Paul Winter Consort - Wintersong

This is for you, Sank... I once gave you one track of this CD as a contribution to a gift collection your friends at MIMIC put together for you. I know you will enjoy this. Scoredaddy

Dedicated to the spirit of giving and forgiving, this fine musical work from 1986 includes traditional songs from Sweden, Italy, England, France, Germany, the Appalachians as well as Bach's "Joy," plus "Beautiful Star" by Odetta. Instrumental in its entirety, Wintersong is music for dancing, loving, and being alive, full of joy and lyricism.

This music is nothing short of a spiritual experience. It paints so many beautiful pictures. When listening to "Swedish Song" you can almost feel the frost on the leaves as they blow on a winter's day in the forest. It carries you along with it's rich depth. So beautiful. Although an album of "Wintersongs", they are all warm ones, and range from bright celebration to heavenly reflection. Paul Winter has created the most beautiful treatments of these songs the world has ever heard. Background vocals, sparcely used, add to the warmth and incredible harmony of sound on peices like "Beautiful Star". Light some candles, turn out the lights and listen to "Little One" and "Dance of the Golden Bough". The purest Love will fill your being. C. Pencil

Tracklist
1 Tomorrow Is My Dancing Day 3:08
Bells [Orchestral] - Ted Moore
Cello - Eugene Friesen
Flute - Rhonda Larson
Guitar [Steel String] - Dan Carillo*
Piano, Organ - Paul Halley
Saxophone [Soprano] - Paul Winter (2)
Talking Drum [Donno], Bells - Neil Clark

2 Swedish Song 3:36
Cello - Eugene Friesen
Piano - Paul Halley
Saxophone [Soprano] - Paul Winter (2)
Written-By - Gustaf Nordqvist

3 The Cherry Tree 3:29
Cello - Eugene Friesen
English Horn - Nancy Rumbel
Flute - Rhonda Larson
Guitar [Steel String] - Dan Carillo*
Piano, Harpsichord - Paul Halley
Saxophone [Soprano] - Paul Winter (2)

4 Little One 3:10
Cello - Eugene Friesen
Piano - Paul Halley
Saxophone [Soprano] - Paul Winter (2)

5 Peasant Revels 4:11
Cello - Eugene Friesen
Flute - Rhonda Larson
Guitar [Steel String] - Dan Carillo*
Percussion - Ted Moore
Piano, Organ - Paul Halley
Saxophone [Soprano] - Paul Winter (2)

6 Dance Of The Golden Bough 5:47
Cello - Eugene Friesen
Piano, Harpsichord - Paul Halley
Saxophone [Soprano] - Paul Winter (2)

7 Beautiful Star 4:28
Cello - Eugene Friesen
Flute - Rhonda Larson
Guitar [Classical] - Oscar Castro-Neves
Guitar [Steel String] - Dan Carillo*
Percussion - Neil Clark
Piano - Paul Halley
Saxophone [Soprano] - Paul Winter (2)
Written-By - Odetta

8 Wintersong 3:42
Piano, Organ - Paul Halley
Saxophone [Soprano] - Paul Winter (2)

9 Joy 4:10
Bass - Russ Landau
Cello - Eugene Friesen
Composed By - J.S. Bach*
Cuica, Whistle - Marcio Sapel
Drums [Snare] - Guilherme Franco
Flute - Rhonda Larson
Guitar [Classical] - Oscar Castro-Neves
Oboe, English Horn - Nancy Rumbel
Saxophone [Soprano] - Paul Winter (2)
Surdo, Percussion [Hand] - Ted Moore

Recorded in New York City's Cathedral of St. John the Divine

Music for Three, Four, and Twenty Lutes

This post is humbly dedicated to our tireless and generous host; Sankerib, this is for you!

Lindberg, Jakob, lute
Meunier, Robert, lute
North, Nigel, lute
O'Dette, Paul, lute
With eight singers and sixteen lutenists
BIS-CD-341

There are several pieces on this recording that display the fun and virtuosity associated with this music. The Piccinini Canzone starts with beautiful counterpoint and ends finally in a rousing conclusion with a duet of fast passages.The Waelrant tune is given two excellent performances with clear voices, vocal quartet accompanied by lutes with original Dutch text and then Italian text, an all-lute version separating the two.

Those familiar with the battle tune "La Battaglia" made famous to recorder players in the Susato dance print will enjoy the lute version by Pacolini. The Tim Crawford arrangement of the Johnson masque music is a stunning tapestry of lush sound of twenty stringed instruments, including 11 lutes, mandora, guitar, bandora, and four theorboes. The tunes evoke an entrance of graceful dancers.

