Gerry Mulligan - Nocturne In the role of leader, Mulligan prepared scores that always made jazz a conversation between musicians. Playing was first and foremost an exchange of ideas. Mulligan had an unwavering sense of logic and had shown it from a very young age. The first great result came in the historic recordings of "Birth of the Cool": the leader was Miles Davis but the eminence grise was above all this boy in his early twenties. "It was a concert recorded in Bologna exactly the day after Jeru's sixty-fifth birthday. For that evening in Bologna Mulligan had brought his trusty Dean Johnson and RonVincent, who accompanied him in the last part of his career (he would die a little less than four years later). At the piano sat Harold Danko, whose contribution in mainstream contexts has always been first-rate. And yet his gaze, his sense of humor, his style - and anyone who attended one of his concerts can confirm this - everything has remained lively: as if the crew cut was no longer in his head but somewhere in his soul. Furthermore, while maintaining his sense of logic unchanged, this mature Mulligan knows how to get to the heart of things on stage. If he has to swing, he does it with all the warmth possible. Of the compositions from his golden years, such as Line for Lyons and Walkin' Shoes, he gives us versions that bring memory back to life. But it is in the more intimate pieces that we find the art of the latest Mulligan at it's best. Among these stands out Song for Strayhorn, a tribute to Duke Ellington's right-hand man. Billy Strayhorn was perhaps the musician who influenced him the most in his youth as a composer and arranger. For us who listen to him in Bologna, Mulligan finds the sincerest and most emotional notes to honor that little great man. "
Double vinyl LP pressing. In the role of leader, Mulligan prepared scores that always made jazz a conversation between musicians. Playing was first and foremost an exchange of ideas. Mulligan had an unwavering sense of logic and had shown it from a very young age. The first great result came in the historic recordings of "Birth of the Cool": the leader was Miles Davis but the eminence grise was above all this boy in his early twenties.
Rich Perry’s newest album Nocturne marks the 21st release in his 21-year-tenure with SteepleChase and for the first time Rich employs guitar (by Nat Radley) instead of piano for his quartet.
Rich Perry still is arguably the best-kept-secret of today’s modern jazz scene inspite of all the talks of admiration by the critics and the fellow musicians such as tenor player David Valdez.
To quote Valdez from his blog, “.. Rich never plays down to the audience, never compromising his advanced harmonic and rhythmic concepts in favor of wide accessibility…. Even though he stays on the cutting edge Rich's sound is always musical and melodic. He just always approaches melodic phrases from an extremely oblique angle. I really can't think of a badder cat that flies so low under the radar… I don't see this changing in the future since fame and fortune are obviously not motivating factors for Mr. Perry.”
The centenary of Benjamin Britten is marked with a new study by the multi-award-winning director Tony Palmer. It is a dark coda to Palmer's four other Italia-Prize-winning films with and about Britten, whom many now regard as one of the greatest composers of the 20th century. This extraordinary film explores Britten's uneasy relationship to the wider world. The bloodiest century in history profoundly affected Britten, not just because he was a committed pacifist, but on a much deeper level. What is the role of the artist in such a troubled world? What are his responsibilities? What is the nature of creativity itself? What is it's function? Does it have a function? Man's inhumanity to Man now, and always. This is the subject matter which preoccupied Britten and that is the subject of this film.
This CD recording is the result of a succession of different moments of musical happiness and the encounter between the solo harpist of the Basel Symphony Orchestra, Aurelie Noll, and two exceptional musicians. María Cristina Kiehr and Yolena Orea-Sanchez (violoncello) have put their talent and artistic sensitivity at the service of this wonderful repertoire. The special sound of the harp creates a kind of new relief here and lends this unusual album its special charm. The program includes works by Reynaldo Hahn, Tchaikovsky, Manuel de Falla and Gabriel Faure. One highlight is certainly the new composition for soprano, cello and harp by Swiss composer Silvan Loher, whose delicate and impressionistic musical style fits wonderfully into this project. Soprano María Cristina Kiehr, born in Tandil, Argentina, is a specialist in "early music". The South American cellist Yolena Orea-Sanchez is a permanent member of the Basel Symphony Orchestra, as is the harpist Noll. She can be heard regularly at numerous European music festivals with the Trio Anthilia (violin, cello and piano), which she co-founded.
