Music for all occasions!

We love music. You're shocked, we know, and we want to make sure that finding those perfect albums, or songs, or pieces aren't what's stressing you out in the coming days.

Hope you enjoy these Hanukkah and Christmas favorites! Many thanks to Amy Edmonds and the Ball State University Library!


Catalog Number: 624284001555

Catalog Number: 8.554714

Catalog Number: TROY744 - Track 12

Catalog Number: 75442270972


Catalog Number: 5099991898258

And finally, a Festivus for the 'restofus!
Catalog Number: 3570-MCD - Track 11

Happy holiday listening,
The Naxos Family

200 To-Do Liszts

People have been talking about it all year.
"1811...2011...times 14, carry the 3...I'm pretty sure that was...THAT WAS 200 YEARS AGO!"

October 22 is a big birthday for a really big composer. One of those biggies that even people who aren't really into classical music know about. Most of my family isn't hep to classical music, but they know a few piano pieces, Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2, etc. when they hear them.

I expect lots of legit bloggers will weigh in with why they love/hate/do not deign to offer an opinion on Liszt. To me the best thing about these big anniversaries is that we have to revisit our opinions on composers. I listened to some of the late piano music just this morning (not always my cup of tea) to remember that Liszt was more than just kind of fancy and uppity in the 1991 film Impromptu.

But I'm really just here for the facts, ma'am. My hope is that you'll take the time to think about the work itself. Weigh it for yourself. They're your ears and you're in control of them.

Liszt was the son of a steward in the service of the Esterházy family, patrons of Haydn. He was born in 1811 at Raiding in Hungary and moved as a child to Vienna, where he took piano lessons from Czerny and composition lessons from Salieri. Two years later, in 1823, he moved with his family to Paris, from where he toured as a pianist. Influenced by the phenomenal violinist Paganini, he turned his attention to the development of a similar technique as a pianist and in 1835 left Paris with his mistress, the Comtesse d’Agoult, with whom he travelled widely during the following years, as his reputation as a pianist of astonishing powers grew. In 1844 he separated from his mistress, the mother of his three children, and in 1848 settled in Weimar as Director of Music Extraordinary, accompanied by Princess Sayn-Wittgenstein. He now turned his attention to composition and in particular to the creation of a new form: the symphonic poem. In 1861 Liszt moved to Rome, where he found expression for his long-held religious leanings. From 1869 he returned regularly to Weimar, where he had many pupils, and later he accepted similar obligations in Budapest, where he was regarded as a national hero. He died in Bayreuth in 1886, four years after the death of his son-in-law Wagner. As a pianist he had no equal, and as a composer he suggested to a younger generation of musicians the new course that music was to take.


Happy Liszt-ening!
(Sorry, I just couldn't help it!)

Mo

*Here's how I really like to think of Liszt (and his buddy Chopin): http://harkavagrant.com/index.php?id=302

Blue Note Records!

It is with great pleasure that we announce the entire Blue Note Records catalog is being uploaded to Naxos Music Library - Jazz! We've included a short description of the label, in case you're not familiar with the "ins and outs" of Blue Note.


If you're interested in more information on becoming an NML-Jazz subscriber - our contact information is below!

Blue Note Records, established in New York by German-born record executive Alfred Lion and art director Francis Wolff in 1939, is a renowned jazz label that has produced a number of legendary albums including John Coltrane’s “Blue Train” and other classic albums from iconic artists such as Herbie Hancock, Jackie McLean, Dexter Gordon, Lee Morgan, Wayne Shorter and many others. The label is revered by jazz fans across the globe. Throughout the fifties and early sixties and continuing for the next five decades, Blue Note continues to discover and launch impressive talents to a new level.

Check out the September NML newsletter for more information!

Happy Listening!
The NML Team

Naxos of America, Inc.
615.465.3836 (direct)
Nick@NaxosUSA.com

Join in the conversation!

