Eleni Karaindrou – Euripides: Medea (2014)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 45:17 minutes | 837 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © ECM
Greek composer Eleni Karaindrou’s collaborations with stage director Antonis Antypas have generated some of her most powerful music. Medea, like the earlier Trojan Women, comes out of this association. Created to accompany performances at the Ancient Theatre of Epidaurus, the music vibrates with emotional intensity. Karaindrou gives her themes to a small ensemble, its sound-colours creating an ambiance both archaic and contemporary, as textures of santouri, ney, lyra and clarinets are combined and contrasted. Even with reduced instrumental forces the composer seems to imply an orchestral scope. Giorgos Cheimonas’ Modern Greek adaptation of Euripides provides the lyrics, movingly sung by a 15-piece chorus under the direction of Antonis Kontogeorgiou and, on two pieces, by the composer.
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Eleni Karaindrou – Concert In Athens (Live) (2013)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 54:28 minutes | 534 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © ECM New Series
An exceptional live recording, “Concert In Athens”, the tenth ECM release by Greek composer Eleni Karaindrou, incorporates moving performances by guests Kim Kashkashian and Jan Garbarek. The US violist and the Norwegian saxophonist have each made important contributions to Karaindrou’s music in the past, Garbarek with his playing on the film-score for The Beekeeper (“Music for Films”) and Kashkashian as the key musical protagonist of “Ulysses’ Gaze”. Themes of both those films are revisited here, amongst much that is new. A primary emphasis is music written for theatre: the wide-reaching emotional scope of pieces for plays by Arthur Miller, Tennesee Williams and Edward Albee provides a wonderful context for bringing the guest musicians into contact with Eleni’s soloists, above all the brilliant oboist Vangelis Christopoulos. Recorded November 2010, with Manfred Eicher as producer, “Concert in Athens” gives us perhaps the fullest picture of Eleni Karaindrou’s compositional creativity to date.
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Elena Urioste & Tom Poster – Estrellita (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:09:40 minutes | 1,20 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © BIS
In their liner notes for this string of estrellitas (‘small stars’), Elena Urioste and Tom Poster admit to a shared love for ‘an old-world, golden sound and for melodies that tug at the heartstrings’. This has resulted in a deeply personal collection of miniatures full of winks, sighs and tears aimed at transporting the listener to bygone eras of fireside salon concerts. With a few exceptions, including Elgar’s Chanson de Nuit and Salut d’amour, the pieces are arrangements by the great violinists of that bygone, golden age: Auer, Kreisler, Zimbalist, Heifetz … while the originals they are based upon range from Gluck’s Melodie from Orpheus and Euridice and Liszt’s Consolation No. 3 to Beau soir by Debussy and Estrellita by Manuel Ponce. In a closing section Elena Urioste and Tom Poster also pay their respects to the Great American Songbook, with new arrangements, signed Tom Poster, of Moon River, When I Fall in Love and Over the Rainbow.
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Elena Urioste – The Jukebox Album (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:03:48 minutes | 1,14 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Orchid Classics
When the pandemic struck early in 2020, violinist Elena Urioste and pianist-composer Tom Poster responded by channeling their creative energies into #UriPosteJukeBox, a portmanteau of their surnames and a nod to the retro feel of the jukebox with its eclectic selection of songs to be chosen by the listener. The original intention was to produce one video of the duo performing together for every day of the lockdown (which at the time was anticipated to be relatively brief). What followed was a project that took off in ways the pair had never dreamed of, capturing the imaginations and hearts of listeners across the globe, embracing requests that traversed many musical genres, featuring commissions by contemporary composers, and entertaining followers with increasingly elaborate costumes, props, additional instruments, and multi-tracking.
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Elena Talarico, Francesco Zago, Stefano Grasso, Giuseppe Olivini – Bill Whitley: Absent Light – In Paradisum (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 30:06 minutes | 290 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Ravello Records
Peeling back the complex layers of Bill Whitley’s ethereal ABSENT LIGHT, one is astounded to see how this music could at once be so serene, yet technically intricate.
