Sir András Schiff (born 21 December 1953) is a Hungarian-born British classical pianist and conductor, who has received numerous major awards and honors, including the Grammy Award, Gramophone Award, Mozart Medal, and Royal Academy of Music Bach Prize, and was appointed Knight Bachelor in the 2014 Queen's Birthday Honors for services to music. He is one of the most appreciated and distinguished pianists in the world. Magically, he brings life into pieces, makes them breathing and swinging and keeps up almost forgotten ideals of piano playing. He is not only a great pianist, but also a professional whose view is not limited on piano music, but who has wide knowledge of the broad field of macro culture. This enables him to play the piano which always makes sense to his own point of view. This extensive concert recordings for fans and collectors includes Schiff's Interpretation of Bartok's Piano Concertos, Schubert's Piano Trios and Bach's Goldberg Variations among others. András Schiff is particularly appreciated for his Janáček and Schubert interpretations, which are included in this collection. The edition makes rare classical archive footage from the years 1989-2008 available on Blu-ray Disc.

Following their first album for Linn (Dvorák: Legends Op. 59, Czech Suite Op. 39), the WDR Sinfonieorchester and Cristian Măcelaru pursue the same folk vein with two orchestral works by Béla Bartók. Based on a rather childish tale (prince, princess, fairies, and of course a happy ending!), the music of the ballet The Wooden Prince – recorded in full here – has all the ingredients of a masterpiece: masterful scoring for large forces, use of musical themes, an effortless amalgam of folk and late-Romantic elements.

Composed in 1923 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the merging of the towns of Buda and Pest – alongside commissions by Ernö Dohnányi and Zoltán Kodály – the century-old Dance Suite is a six-movement work that has become one of Bartók’s best known compositions. Born in Timișoara, a short distance from Hungary, Măcelaru can boast an unparalleled understanding of Bartók, as evident here.

REVIEW:

For overall quality Măcelaru rivals Mälkki, and comparing the two readings episode by episode, one is as likely as the other to convey a little more mood and color. But neither really has the freshness of discovery and excitement heard in Boulez’s first account on Sony, and neither of the two orchestras, the WDR Symphony and Helsinki Philharmonic, approaches Boulez’s spectacular results with the New York Philharmonic.

Măcelaru is up against it again in the Dance Suite, which has had outstanding recordings from Fricsay, Boulez, Solti, and Iván Fischer, among others. Less raw than Solti, Măcelaru shows himself a master of the score in a reading that crackles with aliveness and presence. He gets animated playing from the Cologne musicians, and you quickly forget that they are not on a par with eminent ensembles in this music.

I was captivated from start to finish, and more importantly, I got a bead on Măcelaru beyond my only other exposure to him, in the Shostakovich piano concertos. There’s no reason not to give this release the same enthusiastic praise that has become the norm for Măcelaru. The recorded sound is full, vivid, and lifelike.

-- Fanfare

October 29, 1923 - a date steeped in history. In the midst of a year of political and economic crisis, the age of public radio in Germany was ushered in with the first broadcast of the "Berliner Funkstunde", from the attic of an office building on Potsdamer Platz. The composers assembled on this album not only profited from these developments, but also, in part, actively shaped them.

The composer Ernst Toch experienced the crisis year of 1923 in Mannheim, where his "Dance Suite" op. 30 was premiered on with great success. In this work, Toch was able to realize his interest in cross-disciplinary collaboration and new forms of expression. His imaginative use of instruments is one of the most fascinating aspects of the suite.

The "Frauentanz" for soprano, flute, viola, clarinet, horn and bassoon op. 10 by Kurt Weill, written in the summer of 1923, reflects the interest in chamber music line-ups typical of the time. The decisive factor was not only a new ideal of sound and expression, but also the experience that in times of crisis, pieces with small ensembles had better chances of being performed.

Ernst Krenek had found essential impulses for his work in Berlin; when the crisis came to a head in the summer of 1923 he composed the "Three Mixed Choirs" a cappella op. 22 on poems by Matthias Claudius. Krenek designed these folksong-like works written by a lyricist from the epoch of Empfindsamkeit as parables.

For the festive concert celebrating the 50th anniversary of the unification of the cities of Buda and Pest to form the capital and residence city of Budapest in the autumn of 1923, Béla Bartók created his "Dance Suite" for orchestra - a "rather touchy issue", as the internationalist-minded composer explained in a private note.

REVIEWS:

Given [the events of 1923 in central Europe], you might imagine a CD of mostly German music entitled 1923: Wild Sound of the 1920s might sound a bit, well, wild. Far from it. If anything, it shows the opposite: surrounded by violence and the threat of chaos, the four composers represented here by works they composed in 1923 responded by raising their art to the nth degree of refinement and subtlety. Take Ernst Krenek, a composer who nowadays is remembered for a smash hit opera about a Black jazz musician, and for writing later in life some of the most fearsomely intellectualized, complex works in the entire history of music. He’s represented on this disc by three settings for choir of the 18th-century poet Matthias Claudius, of a ravishing otherworldly beauty caught to perfection in these performances.

