebæk – Guitar

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World Premiere Recording

We hope that you will enjoy this World Premiere Recording of Carl Nielsen’s own 4 Handed Piano Arrangement of Espansiva. His orchestral works brought brilliantly to life through the musicianship and scholarship of Rikke Sandberg and Kristoffer Hyldig.

When Danish composer Carl Nielsen finished his Third Symphony, he spoke of the first movement as “a gust of energy and life-affirmation blown out into the wide world,” and called the finale of his Third Symphony “a hymn to work and the healthy activity of everyday life,” truly a sense of optimism all-too-rare for us denizens of the 21st century!

So, why a four-hand arrangement of an orchestral score you ask? In the days before mechanical recordings, four hand arrangements were both a delightful social activity and an invaluable means of making large-scale works available to gifted amateurs who might not otherwise have opportunity to hear them in concert as well as promote them to conductors and concert programmers. As pianist Rikke Sandberg and Nielsen scholar Niels Bo Foltmann describe in the booklet notes, the discovery of the manuscript of Nielsen’s OWN arrangement “Sinfonia Espansiva” was itself a tale of luck and diligent librarianship.

Rikke Sandberg, Piano
Kristoffer Hyldig, Piano

Review from Classical Source

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Click here for the DSD Bundle of Volumes I, II and III.

“Choppy and no legato”! This was Beethoven’s description of Mozart’s playing years after the latter’s death. The way we hear Mozart nowadays has become such a cliché, it’s virtually impossible to ever dream of Mozart today being played in the way Beethoven describes. Nor are we able to hear all his originality when it is always played the same, clichéd way. No one could ever be more qualified than Beethoven to make this call, therefore this is arguably the closest we will ever come to a ‘recording’ of Mozart’s playing. The sweet, pretty, right-handed (where everything in the left hand is nothing more than a mere accompaniment) playing, with all those competition fingers smoothly & effortlessly ironing out all Mozart’s eccentricities, has become the norm, where repeated phrases and whole sections are always played exactly the same way!

Recently listening to one of the greats of our time playing K284, I naturally found the playing wonderful, though unexpectedly observed myself admiring this much more than Mozart’s actual music. I think this sums up my basic philosophy about Mozart; his music today has become just a vehicle for beautiful, smooth piano/orchestral/instrumental playing, instead of Mozart’s music – with all it’s effervescent eccentricities, it’s joie de vivre, it’s extemporaneous, spontaneous qualities, plus its hiccuped, jolted and jerky dynamics (especially in the slow movements) – all being at the centre of what one listens to.

We know Mozart was arguably the greatest improviser in history, and this element should be glaringly obvious in the performance of his music. A score posted to the publisher on Monday may well have been quite different had he sent it the following Friday, so nothing about his music should ever be set in stone! To play a phrase or whole section twice exactly the same way is a cardinal sin, and in my view, the music momentarily stagnates; it ceases to move forward when this happens.

In this cycle of the complete Mozart Piano Sonatas, I have – in some small way – tried to strip back all the Botox, the lip gloss, the false eyelashes, the mascara and makeup, and – though admittedly on a modern Steinway – get back to Mozart in the raw!

Gil Sullivan, Piano

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In discussing musicianship, one often highlights technical mastery. Yet what sets these performers apart is their ability to channel pure emotion into every note. Listen to Roosmarijn Tuenter’s enchanting viola introduction on Woman in Three Stages, Jeroen van Vliet’s tranquil piano on Madonna, Joost Lijbaart’s almost imperceptible percussive textures on Starry Night, and Sanne Rambags’ mesmerizing voice on Dance of Life.

Each moment brims with authenticity and depth, with silence and space as integral as the notes themselves. This is not easy music, yet it flows organically, like amount in stream in springtime. Premiered at the November Music Festival to critical acclaim – “Moments arise where, under the influence of goosebumps and moist eyes, we are driven to the edge of our seats” (JazzProg) – this suite is a deeply moving experience. Thanks to Frans de Rond’s extraordinary recording technique, described as “A Van Gogh painting come to life, vivid and multidimensional” this masterpiece has been immortalized. It offers listeners the rare chance to step into the music and experience it as if standing among the musicians themselves.

Sanne Rambags, Vocals & Compositions
Roosmarijn Tuenter, Viola, Vocals & Effects
Jeroen van Vliet, Piano & Effects
Joost Lijbaart, Drums & Percussion

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“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

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Mozart was not an innovator after the likes of Monteverdi, Beethoven or Wagner, partially due to music patrons and aristocratic hierarchies of the 18th Century not allowing composers freedom to engage in willful personal expression. The era of the fully ‘freelance’ composer was a generation hence.

Instead, composers were either in the employ of a church parish/diocese, or wealthy aristocrats/nobles, both of whom expected their composer-servants to conceive music within certain boundaries and styles, providing serviceable but pleasing material for specific occasions/ceremonies. Rarely were these compositions performed more than once or twice in a composer’s lifetime, while outbursts of individualism were viewed askance by most employers.

Very few examples of truly freelance composers existed before Mozart, who in fact came as close to freelance as any composer could before the French Revolution of 1789. Innovation therefore was also expected to be held at bay by composers, writers and artists in general, though we are in no doubt Mozart was composing at the very cutting edge of his time. His increasing use of chromatic harmonies and inner voicings, leading us into territories no other composer was capable of, including Haydn, audiences found eccentric, even mystifying. He often explores very dark places, occasionally for a few moments, sometimes for long periods, and in a few instances, entire works, and these chromatic harmonies appeared far more frequently in his later works.

One need not look for anything before, nor for a decade or more after, his Rondo in A minor (K511), or his Adagio in B minor (K540), to find more darkly introspective, melancholic, wrenching chromaticism! Even Mozart’s father complained of “excessive demands made on his listeners”. Conductor Nikolaus Harnoncourt says “Mozart was told he should write “easier” music with a less complicated elaboration of the individual voices – that it was difficult to follow and understand his music; that he should not go so far in his harmonies (hard, dissonant tensions), etc. Despite universal admiration for his genius (few critics doubted Mozart was the greatest composer of his time), these opinions reveal a certain dismay at the unsettling effects of his tonal language: could and should music convey such things?”.

Gil Sullivan, Steinway & Sons Model D Concert Grand Piano, Hamburg

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