Last Song / Una Sveinbjarnardóttir, Tinna Thorsteinsdóttir
Sono Luminus
CD
$8.99$17.99Save 50%Jul 23, 2021
“The project is inspired by the moment before the realization of something that drastically changes your life, the moment of just being, existing in the moment. That moment in time is free and full, mindfulness-ish and unaffected by misery, sorrow, regret, shame, anxiety and depression. In my mind it is bright and has a sense of nostalgia. The title also refers to a daily tradition on Icelandic radio Ra´s 1, where a song, “last song before the news” would be played just before the news hour at noon. The song would typically be an Icelandic one, sometimes a lullaby, a love song or an ode to scary and gorgeous nature. Or an Icelandic traditional, sometimes an Italian canzone or a Scandinavian sorrow. Jo´runn Viðar’s piece Icelandic Suite sums up all these elements, a piece written for the 2000 years anniversary of inhabitation in Iceland in 1974. The lightness and the longing are with us throughout the program except in the title piece of mine, Last Song before the News, where apocalyptic visions are awfully obvious and take over early on. The album is dedicated to my father, Sveinbjorn Rafnsson, whose lightness and passion for music, poetry and history along with his sense of humor has been a lifeline to many people.” (Una Sveinbjarnardottir)
REVIEW:
The chief attraction of this disc is to be found in the program. There is so much interesting music for the adventurous listener to discover that I can recommend this CD on those grounds. The performances of those works are more engaging.
Grigoriu (b. Moldavia, 1926) is one of the major Romanian composers in the period after Enescu. His vast output is little known outside his own country, although it includes oratorios, symphonies, cantatas, chamber music, film-scores, and much more. His musical roots reach back to Romanian folk-music and the modal melodies of ancient Byzantium.
Jarzebski, Vivaldi, Bach, Pachelbel, Haydn & Lutoslawski: Wo
DUX
CD
$16.99$21.99Save 20%Feb 12, 2016
Violinist Krzysztof Jakowicz alongside the Witold Lutoslawski Chamber Philharmonic in Lomiza bring us this album filled with beautiful violin works from composers Jarzebski, Vivaldi, Bach, Pachelbel, Haydn, and Lutoslawski. Krzysztof Jakowicz (b. 1939) is a graduate of the Academy of Music in Warsaw, where he studied under Professor Tadeusz Wronski. He is known as one of the most exceptional violinists of our day, and has made numerous recordings for various labels. The Lomza Chamber Philharmonic was founded in 1977 as the Lomza Chamber Orchestra. The ensemble has given more than one thousand concerts across Poland and overseas, and has received countless awards for their achievements and contribution to the musical culture of Poland. They were renamed Chamber Philharmonic in 2008.
Angelo Berardi (1636–94) maintained in his day that modern music had reached “greater perfection compared to the past” and that the practice of music was more important than theory; he asserted, moreover, that a good composition should also elevate the soul to virtuous thoughts. In terms of his stylistic profile, Berardi shows great richness of inspiration, so much so that this, his only work assigned to the violin, seems to cover the entirety of the instrument’s abilities and expressive variety.
Gypsy Strings is a collection of arrangements of traditional gypsy music together with a selection of original compositions. The disc was conceived to display the talents of London Concertante’s leader, Adam Summerhayes, and the Bulgarian fiddle player Emil Chakalov. The music becomes a jousting match between the two, backed by London Concertante’s twelve-player string section. The ensemble enjoys an ever growing reputation for exciting and memorable performances, thanks to exceptional players and inspired programming.
Last Silence / Martha Aarons, Lev Polyakin, Frances Renzi
Azica Records
CD
$9.49$18.99Save 50%Feb 05, 2021
Performed by the trio for whom it was written, Paul Schoenfield's new composition "Last Silence" picks up where "Cafe Music" left off. A show stopping tour de force of excitement and emotion. Schoenfield's "Four Souvenirs" is finally released here by violinist Lev Polyakin and pianist Frances Renzi, who commissioned the work. Beautiful trios by Rota and Cui round out the album. Paul Schoenfeld‘s music is widely performed and continues to draw an ever-expanding group of fans. According to Juilliard’s Joel Sachs, “he is among those all-too-rare composers whose work combines exuberance and seriousness, familiarity and originality, lightness and depth. His work is inspired by the whole range of musical experience, popular styles both American and foreign, vernacular and folk traditions, and the ‘normal’ historical traditions of cultivated music making, often treated with sly twists. Above all, he has achieved the rare fusion of an extremely complex and rigorous compositional mind with an instinct for accessibility and a reveling in sound that sometimes borders on the manic.”
