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Grete Pedersen, The Norwegian Soloists' Choir - Veni: Songs of Christmas II (2022)

Posted By: ArlegZ
Grete Pedersen, The Norwegian Soloists' Choir - Veni: Songs of Christmas II (2022)

Grete Pedersen, The Norwegian Soloists' Choir - Veni: Songs of Christmas II (2022)
EAC | FLAC | Image (Cue & Log) ~ 264 Mb | Total time: 56:35 | Scans included
Classical | Label: BIS | # BIS-SACD-2511 | Recorded: 2021

December is a time of anticipation. We wait and we hope - veni, come! The songs on this album encompass many nuances and moods - from joy and jubilant celebration to deep melancholy and longing. They move between folk tunes, English carols and traditional Christmas songs from different times and parts of the world, between Bach and Ives, Bulgaria and Norway. Several of the songs refer to the passing of the year, the cycle of nature and rhythms of daily life: lullabies for peace of mind and comfort, and songs about surrendering ourselves to the unfathomable and unknowable in the midst of our everyday concerns: the stars will always shine in the sky - and dawn will come.

Anna Prohaska, Julius Drake - Paradise Lost (2020)

Posted By: ArlegZ
Anna Prohaska, Julius Drake - Paradise Lost (2020)

Anna Prohaska, Julius Drake - Paradise Lost (2020)
EAC | FLAC | Image (Cue & Log) ~ 228 Mb | Total time: 64:00 | Scans included
Classical | Label: Alpha Classics | # ALPHA 581 | Recorded: 2019

The gestation of this project lasted two years. Anna Prohaska and Julius Drake finally concentrated their research on the themes of Eve, Paradise and banishment. Some songs were obvious choices, such as Fauré's Paradis, in which God appears to Eve and asks her to name each flower and animal, or Purcell's Sleep, Adam, sleep with it's references to Genesis. But Anna Prohaska also wished to illustrate the cliché of the woman who brought original sin into the world and her status as a tempter who leads man astray, as in Brahms's Salamander, Wolf's Die Bekehrte or Ravel's Air du Feu.

Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Sir Andrew Davis - Charles Ives: Orchestral Works, Vol. 2 (2016)

Posted By: Designol
Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Sir Andrew Davis - Charles Ives: Orchestral Works, Vol. 2 (2016)

Charles Ives: Orchestral Works, Vol. 2 (2016)
Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Sir Andrew Davis

EAC | FLAC | Image (Cue&Log) ~ 267 Mb | Mp3 (CBR320) ~ 173 Mb | Scans included
Genre: Classical | Label: Chandos | # CHSA 5163 | Time: 01:12:27

In this second volume, the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and its chief conductor Sir Andrew Davis play some of the most characteristic pieces of Charles Ives, an insurance salesman by trade and one of the most precociously original of all American composers.

Joonas Ahonen, Pekka Kuusisto - Charles Ives: Piano Sonata No.2 'Concord' & Violin Sonata No.4 (2017)

Posted By: Designol
Joonas Ahonen, Pekka Kuusisto - Charles Ives: Piano Sonata No.2 'Concord' & Violin Sonata No.4 (2017)

Charles Ives - Piano Sonata No.2 & Violin Sonata No.4 (2017)
'Concord' & 'Children’s Day at the Camp Meeting'
Joonas Ahonen (piano) & Pekka Kuusisto (violin)

EAC | FLAC | Image (Cue&Log) ~ 199 Mb | Mp3 (CBR320) ~ 142 Mb | Artwork included
Classical | Label: BIS | # BIS-2249 SACD | Time: 00:58:55

Charles Ives’s ‘Concord Sonata’ is often described as one of the greatest of American piano works. Published in 1920, at the composer’s own expense, it contains radical experiments in harmony and rhythm and would have to wait until 1939 for its first public performance. In the course of its four movements, Ives depicts some of the famous inhabitants of the small town of Concord in Massachusetts, a centre of the mid-19th century transcendentalism movement. Luminaries of the movement such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau are alluded to in various ways in music that includes references to Beethoven, religious and patriotic hymns and circus marches, as well as brief ‘guest appearances’ by a viola and a flute. Lasting 47 minutes on the present recording, Ives’s second piano sonata is a massive work of a staggering complexity, and a true challenge for any performer – a challenge more than readily accepted by the young Finnish pianist Joonas Ahonen, who has previously recorded Ligeti’s piano concerto for BIS.