Kurt Weill, known to the world for his bitingly satirical music dramas, appears as the composer of seven exquisitely allusive, bittersweet songs based on medieval German poems. Ernst Toch’s Dance Suite is a brilliantly imagined set of six “character” pieces for just a handful of instruments, with titles like The Red Whirling Dance and Idyll. Standing somewhat to one side of all this German romantic/modernist intensity and compression is the Dance Suite by the Hungarian composer Béla Bartók, with its rumbustious evocations of Balkan and North African Music.

The occasional whiff of expressionist harshness or a gently satirical distortion of a waltz shows these composers were not completely cocooned in their composing studios. They were alert to the jarring, shifting currents outside. But what the CD reveals most strongly is how much these composers were focused on their own internal, imaginative world – and how much they cared about craftsmanship. Every bar in all four pieces is exquisitely made, and that quality is caught in the performances, which are all of enormous refinement.

-- The Telegraph

The year 1923 was a year of crisis in Germany; inflation was heating up and far right-wing parties were jockeying for power. In October, the first broadcast of public radio in Germany took place from the “Berliner Funkstunde” station on Potsdamer Platz. This provocative new disc from the Choir and Symphony of Bavarian Radio includes four works written a hundred years ago by a group of innovative composers who all made use of the new, disruptive technology of radio.

Kurt Weill’s Frauentanz is a suite of seven medieval songs, scored for soprano, flute, viola, clarinet, horn and bassoon. Weill helped to create the familiar soundtrack for Weimar Berlin, and this performance by Anna-Maria Palii and the fine instrumentalists of the Bayerischen Rundfunks orchestra provides the authentic feel of a society that was becoming increasingly decadent and hysterical in 1923 and beyond.

Ernst Toch’s Dance Suite is another clever and imaginative piece with interesting orchestration: flute, clarinet, violin, viola, double bass and percussion. The Berlin sound is also evident here, something a bit harsh and raw, in contrast with the softer-focused, more lyrical and pastoral modernism of Paris.

The Ernst Krenek work is a bit of a surprise: his 3 Choruses for a cappella choir . The ‘antique’ sound of these pieces remind me of two of my favorite works: Vaughan Williams’ G minor Mass, from 1921, and Heitor Villa-Lobos’s Missa São Sebastião, from 1937. All three provide old wine in new bottles: ancient cadences with a modernist twist.

The final work on the disc is probably the best known: Bela Bartok’s Dance Suite for Orchestra. This is an orchestral showpiece, a kind of try-out for his Concerto for Orchestra written more than two decades later. Both pieces treat orchestral instruments in a solistic, virtuosic way. The source material might be folkloric, but this is definitely written in a modernist idiom.

Inflation, far right-wing agitation, disruptive technology: yes, we’re talking about 1923, not 2023. And the music on this disc is as fresh and forward-looking as some of the best music written today.

-- Music for Several Instruments (Dean Frey)

Between the new and the familiar, the accordion is a young instrument. This is precisely why I believe it lends itself almost naturally, or rather vocationally, to experimentation. At the same time, its place in the collective imagination, its wide diffusion in popular and folkloric cultures, also make it a “familiar”, “domestic” instrument. This combination of “familiarity” and experimentation is, then, the inspiration behind the entire “Fly. Electronic Music for Accordion” project. New works for accordion and electronics aimed precisely at enhancing such duplicity: the feeling of familiarity and the disconcerting activation of the new. For this purpose, I involved some of the Italian composers among those I most respect, with whom I could establish a creative relationship that could lead to the development of particularly significant works featuring this instrument. At least in my ambitions and intentions. What the outcome will be is not for me to say. The fact remains that when a new work is born, especially one with some compositional weight, we are always faced with an event, the opening up of a world, which, however bewildering, or perhaps precisely because of this, proves capable of putting us in relation with ourselves and with the contemporaneity in which we live. Besides this, the choice of alternating the electroacoustic works with “small” pieces (in terms of duration) taken from the historical, classical literature to which we belong, is also intended to promote precisely the coexistence between familiarity and experimentation. A piece of “easy” listening, “familiar”, a prelude or postlude, as it were, in order to “cleanse” the ear, in some way to prepare it for a different kind of listening, that of electroacoustic music, which is complex and full of novel information, not “familiar”. Fragments of history, therefore, that intervene in the rhythm of listening, supposing a linear path, almost like recollections that assail the involuntary memory, to try to undergo an experience that allows us to achieve a relationship between reminiscence and the new.
Germano Scurti