R. STRAUSS Violin Sonata, Op. 18. RESPIGHI Violin Sonata in b. Six Pieces: Melodia; Valse caressante; Serenata • Tasmin Little (vn); Piers Lane (pn) • CHANDOS 10749 (65:50)
Violinist Tasmin Little has amassed a very respectable discography on a number of different labels, though of late, she seems to have settled in as one of Chandos’s house artists. Her recent recording of Delius’s Violin Concerto received an urgent recommendation from me in 35:4, so I really looked forward to receiving her latest release of these two late romantic sonatas.
On the surface, Richard Strauss and Respighi may not seem to have a lot in common, but their respective violin sonatas have been paired on disc before, notably by Kyung-Wha Chung and Krystian Zimerman for Deutsche Grammophon and by Frank Almond and William Wolfram for Avie. Strauss composed his sonata in 1887 at the age of 23. It’s an inspired outpouring of youth hardly recognizable as music by the composer that Strauss would become. Respighi’s B-Minor Sonata—an earlier sonata in D Minor dates from the composer’s teens—was written in 1917, exactly 30 years later than Strauss’s sonata, by a more mature composer of 38.
Strauss’s sonata will no doubt be permanently associated with Heifetz, not because he championed it and twice recorded it, but because of his callous and stubborn determination to perform the piece in 1953 before an Israeli audience that still considered Strauss a Nazi collaborator and whose emotions were still raw from the Holocaust. That little stunt nearly cost Heifetz his career when an assailant attacked him outside his hotel, striking his right arm with an iron bar. While I don’t condone the death threats and violence against him, I understand the intensity of feelings that were aroused. Heifetz had no one to blame but himself for his own arrogance and intractable insensitivity. He canceled his last concert and departed Israel post haste, not to return there again until 1970.
The shame of it all is that Strauss’s sonata was written half a century before Hitler rose to power, and the piece is a passionate and deeply touching reflection of the late 19th-century German musical culture in which Strauss came of age. Unsurprisingly, Liszt and Wagner, both recently dead, appear as frequent ghosts throughout the sonata’s pages, but another guest one meets, less frequently perhaps but still very much alive when Strauss wrote the piece, is Brahms.
Respighi is not an easy composer to categorize. Some see him, as they see Strauss, Puccini, Rachmaninoff, and Sibelius as manifestations of a resistant strain of late romanticism that persisted well into the 20th century, while others have referred to Respighi as an Impressionist. I think one could support either view. There’s no question but that Respighi’s sonata is the more modern of the two works on the disc, at least in terms of its approach to harmony and tonality, but it remains an essentially romantic work in its gestural language—i.e., in its sweeping vistas and appeal to the emotions, both public and private.
The last time I reviewed a recording of Strauss’s violin sonata was in 32:3. That Atma CD also contained violin and piano works by Elgar and Ravel in performances by Jonathan Crow and Paul Stewart which I called “a desideratum of indescribably beautiful music matched by indescribably beautiful playing.” Pardon the pun, but Tasmin Little brings more than a little of Crow’s eloquent and elegant playing to the Strauss, but I would also have to say that in some of the sonata’s more technically taxing passages, she can sound ever so slightly flustered; and while the notes never actually get away from her, one senses she’s making an effort to stay on top of them. Next to Crow’s Strauss, another performance I’ve long liked is that by Dmitri Sitkovetsky on Virgin Classics. He has the technical chops to pull it off smoothly, but I don’t find him quite as emotionally engaged as either Crow or Little. Whatever the reason, Respighi’s sonata seems to suit Little a little better, both technically and temperamentally. Her performance of the piece is lithe and fully responsive to the score’s rapidly shifting moods and colors. In my opinion, it easily outclasses Tanja Becker-Bender on Hyperion, whose reading I find somewhat flighty and rudderless.
Overall, this has to be rated a very fine effort, and not just by Little, but also by Piers Lane who partners her most excellently on the piano, and by Chandos, which provides its usual deep and vivid sound. This may not be the absolute best Strauss out there, but it’s definitely among the very best of the Respighis, and the extra three encores from Respighi’s Six Pieces for Violin and Piano make for a most enriching program. Easily recommended.
