1688. The First Modern Revolution. By Steve Pincus

For two hundred years historians have viewed England’s Glorious Revolution of 1688–1689 as an un-revolutionary revolution—bloodless, consensual, aristocratic, and above all, sensible. In this brilliant new interpretation Steve Pincus refutes this traditional view.

By expanding the interpretive lens to include a broader geographical and chronological frame, Pincus demonstrates that England’s revolution was a European event, that it took place over a number of years, not months, and that it had repercussions in India, North America, the West Indies, and throughout continental Europe. His rich historical narrative, based on masses of new archival research, traces the transformation of English foreign policy, religious culture, and political economy that, he argues, was the intended consequence of the revolutionaries of 1688–1689.

James II developed a modernization program that emphasized centralized control, repression of dissidents, and territorial empire. The revolutionaries, by contrast, took advantage of the new economic possibilities to create a bureaucratic but participatory state. The postrevolutionary English state emphasized its ideological break with the past and envisioned itself as continuing to evolve. All of this, argues Pincus, makes the Glorious Revolution—not the French Revolution—the first truly modern revolution. This wide-ranging book reenvisions the nature of the Glorious Revolution and of revolutions in general, the causes and consequences of commercialization, the nature of liberalism, and ultimately the origins and contours of modernity itself.

Steve Pincus is professor of history at Yale University.

“Mr. Pincus’s cogently argued account of what really happened during England’s revolution destroys many comforting notions that have prevailed for more than 200 years…. It leaves the reader with something much more exciting: a new understanding of the origins of the modern, liberal state.” - Economist

"A masterful reassessment of the received wisdom of what we understand of modern British history and the concept of revolution. This is a well-researched, well-written and important book." — British Heritage

Independent Publishers Book Awards
MacMillan Center Gustav Ranis International Book Prize
New England Book Festival Honorable Mention
American Historical Association Morris D. Forkosch Prize

Animal Spirits: How Human Psychology Drives the Economy, and Why It Matters for Global Capitalism. By George A. Akerlof and Robert J. Shiller

The global financial crisis has made it painfully clear that powerful psychological forces are imperiling the wealth of nations today. From blind faith in ever-rising housing prices to plummeting confidence in capital markets, "animal spirits" are driving financial events worldwide. In this book, acclaimed economists George Akerlof and Robert Shiller challenge the economic wisdom that got us into this mess, and put forward a bold new vision that will transform economics and restore prosperity.

Akerlof and Shiller reassert the necessity of an active government role in economic policymaking by recovering the idea of animal spirits, a term John Maynard Keynes used to describe the gloom and despondence that led to the Great Depression and the changing psychology that accompanied recovery. Like Keynes, Akerlof and Shiller know that managing these animal spirits requires the steady hand of government--simply allowing markets to work won't do it. In rebuilding the case for a more robust, behaviorally informed Keynesianism, they detail the most pervasive effects of animal spirits in contemporary economic life--such as confidence, fear, bad faith, corruption, a concern for fairness, and the stories we tell ourselves about our economic fortunes--and show how Reaganomics, Thatcherism, and the rational expectations revolution failed to account for them.

Animal Spirits offers a road map for reversing the financial misfortunes besetting us today. Read it and learn how leaders can channel animal spirits - the powerful forces of human psychology that are afoot in the world economy today.

"[T]his book is rather more than the usual lament about the failings of economics. Its authors are two of the discipline's leading lights. . . . Most of the time, the unrealistic assumption of rationality serves economists fairly well. They should, however, be more prepared to depart from it, especially in times like these--even if that makes behaviour more difficult to describe in elegant equations. Messrs Akerlof and Shiller have therefore done their profession a service."--The Economist

"An influential Democrat who was also one of the world's top-ten, highest-paid hedge fund managers last year thinks he knows which book is at the top of the White House reading list this spring: Animal Spirits, the powerful new blast of behavioural economics from Nobel prize-winner George Akerlof and Yale economist Robert Shiller."--Financial Times

"Akerlof and Shiller are the first to try to rework economic theory for our times. The effort itself makes their book a milestone. . . . And their book takes their case not just to economists, but also to the general reader. It is short (176 pages of text) and easy enough for laymen to understand."--Louis Uchitelle, New York Times Book Review

getAbstract International Book Award
TIAA-CREF Paul A. Samuelson Award for Outstanding Scholarly Writing on Lifelong Financial Security
Finance Book of the Year CBN (China Business News)
Financial Times/Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year (Shortlisted)
Financial Times (FT.com) listed "Books of the Year"


