Beethoven: Piano Concertos 2 & 5 for Sextet / Shybayeva, Animato Quartet
Naxos
CD
$9.99$19.99Save 50%Dec 03, 2021
During the Biedermeier period, the piano gained huge popularity as a domestic instrument, and piano concertos were increasingly arranged for chamber music ensembles. Ignaz Lachner’s superb arrangements of Mozart’s piano concertos are well known, but his brother Vinzenz Lachner’s arrangements of Beethoven’s concertos are a rarity, though equally as valuable. This volume completes the cycle of Beethoven’s Piano Concertos in Vinzenz Lachner’s transcriptions for piano and string quintet.
Beethoven: Piano Concertos Nos. 5 "Emperor" & 0 / Giltburg, V. Petrenko, RLPO
Naxos
CD
$9.99$19.99Save 50%Mar 11, 2022
These works share the common key of E flat major but represent two very different stages in the composer’s life. The Piano Concerto "No. 0," WoO 4, was written when Beethoven was 13 years old and is one of his earliest works. With the orchestral score lost, this extant version for piano solo written in Beethoven’s hand includes the tutti sections reduced for piano. The radiant ‘Emperor’ Concerto shows the 38-year-old Beethoven at the peak of his creative powers, and remains a glorious example of his spirit triumphing over life’s adversities.
REVIEW:
Boris Giltburg’s recording of Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto is offered with a scintillating twist, the ‘other’ E-flat concerto composed when the composer was 13. This brings Giltburg’s Beethoven concerto cycle to a close, his ebullience and physicality the reverse of plain-speaking, brilliantly partnered by the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic under Vasily Petrenko.
Given such forces this is never simply ‘another’ Emperor, but one boldly and exuberantly conceived. Giltburg makes you listen with new ears to one of the most familiar and greatly loved works in the repertoire. The Piano Concerto No 0 (played in Beethoven’s original piano reduction) may be a protracted jeu d’esprit, but Giltburg’s relish of its tonic, virtuoso aplomb sets the pulse racing. Naxos soundworld is of an exceptional clarity and focus.
-- International Piano
Excellent performances of the Emperor and the rarely heard Concerto No. 0. The sound reproduction on this Naxos CD is vivid and well balanced. Those looking for an excellent performance of the Emperor and who are attracted to its lesser coupling, will certainly find this a most rewarding disc.
Thalberg: Fantasies on Operas by Donizetti / Nicolosi
Naxos
CD
$9.99$19.99Save 50%May 27, 2022
Sigismond Thalberg was one of the most distinguished pianists of his time, embarking on a solo career in the 1830s and touring as far as the Americas. Thalberg was considered a rival to Liszt though their supposed animosity was largely a journalistic invention. The creation of transcriptions of popular operatic melodies and their transformation into virtuoso concert pieces was hugely fashionable, but Thalberg’s treatments were also admired by Schumann for their Classical transparency, and for stylish technical innovations that saw him imitated throughout Europe. These fantasies on themes by Donizetti are full of the lyrical charm and drama of the original operas, combined with pianistic fireworks that delighted audiences worldwide.
Tan Dun: Eight Memories in Watercolor & Other Piano Music / van Raat
Naxos
CD
$9.99$19.99Save 50%Jun 10, 2022
Tan Dun’s originality has been reflected in worldwide recognition of his music, which draws on both Chinese and Western musical languages. The Eight Memories in Watercolor are deft painterly reflections, while in Trace she balances sound with silence in this evocation of nature. The vibrant drama of Blue Orchid incorporates the opening motif of Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations. In Film Music Sonata, which here receives its first recording on general release, Tan Dun draws on his score for the film The Banquet. The kaleidoscopic C-A-G-E-, strikingly Chinese in sound, is a tribute to his teacher and spiritual compass, John Cage. The Fire, written for Ralph van Raat, contains some of Tan Dun’s most virtuosic and dramatic piano writing.
