Holst Sinfonietta

Holst Sinfonietta & Klaus Simon – Steve Reich: Eight Lines, City Life & Other Works (2024)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 01:13:21 minutes | 677 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Naxos

Steve Reich is universally acknowledged as one of the foremost exponents of minimalism, arguably the most significant stylistic trend in late 20th-century music. This chronological survey shows how Reich’s innate curiosity has taken his work far beyond such musical boundaries. One of the first fruits of Reich’s creative quest is Music for Two of More Pianos in which the influence of Morton Feldman and jazz pianist Bill Evans can be heard.

The rhythmic and flamboyant Eight Lines comes from the true heyday of minimalism, while Vermont and New York Counterpoint both explore webs of phased patterns created by multi-tracked instruments. City Life is a dramatic set of impressions of New York, vividly weaving sampled speech and street sounds into a work with symphonic depth of range and expression.

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Holst Sinfonietta, Klaus Simon – Korngold: Complete Incidental Music (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 01:04:33 minutes | 600 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Naxos

Korngold’s greatest critical successes lay in the field of opera and in his film scores. The early sets of incidental music reflect these two elements, sharing the theatrical bravura of opera and anticipating his own later filmic techniques. The music for the Viennese production of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing in 1920, heard here in full, is expressive and dramatic. Der Vampir, a psychological study of desire, seduction and greed, is rarely heard, but remains a potent example of Korngold’s instinct for directness of characterisation.
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