На русском языке: Spiritus Аnimalis, или Как человеческая психология управляет экономикой и почему это важно для мирового капитализма
Юнайтед Пресс, 2011 г.
ISBN 978-5-904522-87-2

Economists and Societies: Discipline and Profession in the United States, Britain, and France, 1890s to 1990s. By Marion Fourcade

Economists and Societies is the first book to systematically compare the profession of economics in the United States, Britain, and France, and to explain why economics, far from being a uniform science, differs in important ways among these three countries. Drawing on in-depth interviews with economists, institutional analysis, and a wealth of scholarly evidence, Marion Fourcade traces the history of economics in each country from the late nineteenth century to the present, demonstrating how each political, cultural, and institutional context gave rise to a distinct professional and disciplinary configuration. She argues that because the substance of political life varied from country to country, people's experience and understanding of the economy, and their political and intellectual battles over it, crystallized in different ways--through scientific and mercantile professionalism in the United States, public-minded elitism in Britain, and statist divisions in France. Fourcade moves past old debates about the relationship between culture and institutions in the production of expert knowledge to show that scientific and practical claims over the economy in these three societies arose from different elites with different intellectual orientations, institutional entanglements, and social purposes.

Marion Fourcade is associate professor of sociology at the University of California, Berkeley.

"Fourcade has produced a remarkable book. . . . Her 52-page bibliography should be evidence enough of the remarkable effort that went into this book." - M. Perelman, Choice

"In-depth and well-informed comparative analyses of cross-country differences in the practice and conceptualization of economics are few in number; hence, Fourcade's book is a welcome and valuable addition to the literature. Certainly it is an impressive product for a young scholar." - Bruce E. Kaufman, Comparative Labor Law & Policy Journal

Distinguished Scholarly Publication Award, American Sociological Association
Mary Douglas Prize for Best Book in the Sociology
CHOICE Magazine's Outstanding Academic Titles
Robert K. Merton Book Award for Best Book in the Science, Knowledge and Technology
Barrington Moore Award for Best Book in the Comparative and Historical Sociology

Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle with India . By Joseph Lelyveld

A highly original, stirring book on Mahatma Gandhi that deepens our sense of his achievements and disappointments—his success in seizing India’s imagination and shaping its independence struggle as a mass movement, his recognition late in life that few of his followers paid more than lip service to his ambitious goals of social justice for the country’s minorities, outcasts, and rural poor.
Pulitzer Prize–winner Joseph Lelyveld shows in vivid, unmatched detail how Gandhi’s sense of mission, social values, and philosophy of nonviolent resistance were shaped on another subcontinent—during two decades in South Africa—and then tested by an India that quickly learned to revere him as a Mahatma, or “Great Soul,” while following him only a small part of the way to the social transformation he envisioned. The man himself emerges as one of history’s most remarkable self-creations, a prosperous lawyer who became an ascetic in a loincloth wholly dedicated to political and social action. Lelyveld leads us step-by-step through the heroic—and tragic—last months of this selfless leader’s long campaign when his nonviolent efforts culminated in the partition of India, the creation of Pakistan, and a bloodbath of ethnic cleansing that ended only with his own assassination.
India and its politicians were ready to place Gandhi on a pedestal as “Father of the Nation” but were less inclined to embrace his teachings. Muslim support, crucial in his rise to leadership, soon waned, and the oppressed untouchables—for whom Gandhi spoke to Hindus as a whole—produced their own leaders.
Here is a vital, brilliant reconsideration of Gandhi’s extraordinary struggles on two continents, of his fierce but, finally, unfulfilled hopes, and of his ever-evolving legacy, which more than six decades after his death still ensures his place as India’s social conscience—and not just India’s.