FANFARE: Jerry Dubins
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Chandos have prided themselves on having a deep and long-term available back catalogue. Though distantly separated in time the present CD can be seen as an adjunct to two of the grand Chandos series of the 1980s and 1990s. The first was the Respighi orchestral music edition built around the Edward Downes BBCPO symphonies and concertos but supplemented by earlier discs conducted by Geoffrey Simon - still truly splendid - and later ones from Hickox and Noseda. The Downes and Simon discs would shine anew if issued in a box or boxes. The second comprised the half dozen discs they issued in the 1980s golden days of Järvi conducting the then SNO in the major orchestral works of Richard Strauss.
These two violin and piano works have previously appeared - although separately - on Chandos. There were in fact two CDs of the Strauss Sonata – one from Lydia Mordkovitch and the other from Sasha Rozhdestvensky. It comes as no surprise that the Respighi was also recorded by Mordkovitch. She contributed so much to the label that I have every reason to expect that, one of these days, there will be a complete Mordkovitch Chandos Edition. It’s certainly deserved – at least as much as a Takako Nishizaki edition for Naxos.
Little and Lane’s Strauss Sonata is flooded with melodic light and surges and muses with all the eruptive and serenading romance of the same composer’s Don Juan. Both Tasmin Little and Piers Lane are obviously up for it and flatter the 1887 Strauss with a most inward reading which makes it appear a greater work than perhaps it is. The stormy romance of the outer movements of the 1917 Respighi Sonata is emphasised by the utterly peaceful and romantically centred Sargasso calm of the Andante second movement. It stands head and shoulders above the other sonata movements on this disc, masterfully treading that febrile line between poetry and self-conscious sentimentality. Both Little and Lane have every right to be proud of their achievement here. Speaking of that mood we have three movements from the salon-destined and designed Sei Pezzi. I lament that the other three Kreislerian movements were not included – there was space. A puzzling and regretted omission.
With thanks to Chandos for commissioning a liner-note from the inspired Jessica Duchen. Such a fine writer and one whose Korngold book (Phaidon Press) has been unjustly eclipsed by the ‘major definitive biography’. The Duchen is much more than a valid alternative. Indeed, Korngold is a far from irrelevant comparison in the company of the two composers so nobly represented on this disc.
Tchaikovsky & Babajanian: Piano Trios / Gluzman, Moser, Sudbin
BIS
SACD
$10.99$21.99Save 50%Oct 04, 2019
This recording of the Tchaikovsky Piano Trio might well may be among the best.
In Russian chamber music, a rather special tradition evolved around the piano trio, with a number of composers turning to the genre to write ‘instrumental requiems’. First out was Tchaikovsky with his Piano Trio in A minor, Op. 50, ‘à la mémoire d’un grand artiste’, and he was followed by composers such as Rachmaninov, Arensky and Shostakovich. In the case of Tchaikovsky’s trio, the ‘grand artiste’ was the pianist Nikolai Rubinstein, and Tchaikovsky chose the trio genre as he felt that a piece for solo piano would be too lightweight and one with orchestral accompaniment would be too showy. The work is in two movements, a Pezzo elegiaco (‘elegiac piece’) and a set of variations, and it begins with the cello playing a moving lament which sets the tone for the entire first movement. The theme returns at the end of the second movement in the form of an impassioned funeral march. Seventy years later, when the Armenian composer and pianist Arno Babajanian (1921—83) wrote his Piano Trio in F sharp minor, he didn’t give it any subtitle, but there’s a grandeur and breadth of scale which rivals Tchaikovsky’s work – and the second movement is thoroughly elegiac in character. The trio is Babajanian’s best-known work, composed in the Romantic style of Rachmaninov, but also rooted in Armenian folk music, melodically as well as rhythmically. Performing the two works are Vadim Gluzman and Yevgeny Sudbin, both with Russian roots, joined by cellist Johannes Moser, and the three close the album with Sudbin’s arrangement of a brief Tango by Alfred Schnittke.
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REVIEW:
I will begin with what, strictly speaking, is merely the “other piece” on this disc: the piano trio by Arno Babajanian. I have never heard of him or what appears to be his best-known work, but the outstanding recording and startling advocacy of this starry chamber group makes me think I should have.
