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ID: BR0020
Disk: 1
Type: CD
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Kolekce: Vocal CollectionPodkolekce: Vocal and Piano
If you have never heard Moniuszko’s songs, rare Pergolesi arias or Villa-Lobos’ beautiful Bachianas No. 5, then this album is a must have. This beautiful collection of songs also features works by Niewiadomski, Scarlatti, Chopin, Strauss and Weill.
* Annette Celine (soprano) and the Rome Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Alberto Zedda.
** Annette Celine (soprano) and 8 Cellos |
| 20.00 eur Buy |
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ID: CHRCD003
Disk: 1
Type: CD
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Kolekce: Vocal CollectionPodkolekce: Vocal and Piano
A brand new release from Dame Felicity Lott, with Graham Johnson at the piano. Described as “The Queen of English Classical”, here Felicity Lott, known as 'Flott' to her friends, performs a selection of lighter repertoire, from Cole Porter to Ivor Novello, Coward, Barber and Berlin.
Well-known and loved the world over for her musicality, beautiful tone, easy ascents into the upper register, and superb delivery, here Dame Felicity is expertly accompanied by Graham Johnson, who also provides us with extensive and well-written booklet notes. |
| 20.00 eur Buy |
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ID: GMCD7208
Disk: 1
Type: CD
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Podkolekce: Violin
Recorded: 11-13 May 1992 |
| 20.00 eur Buy |
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ID: CAMEO2029
Disk: 1
Type: CD
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Kolekce: British Composer SeriesStephen Plews is a musical polymath.. A classically trained pianist, he is a jazz composer and player as well as composing in the ‘classical’ world. He is also a champion of new music, having set up his own studio and record label ASC Records though he has now returned to performance and composition.
This CD has examples of Plews in out-and-out jazz form but more of the music is contemporary classical with jazz inflections of various kinds. If you are not a lover of jazz, don’t be put off. That also applies to those normally allergic to keyboards, which includes me. Their use here as serious instruments contributing to the impact of the music is entirely convincing and I had no problem with them at all. |
| 20.00 eur Buy |
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ID: GMCD7237
Disk: 1
Type: CD
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Kolekce: Romantická hudbaRecorded:St Paul’s School,London 13-15 April 2001 |
| 20.00 eur Buy |
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ID: E052
Disk: 1
Type: CD
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Podkolekce: Vocal and Piano
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| 20.00 eur Temporarily out of stock |
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ID: SIGCD128
Disk: 1
Type: CD
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Kolekce: Vocal CollectionPodkolekce: Vocal and Piano
The initial impetus for Songs of Innocence came from Andrew Swait who was extremely keen to investigate repertoire rarely sung by a treble; indeed, several of the songs featured are world premiere recordings.
After rehearsals with Andrew Plant in the summer of 2007, Andrew Swait’s immense enthusiasm for Britten’s unpublished student works was soon evident and is as evident in this fresh recording a year on. A wonderful collaboration of English and American 20th century song.
A chorister of Cheltenham College and former chorister of the Abbey School Tewkesbury, Andrew Swait (b.1994) has already enjoyed an extremely successful solo career, performing as principal soloist on Light of the World (SIGCD068) in 2005 and appearing as a soloist with choirs around Britain and Europe. |
| 20.00 eur Buy |
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ID: FHR10
Disk: 1
Type: CD
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Kolekce: JazzRecorded and mastered by Nick Taylor, Porcupine Studios.
With Special guest - Digby Fairweather - Trumpet
One of the leading jazz vocalists in the UK, Wendy Nieper is a very versatile, sophisticated jazz vocalist and a gifted scat singer. Her rich vocal colors are complemented by wonderful phrasing and great musicality. Her wide experience as a singer includes being a member of the Swingle Singers with whom she recorded five albums. She has appeared on numerous albums both as a classical and jazz singer and has toured extensively around the globe. On this album, Nieper is accompanied by a great band including the talented composer/ pianist Roland Perrin and the jazz legend Digby Fairweather. First Flight is an explosive mix of styles from Cuban to jazz and pop to funk. If you like Diana Krall, Stacey Kent, Claire Martin then we are sure you will love First Flight.
Booklet notes
When you break open the packaging of a new album and put it into the CD player, do you always start at the beginning? Maybe it is years of building radio programmes and reviewing CDs, but I tend to make for the standards first. Of course it is interesting to hear completely new music - and there’s plenty of it on offer here - but I confess to having started listening to this album with Good Bait and Ponciana. The reasoning goes that you’ll quickly get the measure of a singer and her accompanists according to how they tackle familiar material.