Sneak Preview: NML and CMS 2011

Will you be at CMS in Richmond this October? If so, be sure to look for our ad. on the back cover of the program book!

Naxos Music Library Adds EMI Classics Catalog

Good morning, music lovers!

It is with boundless pleasure that we announce that the complete EMI Classics catalogue is now available to NML and NML-Jazz institutional subscribers! This vast catalog of recordings includes EMI Classics, Virgin Classics, and Blue Note Records.

Today, more than 225 albums are available in NML with the remainder of the 7200 album catalog available by the end of 2011. More details will be available shortly. Be sure to follow us on Facebook and Twitter for all of the updates.

We hope you’re as excited as we are and look forward to many months of wonderful new music! These additions represent the first of many great things to come - so stay tuned for more updates as we near the end of 2011.

As always our ears and inboxes are open - so please feel free to drop us a line!

Happy historical listening!

Mo
nmlhelp@naxosusa.com

Rise Above the Noise!

We made this excellent infographic and I like it so much I wanted to share. Check it out!

Music Challenge Day 3 - Only the Living

Day 3 of my spontaneous music challenge was focused on living composers. If you're familiar with my blogging or my social media-ing at all, you know that I'm a big proponent of living composers. Here are a couple of my picks from that day of listening.



I started out my day with Lera Auerbach's Cetera desunt, "Sonnet for String Quartet No. 3." I really enjoy Auerbach's work in general, but the feminist part of me especially likes it because she's a quite successful young female composer. Not yet forty, she's been cranking out lovely work that teeters between tonality and atonality for years. Her work gets paired with Shostakovich often on records, and not without reason. There's some of that same forcefulness in her writing, some of that bow-breaking intensity, some of the endlessly building tension.
C71104





The new music movement (or alt-classical or indie chamber, or whatever you want to call it) is a thing I really like, despite many of the pretensions assumed to surround it. In the end a lot of it is just good music. Newspeak is one of those prestigious New York new music ensembles that perform the compositions of all those hot young New York composers. They're under the direction of David T. Little, a percussionist and composer of my favorite work on this disc--the title track, sweet light crude. This piece wends its way through light and simple loveliness into angular modern beauty, then groove territory and frenetic chamber rock and minimalist breakdown in what I would call the B section, and back to a lovely, sad denouement. The composer notes that this is "about love and addiction; about misery; about the perversity of loving your captor. It’s a love song to oil."
All the works here are worth a listen, but the title track really stood out to me as exceptionally composed and performed.
NWAM026



To be entirely frank, I think a lot of the doom and gloom surrounding the classical music scene would dissipate if people would recognize living composers as what they are--the Bachs and Beethovens and Brahmses of today. Sure, it doesn't look exactly the same. But would you really want it to?


Pro musica,
Mo
nmlhelp@naxosusa.com

Music Challenge Day 2 - All New Stuff

Music Challenge Day 2 - All New Stuff

This challenge was intended to get listeners going on different things. In point of fact, the mandate was to "not listen to a single work you've heard before."

Now, I listen to music as part of my job. I do it when I'm doing still other parts of my job. And I'm passionate about music discovery. So I listen to a lot of new music.
But I normally sprinkle in favored composers and works, mix eras, genres, and styles, fold in some outside listening (a little punk, a little hip-hop, a little folk). With this project I vowed to listen only to works I had never heard for the entire day, and (since I also listen to lots of living composers) I tried to focus on historic or non-living composers that I had somehow missed.

