Nayler&Co Boekhandel & Modern Antiquariaat*Ramsj-on-Line

This survey of Ades's early works for small forces rejoices in a compositional voice of percocious assurance. His sideways look at musical techniques and human frailty consistently provokes, teases, satisfies and delights the ear. His considerable talents as a pianist are also displayed in these first recordings by a composer of and for our time.

Alban Berg wrote his Chamber Concerto for Piano and Violin with 13 Winds for the 50th birthday his teacher and friend Arnold Schoenberg. Berg's Chamber Concerto and Stravinsky's works contain decisive elements of the new music.
Stravinsky's Ebony Concerto, written for clarinettist Benny Goodman, and his chamber concerto Dumbarton reach out to American jazz as well as to Classical forms. His Eight Instrumental Miniatures are re-scorings of Les cinq doigts.

Style is difficult concept to pin down, but the group profile of the Alban Berg Quartet was already in place at the time of thse Teldec recordings. What marked ABQ out from all but the best rivals was the structural stength of its interpretations. This 8 CD box contains work by Mozart, Haydn, Schubert, Brahms, Dvorak, Berg, Webern, Urbanner.

The music of the Second Viennese School has, of course, been the marrow of the Alban Berg Quartett's existence. This 3 CD box contains 20th century masterpieces performed by ABQ - Johann Strauss' Kaiser-Walzer, String Quartet by Alban Berg, Stravinsky's Concertina and Three Pieces for String Quartet, Piazzolla's Tango Sensations, Berio's Notturno, works by Bartok, Janacek, Lutoslawski a.o.

For forty years, The Amadeus defined chamber music, setting the benchmark for many young quartets. Three Austrian Jewish refugees-internees, from Vienna and Modling, all pupils of Max Rostal, founded it -violinists Norbert Brainin and Siegmund Nissel, and violist Pieter Schidlof, together with cellist Martin Lovett.

Steve Reich - Eight Lines, Vermont Counterpoint, Four Organs
Philip Glass - Facades, Company

Steve Reich and Philip Glass are the most popular and influential of the first generation of minimalist composers who trailed in the wake of innovations in the visual arts and design in the 1950s. Applied to music, those innovations used early tape technology to generate works of gradual transformation, insistent rhythm and hypnotic repetition.

Bach's three very different Sonatas for Viola da Gamba and Harpsichord BWV 1027-29 were written at Leipzig in the late 1730s or very early 1740s. On this sparkling performance Ton Koopman does his instrument proud -he is now more famous
as a Bach conductor-, but he came to prominence as a harpsichordist and organist. Jordi Savall is probably the only viola da gamba player to have become famous beyond the small world of early-instrument aficionados.

This CD contains Fantasies and Sonatas by Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach performed by Andreas Staier on harpsichord and pianoforte. Bach presented himself to the public with 2 collections of Prussian and Wurttemberg sonatas. They demonstrate exemplary features -clear formal structures, unity of affection and thematic material in each movement. The variations on the theme Folie d'Espagne are experimental, perhaps the first example of a variations cycle with ironic distance to the theme.

There is a certain excitement which the playing of the sonatas of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach arouses in a gambist -an excitement brought about by the significance these sonatas have in regard to the repertoire for the viola da gamba.

The 6 Brandenburg Concertos are rightfully regarded as being the most popular orchestral works of the Baroque era. This CD contains the Concertos 1-3, as well as his orchestral suite No. 4. Bach wrote only 4 known orchestral suites, each of them is festive and fun, Bach injected a bit of Italian influence in each of them. Among the 4 suites, the 4th has some of the sweetest, loveliest qualities.