Naxos CDs have announced a price rise from January 2012. It's the second price rise in 14 years - the swine! From January 3rd the normal retail price will be £6-99, so stock up now with our Special Offer of Five Naxos Single CDs for £25 - that's a saving of £9-95 on the new prices !
Doubles count as two (obviously!) and special orders after December 31 won't be included in this offer.
Showing posts with label Naxos CDs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Naxos CDs. Show all posts
Saturday, 17 December 2011
Saturday, 3 July 2010
Naxos Notes
July releases include Mendelssohn's complete incidental music to A Midsummer Night's Dream, with spoken text and melodramas in English. However, it might be in a New Zealand accent, as it's the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra conducted by James Judd. Whatever your feelings about antipodean pronunciation of the Mother Tongue, the music is wonderful !
Ian Burnside, recently removed from Radio 3 in suspicious circumstances, accompnaies Roderick Williams in a disc of Songs by George Butterworth, a wonderful composer cut down in his prime in the First World War. Another English composer who deserves to be better-known is Cyril Scott, and his three sonatas for Violin and piano make up an enjoyable disc from Clare Howick and Sophie Rahman.
Other rarities to emerge this months include Cimarosa's Requiem, Casella's Second Symphony, Franz Schmidt's third, and Havergal Brian's Eleventh and Fifteenth. Piano music on disc from Ferdinand Ries (Beethoven's student and assistant), Anton Rubinstein, and finally, one of Arensky's Piano Pieces and Etudes.
Lovers of the Clarinet will be pleased to see a coupling of Copland's Concerto (one of my faves) with a Concerto by Robert Aldridge, of whom I for one, have never heard, but it's said to be "a direct descendant of the Copland". If it has anything approaching the haunting, magical atmospher of the Copland, it'll be a treat !
Ian Burnside, recently removed from Radio 3 in suspicious circumstances, accompnaies Roderick Williams in a disc of Songs by George Butterworth, a wonderful composer cut down in his prime in the First World War. Another English composer who deserves to be better-known is Cyril Scott, and his three sonatas for Violin and piano make up an enjoyable disc from Clare Howick and Sophie Rahman.
Other rarities to emerge this months include Cimarosa's Requiem, Casella's Second Symphony, Franz Schmidt's third, and Havergal Brian's Eleventh and Fifteenth. Piano music on disc from Ferdinand Ries (Beethoven's student and assistant), Anton Rubinstein, and finally, one of Arensky's Piano Pieces and Etudes.
Lovers of the Clarinet will be pleased to see a coupling of Copland's Concerto (one of my faves) with a Concerto by Robert Aldridge, of whom I for one, have never heard, but it's said to be "a direct descendant of the Copland". If it has anything approaching the haunting, magical atmospher of the Copland, it'll be a treat !
Friday, 28 May 2010
Naxos - Busting out all Over !
The June releases from Naxos arrived this morning. First out of the box is a collection of Choral music by Eric Whitacre. Although still a relatively young man – he was born in 1970 - Whitacre’s music is becoming increasingly popular with choirs and choral societies. We’ve certainly sold hundreds of his choral parts in the last couple of years, with pieces like Lux Aurumque and Water Night leading the way. It’s interesting, beautiful, music with original textures and sonorities, set to a wide variety of texts. Performed by a top Canadian chamber choir, the Elora Festival Singers, conducted by Noel Edison, it’s a highly enjoyable fiver’s worth. (That’s if you buy three other Naxos CDs – you get four for twenty quid !)
Next we have a real rarity – the opera Lurline by one William Vincent Wallace, of whom I’m not ashamed to say I’d never heard. The setting of the opera is the Lorelei Rock in the Rhine, on which the siren Lurline played her enchanting harp to lure fishermen to a watery grave. Richard Bonynge has prepared a new performing edition of this work, which was declared a complete success by Vitorian theatre critics, and ran for a “substantial” number of performances. A double CD, at £9-99 – certainly one for lovers of opera rarities to investigate.
On more familiar territory, the next in the series of Haydn Masses features the ever popular Nelson Mass, and the St Nicholas Mass.
Beethoven String Quintets – surprisingly obscure – are unearthed by the Fine Arts Quartet, joined by Gil Sharon on Viola. The first, Opus 29 in C major comes between the well known opus 18 quartets and the Rasumovsky quartets. The second, Opus 104, is an arrangement of his early Piano Trio in C minor, and the Fugue in D major is a musical curiosity, written as an inducement to his publisher to make fewer printing errors.
Other highlights for June include Chansons de Mer by Charles-Marie Widor (yes, that Widor!), a collection of Sephardic Romances and Songs, a 3-CD set of Mozart’s Idomeneo, a historic recording of two operas by Gian Carlo Menotti, the Consul and Amelia al Ballo. And finally an intriguing collection of twentieth century music for Clarinet and Clarinet Ensemble entitled Clarinet Hive.
That’s just the ones that I picked out. There are 28 releases scheduled on Naxos for June. Anybody buying them all will get an extra-specially large discount !
