This is a three-CD set that includes all of Villa-Lobos' moody Bachianas Brasileiras. The best known is the fifth, for soprano and eight cellos (well performed here), but there is a wealth hidden among the others. There are dance movements galore; the second builds to a wonderfully percussive and powerful final movement; the eighth, despite an upbeat old folk dance as its centerpiece, has a ...
The Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields Chamber Ensemble gives a bracing, warmly expressive account of the Mendelssohn Octet. The playing is polished, the ensemble is tight, and the style and scope of the interpretation are truly symphonic, as Mendelssohn desired. The analog recording, from 1978, has a pleasing immediacy and freshness. --Ted Libbey
One of the Founding Fathers of Modern Music, Edgard Varese was Fifty Years Ago Experimenting with Sound Collage and Sampling that Are Commonplace in Today¹s Popular Music Amongst the Composers who Claimed Him to Be an Influence were Harrison Birtwistle, Pierre Boulez, John Cage, Morton Feldman, Luigi Nono, Karlheinz Stockhausen and a Teenage Frank Zappa and his Profound Effect on the Latter Can ...
For a composer who is (now) recognizably part of the 20th-century classical canon, the French émigré Edgard Varèse's output was astoundingly meager. Just 15 compositions from his entire life (he destroyed the compositions from his early years, and was a merciless editor of his own material in general) made it out to the listening world. Varèse was caught in the chasm between the music of ...