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Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra – Alone/Together: The Dreams & Diversity of the American Composer (2024)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 01:01:22 minutes | 614 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Albany Records
This recording of works by four composers highlights the diversity of America. Edmund Thornton Jenkins came from Charleston, South Carolina. He studied at Morehouse and the Royal Academy of Music in London. His artistry encompassed classical music as well as jazz, but he died prematurely, cutting short his career. John Wineglass is an Emmy-Award winning composer who is currently composer-in-residence with the Monterey Symphony. Beth Denisch music has been performed around the world with her music drawing inspiration from artist and authors, nature and astronomy, and unexpected places: real and imaginary. Born in Russia, Elena Roussanova is a composer, pianist, and educator, whose career includes a long list of accomplishments, including Composer-in-Residence for the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 2020. She was awarded the American Prize in Composition for Orchestral Music in 2017-18 and her works have been performed by both American and international orchestras.
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Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra, Julius P. Williams & Daniel Washington – A Legacy of the African American Classical Spirit (2024)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 59:11 minutes | 545 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Albany Records
Composer/conductor Julius P. Williams leads the Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra in a recording of works by Black composers. In addition to Williams’ compositions, there are works by the Dean of African-American composers, William Grant Still, Augustus O. Hill, and a work by Edmund Thornton Jenkins restored and arranged by his nephew Tuffus Zimbabwe. Julius P. Williams was named one of Musical America’s Top 30 Professionals of the Year in 2022. His career has taken him to musical venues around the globe and he has been involved in virtually every musical genre. He is currently Artistic Director and Conductor of the Berklee Contemporary Symphony Orchestra and was composer-in-residence with the Boston Symphony. His music has been performed by countless symphony orchestras including the New York Philharmonic. Cleveland Orchestra, and Detroit Symphony, to name but a few. His recordings appear on the Albany, Centaur, Videmus, and Naxos labels.
Read more![Jitka Hosprová, Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra - Flosman, Feld & Bodorová - Czech Viola Concertos (2020) [Official Digital Download 24bit/48kHz] Download](https://i0.wp.com/imghd.xyz/images/2023/04/18/wvocsw5a9qglb_600.jpg?resize=500%2C500&ssl=1)
Jitka Hosprová, Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra – Flosman, Feld & Bodorová – Czech Viola Concertos (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 57:50 minutes | 551 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Supraphon a.s.
The viola’s dark, velvety sound and its depth of expression enchanted many composers of the twentieth century (Bartók, Martinů, Hindemith, Clarke etc.) who made major contributions to the instrument’s repertoire. Jitka Hosprová, however, likes to stay off the beaten path. For her recording with the Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra, she has chosen three modern works composed in her homeland over a span of 30 years at the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries. Oldřich Flosman completed Visions of Michelangelo, a work that is now nearly forgotten, in 1975 on commission for celebrations of the 500th anniversary of Michelangelo’s birth. Jindřich Feld’s Viola Concerto, one of his last works, bears comparison with Bartók’s and even exceeds it in terms of technical difficulty; the demands made on the soloist are quite extreme. Sylvie Bodorová’s Planctus (the title refers to a Medieval form, the “laments of the Virgin Mary”) reflects the gloom, stress, and hopelessness of life in communist Czechoslovakia of the 1980s. In all three movements, the deep intimacy of the viola stands in contrast to the massive symphonic sound of the orchestra. More than any other instrument, the viola has a tone that reaches the innermost world of the composer and of the subject matter. On this revelatory, technically virtuosic recording of rarely played works, Jitka Hosprová brings back to life three works that definitely deserve the attention of performers and listeners.
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Floex & Tom Hodge feat. Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra – A Portrait Of John Doe (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 49:52 minutes | 550 MB | Genre: Electronic
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Mercury KX
This story started in Berlin, but we swear, it doesn’t end in a nightclub… Rather in a symphonic concert hall, perfect to fully appreciate all the nuances of this album of breath-taking mastery. It’s the story of two Toms. The first, Dvorak, a.k.a. Floex, is a producer from Prague. The second, Hodge, is a British pianist and clarinettist, who also works with machines. Following a chance encounter in the German capital, Hodge started remixing Floex, and one thing leading to another, they decided to work on this ambitious project of combining their machines with the Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra’s instruments. Despite having radically different values, classical and electronic music have, in recent years, had several occasions to meet, often with techno artists from Detroit: Derrick May and Francesco Tristano revisiting the founding hit song Strings of Life, Derrick May once again with the Macedonian Philharmonic Orchestra, Jeff Mills and the orchestras of Montpellier, Lille, Lyon, and most recently Toulouse, Carl Craig with the symphonic orchestra Les Siècles on the album Versus released by InFiné in 2017… If the latter is most likely the most refined example (let’s leave the unique Nils Frahm out of this), Floex and Tom Hodge’s album pushes the symbiosis between organic and synthetic even further, reaching an unparalleled level of detail, with ultra-refined structures. This Portrait of John Doe feels like a movie soundtrack (Tom Hodge composed McMafia for the BBC TV show and often works for ads and film trailers): the dreamlike Inauguration of Nobodyis reminiscent of Cliff Martinez’s work on the soundtrack of Solaris, but the most striking about this album is the ease with which piano and synthetic bass, percussions and rhythm box reply to each other and interlace, like on Wednesday (Is the New Friday), highlighting exceptional arrangements. Let’s wish good luck to anyone willing to take up the torch… – Smaël Bouaici
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