As always, virtuoso Paul O'Dette makes the tunes with his improvisitory top lines. It's impossible not to be impressed. May I suggest his other albums: Lord Herbert of Cherbury's Lute Book HMU 907068 and Music of Kapsberger "Il Tedesco della Tiorba" HMU 907020, where O'Dette demonstrates convincingly why he is the world's greatest lutenest. It all makes me wish for a journey back in time! R. D'Ippolito

MUSIC FOR THREE, FOUR, AND TWENTY LUTES

Terzi, Giovanni Antonio
1. Canzone a Otto Voci per suonar a 4 Liutti overo fantasia 00:03:10

Pacoloni, Giovanni
2. Passemezo di Zorzi 00:03:16

Anonymous
3. Temprar potess'io 00:04:33

Piccinini, Alessandro
4. Canzone a Tre Liuti 00:04:10

Lasso, Orlando di
5. Madonna mia pieta 00:02:02

Pacoloni, Giovanni
6. Passemezo della Battaglia 00:02:59

Rore, Cipriano de
7. Dialogo: Amor, se cosi dolce 00:05:16

Johnson, Robert
8. Dance II - Dance III 00:05:40

Parsons, Robert
9. The Songe called Trumpets 00:02:10

Vallet, Nicolas
10. Ballet - Ballet - Est - ce Mars - Courante de Mars - Un jour de la semaine - Allon aux noces - Gaillarde 00:10:21

Waelrant, Hubert
11. Als ick u vinde 00:03:34
12. O Villanella 00:01:21

Pacoloni, Giovanni
13. Padoana - Saltarello 00:04:06

Total Playing Time: 00:52:38
Recorded July 8 & 10, 1985 at Boxgrove Priory, Chichester, England UK

Mozart & Beethoven: Piano & Wind Quintets - André Previn & Vienna Wind Soloists

These are accomplished performances which I’m sure I would have enjoyed more if the picture of sound, as the LP presents it, had been truer to the music. For my taste, the piano is too distant and unfocused in relation to the wind, as if placed directly behind the wind line-up and well back. As a result, it often doesn't have enough presence in the play of colour, and its contributions to the discourse seem too remote.

I began with the Beethoven and never felt at ease with the balance, though by the last movement it appears to have improved—and with it the liveliness and sharpness of the ensemble playing, as one would expect. You can imagine Beethoven himself making a big effect in the forceful and virtuoso piano part, and I don‘t think he would have been delighted by the impression one gets of it here.

The wind stick together as a unit on their own. On the Nash Ensemble’s CRD record you sense that because the balance is right all the players can listen to each other more acutely and function better as a team. You notice too a better line to their performance, of the first movement especially, and a much better characterized range of dynamics. The Vienna Wind Soloists are too loud most of the time.

To me, the Nash‘s record represents chamber music playing of high class and offers a satisfying version of both pieces. The players are ideally matched and also a match for Mozart‘s and Beethoven‘s considerable demands on them as soloists. I don‘t get on so well with the Viennese wind: I dislike the oboe in the Beethoven slow movement, his low notes in particular, and in the slow movement of the Mozart I find the horn vulgar in his solo after the double-bar. Previn does well throughout, without ever sounding quite sure how he wants the main theme of the Mozart finale to go; and at this very moderate tempo Mozart‘s wonderful cadenza for all the instruments is rather a plod, when it arrives, instead of a high point. S. P.

MOZART. Piano and Wind Quintet in E flat major, K.452
1.I. Largo - Allegro moderato (11:10)
2. II. Larghetto (9:20)
3. III. Rondo: Allegro moderato (6:14)

BEETHOVEN: Piano and Wind Quintet in E flat major. Op.16
4. I. Grave - Allegro ma non troppo (13:33)
5. II. Andante cantabile (7:21)
6. III. Rondo: Allegro ma non troppo (5:43)

André Previn (p1); Vienna Wind Soloists (Gerhard Turetschek, ob, Peter Schmidt, cI; Volker Altmann, hn; Friedrich FaltI, bn)

Recorded in Schubertsalle, Vienna on April 24 & 25, 1985

WYNTON MARSALIS: CARNAVAL

Here, Wynton Marsalis switches to cornet and tries to recreate the ambience of the proverbial village wind bands of long ago -- albeit with the emphatically big-league help of Donald Hunsberger and the massive Eastman Wind Ensemble. This means a program of transcriptions of classical tunes, variations on popular ditties, dollops of sentimentality, heaping amounts of showoff display figurations, and other stuff that used to go over big in Middle America in the days before radio and electrical recording came in.

