The award-winning French pianist Pascal Rogé presents a program of music by Gershwin and Ravel in a recording with the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra under Bertrand de Billy. Rogé’s affinity for the French style and empathy with jazz make him particularly suited to this repertoire. His recordings of French piano music have received Gramophone, Grand Prix du Disque and Edison awards. In addition to the classical-romantic repertoire of the Viennese and German schools, 20th-century French music is also one of his specialties. “An intelligent, richly enjoyable performance of the ravel Concerto.” (BBC Music Magazine) “Roge’s playing of Ravel’s Left-Hand concerto is masterly. He has complete technical regard for the work; more importantly, he appreciates the range of the music, its darkness, menace, anger, other-worldly escape, introspection and defiance.” (International Piano Magazine)

REVIEW:

The team of Pascal Rogé and Bertrand de Billy, with some outstanding playing from the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, bring much to this music. The pianist makes easy work of Ravel’s tremendously difficult writing and clarifies a number of problematic textures in the Gershwin.

-- Fanfare

Classical Music

Classical Music

Composer Christopher Roberts’s four serene yet deeply emotive pieces for solo qin (a Chinese zither-like instrument) are quiet, sparce, slightly eerie, almost Feldmanesque. Performed by the composer, who learned the qin while living and teaching for many years in Taiwan. This is a 30-minute CD EP/single. “So Confucius walks into a bar, just in time for Bill Evans’s last set, and after closing time pulls out his qin for a few solos … That’s the vibe that Christopher Roberts captures in these intimate nocturnal musings where crystalline harmonics dance among gutsy bass slides while elegant harmonies whisper their most private thoughts. A truly haunting recording.” [John Schneider, Host of KPFK’s Global Village] “The most Chinese of instruments, the qin has roots in the ancient literati tradition…. Having studied its classical tradition in Taiwan, the quixotic Roberts (also a double bassist) also brings his own traditions of jazz, blues, and solo improvisation to the table. While starting somewhere near its traditional core, Roberts bends his instrument in new directions entirely, turning it westwards even as he faces east.” [Gramophone magazine] “‘Exotic’ is a relative term. Gorecki's music is exotic compared to Lloyd Webber’s, Ligeti’s music is exotic compared to Gorecki’s, and Christopher Roberts’ music is exotic compared to nearly any music you are likely to think of.… Last Cicada Singing integrates Eastern and Western music so well, finding their common ground in calm reflection of natural sounds and processes. Sit back, relax, contemplate.” [Malcolm Tattersall, Music & Vision] “You-are-there-grade realism. The recording is Christopher Roberts’ hauntingly beautiful and stunningly well-recorded Last Cicada Singing [Absolute Sound magazine] “Mesmerizing sounds...quiet, sparse, serene music.” [Michael Barone, Minnesota Public Radio]

The present release is a fascinating journey through the music that unites Debussy with Spanish composers. Places are sounds- and this music is Granada. The city was a recurring source of inspiration for Debussy, and yet the composer never visited it; his knowledge of it was gained only indirectly through literary accounts, images, and musical sources heard in Paris. All of these materials served to unleash his imagination in regard to its sound, which according to Falla represented ‘the truth without authenticity, as not a single note is borrowed from Spanish folklore and yet, even in its smallest details, it wonderfully expresses Spain’. A common element links all the composers in the present program: the city of Paris. From the end of the nineteenth to the early twentieth century, the French capital was a fundamental goal for many Spanish composers, who at some point in their lives went there for study or work purposes. Born in Tokyo, Japan, Azumi Nishizawa is considered one of the finest Japanese pianists of her generation. She studied with Michiko Okamoto and Ikuyo Kamiya at the Toho Gakuen Conservatory of Music in Tokyo, and was subsequently selected as an outstanding pupil by the famous French pianist and instructor Dominique Merlet at the Geneva Conservatory where she won first prize for virtuosity.

This latest release in the Premium Composers Series features a program of the most famous and most beautiful symphonies of Franz Schubert.

V 42: MUSICA CLAROMONTANA

V 28: MUSICA CLAROMONTANA

The ensemble London Winds, praised by BBC Music for its ‘technical accomplishment, expressive commitment and warmth of timbre’, presents in this recording great twentieth-century works for winds.

It features music by Hindemith, Nielsen, and Janácek, and, from the next generation, Barber and Ligeti. Although not equally prolific (Kleine Kammermusik is Hindemith’s single contribution to that genre while winds are generally more prominent in Nielsen’s music), all these composers brought the wind repertoire back to prominence, after a quiet period of more than a century. The music is full of playfulness and European folk colours.

A stunning combination of virtuoso players who also enjoy active solo careers, the ensemble London Winds is renowned for its technical brilliance, interpretative vision, and joie de vivre. Founded in 1988 by the British clarinettist Michael Collins, the group rapidly became one of the world’s most prominent chamber ensembles.

