For his entire life, Reynaldo Hahn was labeled as a composer of salon music, a lightweight, whose compositions were written to satisfy the academic tastes of social circles in the Belle Époque and during the period between the two wars. Luckily however, in recent years, a handful of performers and publishers have allowed us to discover the incredible diversity of his eclectic and enchanting work. While not widely known, his piano music is in fact one of the most original aspects of his talent. The outstanding recordings presented in this boxed set of four CDs should help in banishing those long held prejudices.

Pro et Contra is fully representative of Gubaydulina's fondness for working in long, slow-moving time-units. It was the result of a commission from the Louisville Orchestra. (Located in the largest city in the U.S. state of Kentucky, this symphony had been known for 40 years for its ambitious program of commissioning new orchestral music.) Its scoring is for a large orchestra: Its woodwind section adds all the common auxiliary orchestral winds ……

Joseph Stevenson @ AllMusic

Gaius Claudius Glaber is dead. Many months have passed since his defeat, and the rebel army, led by Spartacus and his generals Crixus, Gannicus and Agron, continue to amass victories over Rome. With the rebel numbers swelling to thousands of freed slaves, it has become a force that has started to challenge even the mighty armies of Rome. Spartacus is more determined than ever to bring down the entire Roman Republic. Following the death of Ashur, Naevia and Crixus fight as one with newfound strength and determination. And Gannicus, always seeking to embrace life to the fullest, shares his bed with the beautiful and dangerous Saxa. Together, the rebels engage in one bloody skirmish after another and prepare for the inevitable: a full out war with Rome.

This program features alternating sequences of Eastern and Western compositions, illuminating the differences and similarities between the musical styles of such cultures. Some of the Western pieces are taken from the "Cantigas de Santa Maria" cycle or have their origins in the Istampittas of Medieval Italy. Some of the Eastern compositions were taken from a manuscript entitled "The Book of the Science of Music through Letters" written by the Ottoman musicologist Dimitrie Cantemir, while others were probably carried forward from a strong oral tradition.

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