Volpini: The Lover's Garden (Il Giardino degli Amanti)
C Major Entertainment
Blu-Ray · DVD
$22.98$32.99Save 30%Jan 26, 2018
In the garden of a Baroque villa, a chamber orchestra is playing Mozart’s wonderful quartets and quintets, and everywhere is pervaded with echoes and references to the composer’s world. As if by magic or conjured by the imagination, figures emerge from the shadows of the labyrinthine garden: they are Mozart’s characters, and they play with – or perhaps make fun of – the guests at the party, embroiling them in their well-known amorous dalliances. With lightness and irony, this journey into the universe of Mozart tips its hat to the 1700s also with the scenery and costumes, and fills the garden with fun and passionate virtuoso dances, which follow each other dynamically and quickly with constant changes in the mood. Like in a dream where everything is jumbled together, where reality and illusion merge.
From Berlin To Athens: Piano Works By Nikos Skalkottas / Ramou
BIS
SACD
$10.99$21.99Save 50%Jun 07, 2019
The choice of works on this amply filled album, as well as the performances are the result of Lorenda Ramou’s research into the artistic environment of Nikos Skalkottas, in Berlin (1921–33) and in Athens (1933–49). The programme is organized as a triptych, focusing on three distinctive compositional styles. First, all surviving Berlin works for piano solo are presented in chronological order, showing how the young composer was reacting to the new and exciting jazz/dance music, but also to the people around him and to events in the musical world of Berlin in the 1920s. This is followed by Suites Nos 2, 3 and 4, a group of mature works composed at the beginning of World War II (1940–41). Closing the release, finally, is the dance suite The Gnomes, probably composed in 1939 and one of a group of piano scores for ballets with Greek subjects. Lorenda Ramou has previously released ‘The Land and the Sea of Greece’ – an album of precisely such scores by Skalkottas – which earned her praise from the reviewer in Gramophone: ‘Her playing is full of verve and alive to the delicacy of Skalkottas’s writing.’
R. STRAUSS Violin Sonata, Op. 18. RESPIGHI Violin Sonata in b. Six Pieces: Melodia; Valse caressante; Serenata • Tasmin Little (vn); Piers Lane (pn) • CHANDOS 10749 (65:50)
Violinist Tasmin Little has amassed a very respectable discography on a number of different labels, though of late, she seems to have settled in as one of Chandos’s house artists. Her recent recording of Delius’s Violin Concerto received an urgent recommendation from me in 35:4, so I really looked forward to receiving her latest release of these two late romantic sonatas.
On the surface, Richard Strauss and Respighi may not seem to have a lot in common, but their respective violin sonatas have been paired on disc before, notably by Kyung-Wha Chung and Krystian Zimerman for Deutsche Grammophon and by Frank Almond and William Wolfram for Avie. Strauss composed his sonata in 1887 at the age of 23. It’s an inspired outpouring of youth hardly recognizable as music by the composer that Strauss would become. Respighi’s B-Minor Sonata—an earlier sonata in D Minor dates from the composer’s teens—was written in 1917, exactly 30 years later than Strauss’s sonata, by a more mature composer of 38.
Strauss’s sonata will no doubt be permanently associated with Heifetz, not because he championed it and twice recorded it, but because of his callous and stubborn determination to perform the piece in 1953 before an Israeli audience that still considered Strauss a Nazi collaborator and whose emotions were still raw from the Holocaust. That little stunt nearly cost Heifetz his career when an assailant attacked him outside his hotel, striking his right arm with an iron bar. While I don’t condone the death threats and violence against him, I understand the intensity of feelings that were aroused. Heifetz had no one to blame but himself for his own arrogance and intractable insensitivity. He canceled his last concert and departed Israel post haste, not to return there again until 1970.
The shame of it all is that Strauss’s sonata was written half a century before Hitler rose to power, and the piece is a passionate and deeply touching reflection of the late 19th-century German musical culture in which Strauss came of age. Unsurprisingly, Liszt and Wagner, both recently dead, appear as frequent ghosts throughout the sonata’s pages, but another guest one meets, less frequently perhaps but still very much alive when Strauss wrote the piece, is Brahms.