Next we have a real rarity – the opera Lurline by one William Vincent Wallace, of whom I’m not ashamed to say I’d never heard. The setting of the opera is the Lorelei Rock in the Rhine, on which the siren Lurline played her enchanting harp to lure fishermen to a watery grave. Richard Bonynge has prepared a new performing edition of this work, which was declared a complete success by Vitorian theatre critics, and ran for a “substantial” number of performances. A double CD, at £9-99 – certainly one for lovers of opera rarities to investigate.
On more familiar territory, the next in the series of Haydn Masses features the ever popular Nelson Mass, and the St Nicholas Mass.
Beethoven String Quintets – surprisingly obscure – are unearthed by the Fine Arts Quartet, joined by Gil Sharon on Viola. The first, Opus 29 in C major comes between the well known opus 18 quartets and the Rasumovsky quartets. The second, Opus 104, is an arrangement of his early Piano Trio in C minor, and the Fugue in D major is a musical curiosity, written as an inducement to his publisher to make fewer printing errors.
Other highlights for June include Chansons de Mer by Charles-Marie Widor (yes, that Widor!), a collection of Sephardic Romances and Songs, a 3-CD set of Mozart’s Idomeneo, a historic recording of two operas by Gian Carlo Menotti, the Consul and Amelia al Ballo. And finally an intriguing collection of twentieth century music for Clarinet and Clarinet Ensemble entitled Clarinet Hive.
That’s just the ones that I picked out. There are 28 releases scheduled on Naxos for June. Anybody buying them all will get an extra-specially large discount !
Sunday, 18 April 2010
Some New CDs
We’ve just received the list of new releases for May from Naxos, and it looks like a much more interesting selection of music than they have managed of late.
Pride of place will no doubt go to the latest in the series of Shostakovich Symphonies from the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic conducted by Vasily Petrenko. This time it’s the dramatic and intense Symphony No 8, Come to think of it, you could describe a lot of Shostakovich like that.
The critical acclaim that greeted Symphonies 5, 9 & 11 from Petrenko and the Liverpool Phil means this is a must-hear recording. Anyway, I’ve always had a soft spot for the Liverpool Phil, as my Auntie Joyce played in it for years, and it was the first orchestra I ever heard live.
Another release that won’t escape the attention of the critics will be Marin Allsop’s reading of Dvorak 7 and 8, following on from her superb offering of the New World last year. She was one of Leonard Bernstein’s most successful pupils, and to my way of thinking, she learned what needed to be learned, and managed to avoid some of the excesses of the master. Perhaps you don’t agree, but it’ll be interesting to see if she can come up with a fresh take on both these symphonies. They are recordings of live performances with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra.
The disc I’ll be dipping into first, as long as it actually does arrive on time, will be Arthur Bliss’s Meditations on a Theme by John Blow, and his Metamorphic Variations, both completely new to me. The Meditations is apparently a kind of tribute to the generation cut down in the first world war, including the composer’s own brother. I’m hoping these pieces will turn out to be another of the unexpected treasures that Naxos produces from time to time. I’m still enjoying the Aviv Quartet’s amazing recording of Erwin Schulhoff’s two quartets that came out last month.
The last of my pick of the new discs is of music by Erno von Dohnanyi. If you’ve never heard of him, don’t let the name put you off – this is great, tuneful, ravishing orchestral music with a twinkle in its eye ! Listen to the Variations, and you’ll see why that word sprang to mind! I promise you’ll enjoy it....money back if not completely delighted!
Pride of place will no doubt go to the latest in the series of Shostakovich Symphonies from the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic conducted by Vasily Petrenko. This time it’s the dramatic and intense Symphony No 8, Come to think of it, you could describe a lot of Shostakovich like that.
The critical acclaim that greeted Symphonies 5, 9 & 11 from Petrenko and the Liverpool Phil means this is a must-hear recording. Anyway, I’ve always had a soft spot for the Liverpool Phil, as my Auntie Joyce played in it for years, and it was the first orchestra I ever heard live.
Another release that won’t escape the attention of the critics will be Marin Allsop’s reading of Dvorak 7 and 8, following on from her superb offering of the New World last year. She was one of Leonard Bernstein’s most successful pupils, and to my way of thinking, she learned what needed to be learned, and managed to avoid some of the excesses of the master. Perhaps you don’t agree, but it’ll be interesting to see if she can come up with a fresh take on both these symphonies. They are recordings of live performances with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra.
The disc I’ll be dipping into first, as long as it actually does arrive on time, will be Arthur Bliss’s Meditations on a Theme by John Blow, and his Metamorphic Variations, both completely new to me. The Meditations is apparently a kind of tribute to the generation cut down in the first world war, including the composer’s own brother. I’m hoping these pieces will turn out to be another of the unexpected treasures that Naxos produces from time to time. I’m still enjoying the Aviv Quartet’s amazing recording of Erwin Schulhoff’s two quartets that came out last month.
The last of my pick of the new discs is of music by Erno von Dohnanyi. If you’ve never heard of him, don’t let the name put you off – this is great, tuneful, ravishing orchestral music with a twinkle in its eye ! Listen to the Variations, and you’ll see why that word sprang to mind! I promise you’ll enjoy it....money back if not completely delighted!
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