Best Classical Music

Kaldalóns: Ave María (Arr. Víkingur Ólafsson)

Kaldalóns: Ave María (Arr. Víkingur Ólafsson) (Upright Piano)

Communion

Sanctuary

Field: Nocturne No. 9 in E Minor, H. 46

Nocturne No. 9 in E Minor, H. 46

Sleeping Lotus

Sleeping Lotus (redux)

a dream in white

Touched

🎹 Gentle Echoes – Soothing Piano & Dreamy Instrumentals (Jaded Sounds Records)

Gentle Echoes is a tranquil journey through the art of piano music, blending the intimacy of solo piano, the warmth of lo-fi piano textures, and the ethereal beauty of dreamy, whimsical string arrangements. 🌙🎶 Released under Jaded Sounds Records, this collection captures emotion in its purest form — soft, reflective, and timeless.

Each composition drifts effortlessly between tenderness and imagination — the sound of quiet mornings, starry evenings, and moments of calm between thoughts. With gentle melodies and cinematic grace, Gentle Echoes invites listeners into a world where every note feels like a breath of peace. ☁️🕯️

Winters Zen

Tune Your Brain for Stress Relief

Liszt: Consolations, S. 172: No. 3 in D-Flat Major. Lento, placido

For more information visit: http://www.klassikakzente.de/recomposed/home 

Some works are so familiar that it is almost impossible to hear them afresh, but that is what Max Richter has achieved with Vivaldi “Recomposed”. This is no mere arrangement; instead Richter has absorbed Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons into his own musical bloodstream. At first Richter followed the example of other works in the “Recomposed” series, which re-mix existing recordings, but, he says, “I wanted to open up the score on a note-by-note level, and working with an existing recording was like digging a mineshaft through an incredibly rich seam, discovering diamonds and not being able to pull them out. That became frustrating. I wanted to get inside the score at the level of the notes and in essence re-write it, re-composing it in a literal way.”Richter calculates that, in the process, he has discarded around three-quarters of Vivaldi’s original. He opens with what he describes as “a dubby cloud which I’ve called Spring 0. It functions as a sort of prelude, setting up an electronic, ambient space for the first Spring movement to step into. I’ve used electronics in several movements, subtle, almost inaudible things to do withthe bass, but I wanted certain moments to connect to the whole electronic universe that is so much part of our musical language today.” Other resonances are no less unexpected: Richter describes part of the first movement of his Summer as “heavy music for the orchestra. It’s relentless pulsed music, which is a quality that contemporary dance music has; and perhaps I was also thinking about John Bonham’s drumming. Then, in the second movement of Autumn I asked the harpsichordist Raphael Alpermann to play in what is a rather old-fashioned way, very regularly, rather like a ticking clock. That was partly because I didn’t want the harpsichord part to be attention-seeking, but also because that style connects to various pop records from the 1970s where the harpsichord or Clavinet was featured, including various Beach Boys albums and the Beatles’ Abbey Road.” Clearly, Richter has brought his own frame of reference to the project. As he says, “Vivaldi’s music is made of regular patterns, and that connects with post-minimalism, which is one strand in the music that I write. That felt like a natural link, but even so it was surprisingly difficult to navigate my way through it. At every point I had to work out how much is Vivaldi and how much is me. It was difficult but also rewarding because the raw material is so fascinating.”Just as Richter’s Seasons plays tricks with the way we hear Vivaldi’s original, so it also asks questions of the soloist, Daniel Hope. “Violinists have Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons hardwired in their brain. Daniel is likely to play the original I don’t know how many times in a year, and for him to have my parallel text going on in another part of his brain is a challenge. I think he did a wonderful job. He brought to it a deep engagement with the original, but he was fully prepared to cut this new swathe through the text.”


Spring One - Vivaldi Recomposed - The Four Seasons

Spring 1 (2012)

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Saint-Saëns: Carnival of the Animals: The Swan

Joep Beving has been one with the piano from an early age. He was forced to end his musical studies at the conservatory and instead continued at university to get a degree in public policy and public administration. However, his love for his instrument never perished. Where once his goal was to hit as many notes per minute as physically possible, his style of playing has changed over the years, searching for a particular aesthetic essence. His path was illuminated by a piano that Beving inherited from his grandmother when she passed away in 2009. This German instrument insisted on a more gentle touch and a gracious pace, which eventually led Beving to adapt to a more classical vocabulary to tell his story.⁣⁣
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This story started to manifest itself relatively late in life, when in 2014 at age 38, he was forced to stay home from work and decided to answer the draw of his piano. In search of tranquility of mind and some form of essence, music started to present itself that he had never played before in his life. Minimal pieces that he later once described as ‘simple music for complex emotions’.  Turned down by the only label he approached, Joep decided to self release his debut album Solipsism in 2015.⁣⁣
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The sound of his piano found its way to the ears of Deutsche Grammophon’s A&R manager Christian Badzura when visiting his favorite Bar in Berlin. This led to the signing of Beving to the world's foremost classical label and consequently the release of equally successful sophomore album ‘Prehension’ in 2017, making Joep one of the most listened to living pianists in the world at that time.⁣⁣
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He has attributed much of his music’s broad appeal to the stream of consciousness in which some of the pieces were conceived. Claiming that the music is already out there and that one has to ‘just’ create the circumstances for it to land. In 2018 he took this idea one step further with the release of ‘Conatus’ of which he said:  “If you see music as a living organism then it is not unthinkable that it has its own innate inclination to continue to exist and enhance itself.” On Conatus, Beving sees compositions from his first two albums travel through the minds of artists he admires (a.o. Suzanne Ciani, Collin Benders, Andrea Belfi), resulting in new pieces of music adding new layers and dimensions which would serve as the upbeat to his next major solo project as would become apparent in April 2019.⁣⁣
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As part of the art piece ‘Franchise Freedom’ by acclaimed artist duo Studio Drift, Joep travels to Burning Man at the end of 2018 to perform in the desert of Black Rock City in front of his largest audience to date. Inspired by the display of human creativity and inclusivity he returns home to finish his third solo album.⁣⁣
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April 2019 sees the release of HENOSIS, Joep Beving’s closing chapter in a trilogy of albums – marking the end of an intensely personal four-year spiritual and philosophical exploration.⁣⁣
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On HENOSIS the Dutch composer continues his minimalist and at times romantic style of writing, but this time explores new territories. It sets off where his sophomore album Prehension left us, the warm intimate sound of the Schimmel piano. With the help of producer Gijs van Klooster and through collaborations with Cappella Amsterdam, Echo Collective, and Maarten Vos, Joep Beving opens up new musical worlds using orchestral and electronic sounds alongside the familiar piano.⁣⁣

Sleeping Lotus (redux)

Joep Beving

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