Schubert’s empathy with women is evident in his body of songs, which include songs to, by, about and for women. Devised by Carolyn Sampson and Joseph Middleton, the present recital brings us each of those possibilities and more. The playwright Helmina von Chézy wrote the text to the tender Romanze, intending it for the play Rosamunde, Princess of Cyprus to which Schubert composed incidental music. Another female author, Marianne von Willemer, wrote the two Suleika poems for Goethe, who included them (under his own name) in the collection West-östlicher Divan. And no less than seven of the other songs on the album are also associated with Goethe, and his characters Mignon (from Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre) and Gretchen (from Faust). Schubert was for a while almost obsessed with the mysterious and waif-like Mignon, making several settings of the poems associated with her. Less of an enigma but equally moving, Schubert’s Gretchen sings of awakening desire (Gretchen am Spinnrade) and laments her coming disgrace (Gretchens Bitte). Carolyn Sampson and Joseph Middleton have collaborated on several acclaimed projects for BIS, most recently with the counter-tenor Iestyn Davies as their companion. Here they close their Soprano’s Schubertiade with three settings of poems by Walter Scott, albeit in German translations. The three ‘Ellen Songs’ are from the verse-romance The Lady of the Lake from 1810, with the last one, ‘Schubert’s Ave Maria’, being one of the composer’s best-known and most loved compositions.
At first glance, the two composers represented on this disc may seem an unlikely couple: Franz Liszt the archetypal virtuoso-composer who crisscrossed 19th century Europe mesmerizing his audiences, and Olivier Messiaen who at the age of 22 was appointed organist at the Sainte-Trinité Church in Paris, remaining there for the rest of his life. In this imaginatively constructed programme, the Swedish pianist (and neuroscientist) Fredrik Ullén juxtaposes music by the two, showing that there are closer parallels between them than might be expected. For a start, a significant role in both composers' work was played by religious convictions, and three of the Liszt pieces included here are related to saints of the Catholic Church: the composer's own patron saint St Francis of Paola, St Dorothea and St Francis of Assisi, whose sermon to the birds is the subject of the first of the Two Legends. But both men also ventured into unexplored musical territory, with Messiaen exploring bird song (which he chose to regard as an expression of 'religious joy') and Hindu rhythms, for instance in Cantéyodjayâ. Meanwhile Liszt in his later years would develop an austere musical style full of dissonance, whole-tone scales, diminished and augmented chords - as striking as it is advanced, and looking ahead far into the twentieth century. One of the prime examples of this late style is Unstern! Sinistre, disastro. On several discs for BIS, Fredrik Ullén has demonstrated not only a stupendous virtuosity, but also a striking originality in his choice of repertoire, including Ligeti's Études and George Flynn's unique, almost two-hour long triptych Trinity, described as 'an utterly convincing performance of this incredible work' on the website MusicWeb International.
Bach: Complete Keyboard Works Vol 2 / Masaaki Suzuki
BIS
CD
$21.99Oct 01, 1997
REVIEWS: BBC Music (3/98, p.66) - Performance: 4 (out of 5), Sound: 4 (out of 5) - "Suzuki...plays the most tautly structured Bach....[He] makes light of the technical demands - hands crossing, finger-knitting polyphony, dazzling figurations - and characterises each variation imaginatively..."
Grieg: Choir Music / Pedersen, Norwegian Soloists Choir
BIS
SACD
$21.99Aug 01, 2007
This is an, err… enchanting disc of Grieg’s choral music – both original and arranged for choir. The opening, resonant, full bodied choral arrangement of the popular “At Rondane”, op.33, No.2 (originally for voice and piano) is plain gorgeous in its moody way. Two religious songs were prepared for mixed choir by Grieg himself of which “Withered, Fallen – At the Bier of a Young Wife” sounds a bit predictable, but touching in its cathedral-like piety. In this song, as in “Ave, Maris Stella” or indeed most of the other works on this glorious sounding (multi-channel/stereo) hybrid SACD, the non-Norwegian ear will always pick up a certain preciousness, that silver-voiced, Christmas-choir touch with scents and touches of mulled wine, snow boots, and blond locks under a woolen hat.
“Margaret’s Cradle Song” op.15, No.1, a short gem some 90 seconds long, was written in appreciation of the birth of his daughter Alexandra in 1868. It is set to the Ibsen poem of the same name and hauntingly beautiful. Alexandra, however, never got to appreciate her song; she died shortly after it was written. (Which is tragic and yet, given that it was set to something by Ibsen, also so terribly appropriate.)
Grete Pedersen, who conducts the Norwegian Soloists’ Choir also sets the first of the Lyric Pieces op.71 “Det var engang” for mixed choir. It might be the only miscalculation in that the result sounds nice and pleasant but also — in its dum-de-dum new-agey way — cheap.
