With the recordings on this album, the Armida Quartet has reached the halfway mark in a project that seeks to intimately explore an entire mountain range: Mozart’s complete works for string quartet, to which they devote intense scrutiny within the framework of a recital series that pairs them with contemporary works specifically commissioned for the occasion. This requires our musicians to pay a particularly attentive ear: history remains unscathed, but the members of the Armida Quartet want to call ingrained listening habits into question. By implication, they explore Mozart’s works as if the composer was looking over their shoulder. In collaboration with Henle music publishers and musicologist Wolf-Dieter Seiffert, they have embarked on a “workshop exploration” of Mozart’s string quartets in the original manuscript. The occasional discovery of certain hitherto overlooked details leads them to interpret certain passages in exciting new ways. All the while, they gain increasing familiarity and assurance as they delve ever more deeply into the master’s musical language. The sources also confirm something that Mozart alluded to in his dedication of the six “Haydn” Quartets to his revered colleague: the fact that the work of composing can be painstaking, at times laborious.
Il Tigrane Arias: The Other Cleopatra - Queen of Armenia
Delos
CD
$14.99$18.99Save 20%Mar 20, 2020
Yes, there was another Cleopatra! She was married to Tigranes the Great, King of Armenia, and together they created an Armenia that reached from the Caspian Sea to the Mediterranean. The resplendent and regal voice of soprano Isabel Bayrakdarian is perfectly suited to the role of Cleopatra. Bayrakdarian shines in arias from three rarely heard operas about King Tigranes and his queen. Bayrakdarian’s multi-hued voice relates the passion, drama, and fervor of the love story of Tigranes and Cleopatra. Bayrakdarian sparkles in five arias from Il Tigrane by Baroque master Johann Adolph Hasse, famous in his day as one of the foremost composers of opera. Arias by Vivaldi and Gluck add further excitement to the album. Vivaldi, known primarily for his instrumental music, stands out as an opera composer, while Gluck, in an early opera, already shows his mastery of the form. Bayrakdarian is supported by the Grammy-nominated team of Constantine Orbelian— “the singer’s dream collaborator” (Opera News) —and his marvelous Kaunas City Symphony Orchestra.
Tamsin Waley-Cohen and Huw Watkins return with the start of a Beethoven Violin Sonata Cycle – here recording the 1st, 5th and 8th sonatas. Gramophone Magazine said “The heart gives a little leap at the prospect of...a duo as engaging and intelligent as Tamsin Waley-Cohen and Huw Watkins.” This cycle is sure to be one of the highlights of Signum’s year, as well as of Beethoven 250. Beethoven’s twelve violin sonatas add up to a comprehensive exploration of the possibilities and potential of writing for the two instruments on equal terms – possibilities that he was ideally placed to understand. The three sonatas on this recording are waypoints on a journey, crafted by a composer who was both violinist and pianist, and who never ceased exploring the practical possibilities of the instruments for which he wrote.
REVIEW:
Their complementary personalities meet most harmoniously in the Spring Sonata’s Adagio, where Watkins draws an appealing, fortepiano-like resonance from the piano and Waley-Cohen’s phrasing taps the music’s pastoral roots. Each of the three sonatas inhabits its own costume, made to measure.
One of the leading composers of the Classical and early Romantic eras, Johann Baptist Vaňhal played a vital role in the development of Viennese music between 1750 and 1780. He composed prolifically in many genres, including a large number of quartets, symphonies, sacred works, vocal and instrumental works, including around 150 piano sonatas and sonatinas. Vaňhal was at his most inspirational and improvisational in his keyboard Capriccios composed in the 1780s, which are some of the most creative examples of the Viennese Classical style, not least in their almost symphonic force.
This is a hybrid Super Audio CD playable on both regular and Super Audio CD players.
