Urlicht AudioVisual News

  • More Praise for Cuckson, Burns, and Nono

    Miranda Cuckson and Christopher Burns | Luigi NonoThe Examiner‘s Stephen Smoliar relates his experience listening to the new recording of Luigi Nono’s La lontananza nostalgica utopica futura with violinist Miranda Cuckson and electronica master Richard Burns some years after having heard a live performance by Gidon Kremer:

    A recent release of this composition by Urlicht has taken a rather unique approach to capturing that sense of journey. Violinist Miranda Cuckson and “projectionist” Christopher Burns made a recording after having given a performance in New York. This was a multi-track recording for playback on a 5.1 Surround Sound system, and it was released as a Blu-ray audio disc. For those who lacked the necessary technology, that disc was packaged with a more conventional stereophonic CD. As one who lacks that “necessary technology,” my own listening experience involved playing the CD with full knowledge of my previous spatial experience.

    With that disclaimer I have to say that there is much to be gained from the CD in spite of its limitations. Without the spatial effects one is more inclined to attend to Nono’s motivic vocabulary. While this may make the journey less “physical,” one can still appreciate that sense of peregrination through the six sections of the piece (conveniently marked as separate tracks on the CD). Furthermore, those who understand the semantics of “madrigal” in its Renaissance context will probably be more likely to appreciate why Nono chose this noun to categorize this particular composition.

    Nevertheless, the other significant disclaimer I must make is that I had the advantage of listening to this recording with the benefit of past experience. There is no doubt that this is complex music, the result of scrupulous attention to both the notations encountered on the music stands and the sounds on the recorded tracks. It is probably more than most listeners will be able to manage on first contact. Nevertheless, it does not take many exposures for mind to encounter familiarities as the performance peregrinates. The listener willing to let this music work its magic on its own terms is likely to be well rewarded.

    Luigi Nono: La lontananza nostalgica utopica futura (1988-89)
    Miranda Cuckson, violin / Christopher Burns, electronics

    Produced by Christopher Burns and Richard Warp
    Recording engineer: Richard Warp
    Recorded at A Bloody Good Record Inc, Long Island City NY
    Mixing engineer (stereo CD): Richard Warp
    Mixing engineers (DTS 5.1 surround mix): Paul Special and Richard Warp
    Assistant mixing engineer (DTS 5.1 surround mix): Dillon Pajunas
    DTS 5.1 surround mix produced at Sonic Arts Center, CCNY, NYC
    Produced for New Spectrum Recordings, NYC
    Executive producer: Glenn Cornett

    Urlicht AudioVisual UAD-5992

    CD plus Blu-Ray Audio for home theater systems — available at Amazon.com.

    CD plus DTS-CD for home theater systems — available here.

  • Gary Karr, Elmira Darvarova & Harmon Lewis Play Handel & Barthélémon

    The two composers on this disc lived and worked in London. Rather than performing a servile role in the aristocratic courts of Europe or working as music directors in churches, they joined many of Europe’s finest musicians in London, where they were offered independence and respect. One composer is in the pantheon of greats. The other has unjustifiably become an historical footnote, and the man who is arguably the world’s greatest virtuoso double bassist is out to right this wrong!

    Double bassist Gary Karr, one of the greatest living string virtuosos, presents the world premiere recordings of trios by late Baroque composer François-Hippolyte Barthélemon, coupled with his edition of string trios by Barthélemon’s friend and colleague Georg Frideric Handel. Karr is joined by his longtime keyboard collaborator Harmon Lewis and MET orchestra past concertmaster Elmira Darvarova. A must-have recording for fans of double bass, baroque music, and just plain terrific music-making!

    George Frideric Handel: Sonata in g minor, Op. 2 No. 8
    I. Andante • II. Allegro [energico] • III. Largo • IV. Allegro [con fermezza]

    François-Hippolyte Barthélemon: Duetto I in C Major
    I. Allegro moderato • II. Andante con variazioni • III. Allegretto

    Barthélemon: Duetto II in A Major
    I. Allegro moderato • II. Adagio • III. Rondeau. Allegretto

    Handel: Sonata in E Major, Op. 2 No. 9
    I. Adagio • II. Allegro • III. Adagio • IV. Allegro

    Gary Karr, double bass
    Elmira Darvarova, violin
    Harmon Lewis, continuo

    Produced by Gary Karr

    Urlicht AudioVisual UAV-5993

    CD release date: July 16, 2013

  • “A Pianist Unlike Any Other”

    elisha-199x300So says music journalist, author, and critic Norman Lebrecht about Elisha Abas at Lebrecht’s blog. Click here to read the entire post and see Abas play Chopin.