Respighi is not an easy composer to categorize. Some see him, as they see Strauss, Puccini, Rachmaninoff, and Sibelius as manifestations of a resistant strain of late romanticism that persisted well into the 20th century, while others have referred to Respighi as an Impressionist. I think one could support either view. There’s no question but that Respighi’s sonata is the more modern of the two works on the disc, at least in terms of its approach to harmony and tonality, but it remains an essentially romantic work in its gestural language—i.e., in its sweeping vistas and appeal to the emotions, both public and private.
The last time I reviewed a recording of Strauss’s violin sonata was in 32:3. That Atma CD also contained violin and piano works by Elgar and Ravel in performances by Jonathan Crow and Paul Stewart which I called “a desideratum of indescribably beautiful music matched by indescribably beautiful playing.” Pardon the pun, but Tasmin Little brings more than a little of Crow’s eloquent and elegant playing to the Strauss, but I would also have to say that in some of the sonata’s more technically taxing passages, she can sound ever so slightly flustered; and while the notes never actually get away from her, one senses she’s making an effort to stay on top of them. Next to Crow’s Strauss, another performance I’ve long liked is that by Dmitri Sitkovetsky on Virgin Classics. He has the technical chops to pull it off smoothly, but I don’t find him quite as emotionally engaged as either Crow or Little. Whatever the reason, Respighi’s sonata seems to suit Little a little better, both technically and temperamentally. Her performance of the piece is lithe and fully responsive to the score’s rapidly shifting moods and colors. In my opinion, it easily outclasses Tanja Becker-Bender on Hyperion, whose reading I find somewhat flighty and rudderless.
Overall, this has to be rated a very fine effort, and not just by Little, but also by Piers Lane who partners her most excellently on the piano, and by Chandos, which provides its usual deep and vivid sound. This may not be the absolute best Strauss out there, but it’s definitely among the very best of the Respighis, and the extra three encores from Respighi’s Six Pieces for Violin and Piano make for a most enriching program. Easily recommended.
FANFARE: Jerry Dubins
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Chandos have prided themselves on having a deep and long-term available back catalogue. Though distantly separated in time the present CD can be seen as an adjunct to two of the grand Chandos series of the 1980s and 1990s. The first was the Respighi orchestral music edition built around the Edward Downes BBCPO symphonies and concertos but supplemented by earlier discs conducted by Geoffrey Simon - still truly splendid - and later ones from Hickox and Noseda. The Downes and Simon discs would shine anew if issued in a box or boxes. The second comprised the half dozen discs they issued in the 1980s golden days of Järvi conducting the then SNO in the major orchestral works of Richard Strauss.
These two violin and piano works have previously appeared - although separately - on Chandos. There were in fact two CDs of the Strauss Sonata – one from Lydia Mordkovitch and the other from Sasha Rozhdestvensky. It comes as no surprise that the Respighi was also recorded by Mordkovitch. She contributed so much to the label that I have every reason to expect that, one of these days, there will be a complete Mordkovitch Chandos Edition. It’s certainly deserved – at least as much as a Takako Nishizaki edition for Naxos.
Little and Lane’s Strauss Sonata is flooded with melodic light and surges and muses with all the eruptive and serenading romance of the same composer’s Don Juan. Both Tasmin Little and Piers Lane are obviously up for it and flatter the 1887 Strauss with a most inward reading which makes it appear a greater work than perhaps it is. The stormy romance of the outer movements of the 1917 Respighi Sonata is emphasised by the utterly peaceful and romantically centred Sargasso calm of the Andante second movement. It stands head and shoulders above the other sonata movements on this disc, masterfully treading that febrile line between poetry and self-conscious sentimentality. Both Little and Lane have every right to be proud of their achievement here. Speaking of that mood we have three movements from the salon-destined and designed Sei Pezzi. I lament that the other three Kreislerian movements were not included – there was space. A puzzling and regretted omission.
With thanks to Chandos for commissioning a liner-note from the inspired Jessica Duchen. Such a fine writer and one whose Korngold book (Phaidon Press) has been unjustly eclipsed by the ‘major definitive biography’. The Duchen is much more than a valid alternative. Indeed, Korngold is a far from irrelevant comparison in the company of the two composers so nobly represented on this disc.