The 32 Piano Sonatas by Ludwig van Beethoven are often referred to as the ‘New Testament’ of the keyboard literature, following on the ‘Old Testament’ of J.S. Bach's 48 preludes and fugues in the Well-Tempered Clavier. Composed over a period of almost three decades, from 1795 to 1822, the sonatas constitute a fascinating panorama of an artistic career which underwent numerous changes – not to say upheavals – but nevertheless remained remarkably consistent. Ever since the first recording of the entire cycle, by Artur Schnabel in the 1930s, a number of the world's leading pianists have given us their performances of this monumental collection on disc. One of the latest cycles is that of Ronald Brautigam, released on single discs between 2004 and 2010. Performed on the fortepiano, as part of a series of Beethoven's complete solo keyboard works, Brautigam's recordings have been described as ‘riveting’, ‘compelling’ and ‘revolutionary’. The eight discs with the 32 sonatas are now being released as a boxed set, along with a ninth disc containing the early, unnumbered sonatas. Contributing factors to the ‘refreshing directness’ that reviewers have experienced in these performances are the widely praised recorded sound and the carefully selected instruments, built by Paul McNulty after originals from 1788-1819 by the foremost Viennese makers of fortepianos. For this boxed set, the original SACD format has been retained – along with the possibility of listening to the performances in surround – thus offering the opportunity of sharing the experience of one reviewer: ‘One has almost the impression of being a contemporary of Beethoven’s: one of the first, infinitely startled – not to say shocked – witnesses to this music’ (Süddeutsche Zeitung).
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REVIEW:
Much of the playing here is sensational. Notice the pronounced rhetorical emphasis yet intensely focused dotted rhythms in the Pathétique’s introduction, or the revelatory continuity from one variation to the next in Op 14 No 2’s uncommonly quick central movement. Those who think that even Brautigam’s sturdy fortepiano cannot approximate an orchestra should check out Op 22’s first movement, where the full-bodied octaves and brilliantly judged ‘Rossini’ crescendo just before the recapitulation make a pulverising impact.
And what about the Moonlight finale’s controlled fury and slashing momentum that remain musical to the core, or how those Op 10 No 1 and 2 finales rock and roll while retaining maximum linear clarity? Few others rightly feel Op 10 No 3’s Minuet as one beat to a bar and effectively spin out the left-hand counterlines. Among the heroic middle-period works, perhaps Brautigam’s Waldstein and Appassionata make a cogent case for period instruments in regard to textural differentiation between registers, shorter pedal resonances, and being able to truly perceive rather than merely infer each pitch within low-lying chords and runs, abetted by Brautigam’s subtle yet expressively powerful tempo modifications and telling accents.
Brautigam’s late sonatas are never less than masterful.
C. P. E. Bach: Solo Keyboard Music Vol 29 / Spanyi
BIS
CD
$21.99Mar 10, 2015
With this disc, Miklós Spányi completes C.P.E. Bach's set of ‘Zweyte Fortsetzung’ Sonatas, in itself a continuation of two previous sets (Wq 50 and 51). The composer himself clearly regarded the 18 sonatas of these sets as a major achievement. All of them are substantial works but the three included here might be considered the most diverse and original of the entire series. Bach assembled the Wq 52 set for publication in 1763 but Sonata No.4 had in fact been composed twenty years earlier, while No.5 and No.6 are of a later date. Together the three works exhibit Bach’s inexhaustible technique of varying melodies and textures, but they also display new structures and harmonic adventures. Following them on this disc are two of C.P.E. Bach's last compositions in the sonata genre, composed after he had left his post at the court of Frederick the Great in Berlin to take up that of Director of Music in Hamburg. Although Bach at this time more and more often performed on the fortepiano, he still favoured the clavichord, and as late as 1786, when the Sonata in C minor, Wq 65/49 was completed, he specified the use of the clavichord vibrato known as Bebung in the manuscript score. Throughout this series, Miklós Spányi has often opted for a clavichord – a copy of a rather late eighteenth-century instrument, built in the Silbermann tradition reaching back to some fifty years earlier. This choice has endeared him to many clavichord lovers, including the reviewer in BBC Music Magazine who about an earlier volume wrote: 'Spányi's ultra-sensitive touch adds magic on this delicate instrument. Gentle tonal subtlety provides rich rewards.'