Like many Catalan musicians of his time, Antonio Soler received initial training as a chorister before his excellence as an organist ensured high appointment at the Escorial, Spain’s royal palace. Here he absorbed the influence of Domenico Scarlatti, and the keyboard sonatas Soler composed remain his most lasting contribution to musical history. The three sonatas in this volume reflect his awareness of trends in Viennese music and are notable for their vivid pastoral elements, refined delicacy and sizzling virtuosic demands.
Docker: Three Contrasts, Scenes de ballet, Pastiche Variations / Davies, Presley, Knight, RTÉ Concert Orchestra
Naxos
CD
$9.99$19.99Save 50%May 13, 2022
Robert Docker was one of the giants of light music – a composer and arranger whose works graced stage, screen, radio and television. Two of his best pieces were written for piano and orchestra: Legend, which can rank alongside Addinsell’s Warsaw Concerto (Naxos 8.554323); and the brilliantly witty inventions of the Pastiche Variations. Not only was Docker a distinguished orchestrator, he was also a rich melodist as his classic Scèneduba lillustrates, while the composer’s impish humor can be savored in Tabarinage. Docker’s early training as a classical violinist fully equipped him to explore the British pastoral tradition in the languid and beautiful Air.
Thomas Hampson, America’s leading baritone and a champion of the art of classic song — poetry set to music — makes his Cedille Records debut with a program of songs by five composers of the early 20th century associated with the city of Chicago: Ernst Bacon, Florence Price, John Alden Carpenter, Margaret Bonds, and Louis Campbell-Tipton. All of them, Hampson says, “have distinguished themselves in history as great voices of the artistic American narrative.” Hailed as “an outstanding recitalist” by Grove Music Online, the much-honored international opera star, recording artist, and “ambassador of song” performs compositions based on poems by Walt Whitman, Langston Hughes, and Rabindranath Tagore, the Bengali poet who became the first non-European to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature. Hampson, whose discography includes more than 170 albums, including Grammy and Grand Prix de Disque award winners, is accompanied on Songs from Chicago by collaborative pianist extraordinaire Kuang-Hao Huang, accompanist of choice for Chicago’s top singers and instrumentalists. The New York Philharmonic’s first Artist-in-Residence, Hampson also has been honored with a Concertgebouw Prize, Library of Congress Living Legends Award, and the Hugo-Wolf-Medal for outstanding achievements in the art of song interpretation, among many other awards.
REVIEW:
It goes without saying that Hampson's singing is gorgeous, and he is ably backed by Chicago pianist Kuang-Hao Huang. An excellent slice of little-known American art song.
Guarnieri: Choros, Vol. 1 - Seresta / Karabtchevsky, São Paulo Symphony
Naxos
CD
$9.99$19.99Save 50%Aug 28, 2020
Camargo Guarnieri’s catalogue of works represents a legacy of incalculable worth for Brazilian culture, as has his influence as a teacher on several generations of younger composers. His association with the poet and musicologist Mario de Andrade led to the birth of the Brazilian Nationalist School and the ideals of using traditional Brazilian music in classical forms. The series of seven Choros and the Seresta for Piano and Orchestra represent Guarnieri’s personal approach to the concerto form, with striking contrasts between potent rhythm and dense, emotionally charged soundscapes and melodies full of Brazilian inspiration. This volume forms part of the first complete recording of the Choros.
Artistic director and conductor of the Orquestra Petrobras Sinfonica, Isaac Karabtchevsky is also artistic director of the Baccarelli Institute and the Heliopolis Symphony Orchestra. He was awarded the Premio da Musica Brasileira four times for his recordings of the complete symphonies of Villa-Lobos with the Sao Paulo Symphony Orchestra on Naxos. He has served as the musical director of the Teatro La Fenice, the Orchestre National des Pays de la Loire and the Tonkunstler Orchestra.