Review:

There's plenty of personality in the playing here, with much wit in the Allegro ben moderato and the charming minuet. London Winds deliver an exuberant account, surpassing my previous favorite, the Michael Thompson Wind Quintet.

– Gramophone

Classical Music

PIANO PHANTOMS • Michael Lewin (pn) • SONO LUMINUS 92168 (65:56)


NIEMANN Ghosts: Night on the Fleet. LYAPUNOV Round of Phantoms. GRIEG The Goblins’ Wedding Procession at Vossevangen. LAUSIG The Ghost Ship. MEDTNER Wood Goblin. DVO?ÁK Goblins’ Dance. GOOSSENS A Ghost Story. TROYER Ghost Dance of the Zunis. KASKI Night Music of the Mountain Goblin. VALLIER The Ghosts at Restormel. BOLCOM Graceful Ghost Rag. FARJEON Some Goblins and Gnomes and Things. PRICE The Goblin and the Mosquito. BAINTON Goblin Dance. HILLER The Dance of the Phantoms. RIVÉ-KING March of the Goblins. SCHUBERT Spirit Dance (arr. Heller). SCHUMANN Ghost Variations


Theme recordings don’t always work, simply because the gimmick of the theme doesn’t always produce music of outstanding quality, but in this disc pianist Lewin seems to have been inspired by the learning of new pieces and thoroughly enjoyed making the disc. I, for one, also enjoyed listening to it.


A large part of the reason for my enjoyment was the fact that despite this “ghosts and goblins” theme, most of the music is really of a high quality. Little if any of it seems to have been written for effect, but merely to explore unusual melodic or harmonic structure by channeling ghostly titles. A quick glance at the list of composers immediately shows several whose reputations as good composers are undisputable—Niemann, Grieg, Medtner, Dvo?ák, Schubert, and Schumann—yet even the music of such composers as Sergei Lyapunov, Carl Tausig, Eugene Goossens, and Ferdinand Hiller are played here with consummate skill and high artistic commitment. Lewin, who won top honors in the Franz Liszt International Piano Competition and the William Kapell International Competition, is evidently an artist committed to excellence in phrasing and interpretation. Not for him the easy route of empty virtuosity: Lewin brings a fine sense of direction and continuity to everything he plays, and the result is a fascinating recital devoid of music one has heard time and time again.


Indeed, eight of the pieces on this disc (those by Troyer, Kaski, Farjeon, Price, Bainton, Hiller, Rivé-King, and Schubert) are world premiere recordings, and I was particularly delighted to see a piece on this disc by Florence Price, whose Piano Concerto I prize so highly. By giving just as much attention and energy to the music of lesser-known composers, Lewin elevates their music so that it sounds indistinguishable from that of the acknowledged masters. In fact, the “lightest”-sounding work on this program was actually Dvo?ák’s Goblin’s Dance, a nice piece but by no means a great one, and even here Lewin does his level best to raise its quality. (Oddly enough, Goossens’s A Ghost Story was a better piece than Dvo?ák’s!)


Harry Farjeon’s Some Goblins and Gnomes and Things turned out to be an excellent piece, as was Price’s The Goblin and the Mosquito. Hiller’s Dance of the Phantoms is merely an enjoyable little romp, but how Lewin plays it! A real surprise, to me, was the piece by Julie Rivé-King, a native Cincinnatian who studied with Liszt and performed with Carl Reinecke. It is another charming piece, but not as insubstantial as one might imagine in advance of hearing it.


Lewin wraps up his program with Schumann’s Ghost Variations, a work completely unknown to me, written in 1854 when the then-schizophrenic composer had a dream that ghosts and angels dictated this theme to him. His wife Clara was apparently upset by the music’s “other-worldly origins” and refused to allow it to be published; thus it did not appear until 1939. As Lewin points out in the notes, the music is “fragile, gentle and intimate, painfully private,” but really and truly, not “ghostlike” at all. Thus we come to the end of this fascinating and original compilation of offbeat piano pieces. Bravo, Michael Lewin!