    Abas Plays Brahms: buy here.

    Abas Plays Chopin & Yedidia: Buy here.

  • About Gene Gaudette

    Gene Gaudette is owner of Urlicht Rights Management and its in-house label, Urlicht AudioVisual. He has over forty years of experience within the music industry as a video, recording, web, and interactive media producer, A&R director, product marketing strategist, artistic adviser, retail and record label manager, music journalist, composer, conductor and arranger.

    Gaudette launched Urlicht AudioVisual’s CD/Audio Blu-Ray label in January 2012. Based in New York City, the label focuses on performers with a unique artistic vision and repertoire encompassing both familiar and rarely-heard works. Many of the releases feature one or more world premiere recordings. Artists featured on the label include conductor José Serebrier, violinists Elmira Darvarova and Miranda Cuckson, cellist János Starker, pianists Pascal & Ami Rogé, Octavio Brunetti, and Elisha Abas, and double-bassist Gary Karr.

    Urlicht’s 2014 release of The Music of Gustav Mahler — Issued 78s, 1903-1940 was acclaimed as “one of the most important Mahler issues in recent decades” by International Record Review‘s Robert Matthew-Walker and made The New York Times’ list of best new releases of the year. Urlicht’s 2015 release desde estusios a tangos, showcasing the late Octavio Brunetti’s arrangements for violin and piano of music by Astor Piazzolla arranged for violinist Elmira Darvarova, was nominated for a Latin Grammy®.

    Urlicht Rights Management also provides complete marketing, logistics and production solutions for content owners, including video and audio production, sophisticated audio recording restoration, web site design, database development, media and metadata preparation and post-production.

    Gaudette is an early Internet adapter, having joined CompuServe in 1988, fired up his first browser in 1992, and teamed up with Jeff Koopersmith in 1997 to migrate American Politics Journal, then a regular CompuServe feature, to the World Wide Web (it is now the Web’s oldest continuously operating publication of online political opinion and headline aggregation). He developed content and databases for andante.com from 2001 to 2003, and has developed dozens of label, artist, e-commerce, and blog Web sites.

    Gaudette has lectured on music business and recording history at the Musikwochen Mahler Toblach, University of Connecticut, University of Hartford, and the Smithsonian Institution. He has been a panelist and presenter for events hosted by the Gustav Mahler Society of New York and MIDEM. He has reviewed New York concerts for classicalsource.com.

    [updated April 3, 2019]

  • Patricia Leonard’s “Strangely Close, Yet Distant” Nominated for American Prize in Composition

    Songs for Mahler in the Absence of WordsComposer Patricia Leonard informs us that Strangely Close, Yet Distant, her trio for viola, cello, and piano included in the New York Piano Quartet’s Songs for Mahler in the Absence of Words, has been nominated for the American Prize for Composition.

    Urlicht AudioVisual congratulates Patricia along with the members of the New York Piano Quartet along with recording engineer John Baker and his team!

    Download the hi-def .flac edition here.
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    Download the hi-quality mp3 edition here.
    Buy the CD edition here.

  • ARG praises the New York Piano Quartet’s CD release of music by Marx and Korngold

    Another rave review for the New York Piano Quartet:

    “Joseph Marx’s Quartet in the Form of a Rhapsody, to give its full name, dates from 1911, the year he also wrote his superb Rhapsody, Scherzo, and Ballade for the same forces. … Marx’s control over his resources is everywhere apparent. The piece struck me as first-rate in every respect. … We need to stop thinking of Korngold as merely a skilled vendor of Hollywood bon-bons. His chamber music not only shows a deeper aspect of his personality, but in retrospect lifts the average of his entire output. Performances of both works are terrific, completely vindicating their value.”
    – Don O’Connor, American Record Guide, June 2013

    Download the hi-def .flac edition here.
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    Download the hi-quality mp3 edition here.
    Buy the CD edition here.