REVIEW:
Each of the four short works on this disc proves to be thoroughly entertaining. Rhythmically they bounce along in the allegros, often driven by Brazilian syncopation, while the slow movements are heartfelt and tender without being over-Romanticized. The performances are excellent. The soloists are members of the São Paulo orchestra—Davi Graton is also a renowned teacher—and Isaac Karabtchevsky boasts a long pedigree in conducting Brazilian music. (He led the same orchestra in Naxos’s first-rate series of the complete Villa-Lobos symphonies.) This initiative to record lesser-known Brazilian repertoire got off to a great start, and the new disc promises even more.
The Hungarian-born composer TIBOR HARSÁNYI is now recognized as an important personality in 'L'École de Paris'. He had a lifelong interest in modern dance, represented here by the Petite suite and Trois Pièces de danse, and he also embraced jazz, which was part of the Parisian atmosphere of the inter-war period, and other influences, while keeping the Central European rhythms and tonalities of his Hungarian origins. The Trois Pièces lyriques is a rare example of Harsányi expressing torment during the turbulent years of the Second World War. GIORGIO KOUKL is a pianist/harpsichordist and composer. He studied at both the Conservatories of Zürich and Milan, where he took part in the masterclasses of Nikita Magaloff, Jacques Février, and Stanislaus Neuhaus, and with Rudolf Firkušný, friend and advocate of Czech composer Bohuslav Martinu. It was through Firkušný that Koukl first encountered Martinu's music, and is now considered one of the world's leading interpreters of Martinu's piano music. As a logical continuation of this work, Koukl has recorded the complete solo piano works of Paul Le Flem, Alexander Tcherepnin, Arthur Lourié, Vítezslava Kaprálová, Witold Lutoslawski, and more recently, Alexandre Tansman and Tibor Harsányi.
Chopin: Piano Concerto No 1 / Sokolov, Rowicki, Munich Philharmonic
Sony Masterworks
CD
$6.49$12.98Save 50%Apr 15, 2016
For the first time on CD, this rare recording of Chopin’s piano concerto is one of Grigory Sokolov’s only productions in a concerto role, accompanied by an orchestra. This original Eurodisc session recording with Münchner Philharmoniker has been newly remastered from the original tapes. Grigory Sokolov is regarded as one of the world’s leading pianists, dedicated to his art, and adored by his audience in sold-out concerts. Few pianists of recent years have become quite such a legend in their own lifetime. Sokolov created a huge worldwide fanbase solely by playing concerts, as he refused do studio recordings. The only recordings available are live recording of concerts.
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REVIEW:
An extraordinary document, with Sokolov’s integrity and humanity illuminating every bar.
Three American Violin Sonatas / Cho-Liang Lin, Parker
Naxos
CD
$9.99$19.99Save 50%May 08, 2020
The three sonatas on this recording were written at the behest of violinist Cho-Liang Lin, who worked closely with each composer at their premiere performance. Paul Schoenfeld's Violin Sonata references literary influences and the composer's past as well as his Jewish heritage in the work's final Freilach or 'joyous dance.' Steven Stucky acknowledged Debussy as the source of inspiration in his work, while the alchemy of John Harbison's style creates music that is simultaneously abstract and narrative. Wryly introduced as "crazy modern music," Bernstein's brief Canon for Aaron was composed for Copland's 70th birthday celebrations.
A couple of years ago this release would have made an easy reference recording. Bavouzet’s Haydn thus far has been excellent, and his playing on this disc is extremely fine: tasteful in its sustained lyricism in the adagios, and brilliant in the outer movements. Indeed the finales are, if anything, perhaps too quick to permit the fullest characterization of the music, but there’s no questioning their dazzling virtuosity.
