In a series that has been called "very important" (Classics Today.com), "of an exceptional level" (Diapason), "always surprising, and certainly ideal" (Répertoire) and "deeply sympathetic" (International Record Review), Miklòs Spànyi has reached the 13th volume, featuring one concerto and two sonatinas for keyboard and orchestra - a genre which, according to the informative liner notes by C.P.E. Bach scholars Jane R. Stevens and Darrell M. Berg, arose as "a direct effort to provide music for a growing concert-going musical public". As might be expected, these are works of immediate appeal, with those trademarks of their composer: the unceasing spirit of innovation and the highly individual use of rhythm and keys. (The opener on this disc is the Sonatina in F major - which actually starts in d minor: a strategy that increases the major mode's feeling of brightness when it belatedly appears.) For those of you who haven't yet discovered the wonderful world of C. P. E. Bach's keyboard works, this is a good place to start; for those who have, prepare yourself for a generous hour of sheer enjoyment!
With this disc London Baroque and BIS are continuing a very successful collaboration which has so far resulted in six releases. On this present disc London Baroque turn their eyes and ears to François Couperin, also known as 'le Grand'. But this CD also invokes two other Baroque giants, namely Corelli and Lully. The main works are the two Apothéoses, in which Couperin portrays the ascent to Parnassus of his two great predecessors. Apart from them being intended as compliments to the composers, one might see in the works - and especially in L'Apothéoses de Lulli - an attempt to advocate and create a fusion of the French style with the Italian, which during the early 17th century was all the rage in Paris. This is music with a history indeed - performed in the ever fresh manner of London Baroque.
Grieg: Cello Sonata; Grainger: Scandinavian Suite / Brantelid, Hadland
BIS
SACD
$21.99Apr 14, 2015
This is a hybrid Super Audio CD playable on both regular and Super Audio CD players.
Wonderfully-played Nordic, or Nordic-inspired, music from a Swedish-Danish cellist and Norwegian pianist.
– Gramophone
5 Stars (out of 5) Brantelid's feverish energy, tonal and textural range add something new. The Andante has a glistening innocence, while the sense of rough, spontaneous dance in the finale pulls the music closer to its roots. That feisty quality ignites the Scandinavian Suite of [Grainger]...Nielsen's poignant Op. 21 song 'Just bow your head, oh flower' is an inspired encore. Blink and you could be sitting in a sunny wooden parlour in Funen, Denmark.
– BBC Music Magazine
Although they were born forty years apart on opposite sides of the world, Edvard Grieg and Percy Grainger have much in common. The aim to become pianists and composers more or less forced both of them to leave their native countries – Norway and Australia respectively – in order to gain access to the great central European tradition that so dominated musical life during the second half of the 19th century. Grieg enrolled at the Leipzig conservatory in 1858 and Grainger at the Hoch Conservatory in Frankfurt in 1895, but their experiences were in many ways strikingly similar: both made progress as pianists, but neither of them found the German approach to the teaching of composition fruitful. Grieg’s strong attachment to Norwegian folk music made it difficult for him to compose in a way that conformed to the Germanic ideal, while Grainger some forty years later withdrew from the composition class at the conservatory in order to study privately. He too would find his greatest inspiration in folk music traditions, as exemplified in La Scandinavie for cello and piano, a suite of arrangements of Scandinavian folk songs. The two composers met in 1906, in London, and not surprisingly they got along famously. The meeting led to Grainger visiting Grieg in Bergen the following year, only two months before the older composer passed away.
The Danish-Swedish cellist Andreas Brantelid and his Norwegian chamber music partner Christian Ihle Hadland have teamed up in this programme of cello works by the two composers, opening with Grieg’s celebrated Cello Sonata. They also include less well-known pieces, however, such as the composer’s arrangement of the Allegretto from his third violin sonata, and an Andante con moto intended as part of a never completed piano trio, in which they are joined by the violinist Lars Bjørnkjær. Discovered after Grieg’s death, the piece would have to wait more than 70 years before receiving its first performance.
