Nine years after it's initial release, Arabella Steinbacher's acclaimed interpretation of two of the greatest concertos ever written for the violin is presented in an attractively priced Stereo re-issue. Steinbacher joins forces with the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande under the baton of Charles Dutoit, one of the most eminent conductors of our age. Both the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande and Arabella Steinbacher, a multiple award-winner, have an extensive Pentatone discography spanning more than a decade.
The inspiring new album Shapes of Water by renowned pianist Carmen Stefanescu takes listeners on a captivating musical journey. Following her successful debut album with Prospero Classical, The Voice of Piano, the pianist has recorded pieces based on the theme of water for her new release. Water has always fascinated artists as a theme and symbol - it stands for purity and renewal, but also for mystery, movement and the transience of time. In her new album Shapes of Water, pianist Carmen Stefanescu transports her audience into a world of sound in which water itself becomes music: it trickles, glitters, flows - and always comes to rest.
Born in Bratislava, soprano Simona Saturova, internationally renowned for her opera and oratorio performances, dedicates her CD Nocturno to the fascination of evening and night - that time between dreams, longing, and silence that has always inspired composers and poets. The program ranges from Mozart's Abendempfindung to Schubert and Schumann to late Romanticism and early modernism. Two songs by Richard Strauss form the framework - Die Nacht as an atmospheric beginning and Morgen as a hopeful conclusion. Two piano pieces, Chopin's Nocturne in D-flat major, Op. 27 No. 2, and Schumann's In der Nacht, reflect nocturnal feelings in purely instrumental form.
Spanish pianists Juan Lago and Belén Navarro present in this album a repertoire that has featured prominently in their concerts over the past decade: works by non-Spanish composers inspired by Spanish popular music. Thanks to the piano-a truly universal instrument-Debussy, Ravel, Chabrier, and Rimsky-Korsakov not only developed their early compositional voices, but also found a vehicle through which their orchestral masterpieces could be adapted and performed beyond the concert hall. Through their own arrangements or those by trusted collaborators, these works have reached intimate settings and private homes around the world. The keyboard's orchestral richness-especially in four-hand performance-and it's ability to imitate or evoke the timbral variety of an orchestra allow the Lago-Navarro Duo to showcase their artistry and technical command in a beloved and familiar repertoire, deeply ingrained in the collective musical memory of the Spanish people. In this album, Ibéria, Rapsodie espagnole, España, and Capriccio espagnol are brought together in a fresh concert format, allowing the musical echoes of Spain to resound with renewed brilliance. Belén Navarro & Juan Lago Piano Duo The well-established Lago-Navarro piano duo-formed in 1997 by Spanish pianists Juan Lago and Belén Navarro-presents in this album a repertoire that has featured prominently in their concerts over the past decade: works by non-Spanish composers inspired by Spanish popular music.
Behzod Abduraimov's performances combine great musical depth with phenomenal technique: 'He has a magical touch,' wrote The Times. This recital is yet another illustration of his many talents: it begins with variations by Carl Czerny, a pupil of Beethoven and a teacher of Liszt. Next, the famous Après une lecture de Dante (whose title is borrowed from a poem by Victor Hugo) represents Liszt's Année de pèlerinage en Italie (1846-1849). The title is borrowed from a poem by Victor Hugo... Another era, another poetic inspiration (Verlaine), with the Suite Bergamasque, an allusion to the festivals of the Lombard commedia dell'arte, which Debussy composed between 1890 and 1905... Still celebrating, this time in Saint Petersburg, with 'it's crowds, it's shacks and it's small traditional theatre, the character of the magician and conjurer... and the animation of the dolls, Petrushka, his rival, and the ballerina', notes Stravinsky, who in 1921 wrote a piano transcription of his ballet Petrushka, composed ten years earlier. Brahms and a peaceful Intermezzo from his Klavierstücke Op. 119 conclude this infernal programme.
Mort au Printemps is a compelling journey through some of the most powerful musical visions of death from the early twentieth century, explored through the intense and versatile language of the piano duo. In this album, the Anton & Maite Piano Duo bring together three works that are deeply connected by aesthetic affinities, personal links between their composers, and a shared creative response to the tragic. At the heart of the programme lies Igor Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring, presented in the composer's own four-hand piano transcription. Far from being a reduction, this version retains all the work's primal energy, revealing with striking clarity it's rhythmic drive, structural ingenuity, and ritualistic character rooted in archaic and ancestral imagery. Alongside it stands El Día y la Muerte by Fernando Remacha, a two-piano work that remained hidden for decades. Inspired by the tragic death of the composer's grandson, the piece unfolds in a sombre, deeply moving musical language situated between Impressionism and Expressionism, marked by tension, dark colours, and emotional intensity. The album is completed by Claude Debussy's en blanc et noir, one of the most distinctive works of his final period, permeated by the oppressive atmosphere of World War I despite the composer's reluctance to make explicit references. Mort au Printemps powerfully reclaims the expressive depth of the piano duo repertoire, offering a recording of exceptional intensity, precision, and artistic vision.