“Great Soul is a noteworthy book, vivid, nuanced and clear-eyed . . . Lelyveld brings to his subject a reporter’s healthy skepticism and an old India hand’s stubborn fascination with the subcontinent and its people.” - Geoffrey C. Ward, The New York Times Book Review
“Thorough . . . The author painstakingly examines the primary sources in Gandhi’s life to provide a rich, multilayered portrait of the evolution of his thought and action—no easy feat, since the Mahatma’s philosophy changed constantly . . . An impassioned, carefully executed work of reseach.” – Starred review, Kirkus
“Rigorous . . . Unexpected . . . Lelyveld pairs a sympathetic but critical analysis of Gandhi’s politics with a vivid portrait of the Mahatma’s charismatic strangeness . . . A stirring, evenhanded account that relates the failure of Gandhi’s politics of saintliness while attesting to its enduring power.” - Publishers Weekly

The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution. By Francis Fukuyama

Virtually all human societies were once organized tribally, yet over time most developed new political institutions which included a central state that could keep the peace and uniform laws that applied to all citizens. Some went on to create governments that were accountable to their citizens. We take these institutions for granted, but they are absent or are unable to perform in many of today’s developing countries—with often disastrous consequences for the rest of the world.

In The Origins of Political Order, Francis Fukuyama, author of the bestselling The End of History and the Last Man, provides a sweeping account of how today’s basic political institutions developed. The first of a major two-volume work begins with politics among our primate ancestors and follows the story through the emergence of tribal societies, the growth of the first modern state in China, the beginning of a rule of law in India and the Middle East, and the development of political accountability in Europe up until the eve of the French Revolution.

Drawing on a vast body of knowledge—history, evolutionary biology, archaeology, and economics—Fukuyama has produced a brilliant, provocative work that offers fresh insights on the origins of democratic societies and raises essential questions about the nature of politics.

Start - April, 12. Preorder

King Hussein of Jordan. A Political Life. By Nigel Ashton

A towering figure in the history of Jordan, King Hussein reigned for nearly half a century, from his grandfather’s assassination in 1953 to his own death in 1999. In this fascinating biography, Nigel Ashton recounts the eventful life of the king who not only survived but flourished amidst crisis after crisis as ruler of a poor desert nation surrounded by powerful and hostile neighbors. Hussein skillfully navigated complicated relationships with the British, his fellow Arab leaders, the new bordering state of Israel, masses of dispossessed Palestinians within his kingdom, every U.S. president from Eisenhower to Clinton, and every British prime minister from Churchill to Blair. This book illuminates the private man, his key relationships, and his achievements and disappointments as a central player in the tough world of Middle Eastern politics.

Ashton has had unique access to King Hussein’s private papers, including his secret correspondence with U.S., British, and Israeli leaders, and he has also conducted numerous interviews with members of Hussein’s circle and immediate family. The resulting book brings new depth to our understanding of the popular and canny king while also providing new information about the wars of 1967 and 1973, President Reagan’s role in the Iran-Contra affair, the evolution of the Middle East peace process, and much more.

Nigel Ashton is senior lecturer, Department of International History, London School of Economics and Political Science.

"Excellent. . . . Ashton is very interesting on Hussein''s relations with Iraq and the wider Arab world." - New York Times

In this respectful and measured scholarly evaluation, Ashton (Kennedy, Macmillan and the Cold War ) builds on unprecedented access to the late king's entire correspondence and more than two dozen interviews to lend valuable insight into how Hussein's shrewdness and empathy kept him politically (and literally) alive as well as casting light on many a foreign policy enigma—notably a confirmation that Ronald Regan personally authorized what became the Iran-Contra scandal. While Hussein's uneasy alliance with the socialist brand of Arab nationalism under Egypt's Nasser led him into “the greatest calamity of his reign,” the 1967 Six-Day War with Israel, he remained “ever alert to the shifting power dynamics of the Arab world,” often maintaining a precarious balance between the Western powers, the Arab states and Israelwhile wielding influence disproportionate to Jordan's relatively modest assets. Ashton reveals Hussein's longstanding covert contact with Israel and his clandestine communications with Israelis in the immediate aftermath of the 1967 warto suggest the possibilities and missed opportunities (including by the U.S.) for a peaceful settlement in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict—just one reason this book feels so timely and relevant. - Publishers Weekly

Планировка города. Ле Корбюзье

Ценная по материалу и легко, нестандартно написанная работа известного французского архитектора-авангардиста, дизайнера, теоретика архитектуры.