Unfortunately for Bavouzet, this repertoire is now very well covered both on period instruments (for BIS and Harmonia Mundi) and above all by Marc-André Hamelin and Les Violons du Roy on Hyperion, which gives you the best of both worlds. Make no mistake, the Manchester Camerata under Gábor Takács-Nagy plays very well, and they are of one mind with Bavouzet. It’s just that the competition is better, however marginally. In the slow movement of the Concerto in F Major, the use of solo strings to open and close the movement strikes me as unnecessarily mannered, and Bavouzet’s cadenza, intended as a tribute to Friedrich Gulda in jazz mode, comes across almost as a weird paraphrase of the theme song from “The Young and the Restless”.
This is the only questionable moment in what is otherwise a wholly enjoyable release, and if you’ve been collecting Bavouzet’s Haydn (and you should be) then I can recommend this latest installment warmly. But as I said, there are several alternatives, Hamelin above all, that you might prefer if you have limited shelf space.
Germany’s oldest Mozart festival celebrates its 100th anniversary in 2021. The present jubilee boxed set presents previously unpublished treasures from the archive of the Bavarian Broadcasting. All live recordings from the Baroque Imperial Hall at Würzburg Residence are digital remasters.
Philip Glass has made an immense and stylistically wide-ranging contribution to piano repertoire. The Orphée Suite, a transcription of excerpts from the first opera in Glass’ Cocteau Trilogy, is one of his most distinctive piano pieces, blending virtuosity and melodic richness. In contrast, the hypnotic How Now is structurally influenced by Indian ragas and gamelan music, whilst Dreaming Awake contains one of the most powerful climaxes in all Glass’ works. Performed by Nicolas Horvath, a Scriabin Competition first prizewinner, this is the first release in the complete Glass solo piano edition which will include many premières.
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Reviews:
This disc is important because it demonstrates that Glass’s music works quite nicely alongside other composers of the past and alongside quite traditional approaches to performance generally.
– American Record Guide
Somehow, the objectivity of the sound of a piano suits the music of Philip Glass perfectly. Certainly that’s how it seems in Nicolas Horvath’s expert performances.
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) was born in the city of Bonn, but moved in 1792 to Vienna, where he spent the rest of his relatively short (he died aged 56) yet highly productive life. While best known, perhaps, for popular large-scale orchestral works such as his concertos and symphonies, he also composed string quartets and other chamber music, songs and, of course, a large amount of music for his 'own' instrument, the piano. In each genre, Beethoven was to some extent a path breaker, transforming the models he inherited from his predecessors or the approach taken by his contemporaries into something radically unique and bequeathing to posterity music that pushed the bounds of politely regulated Classicism towards the highly personal drama of Romanticism. When the young Beethoven arrived in Vienna, he quickly established himself as a virtuoso pianist-contemporaries had quite simply never heard anything like him before-and though deafness ended his career as a pianist, he continued to compose, ultimately publishing 32 piano sonatas (some early sonatas remained unpublished), several sets of piano variations, bagatelles and dances between 1793 and 1822, a representative selection of which are featured on Easy-Listening Piano Classics. Many of Beethoven's piano sonatas have names that describe their character, though not all of these originated with the composer. For instance, 'Pathétique' is an abbreviation of Beethoven's full title 'Grande sonate pathétique' (that is, 'passionate' rather than 'pitiful'); the 'Moonlight' was so named by a music critic who thought of moonlight shimmering upon Lake Lucerne when he heard the first movement (Beethoven simply gave it the sub-title Quasi una fantasia, 'Like a fantasy'); the 'Kurfürstensonaten' are pre-Viennese sonatas dedicated to the Elector (Kurfürst) of Cologne; 'The Tempest' comes from Anton Schindler's claim that the sonata was inspired by Shakespeare's play; 'Pastoral' was provided by one of Beethoven's publishers. In addition, Beethoven composed many shorter piano pieces, which he referred to as 'Kleinigkeiten (Small Things) or Bagatelles', though these should not be underestimated: while some are popular in style and suitable for amateur performers (such as the famous, and probably misnamed 'Für Elise') others are highly characterful miniatures that one writer has described as 'lapidary, fragmentary, yes, even ironic'-true harbingers of Romanticism. Many of his dances (Minuets, Ländler, Ecossaises and so forth) also combine charm and sophistication. Whether composing large-scale serious works for the enjoyment of connoisseurs or smaller popular pieces primarily designed to entertain, Beethoven was very interested in the piano, maintaining close contact with leading piano manufacturers in Vienna and London. The demands he made on both performers and the instrument itself contributed to the development of the modern concert grand. One observer wrote that when Beethoven played the piano 'the music of the man's soul passed over his countenance. He seems to feel the bold, the commanding, and the impetuous, more than what is soothing or gentle. The muscles of the face swell, and it's veins start out; the wild eye rolls doubly wild, the mouth quivers, and Beethoven looks like a wizard, overpowered by the demons whom he himself has called up.' Yet, whether seeking the sublime or appealing to the lighter sentiments, Beethoven's music always communicates 'From the heart... to the heart'.