Tchaikovsky & Babajanian: Piano Trios / Gluzman, Moser, Sudbin
BIS
SACD
$10.99$21.99Save 50%Oct 04, 2019
This recording of the Tchaikovsky Piano Trio might well may be among the best.
In Russian chamber music, a rather special tradition evolved around the piano trio, with a number of composers turning to the genre to write ‘instrumental requiems’. First out was Tchaikovsky with his Piano Trio in A minor, Op. 50, ‘à la mémoire d’un grand artiste’, and he was followed by composers such as Rachmaninov, Arensky and Shostakovich. In the case of Tchaikovsky’s trio, the ‘grand artiste’ was the pianist Nikolai Rubinstein, and Tchaikovsky chose the trio genre as he felt that a piece for solo piano would be too lightweight and one with orchestral accompaniment would be too showy. The work is in two movements, a Pezzo elegiaco (‘elegiac piece’) and a set of variations, and it begins with the cello playing a moving lament which sets the tone for the entire first movement. The theme returns at the end of the second movement in the form of an impassioned funeral march. Seventy years later, when the Armenian composer and pianist Arno Babajanian (1921—83) wrote his Piano Trio in F sharp minor, he didn’t give it any subtitle, but there’s a grandeur and breadth of scale which rivals Tchaikovsky’s work – and the second movement is thoroughly elegiac in character. The trio is Babajanian’s best-known work, composed in the Romantic style of Rachmaninov, but also rooted in Armenian folk music, melodically as well as rhythmically. Performing the two works are Vadim Gluzman and Yevgeny Sudbin, both with Russian roots, joined by cellist Johannes Moser, and the three close the album with Sudbin’s arrangement of a brief Tango by Alfred Schnittke.
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REVIEW:
I will begin with what, strictly speaking, is merely the “other piece” on this disc: the piano trio by Arno Babajanian. I have never heard of him or what appears to be his best-known work, but the outstanding recording and startling advocacy of this starry chamber group makes me think I should have.
The piano trio opens with the violin and cello playing a dark theme together. The piano comes in with some lovely runs reminiscent of Rachmaninov’s second piano concerto (no bad thing, in my view). The second movement starts with a long violin melody over a syncopated piano accompaniment, not a million miles from Korngold or Prokofiev’s second violin concerto. The final movement opens with something of a shock, a jazzy passage in 5/8 time, but then the cello comes in with a lovely theme, and the two moods alternate until the end.
It is a delightful work with strong melodies and rhythmic complexity, which this trio plainly adore. It is wonderfully recorded, giving plenty of power to Johannes Moser’s cello work. I shall be taking it off my shelves frequently.
I have so far had to make do for Tchaikovsky’s Piano Trio opus 50 with an old Naxos recording by the Ashkenazy Trio (8.550467), still available. The coupling is Arensky’s trio, and I would not want to be without that. But this disc blows that version out of the water, both in terms of performance and recording. I cannot pretend to have heard all the hundreds of recordings of the work by world-renowned musicians which are out there – but this well may be among the best.
Once again, the recording of Moser’s cello has all the resonance of the real instrument; Sudbin’s piano is alert but self-effacing when it needs to be; Gluzman’s violin soars and inspires. Above all, the trio give the impression they are listening to each other and adjusting their performances accordingly.
The disc ends with a little bon-bon which I assume the group put in because they were enjoying themselves so much: the Tango from the opera Life with an Idiot by Alfred Schnittke. It is not really necessary, since the disc lasts almost seventy minutes without it, but it is great fun, for us as well as for the artists.
Auvinen: Works for Orchestra / Lintu, Finnish Radio Symphony
Ondine
CD
$9.49$18.99Save 50%Nov 06, 2020
This new album release by the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra under Hannu Lintu presents a new contemporary voice within Finland’s contemporary music scene: Antti Auvinen. This album includes three recent orchestral works by the composer marked by highly pressurised and explosive rhythms and sounds.
