Rarely performed, the Piano Concerto of 20th-century Mexican composer Carlos Chavez receives an insightful, idiomatic, and compelling performance from Mexican-born pianist Jorge Federico Osorio, the Orquestra Sinfónica Nacional de México, and conductor Carlos Miguel Prieto. Surprising tempo changes and a whirlwind of styles make the work a thrill ride for performers and audiences alike!

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REVIEWS:

Make no mistake, Carlos Chávez’s Piano Concerto is a major work. Symphonic in length and very generous in content, it poses quite a challenge to the soloist, with hyperactive allegros surrounding an intimate and evocatively scored central Molto lento. Jorge Federico Osorio has no peer in this repertoire, at least on disc. He plays the work with unflagging energy and, where called for, sensitivity, and he’s very capably accompanied by Carlos Prieto and the Mexican National Symphony Orchestra. This is an important addition to the Chávez discography, and it’s very well engineered.

The couplings make an attractive series of encores. Both Chávez’s Meditación and Moncayo’s Muros Verdes are lovely, lyrical interludes, but Samuel Zyman’s Variations on an Original Theme is a major work more than a quarter-hour long. It’s not easy listening. The music is thorny and at times highly dissonant, but there’s also no question that the work has great integrity, a wide expressive range, and an impressive level of disciplined craftsmanship, nor is it particularly difficult to follow. Osorio, as in the concerto, plays all three solo works very well indeed, and as you’re not likely to find this repertoire so convincingly done anywhere else, this disc earns an enthusiastic recommendation.

-- David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com
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The program includes a postlude of solo piano music by Chávez and two of his younger compatriots. The Chaváz piece is a lovely youthful composition, written when he was 19, and owes as much to the influence of Grieg as it does to any New World sources. José Pablo Moncayo, a student of Chávez, contributes a beautiful and rather impressionistic work. Finally, there is the variation set by Samuel Zyman, a contemporary Mexican composer. This dark, even bleak, work is certainly the most harmonically advanced music on the CD, but makes for a somewhat jarring break from the more mellifluous material represented by Chávez and Moncayo. But the reason to acquire this recording is for the brilliant Chávez concerto, which has not been recorded for years.


Peter Burwasser, FANFARE.

Recognized as one of the world’s leading viola players, Philip Dukes has enjoyed a career spanning over thirty years as an accomplished concerto soloist, recitalist, and chamber musician. He joins forces with Peter Donohoe, acclaimed as one of the foremost pianists of our time, for this extraordinary recording of works by Brahms and Schumann. As he writes in his booklet note, Phillip wanted to find a new approach to these works: ‘I wanted it to sound fresh and alive, almost as when I was looking at the scores for the first time all those years ago, but with the secret benefit of all that subsequent experience under my belt. So, I did just that. I purchased a new, excellent, well researched edition, I listened to all manner of different recordings (of the versions both for clarinet and for viola), and I devoted three months to the project, the culmination of which is what you will hear.’

Moritz Moszkowski (1854–1925) wrote a considerable quantity of piano music, but it is generally remembered today only for a single piece, ‘Étincelles’, which Horowitz enjoyed playing. The early works on this first instalment in Ian Hobson’s survey of Moszkowski’s complete music for solo piano reveal a debt to Mendelssohn and Schumann, but the craftsmanship already justifies a later remark of Paderewski’s: ‘After Chopin, Moszkowski best understands how to write for the piano, and his writing embraces the whole gamut of piano technique’.

The Seven Last Words of Christ refers to the seven short phrases uttered by Jesus on the cross, as gathered from the New Testament. Over the centuries the crucifixion has served as inspiration to countless composers, and settings of these utterances have become something of a subgenre, beginning in the Renaissance with early motets and continuing into our own time. By way of Cesar Franck and Sofia Gubaidulina, composers ranging from Heinrich Schutz to Tristan Murail have contributed versions using various combinations of voice and/or instruments. One of the best known of these settings is probably the one by Joseph Haydn. The one – or rather the four… A rather complicated story begins in 1785, when Haydn received a commission from Cadiz in Spain, at the other end of Europe. He was asked to compose seven slow movements, each ca 10 minutes long, to be played by an orchestra in alternation with the priest expounding on each of the seven words. Relishing this unusual challenge, Haydn accepted and ended up so pleased with the result that he immediately made a version for string quartet as well as authorising another one for keyboard. The work became so popular across Europe that ten years later the music was used one final time, in an oratorio for choir and orchestra. The work is here heard in the version for keyboard, performed by the French pianist Nicolas Stavy. He closes the disc with another unusual work in Haydn’s oeuvre, the Andante con variazioni, Hob. XVII/6, which has been described as ‘the deepest and most profound set of variations for piano composed between Bach and Beethoven’.