Выступая против эклектизма, украшательства, маскирующего конструкцию здания, Ле К. видел в современной технике и серийности индустриального строительства основу для обновления архитектурного языка, а в выявлении функционально оправданной структуры сооружения — богатые эстетические возможности. Рассматривая гармонию создаваемой человеком искусственной среды как определяющий фактор бытия, он разделял утопические надежды на преобразование общества с помощью архитектуры, Главные темы творчества Ле К. 20—30-х гг. — градостроительство, жилище и большие общественные здания. Новизна архитектурных предложений Ле К. заключалась в полном пересмотре проблемы массового жилища на основании тщательного анализа современного быта: в реорганизации функций жилища (рациональном сокращении, слиянии старых, выявлении новых, отвечающих не только насущным бытовым процессам, но и духовным запросам человека), в технологически детально разработанном, создающем максимум удобств использовании площади квартиры при её компактной планировке и расчёте на развитие коллективного обслуживания, в ориентации на индустриальное строительство и в градостроительном обеспечении связи отдельного жилого дома с окружающей территорией.

Градостроительные проекты Ле К., одного из лидеров Урбанизма, в 20—30-е гг. развивали идею «вертикального» города-сада с высокой плотностью населения и большими озеленёнными пространствами, дифференциацией путей движения пешеходов и транспорта, разделением зон жилья, деловой активности и промышленности (проект города на 3 млн. жителей, 1922; «план Вуазен» — план реконструкции Парижа, 1925; планы городов Буэнос-Айреса, 1930, Алжира, 1930—39, Антверпена, 1932, Немура, Алжир, 1934; ни один из проектов не осуществлен). В большом цикле работ в Индии (1950—57) Ле К. осуществляет некоторые свои градостроительные идеи - генеральный план города и ансамбль правительственных зданий в Чандигархе.

Chandigarh 1956: Le Corbusier and the Promotion of Architectural Modernity. By Ernst Scheidegger. Stanislaus von Moos

One of the most ambitious undertakings of legendary architect Le Corbusier was the complete design of Chandigarh, the capital of the Indian state of Punjab. In the 1950s, Ernst Scheidegger traveled to India to witness the construction of the city and now the photographs that he took on his visits are collected here.

Fifty years in the making, Chandigarh 1956 is a testament to Scheidegger’s innovative efforts to promote architecture and urban planning through photography. His striking images show Chandigarh in its raw, evolving state, as he not only documented the rising government buildings and the unfurling streets of a modern designed city, but also captured images of the local people and their living conditions. The volume also features a facsimile of Scheidegger’s original book mock-up with sketches by Le Corbusier, and an essay by Stanislaus von Moo, which analyzes the images as well as the importance of Chandigarh and the work of Le Corbusier’s own office to promote the project through different media.

A captivating account of architectural history, Chandigarh 1956 forges crucial connections between the pioneers of modern architecture and photography and the future of architecture and urban planning today.

Ernst Scheidegger was a founding member of the Magnum agency and is a photographer, teacher, filmmaker, newspaper editor, gallery owner, and publisher. Stanislaus von Moos teaches at the Accademia di architettura in Mendrisio, Switzerland and was the Jean Labatut Visiting Professor at Princeton University in 1997. He has published widely on the history of art and architecture, and is an expert on Le Corbusier’s life and work.

Groundswell. By Peter Reed, James Corner, Peter Latz, Martha Schwartz, Ken Smith, Peter Walker, George Hargreaves

Groundswell: Constructing the Contemporary Landscape presents 23 projects that reveal the surge of creativity and discussion surrounding the designed landscape in a broad, principally urban, international context. In the last 20 years, many significant new public spaces have been created for sites that have been reclaimed from conflict, environmental degradation, and abandonment. The projects, found throughout North America, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, were selected for their outstanding design, and for their variety of contexts, materials, scale, and types of spaces. This fully illustrated volume includes an essay by Peter Reed, Curator in the Department of Architecture and Design at The Museum of Modern Art, that demonstrates how these innovative projects expand the definition of the modernist landscape while responding to a variety of conditions such as program, social function, and the transformation and reclamation previously industrial areas. The essay is followed by a full-color plate section featuring the selected projects. Catalogue entries for each project provide a succinct description of the site, its transformation, and design concepts illustrated by photographs, drawings, and models.