Nocturnes Remodelled is a striking 2025 release from acclaimed Scottish composer Craig Armstrong, offering a fresh perspective on his 2021 album Music for 2 Pianos. This collection features twelve reimagined pieces, each transformed by a global roster of collaborators across electronic, ambient, and post-classical genres. Artists such as Alva Noto, Mogwai, Robert Ames, aus, and Scott Fraser bring distinct sonic identities to Armstrong's minimalist compositions, creating immersive soundscapes that blur the lines between acoustic intimacy and digital abstraction. The album also includes remixes by Armstrong himself and his son Jack Armstrong, adding a personal layer to the project. From Berlin to Tokyo, Glasgow to London, the remodelling process reflects a cross-cultural dialogue rooted in texture, emotion, and spatial depth. The result is a contemplative yet forward-thinking body of work, ideal for fans of Max Richter, Ryuichi Sakamoto, and ambient experimentalism. Mastered for clarity and dynamic range, both the CD and vinyl editions offer a pristine listening experience tailored to each format. Whether for collectors of modern classical or curators of ambient playlists, Nocturnes Remodelled is a refined and resonant addition to Armstrong's celebrated discography.
Simon-Pierre Bestion writes: “I discovered Rachmaninoff’s ‘Vespers’ singing in a choir, and the work made a genuine emotional impact on me! This music gives off an impression of naturalness and ‘simplicity’, yet in fact its architecture is complex and innovative for its time in the quasi-orchestral treatment of the voices. I wanted to place the work in a liturgical context that I conceived by drawing my inspiration from the Orthodox ceremonies I have been lucky enough to attend in Russia and Romania. The special characteristic and the beauty of this Vigil service (which in the Orthodox churches includes both Vespers and Matins) is that it accompanies the prayers of the faithful from dusk until sunrise.”
Barry Douglas CBE has established a major international career since winning the Gold Medal at the 1986 Tchaikovsky International Piano Competition, in Moscow. In demand as a soloist and as a recitalist and chamber musician, he has performed with most of the world's leading orchestras. He celebrates his Irish heritage as Artistic Director of Camerata Ireland, the only all-Ireland orchestra, and of the Clandeboye Festival. Celtic Nocturne combines nocturns by John Field, traditional Irish melodies, and three compositions by Barry Douglas, all of which share the lyrical, melodic nature characteristic of Irish music. Born in Dublin in 1782, John Field moved to London in 1793 and continued his studies with Muzio Clementi. Following an extensive European tour with Clementi in 1802, Field finally settled in Russia. His Nocturnes combine classical structure with romantic expressiveness.
The largest collection of piano nocturnes on CD, celebrating the art of the romantic piano song without words. Over a century of repertoire in all modern recordings, plus a new booklet essay exploring the history and context of the nocturne. Composers of the 18th century such as Haydn and Mozart wrote notturnos as serenades to be sung and played at night time, both on an operatic stage and as independent pieces for entertainment. The early 19th century saw a rapid evolution in the technological, the cultural and the musical development of the piano - as an instrument of longer sustaining power and greater volume than before, offering a broader palette of tone-colours, presenting composers with the potential to write quasi-orchestrally for a single instrument, as Baroque composers had done for the organ. At the same time, musical forms were becoming looser, more shaped by extra-musical inspirations in literature, poetry and the natural world. The Irish composer John Field was the first to publish nocturnes for the solo piano as standalone works, rather than as poetic interludes within larger pieces such as suites or sonatas. Having inherited the form from Field, Frederic Chopin then raised the nocturne to new heights of inward expression. As much as the salon became a place for pianistic display of technique, it also became a space for quiet soliloquy through the course of the 19th century, accessible to the rapidly expanding bourgeoisie with access to an instrument at home and to the education required to play it. Thus publishers commissioned nocturnes from both greater and lesser composers to satisfy an ever-growing market. The nocturnes in this box cover all the great names of Romantic-era piano writing, and many lesser-known ones too. Many of the performances are played on instruments of the period, enabling listeners to immerse themselves into a 19th-century world of softer and more gentle colours and expression. This new box also features an essay by Peter Quantrill outlining the history of the nocturne and it's lasting hold upon our affections and imaginations.