The piano trio opens with the violin and cello playing a dark theme together. The piano comes in with some lovely runs reminiscent of Rachmaninov’s second piano concerto (no bad thing, in my view). The second movement starts with a long violin melody over a syncopated piano accompaniment, not a million miles from Korngold or Prokofiev’s second violin concerto. The final movement opens with something of a shock, a jazzy passage in 5/8 time, but then the cello comes in with a lovely theme, and the two moods alternate until the end.
It is a delightful work with strong melodies and rhythmic complexity, which this trio plainly adore. It is wonderfully recorded, giving plenty of power to Johannes Moser’s cello work. I shall be taking it off my shelves frequently.
I have so far had to make do for Tchaikovsky’s Piano Trio opus 50 with an old Naxos recording by the Ashkenazy Trio (8.550467), still available. The coupling is Arensky’s trio, and I would not want to be without that. But this disc blows that version out of the water, both in terms of performance and recording. I cannot pretend to have heard all the hundreds of recordings of the work by world-renowned musicians which are out there – but this well may be among the best.
Once again, the recording of Moser’s cello has all the resonance of the real instrument; Sudbin’s piano is alert but self-effacing when it needs to be; Gluzman’s violin soars and inspires. Above all, the trio give the impression they are listening to each other and adjusting their performances accordingly.
The disc ends with a little bon-bon which I assume the group put in because they were enjoying themselves so much: the Tango from the opera Life with an Idiot by Alfred Schnittke. It is not really necessary, since the disc lasts almost seventy minutes without it, but it is great fun, for us as well as for the artists.
In their liner notes for this string of estrellitas (‘small stars’), Elena Urioste and Tom Poster admit to a shared love for ‘an old-world, golden sound and for melodies that tug at the heartstrings’. This has resulted in a deeply personal collection of miniatures full of winks, sighs and tears aimed at transporting the listener to bygone eras of fireside salon concerts. With a few exceptions, including Elgar’s Chanson de Nuit and Salut d’amour, the pieces are arrangements by the great violinists of that bygone, golden age: Auer, Kreisler, Zimbalist, Heifetz … while the originals they are based upon range from Gluck’s Melodie from Orpheus and Euridice and Liszt’s Consolation No. 3 to Beau soir by Debussy and Estrellita by Manuel Ponce. In a closing section Elena Urioste and Tom Poster also pay their respects to the Great American Songbook, with new arrangements, signed Tom Poster, of ‘Moon River,’ ‘When I Fall in Love’ and ‘Over the Rainbow.’
As long as you accept the premise of the arrangement style presented here, i.e. Romantic and virtuosic, you will love all seven works.
Sebastian Bohren’s new album La folia is an affectionate homage –to Ida Haendel, one of his heroes; to fiddlers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries; and to the violin itself. The Swiss violinist says, “It is also like a hall of mirrors, as some tracks invoke the spirits of two or three violinists.” From an early age, Sebastian was immersed in a lineage of violinists who favored Romantic transcriptions of Baroque repertoire, studying with a pupil of the great Ukrainian-born violinist Nathan Milstein. Later in life, he fell under the influence of violinist Ida Haendelon YouTube, watching her perform Corelli’s La folia variations. “She played this amazing virtuoso cadenza, and I was captivated. ”So arose the concept of a program reflecting the ethos of La folia, the ear-catching theme which has fascinated composers for centuries, from the Baroque era’s Tomaso Antonio Vitali and Giuseppe Tartini to latter-day Ottorino Respighi and Fritz Kreisler. Sebastian captures the sound world with sincerity, playing on two different violins, the 1710 “King George” Stradivarius, and a Guadagnini made in 1761.
REVIEWS:
A collection of arrangements in the spirit of Corelli’s La Folia sonata, but given a Romantic virtuoso twist for violin and strings. Sebastian Bohren curated the well thought-out selection and is a dazzling soloist. A quite unexpected delight.
-- MusicWeb International
Bohren is a skilled violinist, and his 1761 Guadagnini violin is a lovely instrument. He strikes a comfortable balance between HIP and Romantic styles, applying a tasteful vibrato that never seems excessive or inappropriate. He plays with affection, engages well in dialogue with the two string ensembles that participate, and demonstrates a strong technique. His playing in Tartini’s famous “Devil’s Trill” Sonata is brilliant.