Norway was already an independent nation when Grieg composed the 1907 Four Psalms op.74, his last work. It’s a somber end to his musical output – with “Jesus Christ is Risen” being an especially austere, if moving, setting of this Hans Adolf Brorson text. The four psalm settings are based on a collection of Norwegian “newer and older mountain tunes” that Grieg wanted to help preserve with his musical adoption. He has achieved that all over again by having them included in this very fine reminder that Grieg is so much more than the Grieg of a certain mountain king’s hall, or of lyric pieces, or a piano concerto.
This is a hybrid Super Audio CD playable on both regular and Super Audio CD players.
Beethoven’s three Op. 9 string trios are early masterpieces, every bit as fine as the later Op. 18 quartets. These performances are wonderful: there is nothing to criticize. The quality of ensemble is outstanding, perfectly balanced, always in tune, warmly sonorous, and stylish. The presto finale of the G major trio is impeccably light and fleet, all three slow movements beautifully singing and sustained. In the dramatic C minor trio these players (Frank Peter Zimmermann, Antoine Tamestit, and Christian Poltéra) offer a clinic on how to turn phrasing and accent to ear-catching account without a trace of ugliness or mannerism. The SACD sonics are every bit as fine. Don’t let this one slip by.
– David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com
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These three early trios by Beethoven are given brisk, lively, and well-detailed readings by the Zimmermann Trio, which was formed in 2007. Like so much of Beethoven’s music from the 1796–98 period, these pieces lie between the style of Haydn or Mozart and his own more imaginative manner, which was coming forward in those years. The addition of a fourth voice, in his early op. 18 string quartets, was obviously an extra inspiration for the composer, yet it was this set of trios on which he built those excellent structures.
If you are a fan of these string trios, this is certainly an outstanding recording to own of them. There is, really, nothing one can fault in the trio’s technical execution or musical style. Everything is there: the rhythmic spring, the little felicitous touches on the turns, the clarity in the interplay of voices. In addition, BIS’s hybrid SACD sound is simply splendid, sharp and clearly textured as a good recording of a small string ensemble should be.
Tchaikovsky, Medtner: Piano Concertos / Sudbin, Neschling, São Paulo State SO
BIS
SACD
$21.99Feb 01, 2007
This is a hybrid Super Audio CD playable on both regular and Super Audio CD players.
Tchaikovsky renewed in this dream concerto debut disc
Yevgeny Sudbin’s performance here fairly explodes with imagination, feeling and desire. Here, one feels, is a pianist hungry to test himself intellectually and emotionally as well as technically. For a performer who reputedly gets very nervous, there is nothing tentative about his commanding style. Yet there is nothing overly monumental about it either. His Tchaikovsky is on a human scale, almost a search for something – understanding perhaps. Sudbin is on a journey, to a marvellous career as much as anything else, and it is clear that his listeners are along for the ride. The Medtner is of course the rarity on this release. It is also a cruelly difficult piece to play. Sudbin rises to its demands with aplomb and it is entirely to his credit that one is never made ostentatiously aware of just how fiendish it is. There was apparently some creative tension between him and Neschling during the sessions. Nevertheless, they can both be proud of the results.
-- Gramophone [5/2007]
To describe 26-year-old Yevgeny Sudbin as music’s brightest young star pianist is in a sense to do him a disservice. For he is above all an artist, and here in his eagerly awaited concerto debut on disc he gives us a Tchaikovsky First of spine-tingling brilliance, poetry and vivacity. This is never the Tchaikovsky you have always known, but an arrestingly novel rethink with the concentration on mercurial changes of mood and direction. Here, amazingly, is one of the most familiar of all concertos rekindled in all its first glory, brimming over with zest and shorn of all the clichés that have adhered to it over the years.
In the first movement Sudbin’s octaves ring out at 10'18" like a giant carillon, while the Andantino’s central prestissimo becomes in such extraordinary hands a true firefly scherzo. Not even Cherkassky at his finest possesed a more elfin sense of difference or caprice. And to think that all this and more is accomplished without the lift, or hindrance, of a major competition success.
Medtner’s massive First Concerto, too, could hardly be played with a more burning clarity and committment. Once wittily if misleadingly described as “a declaration of love in the language of the First Empire”, Medtner’s music remains formidably inaccessible, despite displaying the outward trappings of Romantic rhetoric. Yet Sudbin clearly believes in every note and his playing evinces, as on live occasions, a rare sense of affection. Such poetry is confirmed in his encore, his own transcription of Medtner’s Liebliches Kind! from his Op 6 songs. It only remains to add that BIS’s balance and sound are of demonstration quality and that the São Paulo SO under John Neschling sound as if influenced by neighbouring Rio’s carnival spirit, so infectiously do they respond to their radiant soloist.