FANFARE: Lynn René Bayley

Michael Byron’s music, which has appeared on four previous Cold Blue CDs, tends to be harmonically rich, rhythmically detailed, and virtuosic. It is often praised for its ability to create uniquely dense constructions out of relatively limited means: “Byron creates maximalist effect out of minimalist means.” (ClassicalNet) “One is reminded…of the mobiles of Alexander Calder, which are both fixed and moving. And, like Calder’s work, Byron’s music is immediately comprehensible and beautiful, while it remains experimental.” (San Francisco Bay Guardian) “Byron’s music, like Ligeti’s, is instantly recognizable, perceptually challenging, beautifully proportioned and deeply satisfying.” (Paris Transatlantic) In the Village of Hope is a restless (and in some ways relentless) virtuosic harp solo performed stunningly by Tasha Smith Godínez. This ever-changing, ever-churning, ever-developing music is unlike anything else in the solo harp repertoire. A 23-minute CD EP/single. Musicologist/critic/author Eric Smigel wrote of this CD, “In the Village of Hope simultaneously lulls and rouses the listener with elegantly cascading counterpoint and lush harmonies animated by complex rhythms. Its kaleidoscopic variations evoke ethereal wind chimes, rendering both the calm and the storm in a single gesture.” Sequenza 21 called it “gorgeous music…a single 23-minute track that unfolds with such delicacy and grace that an hour of it would not seem too much.” Fanfare magazine wrote, “Originally categorized as a minimalist, [Byron] has composed music over most of his career that more accurately might be described as maximalist, because it is in a state of constant and often rapid flux…. In the Village of Hope sounds like the kind of music a harp might play on itself, for itself, and by itself…. One associates the harp with angelic matters, and while In the Village of Hope doesn't confound that association, this is a heaven that is far from being regular and predictable, and where one is ruled not by immutable Bible truths but by the constant fluctuations of the natural world. This is very pretty listening, and, as such, recommendable.” And Julien Cowley wrote in The Wire, “Harp notes trickling and tumbling like eddies in a stream…. Byron has compared In The Village of Hope to the play of wind chimes, an image that not only suggests the range of timbres elicited by harpist Tasha Smith Godinez, but also fits the character of a piece that seems to occupy its own space while some animating spirit runs through it.”

Connolly’s is a distinguished addition to the catalogue.

In many respects Schumann is the archetype of the romantic artist: deeply influenced by literature, committed to powerfully intense emotions, creatively aware of the virtuosity of performers. He was himself a fine pianist, and the first twenty-three of his published compositions were for his own instrument. He then went on to match this achievement in the field of solo song, in which regard he became the true inheritor of Schubert’s mantle.

Another important aspect of Schumann’s creative nature was his fondness for creating large-scale compositions out of sequences of miniatures. He developed this trend in piano works such as Carnaval and Kreisleriana, and continued it in the vocal song-cycles, including for example Frauenliebe und -leben and the two groups of songs under the title Liederkreis (Opp. 24, 39).

All of these issues are germane to this collection of songs presented by Sarah Connolly with the expert support of Eugene Asti. Under the collective title 'Songs of Love and Loss', this Schumann programme includes two cycles from the great song year of 1840, the Liederkreis and Frauenliebe und –Leben. The remaining songs come from later in the composer’s life: the collection entitled Gedichte der Königin Maria Stuart Op.135, the beautiful short 'Requiem' from Op.90 and 'Mein schöner Stern!' Op.101 No.4. These show no falling-off in quality, despite the commonly-held view that his encroaching final illness undermined the quality of the composer’s later compositions.

There are abundant alternative performances of Frauenliebe und –Leben and the Liederkreis, but Sarah Connolly brings a distinguished addition to the catalogue. While many great artists have brought their insights to the former, a personal favourite is the 1996 Deutsche Grammophon disc by Anne-Sophie von Otter with Bengt Forsberg (445 881 2), while in the Op. 39 Liederkreis there is always the issue of whether a man’s voice is better. Among notable interpretations is that of Bryn Terfel, for instance, with Malcolm Martineau (again DG, 447 042 2). Therefore the excellent Sarah Connolly does not become an instant top recommendation, but she does have both the technique and the insight to do full justice to these great songs.

In Frauenliebe und –leben Connolly and Asti tend towards slower tempi, perhaps missing some degree of ardour, though a real highlight of their performance is 'Du Ring an meinem Finger', in which there is much intensity. The balance between voice and piano is nicely achieved by both the artists and the Chandos engineers, while the recording venue, Potton Hall in Suffolk, is a tried and tested acoustic well suited to chamber music and songs.

Although Connolly is not a native German speaker, her treatment of the language is assured and the treatment of the text abounds in all the subtleties the songs have to offer, with a vocal timbre that is rich and nicely in focus. The collaboration of the artists seems even better in the lesser-known songs. For instance Requiem moves to a convincing climax after a beautifully chaste opening phase, and the somewhat austere songs on poems attributed to Mary Queen of Scots have an intensity that is all their own. Perhaps her preference for slower tempi pays its strongest dividends here.