-- Fanfare
In Bohren’s hands Respighi’s 1921 edition of Tartini’s Sonata in A is truly engaging, with gratifying attention to small-scale phrasing and sonorous scordatura timbres.
Early Romantic Piano Quartets by Hummel, Ries & Schubert
Brilliant Classics
CD
$12.99Jan 30, 2026
Romanticism had many faces. Mozart's spirit still floated through musical life, and Beethoven's mighty music set the benchmark for every Romantic composer. Mozart's legacy was carried forward by two great pianists: Hummel, a pupil of Mozart, and Ries, a pupil of Beethoven. They each steered Romanticism in a different direction. Newspapers across Europe wrote of the 'wild Romanticism' of the bohemian Ries, now seen as a forerunner of Schumann. Meanwhile, the virtuoso Hummel enchanted and astonished his audiences. Around 1815, at the time of the Congress of Vienna, he was the most famous pianist in the world, and Liszt was crazy about his music. Schubert, by contrast, was the creator and embodiment of personal expressiveness in the Romantic era. He performed only in private circles and had no interest in empty virtuosity, even though he was a superb pianist whose instrument, according to contemporaries, would sing under his hands. This new recording presents the Piano Quartet in G major by Johann Nepomuk Hummel (1778-1837), the Piano Quartet in F minor by Ferdinand Ries (1784-1838), and the Adagio & Rondo Concertante by Franz Schubert (1797-1828).
Stained Glass - 20th Century Music for Violin & Piano / Dalene, Hadland
BIS
SACD
$10.99$21.99Save 50%Sep 01, 2023
This recital brings together two established classics from the 20th century with lesser-known works from the repertoire for violin and piano. Alongside Ravel’s Sonata, a work that reveals the influence of jazz on the French composer, and Prokofiev’s wartime Sonata, Op. 94a, an idiomatic arrangement of its original version for flute, we find compositions by Arvo Pärt, Lili Boulanger and Grazyna Bacewicz, which, at times meditative, at times lyrical, at times folk-inspired, testify to the richness of this repertoire. These works are here performed by Johan Dalene, the Swedish-Norwegian winner of the 2019 Nielsen Competition. The present disc is violinist’s fourth release on BIS, following a recording of the Nielsen and Sibelius Concertos named Editor’s Choice by Gramophone and awarded the 2023 Swedish Grammis Award for Best Classical, the Tchaikovsky Concerto described as ‘one of the finest violin débuts of the last decade’ in BBC Music Magazine, and ‘Nordic Rhapsody’, a violin and-piano recital that was awarded distinctions such as Diapason d’or and Gramophone’s Editor’s Choice. As with that release, Dalene is given here the expert support of Christian Ihle Hadland who has also appeared on other much-lauded recordings, most recently one dedicated to Saint-Saëns’ violin sonatas.
REVIEW:
The young violinist Johan Dalene was named Gramophone’s Young Artist of the Year in 2022 and has performed with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, Czech Philharmonic, and San Francisco Symphony. He’s also made his mark in Halls Wigmore and Carnegie, and on this brilliantly assembled collection of works by Arvo Part (Fratres), Maurice Ravel (Sonata in G major for violin and piano), Lili Boulanger (Nocturne), Sergei Prokofiev (Sonata No.2 in D major for violin and piano), and four short works by Grazyna Bacewicz.
The collection’s common thread is a penchant for piquant harmonies, atmosphere, and mysticism. Bacewicz’s early “Witraz” (Stained-Glass Window), which she composed in 1932 at the age of 23, is unforgettable. If you can begin to imagine magical flashes of light and color diffused through a stained-glass window, dancing across the room as they metamorphosize into sound, you’ll get a sense of how special this miniature sounds. Dalene’s Strad whispers, flashes, darts, and whirls as Hadland shines beside him through light and shadow.
Thanks to the iconic ECM New Series recording by Gidon Kremer and Keith Jarrett, Part’s early mystical masterpiece achieved fame just a few years after it was completed. Where Kremer begins with a whisper, Dalene is far more forthright, his tone irresistibly fresh and gleaming, and the recording benefits from superior engineering. The touching poetry of Boulanger’s subtle miniature stands in sharp contrast to Prokofiev’s fabulous scherzo and circuslike finale. Ravel, too, revels in character, humor, amiability, and spice. The finale brings to mind someone chasing a mosquito around the room with a rolled-up copy of Stereophile in hand.
