(…) Les Chants de Nectaire is a perfect example of Koechlin's love of monody and of his comprehensive understanding of the possibilities of the flute. The range of the pieces is deceptively wide - from quiet, almost becalmed meditations to furious, abandoned dances in which the metre is ever changing and sometimes non-existent, while the melodies move from modality and diatonic purity to complex chromaticism, to create a flickering patchwork of moods. The technical demands on the player are enormous (not surprisingly this is the first ever recording of the complete cycle) but Pierre-Yves Artaud is one of the world's greatest flautists, and lavishes all his artistry on these haunting miniatures. - Andrew Clements, The Guardian

The concertos of Karl Amadeus Hartmann, not only richly varied in relation to each other, but also a welcome addition to his more unified group of eight symphonies. Hartmann discovered new and individual solutions that confirm the importance of his concertos as significant and original contributions to the development of this form in the 20th-century. The works compiled on this CD were written between 1931 and 1955, thus providing a superb insight into all of Hartmann's important creative phases.

If you have not yet had the pleasure of encountering the music of the Tōru Takemitsu (1930-1996), this CD, part of Deutsche Grammophon's 20/21 series, is an excellent place to start. It contains seven pieces from the last part of the Japanese composer's career, ranging from Dream/Window (1985), a representation of the city of Kyoto, to the supremely haunting Archipelago S. (1993).

Raymond Tuttle (classical.net)

(…)The accordionist Teodoro Anzellotti has put together an album of Janacek piano pieces that he has arranged for his own instrument The cycle Po zarostlem chodnicku [Along an Overgrown Path] is the dominating piece, and is complemented by Three Moravian Dances and the two piano miniatures Na pamatku [Keepsake] and Vzpomrnka [Memory]. An accordion version of Overgrown Path is not as distant from the original as it might seem, since Janacek actually composed the cycle for harmonium and the piano version was second in line.(…)

Kratochvil, Matej

The Quatuor Diotima offers a passionate performance of both quartets that would merit consideration in any case, but sample the viola d'amore's opening utterance at the beginning of track 9, and you may decide, even if you are already a confirmed admirer of Janácek's tense but richly romantic music, that a rehearing of these works is in order.

James Manheim (allmusic.com)

Teodoro Anzellotti specializes in new music, and occasionally branches out, creating transcriptions of Baroque keyboard works and classics of early modernism, such as music by Satie. He has had numerous works written for him, most notably Berio's Sequenza XIII, the final installment in the composer's historic series of solos for virtuosi

Stephen Eddins (allmusic.com)

Pancrace Royer's First Book of Harpsichord Pieces demonstrates how much the harpsichord tried to change to meet the challenge of the upstart pianoforte. These works push the instrument to its technical limits, showing an astonishing variety and quality of music.

Alexander Bryce

Impressionistic, jazzy, expressionistic, and composed by a Jewish Communist in l932, Flammen didn't stand a chance with the Nazis. But it's a marvelous work—inventive, entertaining, possibly unique. The libretto is only 38 pages long; more than a third of the music is orchestral. Don Juan is at the opera's center, but here he is condemned to passion and life—he can find no eternal rest. He travels from time to time and place to place; his conquests give him no joy despite the fact that he wreaks havoc wherever he goes. (…) John Mauceri leads a tight, riveting performance, and Decca allows us to hear this hallucinatory score in all its glory.

— Robert Levine, ClassicsToday.com

The Symphony of Sirens. In 1922 Arseni Avraamov composed and conducted a visionary public sound event, activating the entire port city of Baku: its factory sirens, the ships horns of the entire Caspian flotilla, two batteries of artillery, several full infantry regiments, trucks, seaplanes, 25 steam locomotives, an array of pitched whistles and several massive choirs. Constantly referenced but forever lost, this extraordinary event is here painstakingly reconstructed and spatialised to approximate the original experience.

(Booklet Extract)

Very few, if any, attempts to merge classical music and jazz have succeeded. Somehow, jazz pianist Uri Caine's masterful and magnificent interpretations of selected works of the 19th century classical composer Gustav Mahler work remarkably well. Of course, it does not hurt to work with a stellar ensemble, including trumpeter Dave Douglas, violinist Mark Feldman, clarinetist Don Byron, and drummer Joey Barron, and turntable spinner DJ Olive, among others. However, it is Caine's clever arrangements that take the cake. He does not simply "jazz up" Mahler, which would mock the greatness of his works. Instead, he worms himself inside the songs and harmonies and uses them as a starting point to create a related, but new, synthesis of his music. Jewish folk melodies, cantorial renditions, free jazz, and classical violin are all merged in a whole that transcends the parts.

~Steve Loewy

This record gives us a survey of Russian music of the twenties in all its diversity, its complexity and all its ambivalence, and affords a glimpse of numerous phenomena with a bearing on analogous processes in western culture of the period. Russian music of the first post-revolutionary decade is here represented by the works of three composers of totally different personalities and scope : Sergey Prokofiev, the young iconoclast, the revolutionary who burst upon the traditional musical scene and, as Mayakovsky said, asserted himself "with weight, brutality and ostentation"; Vladimir Shcherbachov, the heir of the academic traditions of the Saint Petersburg school; and Nikolay Roslavets, that marvellous Russian artist who, after a period of unjust oblivion, has today become the centre of constantly growing interest on the part of music lovers and musicologists.

(Booklet Extract)

Henri Dutilleux's latest orchestral work, ''The Shadows of Time,'' has much to recommend it on its own terms, but when Seiji Ozawa and the Boston Symphony gave the work its New York premiere at Carnegie Hall on Wednesday evening, the piece also carried a provocative question for the start of a new concert season. It challenged listeners to remember the last time they had left a concert by a major American orchestra convinced that a freshly minted work was the highlight of the program, and to wonder why the experience was so rare. …

~ALLAN KOZINN (The New York Times)

Dora Schwartzberg is a well-known teacher, soloist and orchestral musician, originally from Russia, but now living in Vienna. She is best known to disc-buyers as a chamber music colleague of Martha Argerich and others of the Martha Argerich Project, part of the Lugano Festival. With members of the Project she has recorded the Schumann Piano Quartet and Quintet for EMI and the Schumann violin sonatas for the present label avanticlassics, of which more later. She is heard again in Schumann’s Fantasiestücke on this disc and in two of the most famous French violin sonatas.

William Kreindler