I started out with some Taneyev String Quartets on new label Northern Flowers. What lovely work! I couldn't believe how much I had missed out on with Taneyev, especially the very sensitive viola and cello writing. Some people just totally ignore the lower voices in string quartets, making them fill out chords mechanically. Not the case here.
NF9933







Then I moved on to Morton Gould's Saint Lawrence Suite. Woefully, I'm a singer and former pretend-string player who always wanted to be a percussionist, so I listen to very little wind band music. But this work may have started a sea change in me. All the rich, bright timbre of the University of Kansas Wind Ensemble was put to good work here. There are some sweet bluesy, jazzy elements to the suite that play nicely with the quick, light, Copland-esque moments that occur from time to time. This is also the only original work for wind band ever nominated for a Grammy for composition.
8.572629



I also discovered M.K. Čiurlionis for myself in this project. Among my other listening, this last stood out. Perhaps it was the opening, in dark Eastern European style writing that called to mind Borodin's quartets, or perhaps that the composer seemed mutable, even a tad volatile. This Lithuanian composer was also a painter, something I felt I could hear in the compositions before I saw the work. I listened to the String Quartet in C minor and the Theme and Variations, both of which could have tended toward the measly or graceless without the correct force of playing. I have to say, the Vilnius String Quartet brought it on that point.
NF9987


What did you listen to?

Pro musica,
Mo
nmlhelp@naxosusa.com

Music Challenge Day 1- Listen to a Composer You Hate

This week I challenged our social media buddies and myself to get outside of their usual comfortable realm of listening. Four days of boundary pushing (some light lifting, some not so light). Here are my thoughts from each day.


DAY 1: Listen to a Composer You Hate

Confession time, Internet.

I hate Mozart.
It's not personal. It's musical.



And here we go.
Anyone: But he was a child genius!
Me: I know.
A: But he revolutionized the world of music in both performance and composition!
M: I know.
A: But he WAS the classical era!
M: I know.
A: But you like opera. He wrote some great operas. Lots of them!
M: "Great" is a relative term. If you mean too long to be justified by the content, then...yes.
A: Not even Nozze?
M: Nope. I can stand it, but just barely.
A: Cosi?
M: Ugh.
A: What about the choral music?
M: Meh. Some of it is okay.
A: Everyone likes the Requiem!
M: It's all right, I guess.
A: And Amadeus! Did you see Amadeus?!
M: Yep.
A: Didn't you like it?
M: Nope.
A: ...was it the powdered wigs?
M: Yeah, that's it. That's exactly it. That's the reason behind my ire for the entire output of an absurdly prolific composer.

So that's how it usually goes. I'm not known for writing composers off in such a manner. I'm not trying to be snarky. In point of fact, I always say that I'll listen to just about anything to make my ears smarter. And I will, even with Mozart. ONCE.
It doesn't change the fact that I basically dislike his music. True, it's genius composition. True, it's unparalleled in it's classical-ness. True, I could never compose anything an nth as impressive or lasting. I'm just not a fan.

So today I listened to Mozart. All day, marathon listening. Piano trios, symphonies, operas, string quartets, choral works, everything. I put aside my historical disdain and opened up my ears. It was at once harrowing and humbling.

Because I still dislike Mozart. I wanted to come out of this loving his music, feeling freshly washed and clean, wrapped in beauty and classical symmetry. But it didn't happen that way. At the end of my listening project I just wanted to hear something that wasn't balanced and proper. I wanted to hear something that could make me weep at my desk with flayed emotion, something that confused my ear or beat it into submission. Something that said something. Maybe if I wanted better results I should have not started with My Number One Big Issue. You live and learn.

The only thing I can really say for the experience is "I tried again." At least I didn't just write off the composer because of my leftover feelings about his work. I checked my old opinions against new experience, so it's not just an untested, ridiculous prejudice. But I recognize the gifts that he had and the beauty he gave to the world. It's just not my cup of tea.

Jedem Tierchen sein Pläsirchen.



Pro musica (all of it!),
Mo
nmlhelp@naxosusa.com

NML App for Android--Now on Amazon Appstore

I know what you're thinking. You need another place to get our apps, right? RIGHT?

Now you can get the NML app on Amazon's Appstore for Android! Click the giant logo to go!


Don't forget that all of you institutional users will need to take an extra step to generate an app login. Sign up for a free Student/Member Playlist Account through your institution's NML page. The login for that account is also your app login.

Here's to options!



Pro musica,

Mo
nmlhelp@naxosusa.com