Blue
Griffin Recording is an independent recording label and full service
recording company. We are located in Lansing, Michigan.
Recording engineer and producer Sergei Kvitko
has completed degrees in music from Russia and the US, including
Doctorate in Piano Performance from Michigan State University. (Read more...) BGR
uses the highest quality equipment to achieve the superb sound that has
been praised by Gramophone ("vividly detailed, vibrant sonics"), and American Record Guide ("The recording is
close to ideal, rich but clear, truthful, and immediate") among others.
(Read more reviews...)
Blue
Griffin is a unique label as it follows creation of the CD from
beginning to end, from setting up the microphones, recording, editing
and mastering, graphic design and printing, to distribution,
advertising and sales. (View full Catalog...)
Blue Griffin Records offers outlet for local classical talent By LAWRENCE COSENTINO
Nicholas Roth (piano), “Schumann Novelletten, Op. 21.” Roth was something of a sensation when he studied under Michigan State’s Ralph Votapek in the ‘90s. In the first Blue Griffin release, he spreads his smooth technique over a set of exuberant pieces by a young and restless Schumann, and both seem as eager to briskly move things along as they are to impress.
Blue Griffin Records offers outlet for local classical talent
By LAWRENCE COSENTINO
Peter Miyamoto (piano), “Chopin: Ballades and Fantasies.”
This disc is a great, big, steaming sacrifice to the rumbling god of Steinway, the most impressive of Blue Griffin’s recordings to date. It’s a showcase for the phenomenal pianism of Peter Miyamoto, formerly on the faculty at MSU and now based on the West Coast (apparently the Great Lakes couldn’t provide crashing waves big enough for his cover shot). Miyamoto’s Chopin is so good it makes the pupils dilate; it combines the restless glitter of moonlight with the tension of a suspension-bridge cable.
Krieger Piano Sonatina.Nina. Piano Sonatas: No. 1; No. 2. Prelúdio e Fuga. Choro manhoso. Estudo seresteiro. Estudos intervalares Ÿ
Alexandre Dossin (pn) BLUE GRIFFIN BGR125 (64:22)
Brazilian composer Edino Krieger, according to a biography provided by his publisher, was born in Brusque, Santa Catarina, in 1928. He began to study violin with his father and was granted a scholarship at age 15 to study violin and composition at the Conservatório Brasileiro de Música in Rio de Janeiro. In 1948 he won a contest to study with Aaron Copland at the Berkshire Music Center, and afterward with Peter Mennin at Juilliard. Further tutelage came from Ernst Krenek and Lennox Berkeley. In addition to his composing career, Krieger has been active as a conductor, music critic, and music administrator, and has apparently been a calming influence in Brazil’s fractious music world. He is the president of the Academia Brasileira de Música, and the organizer and director of the Bienal de Música Contemporânea Brasileira, a festival that was launched in 1975.
In the notes accompanying his new recording of apparently the complete Krieger works for piano (to date), Alexandre Dossin provides this apt travel guide to the composer’s keyboard œ uvre: “In it we travel from an original native-Brazilian melody to polytonal clusters, passing through an elegant salon waltz, a lazy choro and a melancholic seresta—all enhanced by a neoclassical-modal flavor and polyphonic textures.”
Very little of this music sounds Brazilian in the way that Villa-Lobos does; it’s more likely to call to mind Samuel Barber, sometimes the light Barber of Excursions, and sometimes the tough Barber of the piano sonata. Most of these pieces employ syncopation and have a strong rhythmic drive. Krieger is more likely than Barber to indulge in glittering passagework, but not to a Lisztian extent; poetic expression is more important here than showmanship. You’d definitely peg Krieger as Brazilian upon hearing his 1955 Prelúdio e Fuga or his 1956 Choro manhoso, but his two sonatas (1954 and 1956) and sonatina (1957) offer neo-Classicism without folklore. Nina (1997) is a pleasant salon waltz; the remaining items are etudes from 1956 and 2000, the latter set holding up particularly well as music to hear rather than play.
Pianist Dossin serves on the faculty of the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire; he has degrees from the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory and the University of Texas at Austin; he took first prize at the 2003 Martha Argerich International Piano Competition in Buenos Aires. He first encountered Krieger’s music in 1987 while preparing for a competition celebrating the composer’s 60th birthday. The music stuck with him, and he seems to play it with both devotion and delight; Krieger, at least, has lavished praise upon these performances, and I hear no reason to dispute the composer’s seal of approval.
KRIEGER: Sonatina; Sonatas Alexandre Dossin, p—Blue Griffin 125—65 min
If you like the piano as a vehicle for melodious modern romanticism you should hear Krieger's beautiful sonatas and his captivating sonatina, especially in the first-class presentation they're accorded here. Alexandre Dossin plays with an astute balance of excitement, technical finesse, and fluid expressivity; The recording is close to ideal rich but clear, truthful, and immediate.
His traversal of the Bach suites would surely turn heads if it came within range of many ears; it is captivating, occasionally controversial, and always expressive.
Blue
Griffin Recording is an independent recording label and full service
recording company. We are located in Lansing, Michigan.