At the end of April 1791, Wolfgang Amadé Mozart applied for the position of second Kapellmeister at St. Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna, hoping to inherit the position from Leopold Hofmann, the incumbent Kapellmeister, the City Council of Vienna accepted Mozart’s petition in a strongly worded decree as a basis for the text in the vocal passages of his Sieben Klangräume Accompanying the Unfinished Fragments of Mozart’s Requiem KV 626. All of the parts of the Requiem composed by Mozart himself exist in a complete four-part vocal score with organ bass - only the first movement is fully orchestrated - and contain virtually all of the key musical aspects: theme, harmony, melody, dynamics and modulation. According to Haas, “Mozart sketched out the main musical voices for the whole piece, producing almost a skeleton to the work” – in other words, fragments of sound. This was the approach used by Haas for his Klangräume (Sound Spaces): “ In between these fragments of sound, I was able to add a different sound world - one in the style of the early 21st century.” Haas responds powerfully to the nature of the fragments. Haas regarded the Requiem fragment as “sacrosanct”. The only aspect that Haas adopted from Mozart was his orchestration: mixed choir, mostly with four voices, but also extended to include as many as 16 voices for the spoken passages, but no vocal soloists. Haas does not use any musical material written by Mozart. He only uses the key signature of D minor on which he builds a series of harmonics for his composition. However, Haas responds powerfully to the nature of the fragments. The choir does not sing any of the words from the Requiem. Haas used the letter from the City Council of Vienna answering Mozart’s petition for the Position of assistant to the Kapellmeister at St. Stephen’s Cathedral. “Although Mozart is offered the position, he is granted it with such administrative brutality, which shows a total lack of understanding of everything related to art.” Haas uses the orchestral instruments to echo and foretell the moods in Mozart’s fragments, adding intricate tonal contrasts to the polyphonic richness of Mozart’s music. He adopts completely different compositional methods to establish connections to Mozart’s composition.
Brilliant young Venezuelan pianist Gabriela Martinez has been taking the classical world by storm ever since her student days at Julliard. She has won consistent acclaim at top domestic and international venues for her brilliant technique, aesthetic sensitivity, interpretive acumen, and emotional impact. Here, in her first recording for Delos, she offers a wide-ranging program of classics by Beethoven, Rachmaninoff, and Szymanowski. She also pays homage to acclaimed contemporary composers Mason Bates and Dan Visconti whose title selection, Amplified Soul, was written for her and is heard here in its world premiere recording. Piano fans who want to keep up with the brightest new talents in the field owe it to themselves to get to know this phenomenal keyboard virtuoso.
In 1791, in a suburb of Vienna, Mozart created his Singspiel Die Zauberflöte. The libretto by Emanuel Schikaneder, who also directed it in his theatre, wanted to reach out to the popular audience in German. Thanks to the dramatic and dreamlike qualities of the work, and Mozart's brilliant music, it exceeded one hundred performances in one year and it's success became universal. But in order to win over all audiences, it's trump card was to speak to the audience in their own language - and not in Italian like the court opera. This is what this production offers, in an entirely French version, staged by Cécile Roussat and Julien Lubek and conducted by Hervé Niquet with a sparkling team: Mozart's work suddenly takes on the tone of the Opéra-Comique à la française. And thus, to go it even more strength, we have now the Magic Flute in French!
C.P.E. Bach: Die Israeliten in der Wüste, Wq. 238, BR-CPEB D
Carus
CD
$20.99Jan 13, 2015
A High Point in the CPE Bach Anniversary Year: Frieder Bernius and the Kammerchor Stuttgart are marking the composer’s 300th anniversary with a recording of the oratorio "Die Israeliten in der Wüste" (The Israelites in the Wilderness). In 1768, right at the beginning of his long period as musical director of the Hamburg principal churches, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach composed this masterpiece. The new, sensitive musical language he used delighted contemporaries and colleagues alike. This recording contributes a fitting concluding note to the anniversary year.
BEETHOVEN Piano Trio in Bb, op. 97, “Archduke.” SCHUBERT Piano Trio in Bb, op. 99 • Tr di Trieste • INSTITUTO DISCOGRAFICO ITALIANO 6678, mono (69:52)
These recordings are taken from radio air checks in Cologne on March 12, 1958 (Schubert) and September 23, 1959 (Beethoven). I do not believe these are the same performances by this long-lived, estimable ensemble that can be heard in Deutsche Grammophon’s five-disc compilation of the Trio di Trieste’s complete recordings, but I wouldn’t swear to it since I don’t own that set.
