This album will give years of pleasure both for listening and as a guide to playing the sonatas. amazon
ALEXANDRE GUILMANT (1837-1911)
Tracklist :
Ben Van Oosten
Cavaillé-Coll-Organ St. Ouen, Rouen
Thomas Tomkins (1572-1656) was the last of the English Virginalists. After him, the style died out entirely. Although he was something of a late starter (being the Chapel Royal's junior organist to Gibbons, despite being more than ten years older), he spent much of the later part of his life writing keyboard music (whereas Gibbons died thirty years earlier). Although he was content largely to adopt the forms and figures of the old masters, Tomkins did this expertly, due to his large collection of manuscript sources. By that time, no one cared about the English keyboard style at all (a fact Tomkins lamented), but he nonetheless sojourned on -- to one of the largest and most varied outputs in this style. In fact, only Byrd's output is comparable in size, and he was the primary initiator of the style. Therefore, this music (in spite of its artistic weaknesses) provides a fine endmark to an artistic endeavor that was all too brief. medieval.org
THOMAS TOMKINS (1572-1656)
Tracklist :
Cover - Jan Miense Molenaer (Dameam Virginal)
Harpsichord & Virginal – Bernhard Klapprott
THOMAS TOMKINS (1572-1656)
Best-known (and for many, only known) for his opera Jocelyn, French
composer Benjamin Godard produced an abundance of music in his short
45-year life that is rarely performed. Among his forgotten works are two
piano trios, written in 1880 and 1884. Compared to other works in the
genre from the same time period, Godard's trios are certainly lacking in
the same level of sophistication, gravitas, or stand-alone ability on a
concert program. Still, the two trios heard on this MDG Gold album are
melodically pleasing, possessing rich, non-progressive Romantic
harmonies. The finale of the F major sonata is among the more exciting
moments, with its intense rhythmic drive and pizzicato strings. Chamber
music aficionados will certainly find merit to these works. The Trio
Parnassus, who has undertaken many projects to revitalize long-forgotten
literature, comes to Godard's rescue here. Having successfully breathed
new life into the trios of Lalo, Korngold, Vasks, and the like, Trio
Parnassus has a track record of taking slightly less interesting works
and imbuing them with a sense of commitment, attention to detail,
forward momentum, broad-ranging dynamics, and measured sentimentality.
The resulting performance here is one of respect for the score and the
composer, polished technical skills, nice balance, and a sense of true
chamber music collaboration. Listeners seeking to expand their
repertoire will do well with this and other installments by the Trio
Parnassus. Mike D. Brownell
The MDG label prides itself on maintaining the "natural acoustics" of
the concert halls in which recordings are made, and shy away from
modifying the sound with added reverberation and the like. Listening to
this disc makes you wish that more labels would follow suit, especially
for small chamber works like these. The resulting sound is very much
like attending a live performance -- balance and clarity are left to the
performers rather than post hoc sound engineers.
The members of the
Ensemble Villa Musica heard in this recording represent the rest of the
ensemble well. Each of the solo instrumentalists gives energetic and
lustrous performances of the sonatas. Superb technique and intonation
meet pleasantly splendid musicianship and thoughtful interpretations.
The common thread among all of these sonatas is pianist Kalle Randalu.
His playing is always elegant, and he delivers each of the fiendishly
difficult accompaniment parts with remarkable clarity and individual
sensitivity to each of the different instruments with whom he is
playing. Collectors of Hindemith's vast output for piano and solo
instrument are well-advised to check out this series. by Mike D. Brownell 
Triadic Memories is one of Morton Feldman's most popular and frequently performed works for piano. Here, more than is usual in his music, Feldman uses the repetition of patterns and gestures. The repetitions are rarely exact -- they are characterized by very subtle rhythmic variations -- but almost every gesture, whether large or small, is repeated a few or many times. The repeated figures, while all being quiet and relatively simple and brief, vary in their length, structure, and texture. The unpredictability of the number of repetitions, the asymmetry of the repeated figures, the avoidance of a regular pulse, and the subtlety with which Feldman alters the repetitions keep the music continually intriguing for the attentive listener. Because of its use of discernible repeating patterns, Triadic Memories may be the Feldman work that's closest to the popular understanding of minimalism, although the music sounds absolutely nothing like that of Glass or Reich or Riley. While Triadic Memories is more eventful than much of Feldman's work, its quiet, isolated but related events occurring in a vast temporal landscape create an effect of unhurried serenity that's a trademark of the composer's.
Along with slowly cycling gestures, haunting sonorities, and soft dynamics, the late piano works of Morton Feldman are usually noteworthy for their extreme length. The compositions on the first two volumes of Steffen Schleiermacher's series for MDG, Triadic Memories (timed at 80:44) and For Bunita Marcus (71:48), fall into this category of music on a vast scale. In contrast to them, the two pieces on the third volume, Piano (31:57), and Palais de Mari (22:49), are fairly short for Feldman, and listeners who want to explore his keyboard music in a somewhat more manageable timeframe may choose to start with them. The same spaciousness and quietude of the other works can be found here, and Schleiermacher's sensitivity and control assure that the rarefied moods and delicate sounds are evenly handled throughout both pieces. Thanks to the unprocessed and fully natural audio signal, all of the nuances of Schleiermacher's touch are captured, yet there is also a slight background sound that apparently comes from the performance space, not from any defect in the all-digital recording. Listeners may find that this is only a mild distraction and easy to get past once the music takes hold. This important series is recommended for all Feldman aficionados and anyone interested in the sublime expressions of his late period. Blair Sanderson Tracklist + Credits :
Historically informed performances of poised and inventive keyboard music from the Golden Age of the Venetian Baroque. The epitome of a Rena...