Only one year and a half after their first meeting in Budapest in early 1905, Bartók and Kodály were eager to jointly publish their first settings of Hungarian folk songs. In their foreword to the volume Magyar népdalok (Hungarian Folk Songs), they declare their goal thus: “ … to get the general public to know and appreciate folk songs.” The Ten Hungarian Folk Songs from 1906 (BB 43), Bartók’s earliest and still quite rudimentary but imaginative and very sensitive folk-song arrangements, were collected by the 25-year-old himself mostly in three regions of the Hungarian countryside: near Budapest, Békéscsaba, and the lake Balaton. This set, from which we can listen to four arrangements on this CD, had never been offered by Bartók to be published. Having collected peasant music from regions of the Hungarian Kingdom where significant Romanian and Slovak minorities lived, Bartók immediately became intrigued by the peculiarities – and from his point of view, musical freshness – of both nations’ songs and instrumental dances.

His reverence for the folklore of the Slovaks can be felt in the five arrangements of the Falún (Village Scenes) series (BB 87a), composed in 1924 and based on folk songs from the Zólyom (in Slovakian: Zvolenská) region of what was then Upper Hungary (now Slovakia) he collected in 1917 from village women. These arrangements of bursting energy, enchantingly deep emotionality and transcendence also bear testimony to Bartók’s discovery of Stravinsky’s music which he was galvanized by in the early 1920s. The texts are sung by Katalin Károlyi in Hungarian here, not in their original Slovak-language version.

Before leaving Hungary for Austria and West Germany after the fall of the 1956 revolution, György Ligeti (1923–2006) not only collected folk music in his native Transylvania but also worked for the Institute for Folklore in Bucharest and Kolozsvár in the late 1940s. Thus, in his twenties and thirties, he followed the footsteps of his idols, Bartók and Kodály. In the last months of 1952, Ligeti set to music five poems by János Arany, a leading figure of 19th-century Hungarian poetry. Both text and music are deeply rooted in Hungarian folk songs; indeed, most of Ligeti’s melodies, or parts thereof, could be actual folk songs, just like Arany’s texts from almost a century earlier could be folk-song texts. The last piece is an exception, being a daring musical setting of Arany’s 1868 Hungarian translation of Robert Burns’ humorous song The Deil’s Awa Wi’ Th’ Exciseman (1792).

This project tells of European-American musical exchange at the beginning of the 20th century, the golden era of the transatlantic liners. Through concert tours and emigrations, the chosen composers toured and emigrated across the Atlantic, experiencing foreign impressions and recalling traditional themes. They were inspired by folk music, poetry to blues. I present these facets in original and arranged works for harp. “In the Atlantic crossings and the mutual influences of European and American composers, I felt my own family history with changing migration across the ocean.” (Anne-Sophie Bertrand)

This fascinating recital features three works composed during a short period of tremendous upheaval in the world of music. Szymanowski's Mythes: Trois Poèmes, op. 30 was composed in 1915, Dohnányi's Sonata, op. 21 in 1912, and Bartók's Sonata No. 1 in 1920-21. Violinist Elizabeth Chang writes that "the crosscurrents of multiculturalism and the pursuit of a national identity separate from the prevailing Germanic legacy, are topics with searing relevance to the early 21st century. Probing the connections among the densely intertwined web of musicians of this time yields insight into an inflection point in musical history that unleashed the wildly divergent paths that music composition took as the twentieth century unfolded." This recording presents beautifully detailed performances of three important pieces, performed by two leading virtuosi.

Magdalena Kožená’s fourth Pentatone album Folk Songs brings together folk-inspired song cycles from across the globe. Ranging from Berio’s Folk Songs to sets by Bartók, Ravel and Montsalvatge, this collection provides a kaleidoscope of twentieth-century orchestral song composition. Kožená performs them together with the Czech Philharmonic under the baton of Sir Simon Rattle.

REVIEW:

Kožená is on gleaming form in music that largely suits her voice well, and the orchestra plays fabulously for Rattle.

-- The Guardian (U.K.)

The Transylvania State Philharmonic Choir & Orchestra and conductor Lawrence Foster present choral-orchestral works by Béla Bartók and Zoltán Kodály. They join forces with a remarkable group of soloists – including Luiza Fatyol, Roxana Constantinescu, Marius Vlad, Ioan Hotea and Bogdan Baciu – as well as the Junior VIP children’s choir. The album opens with Kodály’s Budavári Te Deum and Psalmus Hungaricus, followed by Bartók’s Transylvanian Dances and culminating in the composer’s Cantata Profana. The latter work, based on ancient myth, was originally conceived in Romanian, but the piece is usually performed in a Hungarian version. This recording reinstates the Romanian original version, retouched by choir conductor Cornel Groza.