The premieres of Antti Auvinen’s (b. 1974) Junker Twist (2015) and Himmel Punk (2016) in the mid-2010s electrified the scene of Finland’s contemporary music: music critics felt that a new major voice in the country’s music scene had been born. Auvinen’s works are often thematically connected to events in the surrounding society. Junker Twist (2015) deals with the topic of rising neo-Nazist ideologies, while Himmel Punk (2016) takes a stand against religious discrimination. The most extensive work of this album, Turbo Aria (2017/2018), is partially based on arias sung by Finnish sopranos a century ago. These ‘arias’ sung by Alma Fohström, Aino Ackté and Järnefelt and the sounds of the accompanying instruments are augmented by the crackles, pops, hisses and other mechanical noises made by the original discs. Yet the work also has a second underlying theme: the refugee crisis. Is this program music? Perhaps – but it does not matter, because the music is equally impressive with the narrative or without it. In 2016, Auvinen was awarded with the Teosto award, one of the biggest music awards in the Nordic countries.
Bach: Six Trio Sonatas / Tempesta di Mare Chamber Players
Chandos
CD
$10.99$21.99Save 50%Jun 24, 2014
Bach compiled his set of six trio sonatas for organ during the late 1720s. They are thought to have been put together as training material for Bach’s son Wilhelm Friedemann and can be grouped among other pedagogical keyboard collections such as the Inventions and the Well-Tempered Clavier. They are unique, however, in transferring the typical trio sonata texture, a popular style normally played by ensemble, to a single instrument. In Bach’s originals the right and left hands take the top two parts while the pedals perform the bass line. The first movement of Sonata No. 4 was originally composed for ensemble and the unique formal and stylistic characteristics of the collection suggest that other movements, too, started life away from the organ.
Taking this on board, Tempesta di Mare Chamber Players have re-imagined these works in arrangements for ensemble, using scorings typically adopted in the performance of trio sonatas in Bach’s time. Bach was himself a serial adapter and re-arranger of his own works and this recording takes on his understanding of the musical work as a fluid entity, able to assume as many forms as there are purposes for them.
The Philadelphia-based early music ensemble Tempesta di Mare is renowned for its unique programming and championing of rarely performed works, not least through its fruitful relationship with Chandos Records. - Chandos Records
Arranged for chamber ensemble by Richard Stone.
Tempesta di Mare Chamber Players: Gwyn Roberts recorder - flauto traverso Emlyn Ngai violin Karina Schmitz violin - viola Lisa Terry cello - viola da gamba Richard Stone lute Adam Pearl harpsichord Recorded in: Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
Tchaikovsky: Opera & Song Transcriptions for Solo Piano / Severus
Grand Piano
CD
$9.99$19.99Save 50%Oct 11, 2019
Tchaikovsky wrote over 100 lyric art songs or Romances, a sequence of diaries of the soul that embrace moods from euphoria to despair. They were unusually important to him, and he, or his editors, commissioned piano transcriptions by eminent musicians such as Laub and others, all of which were revised by Tchaikovsky. These poetic and melodically beautiful songs, many of which are here recorded for the first time, include the ravishing None but the Lonely Heart and reveal a ‘new’ body of Tchaikovsky’s piano repertoire. The album concludes with an opera fantasy on themes from Eugene Onegin by the Austrian composer and pianist Carl Fruhling. Julia Severus graduated from the Berlin University of Arts and from the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory, where she studied piano with Mikhail Voskresensky and Lev Naumov. Wishing to explore piano ensemble repertoire, she founded the Aurora Duo and Quartet, performing numerous premieres and world premieres, among them Rodion Shchedrin’s Hommage a Chopin in the presence of the composer.
REVIEW:
The range of songs is wide. The most famous of the set, generally known in English as None but the lonely heart, is arranged by Severus. She has replaced the syncopations of the original accompaniment with triplets that meander around the vocal line. In general, I find that the extra little touches of fantasy in Severus’s transcriptions make for more effective piano solos than the others on the disc. That said, Tchaikovsky’s gift for melody and drama make all these pieces worth hearing.
Severus finds the mood and style effectively, and generally plays very well. Overall, this is a very enjoyable and well-balanced recital.
