Entangled Histories: Opera and Cultural Exchange Between Vienna and the Italian States After Napoleon
Author: Claudio Vellutini Publication details: Oxford University Press Weblink: doi.org/10.1093/9780197656594.001.0001 Abstract: Entangled Histories discusses the role of opera in the patterns of cultural exchange across the Austrian Empire in the decades following the wars against revolutionary and Napoleonic France. It argues that new modes of opera production and dissemination between Vienna and the Italian states […]
Sustenance
Featured UBC Alumni: Iman Habibi (BMus ’08, MMus ’10) Featured Track: Offering of Water (2023) for violin and piano 1. of life 2. yasna 3. purify 4. it shall flow if from tears 5. to life Label: Spektral Records Recording details:
French Reflections, vol. VII: Renascence (2024)
Featured UBC Faculty Artist: Jose Franch-Ballester, clarinet Label: Music@Menlo LIVE Featured Tracks: 4-11- Quatuor pour la fin du temps by Olivier Messaien Recording details: Crumb’s cataclysmic Black Angels, a passionate anti-war statement, balances Messiaen’s Quatuor pour la fin du temps (Quartet for the End of Time), a devoutly spiritual work composed in a prisoner of war camp. Two imaginative […]
French Reflections, vol. VI: Vocal Exchange (2024)
Featured UBC Faculty Artist: Jose Franch-Ballester, clarinet Label: Music@Menlo LIVE Featured Tracks: 2,3,4,5- Selected Preludes for Clarinet and Piano by Aleksandr Scriabin; 13. Première rhapsodie pour clarinette et piano by Claude Debussy Recording details: Vocal Exchange juxtaposes treasured songs from three cultures. Russian-American soprano Erika Baikoff offers her unsurpassed vocal skill and bewitching personality in songs by Lizst, […]
French Reflections, vol. IV: Trios and Trumpets (2024)
Featured UBC Faculty Artist: Jose Franch-Ballester, clarinet Label: Music@Menlo LIVE Featured Tracks: 1,2,3- Trio in E-flat major for Piano, Clarinet, and Viola, K. 498, Kegelstatt by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart; 4,5,6,7- La revue de cuisine by Bohuslav Martinů Recording details: Trios and Trumpets gathers music from Austria, Hungary, and France. The piano trio is represented by Mozart and Chaminade, and […]
French Reflections, vol. III: Quartets and Harps (2024)
Featured UBC Faculty Artist: Jose Franch-Ballester, clarinet Label: Music@Menlo LIVE Featured Tracks: 4,5,6- Octet for Two Clarinets, Harp, String Quartet, and Bass by Charles Martin Loeffler Recording details: When speaking of favorite quartets, no one would leave out the famous Adagio from Barber’s 1936 quartet, performed in this volume by rising classical stars, the Viano String Quartet. Loeffler’s recently-discovered […]
French Reflections, vol. II: Vienna to Paris (2024)
Featured UBC Faculty Artist: Jose Franch-Ballester, clarinet Label: Music@Menlo LIVE Featured Tracks: 8,9,10- L’heure du berger for Winds and Piano, op. 20 by Jean Françaix Recording details: Vienna and Paris have long been cultural powerhouses across art forms. Haydn, the founder of the Classical style, and Mozart, who refined and augmented it, are represented in this volume by […]
Understories
Ensemble: Dálava Featured UBC Students and Alumni: Julia Úlehla (PhD ’21) and Aram Bajakian (PhD Candidate) Recording details: Pi Recordings, April 25th, 2025 Dálava, the genre-defying ensemble led by vocalist Julia Úlehla with guitarist Aram Bajakian (Lou Reed, John Zorn, Diana Krall), returns with Understories, a deeply evocative new album that explores uncharted territories of […]
Julius Rontgen: Piano Music, Vol. 6
Artists: Mark Anderson Recording details: Nimbus Records, April 4th, 2025 This recording provides the listener with a chronological overview of Julius Rontgen’s creative output, from his earliest published composition, written in 1864-when he was just nine years old-to pieces written as a mature composer five decades later. The latter reveals a composer of outstanding skill, […]
Mourning for the Death of a Political System: Cantonese Opera and Cantopop in 香 • 夭 Requiem HK (2017)
Author: Hedy Law Publication details: In East Asian Voices of Resistance Against Racism in Music, edited by Maiko Kawabata and Ken Ueno, 138–149. Cambridge: Ethics Press, 2025. Weblink: ethicspress.com/products/east-asian-voices-of-resistance-against-racism-in-music Abstract: The negative racialization of East Asian musicians in Western classical music manifests through tropes of othering such as “Yellow Peril,” Orientalism, and various harmful stereotypes. This volume centers […]