In general, this recording by Romanian ensembles of works by Hungarian composers linked to Romanian sources can be seen as an exploration of Romania and Hungary’s shared roots, and of the bicultural nature of Transylvania in particular. Lawrence Foster has a vast Pentatone discography, including several orchestral and complete opera recordings. The Transylvania State Philharmonic Choir & Orchestra so far featured on two Pentatone recordings under the baton of Foster: Puccini’s La Fanciulla del West (2021) and Melody Moore’s solo recital Remembering Tebaldi (2023). Roxana Constantinescu featured on Pentatone recordings of Mascagni’s Cavalleria rusticana and Puccini’s Il tabarro (both 2020), while Marius Vlad appeared on the above-mentioned La Fanciulla del West recording.

REVIEWS:

One can readily detect a national style in this collection of choral works recently issued by Pentatone, each distinctive and individual if, in the case of Kodály, of uneven inspiration.  Of Psalmus Hungaricus Bartók commented that it ‘could not have been written without Hungarian peasant music’.

[Kodály’s Psalmus] is acclaimed as one of the truly great choral works of the 20^th century, and while there’s no shortage of recordings, actual performances today are relatively rare. The Guardian’s Alfred Hickling once observed, ‘Kodály remains a minority taste in this country, lightly dismissed as a kind of low-fat alternative to Bartók’.  A little unfair perhaps considering the emotional punch and drama of Psalmus Hungaricus in which the soloist assumes the role of the betrayed King David, with a supplicant chorus echoing his anguish and indignation.

According to the Kodály authority David Vinden, the Psalmus is a work ‘that sings itself’. Here, the Transylvania State Philharmonic Orchestra and Transylvania State Philharmonic Choir do the work proud. Under the direction of Lawrence Foster (American-born with Rumanian ancestry), the chorus respond fervently to the raging of the persecuted, bitterness giving way to the affirmation of God’s divine retribution. King David’s grievances are articulated mainly by the tenor Marius Vlad, but here his impassioned utterances sound a little too clenched for comfort, and only in the latter stages of the work does a more yielding tone emerge.  While this performance may not achieve the gravitas or emotional intensity of Kodály’s own recording (Hungaroton, 1957), Lawrence Foster’s ear for balance is sure and his tempi well-judged.

Like the Te Deum, Bartók’s Cantata Profana (1930) is another rarity in the concert hall, although moderately well represented on disc. Based on traditional Transylvanian ballads (and sung here in Romanian), it narrates the tale of a hunter’s nine sons who are magically transformed into stags before their integration into the natural world.  The work remains an under-appreciated part of his oeuvre...Bogdan Baciu and Ioan Hotea, as father and son respectively, are impassioned in their solo contributions, manfully facing their extreme pitches.  The chorus are assured and bring considerable energy to their role.

Taking the disc to just over the hour are Bartók’s Transylvanian Dances, orchestral versions of his Sonatina for Piano from 1915 and given characterful performances.  Overall, these accounts are a worthwhile introduction to the composers’ choral works and make attractive couplings that enjoy full texts and translations with excellent sound.

-- Opera Today

Music by two Hungarian composers, and folk-music-collecting friends, performed in Romania conducted by Los Angeles-born (to Romanian parents) Lawrence Foster, makes for an excellent collection, very well recorded at Radio Cluj in May 2022. Kodály’s Budavári Te Deum is lively and exhilarating, with lyrical correspondences to Walton’s Coronation Te Deum, music that speaks directly without artifice, whereas Psalmus Hungaricus is musically of greater intensity and gravitas, performed here with emotional power to compelling effect. Bartók’s orchestral Transylvanian Dances make a flavoursome prelude to his Cantata Profana, recounting a strange tale involving stags, in an atmospheric, dramatic and suspenseful performance. In addition to the choir and orchestra there are, when required, a children’s chorus and five vocal soloists, each of the latter committed to words and music.

-- Colin's Column

For many decades the orchestras of the German broadcasting service SWR have worked together with many famous musicians from all over the world, including the outstanding pianists selected for this collection, among them Clara Haskil, Jörg Demus, Paul Badura-Skoda, Alicia de Larrocha, Wilhelm Backhaus, and Géza Anda. Furthermore, Chilean pianist Claudio Arrau (1903–1991) is regarded as one of the supreme keyboard masters of the 20th century and must feature in any comparative survey of performances of the central repertoire from Beethoven to Brahms. Annie Fischer (1914–1995), a pupil of Ernst von Dohnányi later went on to make some legendary recordings with Otto Klemperer. Friedrich Gulda (1930–2000) polarized the music scene by embracing the parallel worlds of classical music and jazz in equal measure. He was not only one of the most brilliant pianists of the 20th century with regard to tone and technique, but also one of the wittiest and most musically competent. For decades Wilhelm Kempff (1895–1991) was seen as the leading interpreter of German music from Beethoven and Schubert through Schumann and Liszt to Brahms.