Brahms: Sonata for 2 Pianos & Piano Quintet / Duo d'Accord, Haba Quartett
Oehms Classics
CD
$12.99$25.99Save 50%Apr 21, 2017
For this release, OehmsClassics was able to convince the House of Hessen to engage in a small cooperation because the works heard on this album were personally dedicated to Princess Anna von Hessen. Rainer von Hessen has written the following in his preface to this production: "To the best of my knowledge, this is the first time that both chamber works Op. 34 by Johannes Brahms have been united on the same album: his only Piano Quintet and the Sonata for Two Pianos. Previously, both works could be heard at a concert with the duo pianists Lucia Huang and Sebastian Euler as well as the Haba Quartet of the hr Symphony Orchestra at the baroqu eFasanerie Palace near Fulda. With this rather unusual programme combination, a long harbored wish came true for me, namely to hear both works dedicated by Brahms to Princess Anna von Hessen performed on the same evening: the Sonata for Two Pianos in F minor and the Piano Quintet, that resulted from it. This enabled us to sense how the composer increased the sonic attractiveness of his composition by means of refined instrumentation, hardly changing anything else."
A historic collection of music that inspired a nation and it's President, all performed by the extraordinary musician's of our nation's military bands, orchestras and ensembles with a special track featuring narration by legendary CBS anchorman Walter Cronkite.
The Divine Muse: Haydn, Schubert & Wolf / Bevan, Middleton
Signum Classics
CD
$9.99$19.99Save 50%Jan 24, 2020
After the success of their debut disc, ‘Voyages’, Mary Bevan and Joseph Middleton present their second recital disc exploring Lieder in German and Italian by Schubert, Haydn and Wolf. The programme is woven around songs inspired by the ‘muses’ of the day, both mythological and divine.
REVIEW:
Mary Bevan is not just an exceptionally fine soprano. She’s also a superb actress. Those dramatic qualities – and her keen care for diction – shine in her latest album. She is at her best in the sprinkling of Wolf’s Mörike Lieder, including an ecstatic ‘Gebet’. Middleton’s playing is always sensitive, never overwhelming the singer.
Liszt’s Etudes d’execution transcendante enshrine the spirit of High Romanticism, embodying extremes of expressive drama and technical virtuosity. His encyclopedic approach to technique is shown at its most dazzling in this cycle, heard here in the 1852 revision which Liszt himself declared ‘the only authentic one.’ Integration of musical and technical elements is absolute, and the music’s narratives are supported by dramatic physicality, an orchestral richness of sonority, and an exceptional coloristic quality. The young Moscow-born Israeli pianist Boris Giltburg is lauded across the globe as a deeply sensitive, insightful and compelling musician. Born in 1984 in Moscow, he moved to Tel Aviv at an early age, studying with his mother and then with Arie Vardi. He went on to win numerous awards, most recently the Second Prize at the Rubinstein Competition in 2011, and in 2013 he won First Prize at the Queen Elisabeth Competition, catapulting his career to a new level.
REVIEW:
Boris Giltburg is a phenomenon. The music seems to ooze from every pore of his being, and he makes us think anew about what we are listening to. I renewed acquaintance with favored recordings from my collection (Ashkenazy, Berezovsky, Berman, Gekic, Kempf, Kultyshev, Strelchenko, Trifonov), but this one stands out for its ability to challenge the mind when thinking about Liszt’s magnificent opus.
Gavrilin: The Russian Notebook - Anyuta (excerpts)
Naxos
CD
$9.99$19.99Save 50%Apr 24, 2020
Valery Gavrilin was one of the most colorful and significant Russian composers of the second half of the 20th century. He was only 25 when he composed 'The Russian Notebook,' a 'poem of love and death' crafted in a new musical language that doesn't employ folk melodies but does use folkloric texts, and with a virtuosic vocal part. These stylized tunes are combined with rich melodies to form a haunting cycle heard here in a 2018 orchestration. The ten numbers from the ballet 'Anyuta' are lively, melodious and touchingly beautiful. Yuri Serov has toured across over 35 countries and has recorded more than 70 albums for record labels across the world. Serov is chief conductor of the Volgograd Philharmonic Orchestra and the St. Petersburg Mussorgsky Youth Symphony Orchestra, and is the author of many articles and essays on music.
In his second solo piano recital disc for Signum, this release further demonstrates Alessio Bax's dazzling skill and flair in performance and interpretation - this time with Rachmaninov's piano works. The programme is centered around the Preludes op.23, but takes in a broad selection of his other studies, etudes, melodies and transcriptions - in performance, Bax describes the programme as being a collection of 'visions and landscapes'.