One of Johannes Brahms's sunniest works, the Violin Concerto in D major was conceived during the summer of 1878, which Brahms spent by the idyllic Wörthersee in Kärnte, Austria. By the end of the summer he was able to send the violin part of the first movement, and the beginning of the Finale to his friend Joseph Joachim. Brahms asked Joachim for advice regarding the writing for violin, and also told him that he was planning a work in four movements. By the time Joachim gave the first performance of the work, on New Year's Day 1879, the two had discussed the work in depth, Brahms had replaced the two projected inner movements with the glowing Adagio, and Joachim had composed a first version of his own cadenza, which still is the one most often performed. Vadim Gluzman, who on BIS has previously released Romantic war-horses such as the concertos by Tchaikovsky and Bruch to critical acclaim, now takes on Brahms with the support of the Luzerner Sinfonieorchester under James Gaffigan. He combines it with the composer's Violin Sonata No. 1, written more or less in tandem with the concerto, performing it with his wife and recital partner Angela Yoffe.
This is a hybrid Super Audio CD playable on both regular and Super Audio CD players.
Not much is known about Christopher Simpson’s life, except that he was a seminal writer for the viol. Even today modern violists use his manual The Division Viol as a guide to the practice of ‘divisions’, the improvised embellishments that were so fashionable during his time. Much of his music nevertheless goes unperformed, and the present collection of Ayres here receives its first recording, by Chelys, a British quartet of young violists. Describing the collection as being ‘for two trebles and two basses’, the manuscript sources also include parts for continuo. Chelys have therefore enlisted the aid of Dan Tidhar and James Akers in the twenty airs, pavanes, galliards and other dances that fall comfortably into five suites. On the disc are also some examples of Simpson’s Divisions, for two treble viols and for treble and bass viol respectively. As a result, the programme offers fascinating insights into Simpson’s music and the viol during the mid-17th century. By turns melancholy, lively and graceful, these Ayres are glowing examples from the tail-end of the great English tradition of music for viol consort – a tradition to which, some ten years after Simpson’s death, Purcell with his celebrated Fantazias would add the final chapter.
-----
Chelys pace the Ayres beautifully (the galliards are lilting, the aires tuneful) and ornament the repeats...Woven into the 'Ayres & Graces' are dialogues and antiphony, countermelodies, cascading sequences, chromaticism and hemiolas, to which Chelys and their colleagues Dan Tidhar and James Akers artfully draw our attention.
– Gramophone
“[E]ach movement is worthwhile: the B flat major Pavin, to take just one example, is an especially toothsome feast of gently squeezing harmonies… Performed by the four viol players of Chelys and their keyboard and guitar playing colleagues, they sound wonderfully supple, propulsive and alive.” – The Guardian
Allar Kaasik has enjoyed a long and fruitful career, in his native Estonia as well as abroad. Reflecting on it in the liner notes to this very personal album, he singles out one particular aspect: the ambition to embrace the very latest compositions by Estonian composers. Performing in churches as he often does, Kaasik finds music resounding in a church a part of the Holy Service. This is reflected in many of the works which have been written for him, with composers such as Galina Grigorjeva and Kuldar Sink enriching the tradition of Estonian church music. Among Kaasik’s many partners in performing these works, several appear on the present disc, including two eminent choirs – the State Choir Latvija and Estonian National Male Choir – as well as the Latvian organist Kristine Adamaite. A focal point of the programme is the cello concerto Pro et contra by the most celebrated of all Estonian composers, Arvo Pärt. Kaasik is supported by the Estonian National Symphony Orchestra conducted by Peeter Lilje and the recording has a particular significance – originally released by Melodiya in 1989, it was the first recording of Pärt’s music published on disc in the Soviet Union following the lifting of the unofficial ban on his music. The remaining works on Timeless Light were all recorded between 2014 and 2016.
