Fanfare Magazine on Brahms- Serenade, Schoenberg- Verklärte Nacht
a competitive performance with no technical weaknesses, a taut interpretation, and all the more impressive for being recorded live
The Classical Reviewer- String Trios by Schnittke, Penderecki, Kurtag and Weinberg
This is music that really tears at the soul, particularly in this performance.CD Review- The Arts Fuse on Schnittke, Penderecki, Kurtag and Weinberg Trios
"...a can’t-miss disc that heralds an ensemble to watch."CD Review: The Strad on Schnittke, Penderecki, Kurtág and Weinberg String Trios
..playing with a remarkable intensity and elegant assurance throughout....They expertly summon vivid sound images for a selection of miniatures from Kurtág’s Signs, Games and Messages, and there’s abundant lyricism in their Weinberg String Trio, not least in Woods’s gracefully ...
CD REVIEW- CLASSICAL CD REVIEWS ON VERKLARTE NACHT AND BRAHMS SERENADE NO. 1
The textures are appropriately bass heavy, and the two cellos dominate, but every line comes through with exceptional clarity. This gives the piece a new profile, with the complex but now clear counterpoint driving the music and leading the ear ...
CD Review- Verbunkos on Complete String Trios of Hans Gal and Hans Krasa
It is hard to think of composers of perhaps insufficiently recognized importance in the chamber music canon such as Hans Gál and Hans Krása. And there could hardly be a more serendipitous alliance than for them to be performed by ...
Concert Review- ConcertoNet reviews Epomeo at Tenri
"the wonderful trio of the evening, Ensemble Epomeo...from this entrancing group, the most dexterous execution..."
CD Review- Gramophone Magazine on Gal/Krasa Complete String Trios
"Ensemble Epomeo provide ravishing accounts of both Gal works, fully in sympathy with the idiom... A splendid disc I cannot get enough of."
CD Review- RECORDING OF THE MONTH: MusicWeb International, Steve Arloff on Gal/Krasa Complete String Trios
The disc leaves you feeling profoundly moved as well as drained and I can hardly imagine how it must feel to play such music. This is an extremely important musical document on all counts as it introduces us to two ...
Scotia Festival 2013 in review- Ensemble Epomeo Recital
Ensemble Epomeo is a first-rate trio with such mastery of both the familiar and the new (to us at least) to give us confidence in the music and to seed a desire to hear more of it, more of composers ...CD Review- Joshua Kosman/SF Chronicle on Gal/Krasa Complete Trios
brilliant revelation, a savage takedown of artistic ideals in which order and luxuriance devolve into chaos. It's a compact, unforgettable masterpiece, and the Ensemble Epomeo - which includes Woods along with violinist Caroline Chin and violist David Yang - ...CD Review- Irish Times on Gal/Krasa Complete Trios
"The performances by members of Ensemble Epomeo are highly persuasive."CD Review- Colin Anderson, The Classical Source on Gal/Krasa Complete String Trios
Vividly recorded, the three instrumentalists of Ensemble Epomeo ...play superbly individually and as a team and with obvious commitment; clearly Kenneth Woods’s burgeoning conducting career is not to the detriment of his artistry on the cello. Woods has also written ...
Classical Music Magazine Feature on Ensemble Epomeo
Recordings editor Phil Sommerich interviews the members of Ensemble Epomeo on their new recording of the trios of Hans Gal and Hans Krasa in the current issue of Classical Music Magazine (October 20, 2012). On sale now! Buy a copy ...CD Review- International Record Review, Calum MacDonald on Gal/Krasa Complete String Trios
The Passacaglia and Fugue was in fact the last music he completed, and if I think I place this new recording slightly above the Nimbus rival it must be for the treatment of the Passacaglia, much more the substantial of ...CD Review: MusicWeb International on Gal/Krasa String Trios
"Sound quality is very good. In their debut recording, Ensemble Epomeo (named after an Ischian mountain) are thoroughly convincing from beginning to end. Their sense of ensemble is democratic, their attention to the score attentive and respectful, and their tone ...CD Review- Classical CD Reviews, Gavin Dixon on Gal/Krasa Complete String Trios
Ensemble Epomeo does both composers a great service with their precise, lively and stylistically astute performances. The clarity in all the textures allows both men’s contrapuntal innovations to shine through. There is atmosphere here too (helped by the warm recorded ...CD Review- Fanfare Magazine, Jerry Dubbins of Gal/Krasa Complete String Trios
It’s always difficult to judge an ensemble in unfamiliar repertoire, but I think I can say that the Epomeo’s musicians are more than up to the technical task of their business and that they sound intensely engaged in the emotional ...
Recorded live as part of the Deal Festival, Kent. This disc documents the emerging mastery of two of music history’s most powerful and closely linked artistic personalities — Brahms and Schönberg, pairing the original chamber versions of the seminal works of their early maturity, which were primarily known through performances by much larger orchestral forces. Brahms’s profound influence on Schönberg is clearly evident in his books and essays on Brahms’s music as well as his arrangement of the Brahms Piano Quartet in G minor for full orchestra, now a staple of the orchestral repertoire.Schönberg’s Verklärte Nacht is the key work in which his musical personality truly emerged onto the world stage. For much of the last hundred years, the work has been heard in his own arrangement for string orchestra but for our recording, the String Trio Ensemble Epomeo (Caroline Chin, David Yang and Kenneth Woods) have been joined by a stellar team of colleagues (Diane Pascal, Tom Hankey and Matthew Sharp) for a stunning performance of Schönberg’s original version for string sextet, written in 1899, performed live during the 2013 Deal Festival.
The members of the acclaimed string trio Ensemble Epomeo transform into Auricolae, a fantastical band of minstrels presenting fairytales, folklore, and fables in a two-CD set of new music dramatized via the ageless art of storytelling. More than a dozen parables from around the world fuse traditional allegories with inventive mythical settings, pair timeless legends with new musical scores, and offer original stories whose inspiration stems from the beginning of time. The result is a truly unique synthesis of words and music that is instantly entertaining.
More information from Avie Records here.
Our debut CD for Avie Records, featuring the complete string trios of Hans Gal and Hans Krasa has been released internationally.
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