Friends of long standing as well as regular partners in chamber music, Michael Collins and Stephen Hough bring their combined musical insights and expertise to bear on Johannes Brahms’s sonatas for clarinet and piano. Together with the composer’s trio for clarinet, cello and piano and clarinet quintet, the sonatas are among the most treasured works in the repertoire of the instrument – but it is partly down to good luck that we have them at all. When Brahms in 1891 heard the clarinetist Richard Mühlfeld, principal clarinet of the Meiningen Court Orchestra, he had already announced his retirement. He was enraptured by Mühlfeld’s playing and its vocal qualities, however, and made a ‘comeback’: during the following couple of years he composed all four of his clarinet works. These were written especially for Mühlfeld, whose spirit does seem to pervade the two sonatas – we hear an unusually sunny and lyrical Brahms, with plenty of opportunity to sing for both instruments. When the sonatas were published, they appeared with alternative viola parts to replace the clarinet, and soon violin versions prepared by the composer were also brought out. For the opening work on the disc, Michael Collins has therefore taken a leaf out of Brahms’s book, by adapting the composer’s Violin Sonata No. 2, another late work. The amount of adaptation needed is small: a lot of the violin writing fits the clarinet well, and the sonata share much of the songlike quality of the two ‘real’ clarinet sonatas.

REVIEW:

Clarinetist Michael Collins must have lived with the two Op. 120 sonatas for all his professional career. That seems abundantly clear from his superb playing in both of those sonatas. His Brahmsian experience is also evidenced by his highly persuasive and idiomatic adaptation of Op 110. As for Stephen Hough, his Brahms credentials are well known, not least for his splendid recordings of the piano concertos (review) and, more recently, of the late piano pieces (review). It was a great idea to bring these two fine musicians together for this project and the idea has paid off handsomely.

The production values are high. The recorded balance is ideal and the instruments are reproduced truthfully. I listened to the stereo layer of this SACD and was very satisfied with the results. As I’ve already indicated, Stephen Johnson’s essay is excellent.

This is a disc which will grace any Brahms collection.

-- MusicWeb International

Internationally acclaimed for his music for orchestra (17 symphonies and 31 concertos to date), Kalevi Aho has also composed chamber and solo works. The present disc combines six such pieces, ranging across the composer’s career. The earliest work on the disc is the Bach-inspired Sonata for solo violin from 1973, reminding us that during his years at the Sibelius Aacademy (1968 – 71), Aho studied the violin as well as composition. Another early piece, Prelude, Toccata and Postlude, also started out as a solo work – this time for the cello – before developing into a duo. From the other end, chronologically speaking, is the ample Piano Sonata No. 2 from 2016, with a duration of some 25 minutes. This time it is Beethoven who has provided inspiration, and the composer describes the work as ‘a commentary on the Hammerklavier Sonata, in which Beethoven’s motifs are frequently “misquoted” and developed in a different direction.’ The sonata closes the programme but not before giving us an opportunity to hear three further works involving the violin – a second solo piece, In memoriam Pehr Henrik Nordgren, written in memory of Aho’s fellow composer and friend, Lamento for two violins and Halla (‘frost’) for violin and piano. Performing these works are four highly respected Finnish musicians, the violinists (and brothers) Jaakko and Pekka Kuusisto, Samuli Peltonen (cello) and Sonja Fräki, pianist and Aho specialist.

REVIEW:

The two pieces written to mourn fellow musicians are, in fact, the best. Lamento was created for the funeral of the violinist Sakari Laukola, who died young in 2001. Jaakko Kuusisto’s sincerity obvious and his tone particularly strong and beautiful high up.

– Gramophone

Ondine celebrates Beethoven’s 250th anniversary of birth by re-issuing Olli Mustonen’s Beethoven cycle with the Tapiola Sinfonietta. The three volumes were originally released in three separate volumes from 2007-2009. Mustonen, described by The Sunday Times as “living dream of pianism”, is known for delivering fresh and visionary approach to standard works – this is evident in these masterful recordings of Beethoven’s concertos. Mustonen is a particularly fitting exponent for Beethoven’s music as the composer himself was also both visionary and revolutionary in his approach to tradition. The recording of Piano Concerto No. 1 includes Mustonen’s own cadenzas. Beethoven’s own Piano Concerto arrangement of his Violin Concerto is also featured – one of Mustonen’s signature pieces.

REVIEW:

Mustonen plays the five concertos of a piece, not starting out with Mozartean elegance in the first two and building up to mature Beethoven somewhere in Concerto No. 3. He attacks every bar vigorously and with decisive intent. In my experience, no one since Mikhail Pletnev’s highly original and at times eccentric cycle on DG has sounded so personal in music that too often trips off the fingers with glib sameness.

My overall defense of a cycle that will strike other listeners as totally arbitrary comes down to Mustonen being a composer, not a touring pianist playing subscription concerts. These are a composer’s responses to Beethoven, and Mustonen has the fingers to express them with confident assurance and at times with dazzling flourishes. In my corner this release is one of the most refreshing of the Beethoven year.

