The Joint Venture Percussion Duo is made up of Rachel Xi Zhang and Laurent Warnier, who met one another while students at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam. Both musicians shared an affinity for the music of Maurice Ravel, and regretted the fact that Ravel never wrote for percussion, so the duo took it upon themselves to arrange his music for their own instrument family. Inspired by Ravel’s shimmering orchestral scores and virtuosic piano writing, the Duo has arranged this entire CD which includes Ravel’s masterpieces Le Tombeau de Couperin, Ma mere l’Oye, 5 pieces enfantines, and finally the Pavane pour une infant defunte.
A Musical Journey - A Musical Visit To Andalusia, Sitges, Seville And Granada
Naxos AudioVisual
DVD
$13.99Sep 25, 2012
SPAIN
The Places The tour starts in the countryside near Sancti Petri, and shows other aspects of the fertile landscape of Andalusia, leading to the historic hillside town of Medina-Sidonia, seat of the Guzman family whose Duke led the Spanish Armada in 1588. The resort of Sitges in Catalonia is followed by the great Cathedral of Seville, reputedly the largest Gothic church in the world, and towns that reflect the Moorish past of this region of Spain.
The Music The French composer Maurice Ravel inherited from his mother, of Basque origin, a strong interest in Spain. Spanish elements influence much of his music including the Rapsodie espagnole, completed in 1908, Ravel’s first major orchestral work and a demonstration of his originality and of his gifts as an orchestrator. The music moves from the stillness of night to two characteristic Spanish dances and a final Spanish fiesta. Isaac Albéniz enjoyed a double career, winning an international reputation as a virtuoso pianist and doing much to establish Spanish music in a form acceptable at home and abroad. He divided the later years of his life, a period of deteriorating health, between Paris, Barcelona and Nice, years which saw the composition of his Iberia.
Picture format: NTSC 4:3 Sound format: PCM Stereo / Dolby Digital 5.1 / DTS 5.1 Region code: 0 (worldwide) Running time: 55 mins No. of DVDs: 1
This album centres on Ravel: Ravel the composer with Ma Mere l'Oye - originally a suite for piano four hands composed in 1910, orchestrated the following year to become a ballet and Ravel the arranger with Mussorgsky's famous Pictures at an Exhibition, as well as his orchestration of Schumann's Carnival, an embryonic project begun in 1914 for the great Nijinsky, who would ultimately never dance it. Only four excerpts were transcribed, and they were not published until 1975, on the centenary of Ravel's birth. Joseph Swensen, conducting the Orchestre National Bordeaux Aquitaine, brings them back to life and infuses this colourful programme with his passion and infectious enthusiasm.
This album brings together works by composers closely associated with France and Paris, complemented by a reconstructed version of Mozart's unfinished sonata. The programme spans original compositions for two pianos, alternative arrangements created by the composers themselves, and a bold reimagining of Piazzolla's iconic Libertango by Aleami Piano Duo. In this innovative arrangement, the artists employ extended piano techniques, live looping, and improvisation, expanding the expressive possibilities of the two-piano medium. At the heart of the album lies the idea of encounter: the meeting of two pianos and two pianists, but also of cultures and musical traditions that inspired generations of composers-from the spiritual songs of enslaved African Americans to the passionate rhythms of Argentine tango. Despite their stylistic diversity, all the works are united by the distinctive sonority of two pianos, an ensemble capable of both orchestral grandeur and extraordinary intimacy. The rich palette of colours, vast dynamic range, and interplay between the instruments create a compelling musical dialogue throughout the recording. Aleami Piano Duo is among the most versatile young Polish piano ensembles of it's generation, performing repertoire that ranges from the classical canon to contemporary music and works influenced by jazz. This eclectic programme showcases the duo's interpretative freedom, virtuosity, and remarkable artistic synergy, offering a fresh and captivating perspective on the art of piano duo performance.