Jean-Efflam Bavouzet, Andrew Davis - Charles Ives: Symphonies Nos. 3 & 4 / Orchestral Set No.2 (2017)

Posted By: tirexiss
Jean-Efflam Bavouzet, Andrew Davis - Charles Ives: Symphonies Nos. 3 & 4 / Orchestral Set No.2 (2017)

Jean-Efflam Bavouzet, Andrew Davis - Charles Ives: Symphonies Nos. 3 & 4 / Orchestral Set No.2 (2017)
EAC | FLAC (image+.cue, log) | Covers + Digital Booklet | 01:11:00 | 328 MB
Genre: Classical | Label: Chandos Records | Catalog: CHAN 5174

With this release, Sir Andrew Davis and the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra round out their Ives cycle in superb form. Recordings of Ives, unlike Gershwin, by groups outside of the U.S. may still be comparatively rare, but Davis has nailed the essential diverse, dense networks of Ives' language, assisted by new performing editions and by excellent Chandos engineering in two different Melbourne venues, thereby keeping the multiple strands of the music clear.

Pierre-Laurent Aimard: The Warner Recordings (2012) 6 CD Box Set

Posted By: Designol
Pierre-Laurent Aimard: The Warner Recordings (2012) 6 CD Box Set

Pierre-Laurent Aimard: The Warner Recordings (2012) 6 CD Box Set
Debussy, Ravel, Boulez, Berg, Ives, Messiaen, Ligeti, Carter, Beethoven, Liszt

EAC | FLAC | Image (Cue&Log) ~ 1.2 Gb | Mp3 (CBR320) ~ 973 Mb | Scans included
Genre: Classical | Label: Warner Classics | # 2564 66044-8 | Time: 07:03:59

Released between 1991 and 2005, the selections in The Warner Recordings encapsulate the period when Pierre-Laurent Aimard was signed to Erato and Teldec, performing mostly 20th-century fare and some music from the 19th century. Aimard is famous for his contributions to the modernist catalog, and his performances of works by Pierre Boulez, Elliott Carter, György Ligeti, and Olivier Messiaen are regarded as scrupulously executed and authoritatively interpreted. Aimard also recorded early 20th century pieces by Charles Ives, Alban Berg, Maurice Ravel, and Claude Debussy, as well as Romantic masterpieces of Beethoven and Liszt. A pianist's pianist, Aimard is well-rounded in his repertoire and a true master of keyboard technique, yet he has received considerably less fanfare than many of his flashier colleagues. Yet connoisseurs of piano recordings know that Aimard is indispensible, especially for his special feeling for French music, and his recordings are important documents that serious students and newcomers should appreciate.

The Sixteen, BBC Philharmonic, Harry Christophers - A la Gloire de Dieu: Works by Ives, Stravinsky, Tippett & Poulenc (1995)

Posted By: Designol
The Sixteen, BBC Philharmonic, Harry Christophers - A la Gloire de Dieu: Works by Ives, Stravinsky, Tippett & Poulenc (1995)

À la Gloire de Dieu: Works by Ives, Stravinsky, Tippett & Poulenc (1995)
The Sixteen; BBC Philharmonic; Harry Christophers, conductor

EAC | FLAC | Tracks (Cue&Log) ~ 212 Mb | Mp3 (CBR320) ~ 156 Mb | Scans included
Genre: Classical, Choral | Label: Collins | # 14462 | Time: 01:03:15

The Sixteen, bright stars of the Baroque, have plenty to say on 20th-century repertoire (witness their excellent Britten series on Collins). Underpin them with the BBC Philharmonic and it might seem a magic formula. Ives’s unearthly The Unanswered Question holds few problems for instrumental players weaned on Maxwell Davies – no more than do the brilliant wind roulades of Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms. Deft BBC teamwork and a chamber articulation to woodwind and brass helps this Koussevitzky-commissioned masterpiece to shed its often hammy ‘big band’ sound, creeping closer to the subtle, leaner sonorities of his later choral works. It gains. The singing varies. Too many dynamic shifts sound prosaic or under-prepared; fortes are forced, with muddy results. The vocal blend (happier in lower voices) can seem haphazard and colours the Tippett, where the men’s roars – contrast the lovely, sensual soprano solo – seem crude. Get this disc, instead, for the rare, late Poulenc – his New York-commissioned Sept répons. It is a curiously under-recorded devotional work, bleeding with pathos yet pumping energy, its exoticism enhanced by slightly breathy, tender solos, and scintillatingly sung with just those crucial missing qualities of awe and freshness. A million times more refined than what goes before.