I wasn’t more than half a bar into Good Bait when my ears pricked up. Here was Tadd Dameron’s epitome of a four-four swing theme transferred into a dancing 6/8 rhythm. After a quick zip through the vocalise of the verse, a nice scat chorus is followed by some deft unison between voice and piano. Meanwhile, Ponciana escapes nicely from the shadow of Ahmad Jamal, and becomes a fresh-sounding piece, with some inventive vocal harmonies on the introductory theme and a sweetly sung chorus that steers a neat course between the gauche ingénue qualities of an Astrud Gilberto and the more knowing approach of a Julie London. Clearly Wendy Nieper is a singer who is prepared to tackle familiar material with originality, and she is paced every step of the way by pianist and, on several tracks, composer, Roland Perrin.
I knew Roland’s work from the Blue Planet Orchestra, and as a pianist who had worked with many visiting stars, especially the South Africans in exile who had congregated around the Brotherhood of Breath. I had not realised that like Wendy Nieper, he had a foot, if not an entire leg, in the classical world as well.
For pianists, there are plenty of precedents for straddling the classical and jazz worlds. Fats Waller and James P. Johnson were both accomplished classical players, as was Art Tatum. Bud Powell recorded his personal take on J. S. Bach, and more recently both Chick Corea and Keith Jarrett have moved effectively between the worlds of the Mozartian concert hall and the jazz club. It is less usual for a singer to make a reputation in both the jazz and classical worlds.
Wendy Nieper, however, is someone who has, with duo recordings of Chopin, Canteloube, Sondheim and Bernstein to her credit.
“I focussed on classical singing first,” she told me, “because it demands that you train your voice before you reach a certain age. Classical singing involves a completely different technique from jazz, because you have to develop a core sound, and aim for very clear pronunciation. I’ve always stressed that what I do involves two very different voices. The classical voice is designed to project. It’s very loud, and has a brilliance and ring to it. My jazz voice, on the other hand, is very quiet and intimate, and it plays on things that the microphone gives you. It can be breathy; you can distort your vowel sounds for effect, and be more casual about your consonants. It comes from a different place physically, so you have to change your vocal position.”
The opening track, Blower’s Daughter makes this point perfectly, with Wendy caressing the lyric in a manner a classical singer could not contemplate. Yet the purity of her sound and her use of different registers is a clue to the rigorous training she has undergone, and her mastery of vocal technique. Originally, she had intended to give the first chorus of Solomente a classical treatment, projecting her soprano voice over Perrin’s deft classically inspired rhythmic figures. But it sounded wrong, and instead she ended up with the humming chorus that introduces Pablo Neruda’s Spanish lyrics. The closest she comes to revealing her classical voice is in the link between these and the English version of what she describes as a “landscape song”.
Landscape is important to Wendy in her own song writing. In Roland Perrin, whom she met at a house party she threw a while ago, she has found a collaborator who shares her love of terrain, and of experiment. She says. “I love singing descriptive lyrics like in Empty Beach (a song about someone lost in thought on a seashore) where it runs ‘Clouds drift high in a vast rose sky, time dissolves in a sea bird’s cry’ or ‘Holding on to a silk thin thread, of images forming then quickly shed’. We experimented with the music so that in that same song we do a contrary motion scale (piano going up, voice going down) just before the words ‘Can Echo’ which I then echo in a different key!” From our conversation, I was intrigued to learn that Digby Fairweather’s Harmon muted trumpet here is representing a seagull!
Tree also explores landscape themes, although Wendy confesses this song has been with her a long time, saying, “The rhythmic theme came from a ditty that I wrote as a kid. And Roland kindly made it into something real and quite different.” Their partnership nods in the direction of the jazz tradition as well, on the quirky Monk-ish What’ll it be?, which was written about a waitress in a restaurant where Wendy once worked in Richmond, Surrey.
Overall, the album is a highly successful blend of new takes on old material, and new takes on new material. Although she and Roland had met and discussed the music before the session, Wendy stresses that it was recorded in the age-old manner of jazz records, where four musicians who had not recorded together before arrived on the day and played music that was new to all of them. Each take was an adventure, and the same applied to the second day of recording when Helder Pack replaced Guy Silk for another voyage into the unknown. And as a bonus, Wendy adds quite a few improvised sections at the end of the songs, scatting or humming as an instrumentalist, playing off her fellow musicians, and turning the entire album into a genuine musical conversation, which like all discourses, runs deep and shallow, and hot and cold, and fast and slow, as it develops.
© 2011 Alyn Shipton (Jazz critic, The Times) |
| 20.00 eur Buy |
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ID: CLAVES508405
Disk: 1
Type: CD
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Kolekce: Vocal CollectionPodkolekce: Vocal and Piano
Manuel de Falla
El corregidor y la molinera
El pano moruna (No. 1 from Siete canciones populares españolas) |
| 20.00 eur Buy |
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