NI 5818/20

Carlos Guastavino (1912 - 2000)
The Complete Piano Music
Martin Jones

... (In the late 19th and early 20th centuries) a number of composers of high quality remained known principally only within Argentina itself, equally inspired by European Romanticism and Argentinian traditions, working especially with a harmonic palette inspired by the guitar, and various stylizations of dance rhythms. Some of these - composers such as Carlos López Buchardo, Julián Aguirre, and Luis Gianneo - produced music of high quality that is only gradually becoming known in the wider world, and the leading creative figure among them was Carlos Guastivino, celebrated by his countrymen as probably the greatest exponent of Argentine Romantic nationalism ...

NI 5822/3

Domenico Scarlatti
Highlights from The Complete Sonatas
Richard Lester, harpsichord & fortepiano

The increasing popularity of Scarlatti’s music is due to a number of factors, but largely to his uncanny knack of immediately grabbing the listener’s attention with innovative ideas, captured within the short framework of a ‘simple’ binary form sonata. Selecting a series of sonatas that would form a ‘favourites’ CD really was the most extraordinarily difficult task as there are very few in the five hundred and sixty or so opus that don’t actually live up to expectations; there is always something novel that has an instant appeal. It’s rather like reading a good book that once begun, is difficult to leave. Just when I had whittled my selection of sonatas down to a mere three hundred, another becomes a strong contender that you simply cannot omit; you can see what I mean ...

NI 7950

Prima Voce - Alexander Kipnis (1891 - 1978)

In the search for suitable and evocative words to describe a particular vocal quality, usually, for the bass voice one would expect of course adjectives like 'deep', 'black', 'sonorous', 'cavernous', 'thundering', 'impressive' or even 'noble'. Rarely is the word 'beautiful' used. However, in the case of Alexander Kipnis, it most certainly applies ...

NI 2500/4

Antonio Vivaldi
Violin Concertos & String Symphonies
Volume 1
Shlomo Mintz, violin & conductor
Israel Chamber Orchestra

Vivaldi’s creative genius was not on a level with that of Bach, Mozart or Strauss, but it was considerable all the same. The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians calls him "the most original and influential Italian composer of his generation" and continues: "He laid the foundations for the mature Baroque concerto. His contributions to musical style, violin technique and the practice of orchestration were substantial, and he was a pioneer of orchestral program music."

NI 2505

Paganini
24 Caprices Op. 1
Eliot Fisk, guitar

"Astounding! Even Paganini wouldn’t have believed that it could be played on the guitar. An enormous accomplishment that will raise the level of guitar playing. Has to be heard to be believed."

NI 2506

Aaron Copland
Appalachian Spring, Nonet for Strings, Two Pieces for String Quartet
St. Luke’s Chamber Ensemble
Dennis Russell Davies, conductor

In Appalachian Spring, Copland, a Brooklyn boy who had never even visited the Appalachians, created an unforgettable evocation. Within two years of its first performance (on October 30, 1944, at the Library of Congress) Appalachian Spring went determinedly and, one presumes, permanently, into the standard repertory ...

NI 2507

J. S. Bach
Goldberg Variations
Vladimir Feltsman, piano
Recorded in Concert at the Moscow Conservatory

I was initially awakened to this piece by Glenn Gould’s first recording many years ago on Columbia, which I still like. I was 17 at the time and started working on it right away, although I didn’t play it in public until seven or eight years later. The Goldberg Variations are very special to me; I’ve actually been studying them now on and off for nearly two decades. And since my arrival in the U.S. five years ago I’ve been deeply involved with them. I’ve played them all over Europe, including the Moscow Conservatory, where this recording was made.

NI 2508/10

Mozart
Complete String Quartets
Volume 1
American String Quartet
Peter Winograd, violin, Laurie Carney, violin
Daniel Avshalomov, viola, David Geber, ‘cello

No music plays itself - but the balance of creative and recreative roles varies for each composition, and the means by which the balance is struck must agree with the ideal of the music. Mozart, in that light, is crystalline. With Beethoven, by contrast, one strives and the struggle does not harm but rather enhances a music which is muscle and bone; with Haydn, an ever-present wit and unfailing instrumental sense give freedom; a music of belly and brain. But there is no more sensitive litmus for the interpreter than Mozart: between the acid of 'notes only' performance practice where the music is presumed to speak for itself, and the base of personality cult - between these is perfect Mozart ...

NI 2511

Duke Ellington
Black, Brown & Beige Suite, Three Black Kings
New World A-Comin’, Harlem
American Composers Orchestra
Maurice Peress, conductor

Duke Ellington is known for his jazz band compositions - a body of work spanning over fifty years which indisputably established him as the first among jazz-inspired composers and among the greatest of American composers of all persuasions, or, as the Duke would say, "without category". But there also exists a substantial body of large works: ballets, concerti, tone poems, film scores, even an opéra comique. Starting in 1943, Ellington prepared the first of several annual Carnegie Hall concerts with his own orchestra. For each of these he composed at least one extended work, symphonic in proportion and intention, if not in instrumentation. This recording includes two of these in their symphonic form - Black, Brown & Beige and the piano concerto New World A-Comin’ - as well as two symphonic works not originally written for his jazz band - Harlem, commissioned by the NBC Symphony in 1950, and Les trois rois noirs (Three black kings), commissioned by the Dance Theatre of Harlem.