Leif Ove Andsnes - The Warner Classics Edition 1990-2010
WARNER CLASSICS
CD
$98.12Apr 12, 2024
Leif Ove Andsnes is a leading pianist of his time, known for his exceptional musicianship and subtil touch, his considerable technical flair being unfailingly put at the service of his interpretations. He was a pioneer for being the first home-trained superstar pianist to have emerged from Norway. This box is the story of a 20-year partnership that has yielded a rich seam of recorded treasures, first for Virgin and then for EMI. Running through this cornucopia of 34 albums (36 CDs), we find recurring themes: Grieg (Andsnes even recorded some Lyric Pieces on the composer's own piano at Troldhaugen), Nordic music in general, Schumann, Rachmaninov, Schubert.
Violinist Esther Abrami’s eponymous Sony Classical debut album is a creative melting pot of different styles of classical music – full of new and inspiring compositions. Collaborating with a great variety of contemporary composers and musicians as well as the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, Esther Abrami has set a creative and inspiring musical landmark representing a new generation of classical musicians.
British composer and pianist Alexis Ffrench, Dutch neo-classical pianist Annelie, French pianist and composer Alban Claudin, Oscar-winning British composer Rachel Portman, British Cellist and composer Julian Llyod Webber and American film-composer Jacob Shea all contributed new compositions to Esther Abrami. Next to this, the album features original compositions by Clara Schumann and Amy Beach as well as several unique new arrangements of some of the most famous classical melodies by Pjotr Tchaikovsky, Eric Satie or Frédéric Chopin. Composer and pianist Florian Christl has written a new arrangement based on Bach’s famous violin concerto and producer and composer Wide Eyed created an atmospheric new variation over Mozart’s legendary “Eine kleine Nachtmusik”. A special highlight on the album is “Sainte Victoire en sol mineur” – a great orchestral composition Esther wrote together with French producer Worakls.
“I've decided to perform different styles to connect with all my audience. People who get to know me via TikTok aren’t the same as those who found me on YouTube or on the radio. I wanted to link all of them together. I don’t think we should just be put in a box with only one music style. In classical music, musicians have a tendency to fade behind the music, but with this album people can discover who I really am as I’ve satisfied all my musical tastes and been able to be myself” says Esther.
She adds: “I’ve worked directly with Rachel Portman, who was one of my idols when I was younger. It was very important for me, as it’s going in the same direction as with Tomorrow by Annelie or Romance by Clara Schumann. I want to inspire young women to become a classical composer or musician, as we are still too few. It’s time to change things!’’
REVIEW:
Abrami’s self-titled debut album is a pleasing patchwork of pieces, from familiar items in new arrangements to works by high-profile newcomers. Radio airplay is surely guaranteed for this playlist, the gloss of which is almost blinding. Some lovely moments.
-- BBC Music Magazine
Tracklisting
Pjotr IljitschTchaikovsky: Swan Lake Variation
Sergei Rachmaninoff: Paganini Variation
Julian Lloyd Webber: Jackie's Song (Romanza)*
Annelie: Tomorrow
Johann Sebastian Bach: Bach Variation feat. Florian Christl*
Alexis Ffrench: Hope, Ascending
Jacob Shea: Mozart Variation
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Mozart Variation feat. Wide Eyed
Maurice Ravel: Ravel Variation
Frédéric Chopin: Chopin Raindrop Variation
Clara Schumann: Three Romances for Violin and Piano, Op. 22: I. Andante molto
Worakls, Esther Abrami: Sainte Victoire en sol mineur*
Rachel Portman: Themes from "Chocolat"*
Alban Claudin: Sunken Dreams
Richard M. Sherman, Robert B. Sherman: Scales and Arpeggios (from "Aristocats")*
Eric Satie: Satie Variation (after Gymnopédie No. 3)
Denmark’s leading instrumentalists Ulla Miilmann (flute) and Tine Rehling (harp) joined forces to record a superb collection of late romantic and impressionistic works by an alley of foremost composers of France in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Ulla Miilmann and Tine Rehling began their collaboration as duo in 2007. They have since been dazzling wide range of audiences with their pure and elegant interpretation of repertoire with a significant emphasis on French music.