The coming together of the percussionist and marimbist Vassilena Serafimova and the Quatuor Ardeo,(Ardeo String Quartet) the encounter of two worlds that inspire new repertoires as well as moods and impressions, recreated partly through original arrangements. This is a subtle balance between the marimba coupled with the vibraphone and the strings: the former, pulsating and silky, brings a more pronounced rhythmic dimension and occasionally takes on a concertante role; the latter offers a warm lyricism and a texture at times dense or transparent, but always supple. A delicate balance, too, when it comes to paying homage to the works without diminishing their original artistic strength. As the works and arrangements unfold, the journey takes shape like a voyage journal where age-old traditions meet fresh inspirations. Melodies in a Bottle aims to be less a programme than a passage, one of maritime or urban perspectives, of real or imagined landscapes, of music whose history is rewritten with every note. A meeting space where curiosity becomes an attractive driving force.
Principally surveying the Préludes and Images, the first two volumes of Alessandra Ammara's Debussy survey have attracted praise for their affinity with the composer's elusive but painterly idiom. According to Fanfare, "Ammara reveals her sensitivity to the Debussy sound world, rife with blurred outlines of objects and infiltrated with variegated light, in the manner of the painter J. M. W. Turner." For Volume 3, her focus turns principally to the set of 12 Études, which miraculously took shape over the course of just two months, in August and September 1915. Plagued by ill health following the diagnosis of rectal cancer in 1909, presented with the pressing need to increase his earnings through editing and performing, Debussy wrote the Études while staying in a town near Dieppe, on the Normandy coast. Emerging from a period of severe depression, he once more took inspiration from the sea in a sudden and final burst of creativity, which also saw the composition of the suite for two pianos, en blanc et noir, and the Sonata for Flute, Viola and Harp. However, it is the 12 Études which have come both to define Debussy's late style - on the piano, as a counterpart to his ballet for Diaghilev, Jeux - and to present both a model and a challenge to later composers of piano études from Tansman to Ligeti. Debussy himself said that they were "a warning to pianists not to take up the musical profession unless they have remarkable hands". While the dry titles of the individual Études serve to conceal their rich and turbulent inner landscape, aspects of their invention are prefigured by the earlier works on Alessandra Ammara's album. The three movements of Estampes are as much "studies" in their way as the Études - of particular kinds of movement refracted through the images of a Japanese pagoda, a Spanish evening, and a garden in the rain. From 1904, and capturing the passion of his affair with Emma Bardac, L'isle joyeuse references both the island of Jersey and a painting by Watteau, but it also serves as a study in superimposed scales.
The string quartets of Debussy and Ravel, composed within a decade of each other, make a natural pairing. The Arod Quartet, celebrating it's 10th anniversary in 2023, sets these two belle époque masterpieces in a present-day context with a third work: Al Asr, by the young French composer Benjamin Attahir. The scope of this Erato release is further expanded with a DVD documentary about the Arod Quartet, entitled Ménage à quatre and directed by Bruno Monsaingeon. His first experience of the Arod Quartet was a revelation: "Had I ever heard such sheer strength of attack, such dramatic power, such a variety of sonic colour or dramatic range - all combined with such prodigious delicacy of phrasing?" It was in 2017 that the Arod Quartet gave the premiere of Benjamin Attahir's Al Asr, a substantial work which takes poetic inspiration from the Muslim afternoon prayer and the intense heat of the moment midway between noon and sunset. "Al Asr is dedicated to my wonderful friends in the Quatuor Arod," says Attahir. "They have brought it to life in a way I would never have dared to dream."