A meticulous, focused search for sound informs the selection of pieces on this recital, a voyage through 19th-century European music, in the vehicle of the nocturne, along the route of harp transcriptions. In these works, the composers capture night as a sliver of time, evoking the intimate and introspective side of the Romantic spirit. Night is also a metaphor for transformation, from darkness to light, for transcription from one musical instrument to another. For this ‘reduction of a big thought to a practical instrument’, as Ferruccio Busoni put it in 1913, the harp was a popular choice, particularly in the late 19th century, when the instrument’s repertoire was augmented by a number of excellent transcriptions and reductions by renowned harp teachers and performers. Beethoven’s ‘Moonlight’ Sonata provides the ideal starting point for a sonic journey through the light and dark of the Romantic spirit. Czerny’s short arabesques, Der Abend und die Nacht, continue the theme of twilight and night-time fantasy. Irishman John Field did not invent the nocturne, but he was responsible for the ‘crystallization of an idiom’ that, a generation later, Chopin would take to new heights. The second movement of Brahms’s Piano Sonata No.3 evokes a nocturne, but on a larger scale. Debussy’s Clair de lune envelops the listener in a night freed from traditional formal structures, providing a brief escape from the 18th-century style of the preceding movements. His Nocturne in D flat, on the other hand, transports us back to Romanticism, its mysterious bass octaves and tender arpeggios leading to a melody of expansive, Chopinesque lyricism, which stands out above the changes in harmonic color. With its pure, abstract sonority the concise Les Soirs illumineìs par l’ardeur du charbon presents night as verging on silence.
With it's romantic and mystical connotations, night has long been the inspiration behind many works of art. Guitarist Giorgio Mirto takes on the theme in a beguiling set of little-known and contemporary works for guitar. The repertoire is varied, ranging from Mirto's own compositions to those of old Argentinean masters, but each piece brims with color and expression to evoke the moods of night and darkness.
Chopin's 21 Nocturnes, often described as 'songs of the night', are among the most well-known and beautiful of Chopin's short solo piano works. Divine Art is thrilled to present pianist Tom Hicks' insightful new recording of these works which synthesizes his research into Chopin's performance and composition practices with modern listeners' expectations via a 'stunning technical agility' (American Record Guide). Dr Kim Sauberlich's excellent liner notes delve deeper into this often-forgotten performance, teaching, and historical recording practice and, together with the 21 pieces on this album, pose fascinating questions about authenticity and interpretation. Chopin's practice of sending manuscripts to publishers in multiple countries, while continuing to edit, led to multiple, authentic first editions which are not often heard in performance today, and even less in recordings. In this recording, Tom has tastefully incorporated some of these variants, alongside historically informed choices about tempo rubato and pedaling, to create a version of the Nocturnes that feels fresh, individual, and truly authentic. He has even included minor and occasional improvisations, paying homage to the composer's multifaceted creative process, in which improvisation was central. Tom Hicks has said "All of this led me to see Chopin as a highly creative and spontaneous musician for whom the score is one representation of the work and for whom the score is only the starting point of an interpretation, not the end." The album was recorded at night and the engineers have captured an intimacy of sound. The recording process relied upon minimal editing and longer 'live' takes to recreate the intimate feel of the salon where these pieces were most often heard. Guernsey-born pianist Tom Hicks has an expansive repertoire and has been praised for his "brilliantly evocative"(International Piano) and "gorgeously creative playing" (Fanfare). He has won many awards and competitions and has appeared at the Wigmore Hall in London, Bridgewater Hall in Manchester and many other venues throughout Europe and the United States. This new album follows his March 2022 albums centered around the Liszt and Ireland Piano Sonatas and Camden Reeves' 'Blue Sounds'.