Kronos Quartet - Black Angels (1990)

Posted By: Designol
Kronos Quartet - Black Angels (1990)

Kronos Quartet - Black Angels (1990)
George Crumb, Thomas Tallis, István Mártha, Charles Ives, Dmitri Shostakovich

EAC | FLAC | Tracks (Cue&Log) ~ 243 Mb | Mp3 (CBR320) ~ 149 Mb | Scans included
Label: Nonesuch/Elektra | # 7559-79242-2 | Time: 01:01:39
Classical, Contemporary, Avant-Garde

This disc is supposed to hurt. Just look at the program: it starts with Crumb's Black Angels for electric string quartet, a work that is the aural equivalent of Coppola's Apocalypse Now, and ends with Shostakovich's String Quartet No. 8, a work that is either the aural equivalent of a monument to the victims of war and fascism written in the ruins of Dresden or the musical equivalent of a suicide note written before the composer joined the Communist Party. With the spooky and evocative performances of Thomas Tallis Spem in Alium, Istvan Marta's Doom. A Sigh, and Charles Ives' There They Are!, this disc is so painful it could be the soundtrack for an unmade Kubrick movie. The question is, is this disc supposed to hurt so much? The Kronos Quartet is a harsh and aggressive ensemble with an angular approach to rhythm and structure and an overwhelming need to assert its individual and collective identity.

Olivia Vermeulen, Jan Philip Schulze - Hello Darkness (2021)

Posted By: ArlegZ
Olivia Vermeulen, Jan Philip Schulze - Hello Darkness (2021)

Olivia Vermeulen, Jan Philip Schulze - Hello Darkness (2021)
EAC | FLAC | Image (Cue & Log) ~ 304 Mb | Total time: 71:50 | Scans included
Classical | Label: Challenge Classics | # CC 72887 | Recorded: 2021

Dedicating an album to the dark side of the Lied might seem inappropriate in these times of Covid, climate change and refugee crises, but as a mezzo-soprano Olivia has always been drawn to the darker roles in opera, the sad arias in oratorio and the deep laments in song. After our recent recording ('Dirty Minds'), which focused on 'la petite mort', it seemed a natural progression to turn our attention to 'la grande mort'! Darkness in the outside world and the inner self has always been - alongside Love - one of the chief themes of vocal music, and compositions and songs about death are legion during every period of musical history.

José Serebrier, Eugene Ormandy - Charles Ives: Symphonies Nos. 4 & 2 (1999)

Posted By: ArlegZ
José Serebrier, Eugene Ormandy - Charles Ives: Symphonies Nos. 4 & 2 (1999)

José Serebrier, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Eugene Ormandy, The Philadelphia Orchestra - Charles Ives: Symphonies Nos. 4 & 2 (1999)
EAC | FLAC | Image (Cue & Log) ~ 400 Mb | Total time: 74:16 | Scans included
Classical | Label: BMG Classics | # 09026-63316-2 | Recorded: 1973, 1974

While Eugene Ormandy's fame derived largely from his recordings of short, popular pieces, I feel that his strengths lay somewhere else. Case in point: this recording of Ives' Second Symphony, which Ormandy recorded in 1973, strikes me as the work's finest hour on disc, even better than either of the much acclaimed Bernstein versions. Ormandy is totally self-effacing in this score, unlike Bernstein who never lets you forget his (admittedly significant) showmanship.

Hansheinz Schneeberger, Daniel Cholette - Charles Ives: Sonatas for Violin and Piano (1999)

Posted By: Designol
Hansheinz Schneeberger, Daniel Cholette - Charles Ives: Sonatas for Violin and Piano (1999)

Charles Ives - Sonatas for Violin and Piano (1999)
Hansheinz Schneeberger, violin; Daniel Cholette, piano

EAC | FLAC | Image (Cue&Log) ~ 321 Mb | Mp3 (CBR320) ~ 195 Mb | Scans included
Classical | Label: ECM | # ECM New Series 1605, 449 956-2 | Time: 01:15:57

Whereas most musicians seem to emphasize the music's reflective, nostalgic elements, Schneeberger and Cholette are more attuned to the abstract qualities in the music. On balance, I find that I still prefer the traditional approach, exemplified by Shannon and Fulkerson. To my ears, these artists manage to capture something wonderfully magical and mysterious that just eludes Schneeberger and Cholette. However, I should note that some critics have given high praise to this ECM disc. For example, it was awarded five stars in a BBC Music Magazine review. Another bonus: The ECM recording squeezes all four sonatas on a single disc.