This was something I'd had in mind for a long time..." says pianist Alexandre Tharaud, "to put together an album for the sheer pleasure of it, in collaboration with dear friends and paying tribute to the wonders of the piano duet repertoire." The aptly named 4 Hands offers 18 tracks, each just a few minutes in length, each featuring Tharaud sharing a piano keyboard with a different partner. The repertoire ranges wide - from Bach to Glass by way of such composers as Schubert, Tchaikovsky, Grieg, Fauré, Satie, Debussy, Ravel, Rachmaninoff, Ravel, and Piazzolla. 15 of Tharaud's fellow performers are celebrated pianists - among them the late Nicholas Angelich, Mariam Batsashvili, Bertrand Chamayou, David Fray, Víkingur Ólafsson, and Beatrice Rana. The other three, all stars in their musical fields, are shown in a new, pianistic light: cellist Gautier Capuçon, countertenor Philippe Jaroussky and singer-songwriter Juliette. "The piano duet is one of life's miracles," continues Tharaud. "First and foremost, it is the most intimate way of playing chamber music... It was a joy to record this album... If hearing these pieces prompts people to buy some sheet music and enjoy playing duets together - just as we did in the recording studio - then I will have achieved my aim.
Kyung Wha Chung - Beau Soir (Faure, Franck, Debussy, Elgar, works for violin & piano) The centrepiece of this French-themed recital by Kyung Wha Chung and Kevin Kenner is the splendid violin sonata by Cesar Franck. It is a work long associated with Chung, described by the Financial Times as "one of the greatest violinists of the last half-century". Newer to Chung's repertoire is Faure's Sonata No 1. As she told Strings magazine, each of the works constitutes "a whole portrait of life itself," and she drew a comparison with Monet's paintings: "The reflection of light has endless possibility. The same thing applies to the texture and the sound when you're playing. There are millions of sounds."
Debussy Centenary Premieres (3CD) ARTIST: Claude Debussy - Debussy Centenary Discoveries offers new insights into a captivating, inventive and influential musical genius. Each recording on these 3-CDs is in some way a first: Chanson des brises and Diane aux bois make their debut appearance in any form; the unfinished opera La Chute de la Maison Usher is heard just as Debussy left it; the Chansons de Charles d'Orleans appear in their original version, while Debussy's transcriptions of his own Jeux and Khamma, and of works by Schumann, Raff and Saint-Saens, are also new to the catalogue. Pianists Philippe Cassard and Jean-Pierre Armengaud are among the musicians who lead this fascinating voyage of discovery
His exceptional touch and sense of phrasing, his deep and personal understanding of the most varied repertoires, or even the legendary trio he formed together with Jacques Thibaud and Pablo Casals, made Alfred Cortot the greatest pianist of his time. Master of many disciples, notably the brilliant Dinu Lipatti, Samson François and Clara Haskil, Cortot also had a lasting influence on the Russian piano school through Samuil Feinberg and Heinrich Neuhaus, the latter himself being the revered teacher of Sviatoslav Richter.
All of the recordings in this set had undergone careful sound restoration in 2012, in order to respect as closely as possible the original sound. The remastering was carried out under the expert control of Mr. Guthrie Luke, a former disciple of Alfred Cortot who attended many recording sessions by Cortot. These recordings do not represent a "complete" edition: the many rolls engraved by the artist for Duo-Art, Aeolian and Pleyela labels have not been reproduced here, most of them doubling the 78-RPM repertoire. The first recordings are acoustic; and the ones with an electric microphone appeared as early as 1926.
Written between 1887 and 1890, Gabriel Faure's Requiem is among the best-loved pieces in the choral repertory. Traditionally, Requiems are serious, prayerful laments for the dead. Faure's was altogether different. In place of the usual somber mood, his is noted for it's calm, serene and peaceful outlook. The composer revised and expanded the work several times, but it is the original version that is performed here using period instruments and performance practices. This sublimne recording, featuring Ensemble Aedes and Les Siecles led by Mathieu Romano, also includes Poulenc's Figure Humaine and Debussy's Trois Chansons
FRENCH PIANO IMPRESSIONS / DEBUSSY - FAURE - RAVEL
ALTO
CD
$22.81Jun 01, 2018
Tirimo is a fine pianist with first-rate technical command, and understands Debussy's world well. (Gramophone). "Probably first choice for those wanting a modern digital recording offering the complete set... recording most realistic and natural." (Penguin Guide). "A most enjoyable recital, and one for which listeners will be grateful... What is Impressive is the pianist's integration of fragility and firmness, simplicity and complexity." (Gramophone). "I'm glad to be able to praise a fluid but unhurried Jeux d'eau that is well served, too, by the velvety-rich recorded sound... it 's attractive. So are the Sonatine, and the tenderly solemn Pavane pour une infante defunte." (Gramophone). "Dickinson made Satie's music a center point of his repertoire, and his thoughtful approach to this highly rewarding music is all his own... variety of articulation and color is fully at the service of the composer." (Penguin Guide).
