So 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.
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“A Pianist Unlike Any Other”
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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]
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Patricia Leonard’s “Strangely Close, Yet Distant” Nominated for American Prize in Composition
Composer 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!
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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
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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
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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.
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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, electronicsProduced 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 CornettUrlicht AudioVisual UAD-5992-BR
Audio Blu-Ray + CD release date: February 12, 2013
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The New York Piano Quartet Plays Marx & Korngold
“How could such a major composer fall into oblivion?”
Those are the words of conductor Riccardo Chailly concerning Austrian composer Joseph Marx, whose music remained firmly in the romantic tradition throughout his long career, which spanned the first six decades of the twentieth century. For the latter half of the twentieth century, Marx’s reputation rested on over 150 songs composed in the late romantic style, most of which he wrote while he was in his twenties; the rest of his music had been all but forgotten. Only recently has his technically demanding chamber music, including the?Rhapsodie for piano quartet — which received its American premiere last year from the New York Piano Quartet — enjoyed a revival.
Marx’s more famous contemporary, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, is most well known as the composer who revolutionized music for the cinema. Korngold enjoyed a fruitful partnership with Paul Wittgenstein, the eminent pianist who lost his right arm in the First World War and commissioned the leading composers of his day to write works for piano left hand. Korngold’s Suite for piano left hand, two violins and cello has all the composer’s hallmarks — evocative and expressive melodies, brilliant harmonies, and dramatic virtuoso gestures — along with a few portents of the great film scores he would begin composing less than a decade later.
Here are two great works of 20th century high romanticism guaranteed to please fans of romantic repertoire and bravura chamber music. In their newest recording, the New York Piano Quartet rise to the challenge of Marx’s Rhapsodie, a veritable symphonic poem for four players, and Korngold’s entertaining Suite.
Joseph Marx: Rhapsodie
Erich Wolfgang Korngold: Suite for piano left hand, two violins and cello*New York Piano Quartet
Elmira Darvarova, violin / Ronald Carbone, viola and *violin / Samuel Magill, cello / Linda Hall, pianoProduced by Gene Gaudette
Engineered by John C. Baker
Recorded March 2012, Lawrenceville School Chapel, Lawrenceville, NJUrlicht AudioVisual UAV-5996
CD release date: January 29, 2013
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One of “The Best Classical Music Recordings of 2012” (New York Times)
The New York Times praises the new recording of Luigi Nono’s La lontananza nostalgica utopica futura with violinist Miranda Cuckson and electronica master Richard Burns as “One of the Year’s Best New Classical Recordings”:
“Played with assured mystery by the accomplished Miranda Cuckson, Luigi Nono‘s 1988-89 work swerves from ethereal to violent and back again. The violinist interacts with previously taped material, including both her own playing and studio sounds, and wanders during a live performance, a spatial element captured in the surround-sound version on one of the discs in this set. At times Ms. Cuckson even sings, hauntingly — a part of the score seemingly ignored by previous interpreters.”
— Zachary Woolfe, The New York TimesLuigi Nono: La lontananza nostalgica utopica futura (1988-89)
Miranda Cuckson, violin / Christopher Burns, electronicsProduced 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 CornettUrlicht 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.
Lossless FLAC download — available here.
MP3 download — available here.