5 Classical Music Albums You Can Listen to Right Now

Leiviska: Orchestral Works Vol. one

Lahti Symphony Orchestra; Dalia Stasevska, conductor (Encore)

Bis, the indispensable brand of Sweden that brought us Osmo Vanska's Beethoven, Masaaki Suzuki's Bach and all the music written by Jean Sibelius, celebrated its 50th anniversary by announcing that it sold itself to Apple earlier this year. The news was sobering, coming not long after Universal acquired Hyperion and a significant stake in Harmonia Mundi's parent company. These labels are not only independent in terms of ownership but also zamAt that time he was also spiritually independent.

Maybe all is not lost yet, because in this extraordinary album the Encore is still everywhere. zaman does what he does best: unearths an unknown Scandinavian whose compositions are worth listening to.

Helvi Leiviska (1902-82), zamShe was the leading Finnish female composer of the moment, but for most of her life she worked as a librarian at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki. “It belongs neither to modernism nor to Neo-Classicism,” she says in the liner notes of this album. She wrote three symphonies; Among these, the problematic, turbulent, not-so-tragic Second (1954) is the main work here.

Among the rest, I was particularly impressed by “Kehtolaulu,” a dark little lullaby taken from a late 1930s suite based on the music Nyrki Tapiovaara wrote for her experimental film “Juha.” Dalia Stasevska and the Lahti Symphony give everything their all. DAVID ALLEN

Works of Louis Wayne Ballard

Fort Smith Symphony; John Jeter, chef (Naxos)

Conductor John Jeter can be classified as the angelic force of overlooked American music. In his past albums for Naxos, he explored the little-played symphonies of William Grant Still and contributed to the increased interest in Florence Price.

Here, he and the Fort Smith Symphony return for a priceless hour accompanied by Native American composer Louis Wayne Ballard, whose music has yet to attract major attention from record labels. All four works in this set are world premiere recordings and suggest that additional recordings are worth making.

The first three chapters of “Scenes from Indian Life,” written in 1963, have a modest playfulness. (The fourth episode, added in 1994, takes on a more serious cast.) But the longer pieces are even more impressive. Selections from Ballard's ballet "Four Moons" would pair well with Bernstein's "Fancy Free" suite. Ballard's Fantasy Aborigine No. The tone-poem writing of his 3, “Kokopelli”—along with its various dances influenced by the Shawnee, Choctaw, Osage and Cherokee tribes—could add an American flavor to an orchestral program featuring music by Strauss.

The singing wind, woodwind and string lines throughout “The Devil's Promenade” are also mesmerizing. All the playing here zamAs compelling as it is now, I came away from this album hoping to see Ballard's music played by orchestras around the world. SETH COLTER WALLS

'Folk music'

Chamber Choir Ireland; Paul Hillier, director; Esposito Quartet (Louth Contemporary Music Ensemble)

All three tracks on this impressively serene album are worth listening to, but one stands out from the rest: “The City, Full of People.” Cassandra Miller copied herself – using ancient music as material, as she often does – by singing a fragment of 16th-century verse from Thomas Tallis's Lamentations. He later expanded the transcription into a score for 16 singers divided into six groups intended to surround the audience during the performance.

The trajectory is impressive: from the all-male vocal ensembles Tallis is known for, to his private meditation on a woman's music, to his translation for a mixed-gender choir able to come together today after a pandemic that isolates us all. . On Tallis's journey with Miller, her gloomy simplicity blurred slightly into a swirling, overlapping, dreamy melancholy and surprising joy that shared both the floating light and the earthiness of human voices.

Its companions are Laurence Crane's spare, patient String Quartet No. 2, played by the Esposito Quartet. XNUMX and Linda Catlin Smith's "Folio," a brilliant choral score with parts by Emily Dickinson (as does Miller, sung by the magnificent Irish Chamber Choir under Paul Hillier). “Folks’ Music” is a tribute to Eamonn Quinn and his Louth Contemporary Music Society in Ireland, who commissioned these works and created this magnificent album. ZACHARY WOLFE

Messiaen: 'Zam'End of the Moment Quartet' and Murail: 'Stalag VIIIA'

Het Collection (Alpha Classics)

Olivier Messiaen's "ZamThe End of the Moment Quartet”, II. It was composed while he was imprisoned in Stalag VIII-A, a German prisoner of war camp during World War II. This work, a quiet and luminous view of the texts from Revelation, zama time when the collapse of the moment and history may not seem so distant zamwas designed at the time.

The quartet inspired Messiaen's student Tristan Murail, the founder of spectralism, to write "Stalag VIIIA" (2018). Intended as a prelude to Messiaen, the work borrows the older composer's overtone chords and draws from them not only the constant subject of the previous work, but also the same zamIt creates an icy atmosphere that also alludes to the cold conditions of its premiere. In this highly attentive performance by the Belgian ensemble Het Collectief, Murail's music seems to dissolve in a long, frozen breath, leading directly and effectively to the first notes of Messiaen's quartet.

As for this piece, Het Collectief players are a zamThey give a performance that shows how this sometimes difficult music now feels like a fundamental repertoire. Even if the band falls a little short of the clairvoyance of the still unique Tashi recording from the mid-1970s, they do a superb job emphasizing the work's dance rhythms. And the clarinet solo “Abyss of Birds” played by Julien Hervé is extremely gripping. DAVID WEININGER

Mascagni: 'Cavalleria Rusticana'

Balthasar Neumann Choir and Orchestra; Thomas Hengelbrock, conductor (Prospero)

“Cavalleria Rusticana,” Pietro Mascagni's bold, excitingly paced work that defines verismo opera, is nothing short of zamThe moment did not appear on stage the way he wrote it.

Eager to win the competition in which he presented his one-act opera, Mascagni pieced together feedback from the judges, who wanted cuts, and the star singers of the premiere, who wanted their roles reduced.

In a concert performance in Germany last year, conductor Thomas Hengelbrock restored much of the original material. Stimulated by the chorus' reinstated counterpoint passages, the brindisi swirls with dazzling foreboding before Turiddu's murder. The upward transition to A major for Santuzza's prayer makes it shine. But not every restoration works: Alfio's entrance aria no longer needs to be.

Carolina López Moreno, a true “soprano Santuzza,” exudes a wounded, trembling innocence as a peasant girl ruined and cast aside by her lover, and her desperation carries her to a jarring high C sharpness in prayer. Tenor Giorgio Berrugi, as Turiddu, uses a sobbing tone in his expansive phrases but struggles when his voice is put under pressure. The beautifully crafted Balthasar Neumann Chorus spreads its voice in layers of light that suit the opera's Easter service better than the lively drinking song.

Hengelbrock makes a solid case for reconsidering the formal design of such an influential work; although it leaves open the question of whether the work succeeded despite these changes or because of them. OUSSAMA ZAHR