– Fanfare

Pianist John Wilson, like his mentor Michael Tilson Thomas, is a servant of the music rather than its dictator and he knows both when and how to step back and let it speak.

The dynamic young American pianist John Wilson first encountered Michael Tilson Thomas (affectionately known as "MTT") in 2015 when he was a fellow with the New World Symphony. John’s protégé status quickly evolved to that of close confidant and collaborator, leading to this solo debut album featuring the world-premiere recording of the title track, MTT’s three-movement suite for piano, Upon Further Reflection. MTT explains innumerable influences that are embedded throughout the work, including the piano music of Debussy and Schumann, bossa nova, gamelan, ragas, Monteverdi, Berg, and Peggy Lee’s rendition of the song "Alley Cat," all of which “flowed together in a way that seemed completely natural... to me anyway.” In 2019, John premiered a portion of Upon Further Reflection that was broadcast live on MediciTV to an audience of over 50,000. John embellishes the album’s Americana theme with two titans of the solo piano repertoire – Aaron Copland’s early Piano Sonata – a work lesser-heard than the composer’s other works for solo piano – and Earl Wild’s virtuoso arrangements of seven of George Gershwin’s most iconic tunes.

REVIEW:

Given the scope and versatility of his long conducting career, it’s no surprise that Michael Tilson Thomas’s work as a composer has, until now, largely passed under the radar. In recent years, though, it’s begun to emerge. MTT’s latest champion is the pianist John Wilson, a former fellow with the conductor’s New World Symphony and a brilliantly gifted pianist.

His new album, Upon Further Reflection takes its cue from Tilson Thomas: the title track is a three-movement meditation on the artist’s early life, while subsequent selections by Earl Wild and Aaron Copland draw out different strands of MTT’s personality and long career. Taken together, the program paints an affecting portrait.

Upon Further Reflection is an ingratiating piece. Its freshness derives partly from its eclecticism – echoes of jazz, bossa nova, and Broadway collide with more abstracted, nostalgic expressivity – and partly from its wild virtuosity. Indeed, no small part of the thrill of Wilson’s performance is hearing the terrific dexterity with which the pianist dispatches its busiest textures (particularly the concluding “You Come Here Often?,” its material adapted from an aborted 1977 musical).

While Wilson’s just as comfortable with the music’s more ruminative moments – the reflective and somewhat brooding outer thirds in “Sunset Soliloquy (Whitsett Avenue 1963)” are tenderly shaped – much of this piece, like MTT, is smartly extroverted. The profile of the refrains in “Bygone Beguine (1973)” grow in intensity and definition as the movement proceeds, but they never lose their soulful vibe.

Filling out the disc are Wild’s 7 Virtuoso Etudes after Gershwin and Copland’s Piano Sonata.

The Wild set, with their knowing adaptations of familiar tunes, fit smartly alongside Reflection. And Wilson, whose playing is magnificently secure and flawlessly balanced, gives a reading that rivals Wild’s own for character; it exceeds it for recorded quality.

Wilson’s account of Copland’s Piano Sonata is shaped with similar thoughtfulness. This 1942 score is years removed from the populist composer of that day – its harmonic acerbity recalls the Piano Variations of 1930 much more than Rodeo or Appalachian Spring. Regardless, it’s a powerfully-structured work whose three movements chart a course from turbulence to nervous peace.

The pianist has got real sympathy for this music: how it’s structured, how the melodic line develops, its drama is paced, the shifting tone colors, and so on. His control of dynamic contrasts and balances in the first movement are masterful, as is his transition in to the driving Allegro. In the central Vivace, the music shimmers, while the stentorian, oracular gestures at the start of the finale simply melt into the movement’s concluding diatonic counterpoint.

True, that transition provides one of the most powerful contrasts on this disc – and it’s more a compositional accomplishment than an interpretive one. But Wilson, like his mentor MTT, is a servant of the music rather than its dictator and he knows both when and how to step back and let it speak. The result is a performance of raw power and touching beauty.

-- The Arts Fuse (Jonathan Blumhofer)

Germaine Tailleferre is best known for being a member of the French circle of composers known as Les Six - the only woman in the group. Her stylish combination of neo-Classicism with a ready wit and energy can be compared to Poulenc and Milhaud. From the captivating Romance written while still a student, to her sparkling music for the 1937 Paris international exhibition, all of these pieces show Tailleferre as being very much at the heart of the contemporary French musical scene. This recording, described by the composer’s granddaughter as being ‘as though Tailleferre herself was performing these works’, is the first of three volumes presenting the complete piano music played by Nicolas Horvath.

REVIEW:

The Monaco-born Horvath’s discographical versatility lends itself to the chameleon Tailleferre: she switches from neoclassical to radical, tonal to bitonal, rhythmic and familiar to irregular and dissonant. Horvath is a great advocate.

-- The Guardian