Award-winning Polish composer, Pawel Lukaszewski, is one of today's most distinctive creators of contemporary sacred music. The Nocturnes for piano, based on some of his own sacred pieces, are inspired by the cosmos, with each nocturne named after a newly discovered bright star in constellations including Vela, Scorpius and the Southern Cross. Lukaszewski takes the listener on a journey through the beauty of the night sky with these intimate and atmospheric sound paintings.
Deeply felt new recordings of these landmarks in Romantic piano literature on a modern Steinway grand, by an Italian artist with an active interest in the lineage of piano history. On recordings for Piano Classics ranging from Beethoven to Alkan and beyond, the Italian pianist Vincenzo Maltempo has demonstrated a deeply informed understanding of Romantic piano literature, both in the nuts and bolts of it's composition and in the field of it's reception. According to a Fanfare review for album of Schumann, 'This impressive young Italian pianist displays a great love and dedication towards this music. Maltempo, who was born in 1985, begins with smouldering technique, no surprise for someone who has made a name for himself as a fearless interpreter of the briar-patch scores of Alkan. ' In his own booklet introduction to his latest recording, Maltempo explores the nature of a Chopin tradition, as handed down to us from accounts of the composer's own playing, his instructions to his students, and then the early recordings made by renowned interpreters such as Cortot and Pugno. 'What their recordings share is a relatively free or liberal interpretation of elements in the score that are now treated more rigidly. Their application of rubato is more subtle, their pedal technique does not cloud the sound but clarifies melodies and harmonies. They communicate a wide and infinitely varied dynamic range, and a diaphanous warmth of phrasing, without falling into mannerism or "sentimentality". ' These qualities, therefore, are the guiding lights to his own playing of the Nocturnes. Maltempo has chosen to record them on an 1888 Steinway piano, distinguished by the clarity of articulation which has always been a Steinway hallmark, but bestowing on these quintessential pieces of nocturnal poetry a softer and more rounded palette than we are accustomed to find on modern pianos. These recordings are, in the best possible sense, 'historically informed', without being bound either to the barline or to doctrinal notions of a 'correct' Chopin performance. They are, instead, as free and as personal, yet as imbued with the inner spirit of the score, as it seems the composer wished to find in his performers. - Any new recording of the complete Nocturnes by Frederic Chopin rouses the interest: in the field of countless existing recordings, does the pianist have something new to say? Inspired by but not imitating the great masters of the Golden Piano Age, Vincenzo Maltempo presents the Nocturnes as dramatic tone poems with a strong narrative, based on the art of rhetoric and Belcanto. As a means to the expression of his ideas, he found an 1888 Steinway grand with an exceptionally wide dynamic range and singing tone. The result is an enervating and moving journey through these eternal masterpieces! - Italian pianist Vincenzo Maltempo, one of the most interesting pianists of the young generation, made his name in his staggering recordings of unjustly forgotten romantic repertoire: Transcendental Studies by Lyapunov (Piano Classics, PCL0124) received 5 stars in several classical magazines (a. o. The French Diapason). His recording of Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsodies received rave reviews, a Gramophone Editor's Choice: "extraordinary breadth and nobility... little short of perfection... ", "9/9, close to ideal" (Jed Distler Classicstoday. Com). His recordings of Alkan have "confirmed his place in the restricted circle of Alkan's best performers, 5 stars" (Diapason), "Exhilarating, thrillingly demonic, 5 Stars" (Andrew Clement in The Guardian).