The Trio di Trieste was one of the 20th century’s longest-surviving piano trios, and one that has often been compared to the Serkin-Busch and Cortot-Thibaud-Casals Trios. The comparison is more apt, I think, to the latter than it is to the former, for these are readings of a fairly Romantic persuasion, with tempos, dynamics, and phrasing undergoing frequent adjustments to fit the mood of the moment. Within that interpretive paradigm, however, it has to be said that the playing of Renato Zanettovich, Lebero Lana, and Dario De Rosa is of a beguiling beauty that simply silences any criticism of the ensemble’s stylistic approach.
My only regret is that I never got to see and hear the Trio di Trieste perform live—though I suppose these air checks are the next closest thing to it—for whatever one might point to that the players don’t do right in terms of observing the absolute letter of the scores, one cannot cite a single thing they do wrong in terms of intuiting the music’s spirit and emotional core. These performances simply transcend any mundane considerations as they ascend into the realm of the sublime. For a glimpse of the starry firmament Beethoven reveals to us, listen to the hushed, almost trembling awe the players convey in the closing measures of the “Archduke” Trio’s great Andante. It will make you want to fall to your knees in wonderment. This is the performance of this movement I have sought my entire life, and finally I have found it. All else, as the sage said, is mere commentary.
In closing, let me just say that the sound of these recordings is so good it’s not even necessary to qualify it with an excuse about their source. If I were not writing this review for the regular composer section of the magazine, I could easily see submitting it as an entry to the Classical Hall of Fame. Is further recommendation needed?
Salieri & Beethoven In Dialogue / Herrmann, Heidelberg Symphony
Haenssler Classic
CD
$20.99Jan 15, 2021
“The pupil Beethoven was here!” – the young piano virtuoso Ignaz Moscheles caught sight of this sentence in block letters on a note in the house of his teacher Antonio Salieri, Kapellmeister to the Viennese court. “A man like Beethoven still has something to learn from somebody like Salieri? How much more do I!” thought the fourteen-year-old acolyte of the arts and ardent admirer of Beethoven. It is indeed noteworthy that Beethoven, who by 1808 was already widely acknowledged as a genius, was still ready to take advice from Salieri. The two musicians must first have met in the mid-1790s; Beethoven made his first appearance as a soloist in Vienna in March 1795 with a piano concerto of his own that Salieri conducted. He was already known as a virtuoso and instrumental composer, but had yet to make his mark in the prestigious genre of opera. Beethoven began at that time to pursue his goal of employment in the operatic sphere and was evidently aware of his relative lack of experience in the field of vocal music. Salieri for his part was Vienna’s unchallenged authority on the subject and had been so for decades. The sociable and well connected maestro never charged his students, and Beethoven made good use of the offer of free lessons over the years. He thanked Salieri for his generosity by dedicating his op. 12 Violin Sonatas to him and by composing a set of variations on a Duettino from Salieri’s opera Falstaff ossia Le tre burle.
The works in this collection attest to the high standard of music-making in Naples. The composers here recorded were at the forefront of the achievements of Neapolitan music in the first half of the 18th century, the golden age of music production in the southern Italian centre. And the Neapolitan style at this time was fashionable beyond the borders of Italy, as well. Among all the composers presented, only Mancini lived and worked almost all his life in Naples. The others spent their lives travelling or serving foreign courts. This programme exploits the felicitous pairing of the voice with flute, two instruments similarly tied to the expressivity of human breath. Throughout this programme a baroque transverse flute, or ‘traverso’, is used, either called for specifically or substituted for the recorder. When these pieces were written the two types of flute still existed alongside each other as equals, as they had done for centuries before the transverse variety began to dominate later in the 18th century. Use of the viola da gamba for the bass part also finds justification in Naples. While in Rome the instrument had almost completely disappeared by the first half of the 17th century, it endured in Naples and continued to be used. Several mid-18th-century viole da gamba, preserved to this day, in various sizes by luthiers from the Neapolitan Gaglian family attest to the much later persistence of this instrument in that area.