Un Siecle de Musique Francaise: Camille Saint-Saens
Sony Masterworks
CD
$4.99$9.98Save 50%May 13, 2016
Features Philippe Entremont (piano), L'orchestre du Capitole de Toulouse, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Berj Zamkochian (organ), Bernard Zighera (piano), Leo Litwin (piano), The Philadelphia Orchestra, Boston Pops Orchestra, Samuel Lipman (piano), Martin Hoherman (cello)
Orchestre Nationale du Capitole de Toulouse, Michel Plasson, Charles Munch, Eugene Ormandy, Arthur Fiedler.
Bach: Magnificat in E-Flat Major & Missa in F Major / Gardiner
SDG
CD
$10.49$20.99Save 50%Oct 13, 2017
The Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists celebrate Christmas with a mixed programme of J.S. Bach’s sacred choral works. As we approach the 500th Anniversary of the Lutheran Church, these works transport listeners to 18th-century Leipzig for a traditional Christmas celebration. The programme moves from the intimacy of “Süßer Trost” to the vast celebration of joy that is Bach's Magnificat. The Bach at Christmas project is dedicated to the memory of philanthropist and patron of the Monteverdi choir, Sir Ralph Kohn. The concerts from which these recordings were taken took place at the Alte Oper, Frankfurt, in December of 2016.
Always Ready / Buckley, United States Coast Guard Band
Altissimo
CD
$9.49$18.99Save 50%Jan 01, 2001
Always Ready is the English translation of Semper Paratus, the U.S. Coast Guard motto. +On this album, The U.S. Coast Guard Band performs a wide variety of patriotic classics, some unique to their specific military branch. +This disc also provides timeless patriotic songs like America the Beautiful, marches like The Thunderer and concert works like Charles Ives’ iconic Variations on “America.” +Each of the nineteen tracks offers something different, while still maintaining the band’s core sound.
Witold Lutoslawski's few surviving apprentice works are suffused with the elegance of Ravel and the lush effusiveness of Szymanowski, and this is particularly true of the early Piano Sonata, heard here in Giorgio Koukl's new and corrected edition based on the original manuscript. Further premieres include the wistful 'A Kiss of Roxanne' and the technically complex 'Invention.' Including all of the folk-music tinted pedagogical miniatures, works for piano four hands and other occasional pieces, this is the most comprehensive edition of Lutoslawski's works for solo piano ever recorded. Virginia Rossetti began her piano studies with Massimiliano Ferrati, later attending the 'Antonio Buzzola' Conservatory in Adria where she graduated with honors. In May 2013 she obtained her Master of Performing Arts with distinction at the Hochschule fur Musik in Basle and in 2014 at the Royal Flemish Conservatoire of Brussels. Since 2011 she has been the pianist of the Lunaire Piano Trio. Giorgio Koukl is a pianist/harpsichordist and composer. He studied at the State Music School and Conservatory, and the Conservatories of Zurich and Milan.
Founded in New York in 2005, the contemporary music quartet Yarn/Wire is made up of two percussionists and two pianists. The group has gained an international reputation for dazzling and innovative programs. This release features outstanding studio-quality first recordings of three works that grew out of Yarn/Wire’s long association with the artistic team of Wolfgang Heiniger (percussionist, composer, sound designer) and Enno Poppe (pianist, composer, conductor). Heiniger and Poppe have worked together for more than 20 years and the piece “Tonband” (2008/2012) was a collaborative effort: Poppe composed the first two movements and Heiniger the final three. The work is indebted to Stockhausen’s “Kontakte” for piano, percussion, and four-track electronics from 1958–1960 but also contains references to rock music and has an uninhibited approach to melody. The other pieces on this album grew out of the two composers’ work on “Tonband”. “Feld” is the most explosively rhythmic music Poppe has composed to date – extremely challenging for the performers yet electrifying and highly expressive. While Bartók used the pianos for percussive effects in his Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion from 1937, Poppe here treats the percussion instruments like “extended pianos.” Heiniger’s “Neumond” (2018) places historic electric organ sounds in a constantly shifting tonal space, recalling the dark aesthetic of old horror films as well as other pieces on which he collaborated with Enno Poppe such as “Rad”, “Arbeit”, and “Rundfunk”.