-- Terry Barfoot, MusicWeb International

The present album is the second of two recorded by the Orchestre Philharmonique Royal de Liège and Jean-Jacques Kantorow to commemorate the centenary of the death of Camille Saint-Saëns. On the first instalment the team offered us ‘deeply impressive performances in stunning sound’ (theclassicreview.com) of the composer’s first and second symphonies and the unnumbered Symphony in A major, but now the time has come for Saint-Saëns’ crowning glory in the symphonic genre: his Symphony No.?3 in C minor, generally known as the ‘Organ Symphony’. The work was composed in 1886, and Saint-Saëns had planned to dedicate it to Liszt but the latter’s death the same year caused the dedication in the published score to be modified to ‘in memory of Franz Liszt’. It is written for a larger orchestra than his previous symphonies, with the unusual addition of a piano and an organ – the two instruments that Liszt (and Saint-Saëns himself) favored. Without being a virtuoso vehicle, the organ part is central to the work – especially in the grandiose ending – and it is here performed by the renowned organist Thierry Escaich, playing the great organ of Liège’s Salle Philharmonique. On the album, the symphony is preceded by the ‘Urbs Roma’ symphony, composed in 1856 by a 21-year-old Saint-Saëns. It was written for a competition, and its title – ‘the city of Rome’ – was one of the subjects prescribed by the organizers. In the absence of an explanation by the composer, it is unclear how the music relates to the subject. Another enigma is why Saint-Saëns omitted the symphony from his catalogue of works, even though it actually won him a first prize. In consequence, ‘Urbs Roma’ remained unpublished until 1974 and is rarely heard even today.

Giovanni Battista Bassani, a late-Renaissance composer of great importance, has been all but ignored by posterity and recent studies. His music’s rediscovery brings to light the work of a great contrapuntist as well as creator of catchy melodies and surprising rhythmic solutions. His “Armonici Entuisiasmi di Davide”, printed in Venice in 1690, a collection of nine psalms, a Magnificat and the Litany of the Blessed Virgin, was for use during the liturgical year’s rites of Vespers. One of the leading specialists of music from this period, Giovanni Acciai, leads the Ensemble Ars Nova Cantandi.

Musicologist Adrian Thomas considered Grazyna Bacewicz’s string quartets “unrivalled in 20th-century Polish music and… one of the century’s most significant contributions to the genre”. Her folk-music infused First Quartet dates from student days at the Paris Conservatoire, while exceptional polyphonic skill, intense emotion and playful, high spirits characterize the Third Quartet. Both the Sixth and Seventh Quartets unite tradition with a strikingly effective and highly personal exploration of progressive contemporary techniques. As Lutoslawski observed, in the “rapidly changing artistic currents” of the times, “it was [Bacewicz’s] music which helped create that atmosphere.”

British music for the clarinet was hugely indebted to the elite interpreters who inspired this important repertoire. they included Frederick Thurston, who first performed three of the works on this recording. Sir Arnold Bax's sonata, much admired and imbued with Celtic folklore, is heard in a version that restores the manuscript's original phrasing. the pieces by roger Fiske and Iain Hamilton are heard in Premie. re-recordings, while Richard Rodney Bennett's duo Concertante was commissioned by the eminent soloist in this recital, Nicholas Cox.

Narciso Yepes became a star at the beginning of the 1950s with the soundtrack of the movie Jeux Interdits; he could be easily considered as the only guitar soloist comparable to Andrés Segovia. Shy and reserved, Yepes took little advantage of his fame at the time, realizing few recordings, with most quickly deleted from the catalog. This faithfully re-mastered IDIS CD collects a set of recordings performed by Yepes during the years 1960-63, consisting of repertoire from the Renaissance to the 20th c.

This new release is the Christmas equivalent of The King’s Singers’ recent release, Great American Songbook. Paying homage to the a capella group’s heritage while still acknowledging their modern passion for swing, the group mixes Christmas classics like “In the Bleak Midwinter,” and “The Holly and the Ivy,” with modern tunes such as “Winter Wonderland,” “Frosty the Snowman,” and “Sleigh Ride.” The group’s favorite arrangers have reworked all of these tunes specifically for the ensemble- Berty Rice, Keith Roberts, and Alexander L’Estrange.

REVIEW:

The latest King’s Singers CD, a seasonal celebration from Signum Classics, mixes well-known American carols with some from “the other side of the pond.” The result is a blend that... is every bit as smooth as a perfectly prepared cup of hot cocoa, and just as warming.

The exceptional adaptability of the King’s Singers is shown in the handling here of songs as different as Santa Claus Is Coming to Town and White Christmas, either of which could easily be a throwaway and neither of which is. The group’s beautiful melding is apparent in different ways in numbers such as The First Nowell and Silent Night. The King’s Singers simply have a way of bringing joy to the world.

– Infodad.com

Ronald Center (1913–73) is sometimes described as ‘the Scottish Bartók’, and his music does indeed capture some of the stark, wild energy of the Scottish landscape in a style of Bartókian asperity. These three string quartets show him, in his northeast corner of Scotland, to have been fully conversant with the quartets being written around the same time by Barber, Britten and Shostakovich, but their direct manner, terse expression, wiry humor and roots in Scottish folk-music ensure that Center is his own man.