Dussek: Piano Sonatas, Op. 9 - The Sufferings of the Queen o
DUX
CD
$21.99Jan 03, 2020
Born on 12 February 1760, Jan Ladislav Dussek is one of the most recognizable artists at the end o f Classicism and beginning of Romanticism. His rich artistic output gained recognition mainly due to innovative, for that time, piano works and numerous symphonies. Dussek significantly contributed to the spread of English pianos in Europe, which implied further development of construction of these instruments. The album contains three Piano Sonatas, Op. 9 and the cycle The Sufferings of the Queen of France, Op. 23 performed by world-renowned Marek Toporowski.
Around 1800 Vienna was, alongside Paris, one of the European centers for guitar performance. The instrument was well suited for the idiom of Viennese classicism and ideal for domestic music-making and it was promoted by figures such as the virtuoso Mauro Giuliani and the composer/publisher Anton Diabelli. But Beethoven, the towering giant of musical Vienna, seems to have been unmoved by the charms of the guitar – while instead composing for its sibling, the mandolin. Duo Halász, the husband and wife team of Franz and Débora Halász have now rectified this, by appropriating Beethoven’s four extant pieces for mandolin and piano (WoO?43 and 44) as well as adapting some other early compositions, including the Serenade in D major for flute and piano and the Variations on Mozart’s ‘Se vuol ballare’ for violin and piano. In doing so they follow the example of an eminent guitarist and contemporary of Beethoven, namely Ferdinando Carulli, whose 1825 arrangement of the Variations on Mozart’s ‘Ein Mädchen oder Weibchen’ closes the programme. Franz and Débora Halász have made a number of recordings for BIS, together and separately, to critical acclaim, including a Latin Grammy Award for their disc Alma Brasileira with chamber works by Radamés Gnattali.
Beethoven’s letters show an extensive and prolonged correspondence with Scottish publisher and keen amateur musician George Thomson, who made it his task to collect and publish folk song settings, commissioning the likes of Pleyel, Koželuch and Haydn. The Opp. 105 and 107 collections, written for piano with optional flute or violin parts, are filled with delightfully decorative but virtuoso writing. This recording offers versions with improvisation and ornamentation by flutist, conductor and former Rampal student Patrick Gallois, based on the performance practices of the early 18th c.
Mozart’s Violin – The Complete Violin Concertos / Christoph Koncz, Les Musiciens Du Louvre [2 CDs]
Sony Masterworks
CD
$16.98Oct 09, 2020
It was an awakening experience when Christoph Koncz, principal violinist of the Vienna Philharmonic and conductor, first held Mozart’s original concert violin in his hands. This was the violin on which Mozart had played as concertmaster in the Salzburg Hofkapelle: a Baroque violin that was carefully preserved after Mozart’s death and treated almost as a holy relic. The idea of recording Mozart’s five violin concertos for the first time on the composer’s own concert violin was one that Christoph Koncz found irresistibly fascinating. “There’s a close connection between these concertos and this instrument, and Mozart’s own experience of this violin undoubtedly inspired him greatly. In his violin concertos he was fond of using the instrument’s upper tessitura and coloratura register, which is where his violin sounds particularly beautiful.” – Christoph Koncz
![Mozart’s Violin – The Complete Violin Concertos / Christoph Koncz, Les Musiciens Du Louvre [2 CDs]](http://arkivmusic.com/cdn/shop/files/3851287-2610278.jpg?v=1786714117&width=800)
![Mozart’s Violin – The Complete Violin Concertos / Christoph Koncz, Les Musiciens Du Louvre [2 CDs]](http://arkivmusic.com/cdn/shop/files/51tr1-xzXFL.jpg?v=1786714116&width=800)
![Mozart’s Violin – The Complete Violin Concertos / Christoph Koncz, Les Musiciens Du Louvre [2 CDs]](http://arkivmusic.com/cdn/shop/files/3851287-2610278.jpg?v=1786714117&width=400)