This collection of rarely recorded Wagner repertoire, the master’s work for voice and piano, includes the famed Wesendonck-Lieder in both its original German and an Arrigo Boito Italian version.
Also featured are the famed ‘Gretchen am Spinnrade’, ‘Melodram’, the complex ‘Dors, mon enfant’ and further works with texts by writers including Hugo, Heine, de Ronsard and Scheurlin. Michela Sburlati - ‘a fine dramatic soprano’ (NYT) and fellow Italian maestro Marco Scolastra perform. Booklet includes liner notes, sung texts and artist biographies.
***** (out of 5) The first prerequisite of great Chopin playing is arguably beauty of tone, as well as refinement and variety… Lortie is a model Chopinist: eloquent but never sentimental, elegant without ever sounding effete, dramatic but never exaggerated, harmonically luminous, structurally immaculate – and surprising.
– BBC Music Magazine
"Lortie's Chopin playing has a wonderful, penetrating directness about it; there's not a trace of dreamy indulgence in any of the nocturnes, though all their decorative tracery shines out with a sharp-cut brilliance, and the impromptus dance and divert without a trace of self-consciousness” – The Guardian
Mendelssohn: Violin Concertos / Tianwa Yang, Gallois, Sinfonia Finlandia
Naxos
CD
$9.99$19.99Save 50%Feb 26, 2013
Violinist Tianwa Yang turns her attention to one of the great 19th century violin concertos, coupled with two of Mendelssohn's youthful yet astonishingly mature works.
REVIEW:
Young violinist Tianwa Yang has exceptional technique, and her vision in the great E minor concerto is unfailingly intelligent. The first movement is taken a touch on the slow side, giving the music added weight and seriousness. In the finale, too, Yang refuses to rush or indulge in empty showmanship, while the Andante’s singing melodies do just that. If there is any down side to her interpretation, it is this: older, wiser violinists such as Nathan Milstein shape the many moments of passagework to more purposeful effect, just as a masterful singer understands that coloratura expresses virtuosity but also can be phrased and articulated so as to heighten the emotion and intensity of the phrase. Yang isn’t quite in that league yet, but there is absolutely nothing wrong with the playing as such. The accompaniments, similarly, won’t compare to the best versions featuring major orchestras, but they offer distinguished contributions nonetheless.
What makes this disc such a smart one, though, is the inclusion of the youthful D minor concerto and the F minor violin sonata. Most Mendelssohn discs couple another major violin concerto (usually Bruch’s or Tchaikovsky’s), and God knows we don’t need another recording of those works any more than we need another Mendelssohn E minor concerto. Both youthful works are vintage early Mendelssohn, and he was not a composer who invariably got better with age. Yang plays them very well indeed, and there’s far less competition here than in the more famous companion pieces. Pianist Romain Descharmes accompanies very sympathetically, and both in the concertos and the sonata the engineering is very clean and well-balanced. In sum, the couplings make this disc worth acquiring even if you’d never think of buying another version of the E minor concerto. As for Yang, she remains an artist to watch.