-- Bryce Morrison, Gramophone [5/2007]
You know you've got a winner on your hands when a performance of a piece you know by heart and already own in dozens of recordings makes you sit up and listen to it with fresh ears. That's exactly what happened at the opening of this Tchaikovsky First Concerto. Yevgeny Sudbin attacks those pounding "Liberace" chords with virtuoso relish--and thanks to a little arpeggio action in the right hand at the top of each sequence, with a glint of humor as well. This devil-may-care opening turns out to be a bit deceptive, though, for what characterizes the remainder of the performance is Sudbin's willingness to engage the orchestra in a real dialog. Mind you, nothing is precious or mannered: he simply knows where his part fits into the overall texture, and in places such as the second subject of the first movement and the entire Andante, he lets his colleagues in the wind and string sections have their say and reacts accordingly.
The result, while never short-changing the virtuoso elements (particularly in the finale), has a give-and-take that few other versions match. There are a couple of brief spots in the first movement where the tension does drop a bit as Sudbin lapses into dreamy reverie, but otherwise this is as persuasive a performance of this warhorse as any on disc. The orchestra and conductor have just as much to offer as the soloist, being totally at one with the interpretive concept and wholly characterful in their collective response. I would have loved to have heard this live.
The Medtner First Concerto, a 34-minute single-movement post-Romantic effusion that no one seems to like very much, also receives an enormously powerful and convincing performance. Sudbin must be almost unique in the arts world in that his liner-note writing is every bit as good as his piano playing, which is saying a lot. He makes a strong case for the work and guides the listener through its twists and turns with clarity and enthusiasm. Yet despite his professions of love for the piece, the sincerity of which I do not question, it says something that he has to spend three times the space talking about it than he does the Tchaikovsky. In short, it requires a measure of special pleasing. And yet it really shouldn't. Yes, it may sound in places like Rachmaninov without the tunes, but there's nothing radical or off-putting about Medtner's style.
Perhaps he stresses form over immediacy of emotional expression, and the bottom line is that it's not easy to grasp a single-movement form lasting longer than half an hour on casual acquaintance. But if you make the effort, you will discover an impressively grand, turbulent work that progresses from tragedy to defiant triumph. It's a connoisseur's piece, for sure, and for that reason it won't necessarily appeal to the same audience as the Tchaikovsky (hence the single note of caution in the overall rating for artistic quality). Nevertheless Sudbin deserves a ton of credit for giving the piece an outing and investing it with every ounce of the passion that it deserves. As he himself notes, it is music that grows on you given sufficient time, and you will know right away if you feel like making the investment. Sudbin's own transcription of one of Medtner's songs makes a perfect encore, and the sonics in all formats are, typically for this label, state-of-the-art. In sum, a disc to live with.
Gade: The Symphonies / Jarvi, Stockholm Sinfonietta, Malmo Symphony Orchestra
BIS
CD
$49.99Jan 01, 2010
REVIEW:
Niels Gade was a musical conservative, very much of the Mendelssohn school, but he had a distinctive personality and...he knew how to make his music move. These symphonies have good tunes, almost no dead spots, and the Fifth, which has an important concertante part for solo piano, really is an entertaining and original piece by any standard.
At five discs for the price of two, this set is a steal. Neeme Järvi's versions of the eight symphonies are as fine as any available, certainly as good as Hogwood's excellent Chandos set which now costs several times as much. Niels Gade was a musical conservative, very much of the Mendelssohn school, but he had a distinctive personality and, more to the point, he knew how to make his music move. These symphonies have good tunes, almost no dead spots, and the Fifth, which has an important concertante part for solo piano, really is an entertaining and original piece by any standard. Järvi secures crisp, lively playing from the Stockholm Sinfonietta; there isn't a weak performance in the lot.
The Violin Concerto is also a fine, unaccountably neglected piece, very well played by Anton Kontra (of the eponymous quartet fame). Its central Andantino espressive really is a gem, but then the entire piece has a formal compactness and confidence typical of Gade. The Crusaders (featuring the Aarhus Symphony under Frans Rasmussen) is an hour-long cantata for soloists, chorus, and orchestra, and it makes a considerable bonus. Of course in today's world it's kind of hard to sympathize with the crusades, or with any piece in which Peter the Hermit is the good guy, but give Gade credit: he gets through the entire Armida/Rinaldo love story in 23 minutes, and it's the best part of the work. Enough talk: just get this box, and your Gade collection will be pretty much complete.
