March 1, 2015 Matt Haimovitz’s new Beethoven set launches affiliation with Dutch label Even for pioneering cellist Matt Haimovitz, recording Beethoven’s complete music for cello and piano on period instruments […]
February 27, 2015 Beethoven, Period Matt Haimovitz; Christopher O’Riley Pentatone PTC 5186 475 Beethoven’s interest in the cello appears to have begun early on. His first set of two cello […]
February 22, 2015 NEW RELEASE OF THE WEEK Beethoven, Period. Pentatone PTC 5186 475 Beethoven: Cello Sonata No 3 in A major, Op 69 (26:11) Matt Haimovitz, cello; Christopher O’Riley, […]
This will be delightfully fascinating for all who know the music. It gives us a different sort of lyric appreciation of the music, a new life born of a return to the period sound.
So, here for you to gorge on are Beethoven’s complete cello sonatas and variations, beautifully played as they were originally intended. Period.
PENTATONE has initiated a cooperation with the American record company Oxingale Records. Now they launch the debut work of their collaboration, which has subcategory Oxingale Series.
December 26, 2014 Having made clear my discontent with the nominations for the 57th annual GRAMMY awards, I feel more than obliged to recognize that this was actually a rather good […]
June 12, 2014 “Akoka – Reframing Olivier Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time” = DAVID KRAKAUER: Akoka; MESSIAEN: Quatour Pour La Fin Du Temps; JOSH DOLGIN (‘So-called’): Meanwhile – […]
Framing a vivid rendition of the “Quartet for the End of Time” are two musical flights of fancy, an improvisation by the extraordinary clarinetist David Krakauer, and an electronic remix of the quartet by Socalled.
April 2, 2014 Yesterday Oxingale released a new recording with a somewhat intimidating title, Akoka: Reframing Olivier Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time. This title definitely deserves points (and probably […]
March 30, 2014 … Avi Avital, “Between Worlds” (Deutsche Grammophon). You have to smile, hearing Bartok’s Romanian Folk Dances played on mandolin, accompanied by accordion and harp. That’s what mandolin virtuoso Avi Avital […]
KlezmerShack digs Akoka: “It is stunning. It will officially release on April 1, and if you are at all interested in amazing once-avant garde music, this is a must-purchase. It has replaced (mostly) my older recording. As intended, this is the “Quartet for the end of time” for our time.”
The centerpiece of the CD is a shatteringly beautiful performance of Olivier Messiaen’s “Quartet for the End of Time,” a deeply spiritual piece of music written while Messiaen was a prisoner in a German POW camp. The clarinetist for whom he wrote the piece was a fellow prisoner, an Algerian Jew named Henri Akoka.
During the past decade, Christopher O’Riley has been quite busy, hosting From the Top, concertizing, and recording his adaptations of pop songs by Radiohead, Nick Drake, and Elliott Smith. But he hasn’t released an all-classical CD since a Scriabin disc in 2004. That is, until 2013, when his two-CD recording of music by that barnstormer of barnstormers and finger-buster of finger-busters, Franz Liszt, saw the light of day.
2. Christopher O’Riley, “O’Riley’s Liszt” (Oxingale): I love the way pianist O’Riley moves from fascination to fascination with each new recording. This double-disc feels like a concept album: nothing but Liszt transcriptions of works by Mozart, Schubert, Schumann, Wagner (“Prelude and Liebestod”) and (the pièce de résistance) Berlioz, whose “Symphonie fantastique” is rarely heard in this titanic version for solo piano. It unfolds like an ancient exploration, straight to the scaffold and the “Witches’ Sabbath.”
December 12, 2013 Philip Glass This Concerto grew from music Glass composed in 2001 for Naqoyqatsi, his third collaboration with the innovative documentary director, Godfrey Reggio. Glass had completed […]
Oxingale Records 