Publisher: The Museum of Modern Art, New York
ISBN-13: 978-0870703799

S M L XL. By Rem Koolhaas, Bruce Mau, Hans Werlemann

S,M,L,XL presents a selection of the remarkable visionary design work produced by the Dutch firm Office for Metropolitan Architecture (O.M.A.) and its acclaimed founder, Rem Koolhaas, in its first twenty years, along with a variety of insightful, often poetic writings. The inventive collaboration between Koolhaas and designer Bruce Mau is a graphic overture that weaves together architectural projects, photos and sketches, diary excerpts, personal travelogues, fairy tales, and fables, as well as critical essays on contemporary architecture and society.

The book's title is also its framework: projects and essays are arranged according to scale. While Small and Medium address issues ranging from the domestic to the public, Large focuses on what Koolhaas calls "the architecture of Bigness." Extra-Large features projects at the urban scale, along with the important essay "What Ever Happened to Urbanism?" and other studies of the contemporary city. Running throughout the book is a "dictionary" of an adventurous new Koolhaasian language -- definitions, commentaries, and quotes from hundreds of literary, cultural, artistic, and architectural sources.

This extraordinary, massive, and mind-boggling 1,300-page book combines essays, manifestos, diaries, fairy tales, travelogues, a cycle of meditations on the contemporary city--and complex illustration--with work produced by Koolhaas' Office for Metropolitan Architecture over the past twenty years. This almost overwhelming accumulation of words and images illuminates the condition of architecture today--its splendors and miseries--exploring and revealing the corrosive effects of politics, context, the economy, and globalization. In some ways, this is the "Medium is the Message" of 1990s architectural discourse: guaranteed to be hugely influential in the coming decades, but grossly misunderstood by those who have not read it.

Koolhaas, Dutch architect, author (Delirious New York) and cult figure, wants architecture to be "a chaotic adventure," and this massive tome certainly is. Created with Toronto-based designer Mau, it's a huge collage splicing freewheeling essays, diary excerpts, photographs, architectural plans, sketches, cartoons and surreal montages of images. There's also a running glossary of Zen-like definitions, plus fables and parables intended to shake modern architects out of conventional thinking and to dispel urban despair. In one essay, Koolhaas admires Japan's metabolist movement, which fuses organic, scientific, mechanistic and romantic vocabularies. That approach seems compatible with his own innovative, eclectic vision as head of the Dutch firm Office of Metropolitan Architecture (O.M.A.), whose houses, villas, office towers, libraries, colleges, cultural complexes and other projects are showcased here. While some readers may be mystified by a nonlinear hodgepodge, architects, planners and designers will find this frequently outrageous assemblage a provocative repository of ideas. - Publishers Weekly

Makeshift Metropolis: Ideas About Cities. By Witold Rybczynski

Rybczynski (A Clearing in the Distance), professor of urbanism at the University of Pennsylvania, offers a glimpse of an urban future that might very well serve as a template for cities around the world. Just as the dense and green Israeli city Modi'in mixes old and new modes of urban planning, this book integrates history and prediction in its survey of the development of the American city. A brisk look back takes us from colonial town planning through the Garden City and City Beautiful initiatives of the early 20th century that defined and delivered the distinctive aesthetic character to such cities as New York and Chicago to the big box era. He also examines how contemporary urban designers and planners are revisiting and refreshing older urban ideas, bringing gardens to a blighted Brooklyn waterfront. Rybczynski's study is kept relevant by his focus on what the past can teach us about creating the "cities we want" and "cities we need." The prose is instructive and always engaging, and the author's enthusiasm for the future of cities and his enduring love of urban settings of all kinds is evident. He not only writes about what people want from their cities, he inspires the reader to imagine the possibilities - Publishers Weekly

“Impressive… [Rybczynski] writes with disarming ease… Our finest architecture

ISBN-13: 978-1416561255

Cities and People: A Social and Architectural History. By Mark Girouard

Girouard, author of a dozen well-received books on English architecture, here is concerned with Western cities from the Middle Ages to the present. He aims to show why selected cities grew and developed as they did, with first a potted history of the revival of urban life, then discussions of the great preindustrial cities, and finally a consideration of industry (Manchester), suburbs (London), and the sky scraper. Although Girouard writes well, his subject is too broad and the treatment too episodic for the book to amount to much, even at an introductory level. The author provides exposition, but no synthesis. Only for comprehensive collections, or where Girouard's name will create a demand.