There is no better recordings of the strio trio repertoire than those you will find here. - David Hurwitz (ClassicsToday.com)
In 2007 Frank Peter Zimmermann was able to realize his long-cherished dream to establish a string trio, together with Antoine Tamestit and Christian Poltéra. Three individually superb string players do not necessarily add up to a top-flight trio – even if they all play on instruments by Stradivarius, as here – but Trio Zimmermann immediately made a name for itself at international festivals and prestigious concert venues.
In 2010 the trio released its first album – with Mozart's seminal Divertimento – to critical acclaim. (More than 10 years later, that recording was the top recommendation in the Record Review series Building a Library on BBC Radio 3.) On following offerings, the ensemble explored the later repertoire for string trio: two discs with Beethoven's contributions to the genre, and a third with works by Hindemith and Schoenberg which have garnered distinctions such as Diapason de l’Année, the Chamber Award from BBC Music Magazine and a ‘Jahrespreis’ from the German Record Critics’ Award association. For their fifth disc to date the trio went back in time, however, as the three members together prepared a performing version of Bach's Goldberg Variations, described as ‘a triumph of combined technical ingenuity and musical insight’ in The Strad. These five discs have now been collected into a boxed-set retrospective, offering lovers of chamber music more than 5 hours of glorious music-making, in top-notch sound and including the original booklets with full documentation.
Past praise for previously released albums included in this set:
Bach: Goldberg Variations
The expertise and fluency of the Zimmermann's playing is evident. Their approach to dynamics is refreshingly flexible, and all three players bring a graceful approach to ornamentation.
-- BBC Music Magazine
Beethoven: String Trios, Op. 9, Nos. 1-3
These musicians are in command of the meticulously written extremes in expression, sforzandos not indiscriminately stabbed at but gauged according to the contexts in which they appear. Tempi are gauged to a nicety too. In sum, they do Beethoven proud throughout this exceptionally fine disc.
-- Gramophone
Hindemith & Schoenberg: String Trios
The Trio Zimmermann play them both Hindemith works with such energy, panache, and attention to the minutest detail that they are totally convincing and make a perfect foil to the rigors of the Schoenberg that follows.
-- The Guardian
Trio Zimmermann play Mozart & Schubert
The Zimmerman Trio plays with remarkably accurate intonation and a ravishing tone that’s also mindful of the Classical style. In other words, they don’t lay it on too thick, but they aren’t afraid to let the melodic lines sing. Schubert’s single-movement trio makes the perfect coupling.
-- ClassicsToday.com (10/10; David Hurwitz)
Beethoven: String Trios, Op. 3; Serenade, Op. 8
The Zimmermann Trio offers what must be the finest recording of Beethoven's Op. 3 since the classic mono Heifetz/Primrose/Piatigorsky version. They bring out all of the first movement’s requisite brio, paying heed to the syncopated rhythmic underpinnings that support the scampering triplet passages. The ensemble lightens its sonority for the Andante without sacrificing body and definition, while they articulate the Menuetto’s two-note phrase groups and subito dynamics in strict tempo yet in a way that’s oblivious to the bar lines. While the Finale is a model of controlled ferocity, the musicians are not afraid to let the lyrical sections sing out sweetly (never cloyingly).
Power and delicacy effortlessly coexist in the Serenade’s opening March, while subtle dynamic gradations distinguish the Menuetto’s loud arpeggiatted tuttis. The Adagio’s long unison lines offer cogent proof that one can employ minimum vibrato and still retain a focused and alive sonority. The March returns da capo at the end of the piece, with slightly more emphatic fortes and lighter pianos this time around. The warmth, clarity, and ambient realism of BIS’s surround-sound engineering holds equal appeal when experienced in conventional stereo playback mode. This release is not just a worthy follow-up to the Zimmermann Trio’s magnificent Mozart K. 563 and Beethoven Op. 9 Trio traversals, but a reference disc in its own right. Bravo!