Ravel: Sheherazade, Chansons Madecasses / Boulez, Norman, Harper, Van Dam
Sony Masterworks
CD
$17.99Jan 14, 2010
This thoroughly recommendable issue is most welcome on CD, where its appreciable attributes can be even more clearly heard. Each singer has been carefully chosen for his or her task, and the contrast in timbres is, for the most part, illuminating. My single reservation concerns Heather Harper whom I now find a little cool for Sheherazade, in spite of the obvious distinction of her phrasing, but then this cycle isn't that well suited to Boulez's talents for stereoscopic precision and minute calculation. The other three singers have hardly been bettered as interpreters of their songs, and Boulez and his BBC and Parisian colleagues play throughout with delicacy combined with pinpoint accuracy. The recordings, made at different times in the 1970s and 1980s, are finely balanced. So I am as enthusiastic about the disc as I was back in 1984, if not more so.
Maurice Ravel: La Valse; Ma Mere L'oye; Tzigane; Bolero; Pavane
TACET Musikproduktion
Blu-Ray
$26.99Jan 28, 2014
• Maurice Ravel's music needs no introduction. A sampling of orchestral works, including Valse and the famous Boléro.
• Carlo Rizzi leads the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra
• One of the first set of 5 Blu-ray audio discs from TACET.
• The Blu-ray audio disc was mastered in 24 bit / 96 kHz resolution, both in stereo and in TACET Real 5.1 Standard Surround Sound.
• The Blu-ray disc joins the TACET assortment as the fifth sound carrier alongside CD, LP, DVD audio and SACD.
With Carlo Rizzi, Gordan Nikolic and the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra Amsterdam, one of the most sought-after conductors, one of the best violinists and an absolutely top-notch orchestra got together for a TACET production. What an honour to be able to work with such artists! We have tried to apply the precision and painstaking detail from chamber music to this project as well. Carlo Rizzi brings out typically Ravellian details that frequently have the effect of being levelled out, e.g. the composed overtones. There will be some surprises in store for one listener or another. In all honesty: do you know what the saxophones in Bolero play a few bars before the end? Or when the first harp plays and when the second harp plays in La Valse? Not least, this production should offer something to the many old-fashioned crazy audiophiles, our beloved public, who still prefer a carefully produced sound carrier to a blurred or squeaky You Tube download. Whether the result is really worth more than merely another line in the table "Recordings of the Great Orchestral Works of Ravel" - that is up to the critics to decide. It's your turn! (Of course the recording is also being issued as an LP and in TACET Real Surround Sound.). Andreas Spreer
French Chamber Music - Debussy, Ravel / André Previn, Et Al
RCA
CD
$17.99Aug 12, 2010
I have an old HMV LP with a youthful looking Andre Previn on the sleeve (9/74 - nla) and coupling the Ravel Trio and Shostakovich E minor Trio, and very good it is; the other artists were Young Uck Kim and Ralph Kirshbaum. Now an older Previn returns to the Ravel, and with new colleagues brings to it the same affection, together with a chaste quality wholly appropriate to this composer who evinced an honourable bashfulness yet whose passion is unfailingly genuine and moving - surely one reason for his immense popularity today. The Trio is one of the largest and grandest of chamber works, yet its rhetoric is without hollowness (and how rare that is in French music!) and it somehow just stays within the bounds of chamber music: oddly enough, one of the most shattering climaxes comes in the slow movement. A rich yet un-glitzy recording helps this intensely felt yet refined performance, and altogether the artists offer a memorable musical experience.
Debussy's long lost piano trio is a youthful work that I'm certain he would have hated to have played at all, but scholars don't always mind about that sort of thing. Having come to light fairly recently, this jejune piece now has several performances on disc. Undoubtedly it needs skilful playing to avoid seeming embarrassingly weak alongside the Ravel, and the present artists do a very decent job, presenting its naIvety without apology. Their disc is not generous at 48 minutes, but the performance of the Ravel above all makes it value for money.