Yale University Press (September, 1987)
ISBN-13: 978-0300039689

Shtikat Haarchion (A Film Unfinished). Directed by Yael Hersonski

A film about an unfinished film which portrays the people behind and before the camera in the Warsaw Ghetto, exposing the extent of the cinematic manipulation forever changing the way we look at historic images.

Yael Hersonski's powerful documentary achieves a remarkable feat through its penetrating look at another film-the now-infamous Nazi-produced film about the Warsaw Ghetto. Discovered after the war, the unfinished work, with no soundtrack, quickly became a resource for historians seeking an authentic record, despite its elaborate propagandistic construction. The later discovery of a long-missing reel complicated earlier readings, showing the manipulations of camera crews in these "everyday" scenes. Well-heeled Jews attending elegant dinners and theatricals (while callously stepping over the dead bodies of compatriots) now appeared as unwilling, but complicit, actors, alternately fearful and in denial of their looming fate. - Sundance Film Festival

"Moving, mysterious and intellectually provocative!" — New York Times (Critic's Pick)

“A profound and vital documentary.” — Entertainment Weekly

Hot Docs Film Festival - Best International Feature
Sundance Film Festival - World Cinema Documentary Film Editing Award, Grand Jury Prize Nominated
San Diego Film Critics Society Awards, Nominated
Satellite Awards, Nominated

Into the Universe with Stephen Hawking

Stephen Hawking's Universe is an epic new kind of cosmology series, a Planet Earth of the heavens. Over eight, spell-binding hours, an animated Stephen In Into the Universe with Stephen Hawking, the world's most famous living scientist explores the greatest mysteries of the cosmos. In three landmark instalments
he reveals the wonders of the universe as never seen before. Definitive, provocative, surprising, and beautiful, Into the Universe with Stephen Hawking is a
fascinating look through the mind's eye of one of the finest brains on the planet.

3 Episodes/ 45 min each - 1- Aliens: "Are We Alone?" An eye-popping journey from the moons of Jupiter to a galaxy perhaps not so far, far away in search of alien life. We'll see what aliens might look like, question what it means to be alive, and calculate the odds of making 'contact'. 2- Time Travel: "Is Time Travel Possible?" Hawking explores the world's favorite scientific 'what if?' warping the very fabric of time and space as he goes. From killing your grandfather to riding a black hole, see how time travel may actually come true. 3- The Story of Everything: The world's most famous living scientist presents the wonders of the universe, revealing the splendor and majesty of the cosmos as never seen before. See how the universe began, how it creates stars, black holes and life -- and how everything will end.

The Army of Crime (L'Armée du crime)

The poet Missak Manouchian leads a mixed bag of youngsters and immigrants in a clandestine battle against the Nazi occupation. Twenty-two men and one woman fighting for an ideal and for freedom. News of their daring attacks, including the assassination of an SS general, eventually reaches Berlin

The closest person to a protagonist in the gripping historical mosaic “Army of Crime” is the eminent Armenian poet Missak Manouchian (Simon Abkarian). A militant Communist and hero of the French Resistance, executed by the Nazis in 1944, he is the noblest figure in a sprawling, semifictional movie that has enough characters to fill an entire neighborhood. - New York Times (Critic's Pick)

Étoiles d'Or Award
2009 Cannes Film Festival out of competition program

Echoes of Time. Lisa Batiashvili (violin), Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, Esa-Pekka Salonen

Kancheli: V & V for violin and taped voice with string orchestra
Rachmaninov: Vocalise, Op. 34 No. 14
Shostakovich: Violin Concerto No. 1 in A minor, Op. 99, Lyric Waltz (Dances of the Dolls)

Lisa Batiashvili’s debut album for DG, ‘Echoes of Time’, is a matter of the heart - Lisa focuses her program on composers whose lives and work have been heavily influenced by the political happenings in former Soviet Union. Inspired by personal experience, Lisa, herself, went into German exile with her family during the political upheaval in Georgia in 1991.

The program spans the whole of the 20th century, classics by Shostakovich ‘Waltz from the Doll’s Dances’ and Rachmaninov’s ever popular ‘Vocalise’, are combined with Georgian composer, Giya Kancheli’s ‘V and V’, and Estonian, Arvo Pärt’s ‘Spiegel im Spiegel’. ‘Spiegel im Spiegel’ was written shortly before the composer went into exile.