For starters, there’s the massive instrumental setup. ABSENT LIGHT, despite its pleasant airiness, is scored for male soprano, piano, soprano saxophone, electric bass, electric guitar, celesta, glockenspiel, tenor instrument, and glass bowls. But its true beauty is of a mathematical nature: featuring three separate rhythmic cycles, instruments taking turns with arithmetic regularity, and a singing undercurrent of the glockenspiel playing a cryptic 73-beat counterpoint.
Blurring the lines between mathematics and music, ABSENT LIGHT is a shining example of intricate acoustic architecture. Mesmerizing and intense.
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Elena Obraztsova – Schumann, Mahler: Romances (Remastered) (2017/2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 01:03:58 minutes | 1,02 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © JSC Firma Melodiya
The Russian mezzo-soprano, Elena [Yelena] Obraztsova Elena [Yelena] Vassilievna Obraztsova). Memories of Elena’s childhood are connected to war and blockade. Her father left for the front and the family remained in besieged Leningrad up to the end of winter of 1942. Later, Elena, her mother and grandmother were evacuated across Ladoga lake to a small town Ustjuzhnu of the Vologda area where they lived until summer of 1945. After war living was hard and difficult. Her father returned after a year, her mother had to work and Elena was given to a kindergarten. At the age of 5 Elena started singing. She sang what she heard, mainly Strauss’s waltzes. As a schoolgirl she had her first lessons in music – she sang for herself or listened to recordings. She spent hours sitting at a loudspeaker during opera transmissions. Since childhood music was the central point of her life. She liked domestic musical evenings where also her father, an engineer by profession, performed: he was an excellent baritone and besides he played violin. From a business trip to Italy he brought a big collection of recordings from which the little girl got acquainted with voices of the well-known singers of that time – Beniamino Gigli, Caruso, Galli-Curzi.
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Elena Mindru – Hope (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 48:08 minutes | 521 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Eclipse Music – Supersounds Music Oy
Hope” is Elena M^indru’s fourth record as a jazz singer and a bandleader. The theme of the music goes hand in hand with the general message of the whole album, to bring hope for the future, even amid a variety of threats, and how hope and coming together for a common cause can save our planet. Through their music, the group raises an alarm signal about the prospects of humanity in a changing ecological environment as well as the challenges brought on by globalization (migration, disappearing livelihoods, cybernetics, and artificial intelligence).
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Elena Kuschnerova – Russian Soul (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 57:22 minutes | 500 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Ars Produktion
Elena Kuschnerova presents piano music by the now almost forgotten Alexander Lokshin.
She couples his music on this new recording with Prokofiev’s Piano Sonata No.7, the third movement of which, along with the Toccata Op.11, is known as the most relentless piece of motor music from his pen.
Kuschnerova presents piano music by the now almost forgotten Alexander Lokshin (1920-1987), whom Rudolf Barshai called one of the most important Russian composers of the 20th century.
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Elena Kolesnichenko – Concert sans orchestre (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:17:15 minutes | 1,28 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © GWK Records
Elena Kolesnichenko was born in 1981 in Kharkiv in a simple family. It turned out that the girl has a great musical talent. At the age of seven, Elena began attending a special music school for gifted children in Kharkiv, and then continued her studies at the Moscow Conservatory. At the age of nine, she performed at the United Nations in New York and before the Pope at his Vatican residence. A typical pupil of the Russian piano school, extremely talented, with perfect technique, 18-year-old Elena came to Germany to hone her skills at the Hanover Higher School of Music under the guidance of Professor Vladimir Krainev. The young pianist became interested in the music of Beethoven, to whom she dedicated her first solo album in 2014. Her concerts are distinguished by a well-thought-out dramatic concept: no pursuit of effects, no exaggerated gestures, all the attention is focused on the music and only on the music. With her characteristic crystal-clear touch, rhythm, vitality and organic interaction with the instrument, Elena Kolesnichenko never leaves the audience indifferent, whether in the Great Hall of the Cologne Philharmonic or in a small music salon.