Joyce DiDonato, Maxim Emelyanychev, Il Pomo d’Oro - Eden (2022)

Posted By: ArlegZ
Joyce DiDonato, Maxim Emelyanychev, Il Pomo d’Oro - Eden (2022)

Joyce DiDonato, Maxim Emelyanychev, Il Pomo d’Oro - Eden: Ives, Portman, Mahler, Marini, Copland, Valentini, Cavalli, Gluck, Wagner, Handel, Mysliveček (2022)
EAC | FLAC | Image (Cue & Log) ~ 302 Mb | Total time: 68:29 | Scans included
Classical | Label: Erato| # 0190296465154 | Recorded: 2021

"EDEN is an invitation to return to our roots. It is an overture to engage with the sheer perfection of the world around us, to consider if we are connecting as profoundly as we can to the pure essence of our being. It is a clarion call to contemplate if our collective suffering isn't perhaps linked to the aching separation from something primal within and around us. This is a vivid musical exploration through the centuries to remember and to create a new EDEN from within." - Joyce DiDonato

Sir Andrew Davis, Melbourne SO - Charles Ives: Symphonies Nos. 1 & 2 (2015)

Posted By: Designol
Sir Andrew Davis, Melbourne SO - Charles Ives: Symphonies Nos. 1 & 2 (2015)

Charles Ives - Orchestral Works, Vol. 1: Symphonies Nos. 1 & 2 (2015)
Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Sir Andrew Davis

EAC | FLAC | Image (Cue&Log) ~ 310 Mb | Mp3 (CBR320) ~ 187 Mb | Scans included
Genre: Classical | Label: Chandos | # CHSA 5152 | Time: 01:17:27

Charles Ives composed his first two symphonies between 1897 and 1902, but they weren't performed until a half-century later, when Leonard Bernstein premiered the Symphony No. 2 in 1951, and Richard Bales conducted the Symphony No. 1 in 1953. The contrasts between the two symphonies are striking, since the First was a student work, composed in emulation of the European tradition, while the Second was more idiosyncratic in the use of hymn tunes, folk songs, and other Americana, all developed in a freewheeling manner that reflected Ives' eclectic musical upbringing. This 2015 hybrid SACD by Andrew Davis and the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra is a straightforward presentation of both works, side-by-side, and their differences are highlighted in the styles of playing.

Escher String Quartet - Barber & Ives: String Quartets (2021)

Posted By: ArlegZ
Escher String Quartet - Barber & Ives: String Quartets (2021)

Escher String Quartet - Barber & Ives: String Quartets (2021)
EAC | FLAC | Image (Cue & Log) ~ 350 Mb | Total time: 74:15 | Scans included
Classical | Label: BIS | # BIS-SACD-2360 | Recorded: 2019

Previous releases from the New York-based Escher Quartet include an acclaimed set of Mendelsohn’s six string quartets as well as an album with works by Dvořák, Tchaikovsky and Borodin. For their latest offering the members have looked closer to home, however, choosing to combine the quartets by Samuel Barber and Charles Ives. The disc opens with Barber’s String Quartet in B minor, containing the music for which the composer remains best-known: the second movement which he two years later expanded into Adagio for Strings. Recognizing its potential already while composing it, Barber described the piece as ‘a knock-out’ – which made it all the more difficult to come up with a third movement worthy to follow it.

Ruby Hughes, Joseph Middleton - Songs for New Life and Love: Mahler, Ives, Grime (2021)

Posted By: ArlegZ
Ruby Hughes, Joseph Middleton - Songs for New Life and Love: Mahler, Ives, Grime (2021)

Ruby Hughes, Joseph Middleton - Songs for New Life and Love: Mahler, Ives, Grime (2021)
EAC | FLAC | Image (Cue & Log) ~ 231 Mb | Total time: 74:12 | Scans included
Classical | Label: BIS | # BIS-SACD-2468 | Recorded: 2019

After appearing on a quartet of very different BIS releases, ranging from early baroque arias to orchestral songs by Alban Berg and Mahler’s ‘Resurrection Symphony’, the British soprano Ruby Hughes has devised a song recital, together with her regular Lieder partner Joseph Middleton. The process began in 2018 when the two gave the world première of Helen Grime’s Bright Travellers, a set of five poems charting the interior and exterior worlds of pregnancy and motherhood. Ruby Hughes soon set about planning a programme which would converge with Grime’s music and the themes of new life and of love in all its aspects.