  • Gramophone hails the New York Piano Quartet’s CD release of music by Marx and Korngold

    High praise from the world’s most influential classical music magazine:

    “ The players – all members of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra – restore life to works by the Austrian composers Joseph Marx and Erich Wolfgang Korngold long left on the shelf of history. … Both pieces receive ultra-impassioned, vividly detailed performances by the musicians of the New York Piano Quartet. Given the fact that Marx and Korngold aren’t shy about wearing hearts on sleeves, the players dig into the music with alacrity, the strings often employing juicy vibrato and slides to emphasise the composers’ expressive oints. The artistry has the excitement that often transpires when something significant as been unearthed and savoured.”
    – Donald Rosenberg, Gramophone, June 2013

    Download the hi-def .flac edition here.
    Download the CD-quality .flac edition here.
    Download the hi-quality mp3 edition here.
    Buy the CD edition here.

  • Legendary Double Bassist Gary Karr on Urlicht

    Gary Karr is the world’s leading double bass soloist — a phenomenal musician and pedagogue whose playing and teaching have revolutionized the way in which the lowest instrument in the string family is heard.

    Urlicht AudioVisual is pleased to announce its first release with Gary Karr, joined by his longtime artistic collaborator Harmon Lewis and the first woman concertmaster of the MET Orchestra, Elmira Darvarova. The disc showcases the music of two European Baroque masters who reached their artistic zenith outside of their native countries in London: Georg Frideric Handel, a giant among Baroque composers, and François-Hippolyte Barthélemon, a French violinist of the generation after Handel who counted Haydn among his friends and colleagues.

    Karr. Darvarova, and Lewis eschew the trends of scholarly, so-called “authentic” performance practice, bringing warm cantabile playing and robust energy to Handel’s Trio Sonatas Op. 2 Nos. 8 and 9, and puckish playfulness alternating with beautiful contrapuntal melodies in Barthélemon’s unjustly neglected Duettos.

    Handel • Barthélemon | European Baroque Masters in London is scheduled for release in July 2013 and will be distributed in the US and Canada through E One Entertainment.

  • Urlicht on the Road: Report from Paris

    Our owner is still shaking off jet lag following an enormously rewarding two days of marathon recording sessions at Temple Saint-Pierre in Paris La Villette. The indefatigable pianist Pascal Rogé and friends — violinist Elmira Darvarova (the first ever woman-concertmaster in the history of the Metropolitan Opera), Orchestre de Paris principal clarinetist Pascal Moraguès, New York Philharmonic horn virtuoso Howard Wall, and Pascal’s wife, pianist Ami Rogé — recorded some of Francis Poulenc‘s most rewarding chamber and piano four-hands music. Audiophile engineer George Vassilev, who was an enormously perceptive set of “second ears”, and François, the master piano technician from Régie Pianos who was present for the entire session keeping a stunning Steinway in perfect condition, played a huge role in making these demanding sessions a complete success. Urlicht is grateful beyond words to every one of these terrific musicians, and can’t wait to get this recording on the market.

  • Miranda Cuckson Plays Luigi Nono: La lontananza

    Luigi Nono‘s penultimate work was conceived as an immersive experience for listeners: a solo violinist accompanied by electronically transformed violin sounds emanating from speakers around the audience.

    For the first time, Nono’s La lontananza nostalgica utopica futura is being released in a way that allows the home listener to experience the work as the composer intended, with violinist Miranda Cuckson accompanied by Luigi Nono’s original eight-channel tape, restored and mixed by Christopher Burns in high-definition 5.1 surround sound on Blu-Ray Audio disc, and in a stereophonic mix on compact disc.

    Luigi Nono: La lontananza nostalgica utopica futura (1988-89)
    Miranda Cuckson, violin / Christopher Burns, electronics

    Produced by Christopher Burns and Richard Warp
    Recording engineer: Richard Warp
    Recorded at A Bloody Good Record Inc, Long Island City NY
    Mixing engineer (stereo CD): Richard Warp
    Mixing engineers (DTS 5.1 surround mix): Paul Special and Richard Warp
    Assistant mixing engineer (DTS 5.1 surround mix): Dillon Pajunas
    DTS 5.1 surround mix produced at Sonic Arts Center, CCNY, NYC
    Produced for New Spectrum Recordings, NYC
    Executive producer: Glenn Cornett

    Urlicht AudioVisual UAD-5992-BR

    Audio Blu-Ray + CD release date: February 12, 2013