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Elena Gaponenko – Hommage à Vienne (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:08:55 minutes | 1,18 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Oehms Classics
That Vienna is one of the capitals (if not THE capital) of music is undisputed. With this recording, Elena Gaponenko has dedicated an entire album to the city on the Danube and the composers who have worked there. Really interesting is the time frame that these works originate from, they span exactly 25 years, from 1815–1840. In her introduction to this CD Elena Gaponenko writes: “This recording should honour this enchantingly beautiful city as a great guardian of culture, as it has brought so many musical icons together and allowed them to develop creatively.”
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Elena Fischer-Dieskau – Schumann: Kreisleriana – Brahms: Two Rhapsodies, Seven Fantasies (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:14:18 minutes | 1,13 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Delphian Records
Clara Wieck, who in 1840 was to become Clara Schumann, was a significant figure in the lives both of her husband Robert and of Johannes Brahms, to whom the Schumanns became mentors. The double inspirations of Clara and of the writer E.T.A. Hoffmann’s fictional Kapellmeister Johannes Kreisler are the connecting threads on this debut recording by pianist Elena Fischer-Dieskau, in which Robert’s capricious, moody Kreisleriana is joined by two sets of piano pieces by Brahms.
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Elena Casoli, Virginia Arancio, Teresa Hackel – Fausto Romitelli: Solare (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:02:12 minutes | 928 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Stradivarius
Elena Càsoli writes of her new release on Stradivarius: “This recording is the opportunity to collect, for the first time on a single album, most of the works for and with the guitar by Fausto Romitelli. I feel really gladsome about the possibility to think up and elaborate this release with Stradivarius. For me, it represents the desire to crown my passionate work of years on his music. These are compositions full of strength and inspiration, with a sound that is vibrante e luminoso!, as Fausto writes on the fifth page of the Solare score. I have invited Teresa Hackel and Virginia Arancio to collaborate because of their bravura and their connection the works interpreted.”
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Elena Bashkirova – Dvořák: Poetic Tone Pictures (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 01:00:50 minutes | 485 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © CAvi-music
“This time, I am not only an absolute musician, but also a poet”, wrote Dvorak regarding the Poetic Tone Pictures, Op. 85, his most extended cycle of lyric character pieces for piano. Concluded in April/May 1889 at his summer residence in Vysoka, the Poetic Tone Pictures introduced a new tendency in Dvorak’s output: from then on, he started to “poeticize” his musical style. As he wrote to his publisher Fritz Simrock: “Each piece will have its own title and is meant to express something: thus, as it were, this is program music!” This new tendency culminated in 1896-1898 with the five symphonic poems The Water Goblin Op. 107, The Noon Witch Op. 108, The Golden Spinning Wheel Op. 109, The Wild Dove Op. 110, and A Hero’s Song Op. 111.
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Elena Antongirolami – Rossiniana: Themes, Variations & Fantasias (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 01:03:11 minutes | 591 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Dynamic
This debut album of duo Antongirolami-Galosi features a collection of works for cello and piano both by and about Rossini. It’s a homage to the maestro’s great legacy (Rossini was also a skilled cellist), with both performers and composer hailing from the same native region. The programme on this release includes themes, variations and fantasias on music composed by Rossini himself, including some less well known chamber pieces, as well as music composed in the Rossinian style by 19th- and 20th-century composers.
Antongirolami and Galosi have played as a duo since 2013 and perform at various festivals in Italy.
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Elen Machová – Tůma: Requiem (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 59:40 minutes | 976 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Supraphon a.s.
The Czech baroque ensemble is an independent association, and therefore it is not easy in the current covid-I-fit time. You could say he’s fighting for survival. But he fights bravely and, perhaps, successfully.
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