How do we even measure time? It is sometimes said that time is as old as humankind, but of course it isn’t. It’s just something we created out of a need for... what exactly? Earliest known evidence suggests we were measuring time already 5000 years ago. That way we could create predictability, for example concerning planting and harvesting. From there on we could more easily schedule and organize, which then helped us building a more sustainable life. When we had found a mutual understanding of what we would call time then other systems could be developed, kind of like a third-party software.
Music notation works as a fine example. Today our life is synchronized “to the beat.” Not only is every single footstep kept track of by our telephones or every breath by our smart wrist watches – even our thoughts are as good as monitored as we scroll casually through advertisements on social media. Without us even realizing, the idea of time and synchronicity is apparently encrypted so deep in our consciousness that the thought of viewing the world without it is beyond our comprehension. That doesn’t change the fact that time as we understand it has not always been the same. Our ideas on time have changed throughout the centuries and will most probably continue to do so. The works on Sonic Alchemy are of composers who offer a new perspective on how we can perceive time, each in their own way. - Páll Ragnar Pálsson
Since the mid-1980s, Frank Peter Zimmermann has earned recognition as one of the world’s leading violinists, admired not only for his technical skill and interpretive intelligence, but also for his versatility in a wide-ranging repertoire. His extensive discography ranges from Bach concertos and Beethoven sonatas to works by composers such as Martinu, Ligeti, Magnus Lindberg and Brett Dean. He waited until the fourth decade of his career, however, to take on Bach’s Sei solo a Violino senza Basso accompagnato, the six sonatas and partitas for solo violin. The first disc (BIS-2577) dedicated to this absolute pinnacle in the repertoire for the instrument was released in February 2022 to great critical acclaim. Now comes the much-awaited conclusion to this collection. Zimmermann compares these works to ‘a mighty tree, which protects me and crushes me at the same time’, the music giving him hope and strength at the same time as it confronts him with his limits as a violinist. On this new release, he now offers us the Sonata No. 1 in G minor, as well as the B minor Partita No. 1 and the Sonata No. 3 in C major.
Marking 70 years since Enescu's death, celebrated violinist Charlie Siem returns to Signum Classics performing the Brahms Violin Concerto, and works by George Enescu with previous collaborators, conductor Oleg Caetani and the Philharmonia Orchestra. This release features a world premiere recording of the Brahms Violin Concerto cadenza written by George Enescu. PRAISE for Siem, Caetani and Philharmonia on Signum Classics: "Terrific performance there from Charlie Siem and the Philharmonia Orchestra and conductor, Oleg Caetani" - Classic FM Album of the Week
A new and complete survey of the attractive body of cello sonatas which, in his day, helped to make Antonio Caldara a Viennese rival to the fame of Antonio Vivaldi in Venice. Born in Venice as the son of a violinist, Caldara grew up as a chorister at the Basilica di San Marco, and won important posts in Mantua, Rome and Barcelona, as a maestro di capella to royal courts. But it was his move to Vienna during the 1710s which secured his name and his fortune. Becoming Vice-Kapellmeister to the Imperial Court in 1716, Caldara introduced the late Venetian style to Central Europe, and it's influence remained a determining factor in both church music and opera as well as instrumental music until long after his death in 1736. Through sacred works such as the oratorio Maddalena al piedi di Cristo, Caldara has won a following on record in the modern era. However, his surviving output of instrumental music has remained largely unexplored. Publishing his Op.1 Trio Sonatas in 1688, Caldara refers to himself as a 'musico di violoncello', and there can be no doubt from this collection that he knew his way around the instrument. They were composed between 22 April and 26 July 1735: Caldara's sheer facility has perhaps told against him, with a total output of over three thousand separate works. But he knew his craft, and melody seems to have come readily to him. A few Lezioni (Nos. 43, 23 & 1) from Caldara's published instruction method for learning the cello are included as preludes to Sonatas Nos. 8, 10 and 12. Most of the sonatas belong to the four-movement 'sonata da chiesa' form, but Caldara also used the three-movement archetype which became increasingly standard. There is no shortage of opportunities for virtuosic display, as well as for lyricism. These recordings are made by musicians immersed in the Italian late-Baroque world. In it's expanded form, L'Arte dell' Arco has made much praised recordings of Haydn and Vivaldi for Brilliant Classics, including a comprehensive box of Vivaldi's Concertos Opp. 1-12. These Italian musicians speak and sing Caldara's music with unforced fluency. - Antonio Caldara (1670-1736), an Italian Baroque composer, was born in Venice, where he was a chorister in the famous San Marco, with Legrenzi as his teacher. He soon spread his wings across Europe and held several important posts in Mantua, the Spanish court in Barcelona, Rome and eventually the post of Kapellmeister at the Imperial Court in Vienna. Caldara left a substantial oeuvre, consisting of instrumental music in the tradition of Corelli, sacred music and operas. - Caldara's sonatas for cello and basso continuo exemplify the transition from the late Baroque style toward the emerging galant aesthetic. These works are clearly written by a master of the instrument, as Caldara evidently was. The sonatas typically follow a four-movement structure, alternating slow and fast tempos, in the tradition of the sonata da chiesa. They blend lyrical, cantabile lines with virtuosic passages, showing the cello's agility and warm tone. - Played by one of Italy's foremost "Early Music" cellists, Francesco Galligioni, playing with fellow members of the ensemble L'Arte dell'Arco. He successfully recorded the complete cello concertos by Vivaldi, works by Dall'Abaco, sonatas by Lanzetti and others.