Beethoven: Symphonies No 2 & 7 / Vanska, Minnesota Orchestra
BIS
SACD
$21.99Aug 01, 2008
Beethoven began composing his Second Symphony around late 1800, after a successful performance of his First Symphony at a benefit concert in April that year. The hope seems to have been to perform it at a similar concert the following spring - the week before Easter was just about the only time of year when such concerts could be staged in Vienna at that time, since the orchestras were engaged mainly in operas during the rest of the season. After sketching the first movement in considerable detail, however, plans for the rest of the work were suddenly put on hold when he was commissioned to write a ballet, Die Geschöpfe des Prometheus. This was duly performed in March 1801, and Beethoven finally returned to complete the symphony the following winter, in readiness for the next opportunity for a benefit concert. When the time came in April 1802, however, Beethoven was disgusted to find that he had not been given one of the few available slots in the calendar, and that the date had instead been allocated to what he called 'thoroughly mediocre artists'. Nevertheless, this misfortune may have enabled him to make further refinements to the music before it was first performed. Certainly he did make substantial alterations to the finale at a late stage, in particular by greatly enlarging the coda. Osmo Vänskä became the Minnesota Orchestra's tenth music director in September 2003. Praised for his intense and dynamic performances, Vänskä is recognized for compelling interpretations of the standard, contemporary and Nordic repertoires, as well as the close rapport he establishes with the musicians he leads. He began his musical career as a clarinettist, occupying the co-principal's chair in the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra for several years. After studying conducting at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, he won first prize in the 1982 Besançon International Young Conductor's Competition. His conducting career has featured substantial commitments to such orchestras as the Tapiola Sinfonietta, Iceland Symphony Orchestra and BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. His numerous recordings for BIS continue to attract the highest acclaim; his Beethoven symphony cycle with the Minnesota Orchestra - including a Grammy-nominated recording of Symphony No.9 - has broadcast the exceptional dynamism of this musical partnership to audiences worldwide. Meanwhile Vänskä is heavily in demand internationally as a guest conductor with the world's leading orchestras, enjoying regular relationships with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, Philadelphia Orchestra and National Symphony Orchestra of Washington. In May 2008, after two decades at the helm of the Lahti Symphony Orchestra, Vänskä was named that ensemble's conductor laureate. Among the many honours and distinctions he has been awarded are the Pro Finlandia medal, a Royal Philharmonic Society Award, Musical America's 2005 Conductor of the Year Award, the Sibelius Medal in 2005 and the Finlandia Foundation Arts and Letters Award in 2006.
Mendelssohn: Lieder ohne Worte, Books 5-8 / Brautigam
BIS
SACD
$21.99Jun 10, 2016
Felix Mendelssohn had no idea that when he presented his sister Fanny with a “song without words” for her birthday, that he was inventing his own genre. He went on to compose a great number of these Lieder ohne Worte. These works became incredibly popular among pianists, and among audiences. In the words of Mendelssohn himself, “The music I love expresses ideas that are not too vague to be captured in words, but on the contrary too precise.” Pianist Ronald Brautigam performs these works on a piano copied by Paul McNulty after an Ignaz Pleyel 1830 model.
Resonanser - Swedish Choral Music / Widmark, Allmänna Singers
BIS
CD
$21.99Oct 01, 2008
The Swedish choral tradition enjoys a very high reputation, with music lovers often claiming to be able to recognize a uniquely Swedish choral sound. Exactly what this sound consists of is difficult to pinpoint, but often mentioned are keywords such as melancholy, the Scandinavian countryside, folk music and traditional ballads. The selection of works on this disc exemplifies all of these, and the performance of them has been entrusted to one of the choirs that have shaped Swedish choral music: Allmänna Sången, an Uppsala student choir with a history going back for more than 175 years. The choir's position in Swedish cultural life was demonstrated in 2005 by an invitation to sing at the Nobel Banquet. That performance was televised throughout the world, and in fact included three of the works on this disc - Biegga Luothe, Glaspolskan and Byss-Kalles slängpolska. Great traditions notwithstanding, this disc offers a new perspective on its subject, as the choir brings out new resonances in the often well-known music. A collaboration with Swedish jazz pianist Anders Widmark lends unusual colours to settings of ancient folk chorales (I Himmelen) and traditional harvest songs (Slåttervisa), as well as to classics from the treasure of Swedish choral music such as Stenhammar's Three Choral Songs and Alfvén's Evening ('Aftonen'). Both Allmänna Sången and Anders Widmark have made a number of successful recordings, and now that they join forces for the first time, it is an occasion not to be missed.
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893) Gothenburg Symphony OrchestraNeeme Jarvi, conductor Symphony no 1 in G minor "Winter Dreams", Op. 13; Romeo &Â?JulietSymphony no 2 in C minor "Little Russian", Op. 17; Overture in FSymphony no 3 in D major "Polish", Op. 29; The Snow Maiden, Op.12Symphony no 4 in F minor, Op. 36; Symphony no 5 in E minor, Op 64Symphony no 6 in B minor "Pathetique", Op. 74; The Tempest;Overture on the Danish National Anthem; Voyevoda Dances;Dmitri Pretender and Vassily Shuisky; Serenade for N.Rubinstein;Capriccio Italien; Francesca da Rimini; etc.