From the hoary old hurdy-gurdy tune "The Carnival of Venice" that leads off the album onward, this is a record for dedicated antiquarians who dote on their Edison band cylinders because they like the music. But Marsalis works earnestly with the idea, playing those insidiously hummable tunes absolutely straight, with acres of flawless rapid-fire technical displays and even a touch of soulfulness on the token spiritual, "Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child." And Marsalis' pass through the nonstop minefield of Paganini's "Moto Perpetuoz," using circular breathing to make the dumbfounded listener think that he doesn't have to take a breath, is a pretty astounding technical feat. Richard S. Ginell

1. Variations on "Carnival of Venice," for trumpet 7:32
Composed by Jean-Baptiste Arban
2. The Debutante, caprice brillant for cornet & piano (or band) 5:49
Composed by Herbert L. Clarke
3. Believe Me, If All Those Endearing Young Charms (AKA: My Love's On The Cold Ground) 3:26
Composed by Irish Traditional
4. Grand Russian Fantasia for cornet & orchestra 6:19
Composed by Jules Levy
5. Moto perpetuo, for violin & guitar (or orchestra) in C major, Op. 11, MS 72 4:31
Composed by Niccolò Paganini
6. 'Tis the Last Rose of Summer 1:46
Composed by Thomas Moore (composer/poet)
7. The Flight of the Bumble Bee, musical picture for orchestra (from The Tale of Tsar Saltan) 1:03
Composed by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov
8. Napoli for cornet/trumpet & band/orchestra "Canzone Napolitana Con Variazioni" 5:43
Composed by Herman Bellstedt
9. Fantasie Brillante, for cornet & ensemble 8:16
Composed by Jean-Baptiste Arban
10. Sometimes I Feel Like A Motherless Child 3:20
Traditional Spiritual
11. Valse Brillante for cornet & band 8:07
Composed by Herbert L. Clarke

Wynton Marsalis (cornet), Donald Hunsberger directing the Eastman Wind Ensemble
Recorded in the Eastman Theater, Eastman School of Music of the University of Rochester, NY

VIVALDI: 12 CONCERTOS, OP. 8 - CHRISTOPHER HOGWOOD, AAM

Antonio Vivaldi
12 Concertos, Op. 8
Il Cimento dell'Armonia e dell'Inventione
Academy of Ancient Music, Christopher Hogwood
L'Oiseau-Lyre 417 515-2

I found plenty to enjoy in these Vivaldi performances when they were first released on LP some three-and-a-half years ago. This is the set which includes the Four Seasons and many readers may already have encountered those concertos in the present version since they have been released on a separate LP and CD. In this new issue Vivaldi's opus is presented complete. The ten violin concertos are split up between five soloists, each of whom takes two works; the remaining concertos are scored for oboe or violin and Christopher Hogwood sensibly allots them to the oboe since the solo part strongly suggests that Vivaldi had it foremost in mind.

Different soloists for different concertos make for interesting listening and Hogwood, furthermore, adds to the variety with imaginative continuo realizations which effectively enhance texture and exploit sonority. This aspect of the interpretations is, for me, the most consistently rewarding one, though I hasten to add that solo and ripieno playing is, in all but one or two instances, refined and characterful. The oboist is the Swiss player, Michel Piguet, who gives gentle, lightly-articulated performances. In general I liked his ornamentation and he introduces an affecting pathos to the slow movement of the D minor Concerto, RV454. The finale fares a little less well; Piguet hurries his solo passages and the tutti-ritornellos, lively though they are, lack the bold assertiveness suggested in the writing. The attractive C major Concerto comes off delightfully and I enjoyed the mischievous little trills in the tuttis.

To sum up: I found myself enjoying these performances as much if not more than I did the first time round. The LP recorded sound was good but textures are clearer and sonorities more resonant in the CD format. A sparkling performance of the fine eleventh Concerto, RV2 10, such as we have here, may well tip the scales if you are questioning the wisdom of acquiring yet another Four Seasons. As I have already said, though, there is no shortage of enjoyable music-making here. Recommended. N.A. grammophone.net

VIVALDI
Il Cimento dell' Armonia e dell' Inventione 12 Concertos,Op.8

L'Oiseau-Lyre - Florilegium - Digital

THE ACADEMY OF ANCIENT MUSIC
CHRISTOPHER HOGWOOD

Violins:
ALISON BURY - Rogeri 1699, Cremona
CHRISTOPHER HIRONS - Duke c. 1775
JOHN HOLLOWA Y - Mariani 1650
MONICA HUGGETT - Rowland Ross 1977 (Stradivarius 1688)
CATHERINE MACKINTOSH - Rowland Ross 1978 (Amati)
Oboe:
MICHEL PIGUET - Bernhard Schermer 1982 Oean Joseph Hyacinth, Rottenburgh 18th century)

Continuo instruments: Harpsichord, Chamber organ, Theorbo, Baroque guitar, Archlute

Record Producer: PETER WADLAND
Sound Engineer: JOHN DUNKERLEY
Recording Location: Kingsway Hall, London, November/December 1982