Schnelzer: A Freak in Burbank / Gringolts, Crawford-Phillips, Västerås Sinfonietta
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$10.99$21.99Save 50%Mar 04, 2022
Born in 1972, Albert Schnelzer belongs to the most widely noticed Scandinavian composers of his generation. He has written in all genres, and the present album includes a concerto as well as both orchestral and chamber works. Schnelzer’s orchestral output has attracted great attention, with A Freak in Burbank belonging to his most often heard works. Inspired by Haydn as well as by the filmmaker Tim Burton, it has been played more than 70 times to date, in venues such as the Berlin Philharmonie, the Amsterdam Concertgebouw and the Royal Albert Hall. It here appears on album for the first time, performed by the Västerås Sinfonietta conducted by Simon Crawford-Phillips. The same team has also made the premiere recordings of two other works: Burn My Letters – a commission for Clara Schumann’s 200th anniversary – and the violin concerto ‘Nocturnal Songs’, composed for Ilya Gringolts. Interspersed with these are three chamber works – Dance with the Devil, Apollonian Dances and Frozen Landscape – performed by some of Sweden’s foremost instrumentalists.
REVIEW:
A Freak in Burbank is an exciting and vivid work, full of insistent rhythms, quixotic harmonies, and colorful orchestration. There is a capricious spirit in it that grabs the attention of the listener, much as, for example, Haydn’s music does.
Dance with the Devil is for solo piano, and also grabs the attention of the listener from its very first notes. The opening, in fact, is cut from the same musical cloth as is Bartók’s Allegro Barbaro, and like that seminal work Dance never lets up in its energy level. The notes aver that the piece is influenced by heavy metal music.
Burn My Letters—Remembering Clara is scored for chamber orchestra and depicts in music the voluminous correspondence between Clara Schumann and Johannes Brahms. In this rather neo-Romantic work, the composer has attempted to capture something of the energy and lust for life of Clara Schumann, in addition to representing the hectic life she lived as a touring pianist. In this work, he has attempted to assimilate (successfully, I think) the frankness in which Schumann writes about her doubts, fears, and sorrows. Despite such heavy concepts, the piece has a lightness and airy quality about it that I find most attractive.
The program turns back to the realm of chamber music with Apollonian Dances for violin and piano.Violinist Cecilia Zilliacus and pianist David Huang are both clearly masters of their respective instruments, and the work simply couldn’t be in better hands.
Frozen Landscape remembers a vivid experience from Schnelzer’s youth when he was up in the mountains of northern Sweden. This piece’s unrelenting quiet dynamic level sustains interest throughout its seven-and-a-half-minute duration. Both cellist Jakob Koranyi and pianist Huang pull off exquisitely what must be a difficult work to bring across.
The concert concludes with Schnelzer’s Violin Concerto No. 2, “Nocturnal Songs,” a 25-minute work from 2018.
The work was written for violinist Ilya Gringolts, who performs it at the highest level here, even the finger-busting finale. First-class orchestral support is supplied in the pieces that require it by Simon Crawford-Phillips and the Västerås Sinfonietta, an ensemble of which I’ve been previously unaware but glad to have become acquainted with.
This CD is splendid in every parameter, and I am truly delighted to become familiar with the work of such a talented member of the newer generation of Swedish composers.