For Pärt’s ‘Spiegel im Spiegel’ and Rachmaninov’s ‘Vocalise’ Lisa teams up with one of our DG’s most distinctive pianists, Hélène Grimaud. Esa-Pekka Salonen conducts the Symphonie orchester des bayerischen.

“few if any [recordings of the Shostakovich] are finer than this one...Batiashvili's reflective, almost weightless approach in the opening Nocturne...is rendered more distinctive by the resonant acoustic of the empty Herkulessaal...the passacaglia is exceptionally poised and the cadenza more sheerly musical than usual. The finale whizzes to its end without undue triumphalism.” - Gramophone Magazine (Disc of the Month)

“It's a marvellous performance [of the Shostakovich], suitably crepuscular in the opening "Nocturne", before a Gypsy flamboyance takes over for "Scherzo". Salonen proves the perfect accomplice in realising the album's theme of works reflective of the Soviet era, the programme including pieces by Soviet emigrés Arvo Pärt and Giya Kancheli” - The Independent ****

Pergolesi: Stabat Mater. Anna Netrebko (soprano), Marianna Pizzolato (contralto)

Assisted by Antonio Pappano and recorded at Netrebko’s July 2010 Baden-Baden concert, here is a landmark performance of one of classical music’s most popular works. In the Stabat Mater, Anna Netrebko’s lusciously dark soprano and mezzo Marianna Pizzolato’s beautifully schooled tones are a marvellous complement to each other.
For this Pergolesi tribute, Anna Netrebko has added the secular cantata, Nel chiuso centro and Questo è il piano is also a secular cantata for alto and strings. Both cantatas add a special touch to this album where Pergolesi’s sacred masterpiece is featured alongside some secular (more operatic) compositions.
“Netrebko finds real depth in this deceptively simple music...Pizzolato applies her expressive powers so well to yet another shepherd/nymph gripe as to make us actually feel sympathetic...the singers blend perfectly, and time and again the attention is caught by the quality of the playing. It is a most distinguished issue.” Gramophone Magazine (Editor's Choice)
“Though she minds her words carefully and modulates her tone, [Netrebko is] still at heart the suffering diva, dazzling us with that dark voice soaked in luscious full cream...the two voice colours blend superbly in the Stabat Mater, sensuously curling round in duet like intertwined vines...Pappano springs through these pieces with loving fervour.” The Times ****
“When Anna Netrebko decided to dedicate a programme to Giovanni Battista Pergolesi, the choice of Antonio Pappano as conductor was a crucial masterstroke...so sublimely do the two voices intertwine on the duets "Stabat Mater dolorosa" and "Sancta Mater, istud agas" that one fervently hopes this is not to be a temporary alliance.” The Independent
“the Russian diva's singing certainly won't disappoint - as thrillingly passionate here as it is in Romantic opera. She's impressively partnered, too, by Marianna Pizzolato, whose full-bodied mezzo is as intense and intoxicating as the finest of Italian wines...the sensuous intertwining of two such voluptuous voices makes for a heady mix indeed.” BBC Music Magazine

Sonny Rollins

Always a restless creative spirit, a constantly self-renewing citizen of the jazz world and one of the music's leading lights, saxophone legend Sonny Rollins has long been ambivalent about, even averse to, the business side of music. However, since forming his own record label, Doxy, in 2005, Rollins has emerged as an inspired-and surprisingly assertive-entrepreneur.
The high honors, perhaps long overdue, keep on rolling in for saxophonist Sonny Rollins. His historic 80th birthday concert in New York's Town Hall three nights after his September 7 birthday was one of the top jazz events of 2010
Then you add in Edward MacDowell Medal, a lifetime achievement award from the Montreal International Jazz Festival, being the subject of an artful and insightful book (John Abbott and Blumenthal's Saxophone Colossus: A Portrait of Sonny Rollins) and induction into to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, the nation's oldest and most prestigious honorary society.
Now, Rollins is one of 10 recipients of the 2010 National Medal of Arts for outstanding achievements and support of the arts. President Barack Obama will do the honors in an East Room ceremony at the White House. The medal is the nation's highest honor for artistic excellence.

Albums: Just In Time (Synergie OMP, ASIN: B004JKMIHU), Saxophone Colossus (Efor, S.L, UPC: 885686605172), With A Song In My Heart (Synergie OMP, UPC: 884385552756 ), In Takes (Legend World Music OMP, UPC: 885686237298)