For her second album with naïve, Zlata Chochieva has chosen a magnificent, audacious program, associating Schumann, Ravel, Liszt and Bartók with the lesser known Draeseke and Schulz-Evler. Sensitive to nature and to the emotions it inspires, the Russian pianist Zlata Chochieva has conceived this very personal album as a patchwork, sometimes inward-looking, landscape with changing skies. “A recorded program is not a concert program, but I also wanted to tell a story, propose a whole tapestry of emotions, open different perspectives,” she confides.

Last volume of Ravel

On a previous volume of this, the most complete survey of Ravel´s piano music ever recorded, Oleg Marshev “sails through thickets of tremolos and relentless arpeggios, yet remains attuned to the composer´s sensual harmonic language (Gramophone). The final volume brings the composer's oblique homages to the world of ancient régime Paris, in his dance suite after Couperin, and the Vienna of Schubert and Johanns Strauss in constrasting transformations of the waltz. Marshev is a phenomenon.

- BBC Music Magazine

The new album "Oceanic" by Iveta Apkalna is a collection of two expansive organ works and two orchestral interludes with maritime connotations, showcasing Apkalna's special relationship with the sea as a musician who grew up on the Baltic. The album features Bernd Richard Deutsch's "Okeanos," which Iveta Apkalna describes as the best contemporary organ concerto. It also includes Maurice Ravel's "Une barque sur l'océan," a key work of musical Impressionism, and Jean Sibelius's "The Oceanides," a personal "Rondo of the Waves" along similar lines to Debussy's "La mer."

This box set documents Riccardo Chailly's first years as principal conductor of the Lucerne Festival Orchestra. In summer 2016, he steps into the office as Claudio Abbado's successor with Mahler's 8th Symphony. In a colorful, fresh and stirring performance of the overture and incidental music to William Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and Tchaikovsky's "Manfred" Symphony, Chailly and the Lucerne Festival Orchestra bring the musical imagery of both works to life. In summer 2018, the performers transport us to Ravel's musical universes full of colors, scents and flavors: from the pulsating three-four time of the waltzes to the ancient love story of Daphnis and Chloé and the relentless rhythm of the Boléro. A recording from summer 2019 of Rachmaninoff's Third Symphony and Third Piano Concerto with Denis Matsuev marks the various stages in the composer's life and demonstrates once again the close bond between the orchestra and their new principal conductor.

The pianist, composer, producer and renaissance musician Jeroen van Veen has played many concerts with both his wife Sandra and his brother Maarten, and has recorded with both of them for Brilliant Classics. The present compilation brings together a unique sequence of masterpieces for the genre in live and studio performances, made between 1992 and 2008, and given by the brothers as Piano Duo Van Veen.

This pocket history of the piano duo opens – as it must – with the F minor Fantasy of Schubert. All elements of Schubert's art can be found in the Fantasy: his gift for a sublime, gently unfolding melody; melancholy harmonic turns from major to minor; high drama within a spacious symphonic design; intricate counterpoint in the finale. Less well known but no less accomplished in its way is the set of Beethoven variations by Camille Saint-Saëns, a polished transformation of a minuet theme. This 1992 studio recording concludes with a pair of 20th-century pieces which capitalize on the energy and momentum of the piano duo genre as a whole: La valse of Ravel and the Paganini Variations of Lutoslawski, which never fail to raise the pulse and receive here barnstorming performances. The adrenaline level increases further with a sequence of live performances on album 2, opening with Rachmaninov’s gorgeous Russian Rhapsody and continuing with The Rite of Spring in the version which Stravinsky first performed with his friends in Paris prior to the ballet’s notorious public premiere in 1911. In his Monologue of 1964, Zimmermann developed the thread of his Dialogue for two pianos and orchestra with a collage technique which quotes from Bach, Mozart and Beethoven in which the two pianists muse almost to themselves at times. Rounding off this collection in epic style is the apotheosis of Messiaen’s Visions de l’Amen.

REVIEW:

This is a spectacular piano duo release. Of the 2 discs one was recorded in the studio (one piano) and the other in concert (two pianos). The repertoire here is mostly “famous works”, but the Zimmermann falls outside of the title’s range. There are a lot of brilliant, virtuosic pieces here, and the Ravel and Stravinsky are best known in their orchestral guises. Among people who listen to a lot of 4-hand repertoire, everything here, except perhaps the Zimmermann, will be in our libraries. This is a release I’ll keep on my active listening stack for quite some time.

-- American Record Guide (James Harrington)

Between 1803 and 1968, the Grand Prix de Rome marked the zenith of composition studies at the Paris Conservatoire. In Maurice Ravel’s time the competition included an elimination round (a fugue and a choral piece) followed by a cantata in the form of an operatic scena. The entries were judged by a jury which generally favoured expertise and conformity more than originality and Ravel’s growing reputation as a member of the avant-garde was therefore hardly to his advantage, and may explain why he never won the coveted Premier Grand Prix, and the three-year stay at Rome’s Villa Medici that went with it.

The present set brings together all the vocal works that Ravel composed for the Prix de Rome – five shorter settings for choir and orchestra and three cantatas, each with three characters taking part in a plot which followed a more or less fixed sequence of introduction, recitative and aria, a duet, a trio and a brief conclusion. First published more than half a century after Ravel’s death, these test pieces for the Prix de Rome have never acquired the popularity of his other early works, such as Pavane pour une infante défunte, Jeux d’eau or the String Quartet. They are worth more than their reputation as academic exercises might suggest, however, and deserve to be better known, especially when performed by Orchestre National des Pays de la Loire and Pascal Rophé and a team of vocal soloists including Véronique Gens and Michael Spyres.

REVIEWS:

This two-disc set brings together all of these rare vocal pieces by the composer: five shorter settings for choir and orchestra, and three cantatas, each with three characters taking part in the plot, which followed a more or less fixed sequence of introduction, recitative and aria, a duet, a trio and a brief conclusion. First published more than half a century after Ravel's death in 1937, these test pieces for the Prix de Rome have never acquired the popularity of his later and more mature works, but they are no mean pieces and are worth more than their reputation as academic exercises might suggest. These are compositions that are deftly crafted, full of attractive melodies, harmonically refined, and very often deeply sensitive. Indeed, they encapsulate all of the future Ravel hallmarks that were to make him one of the twentieth century's leading French composers.

Pascal Rophé draws some convincing performances and, in his hands, the music has an immediacy that keeps it consistently fresh and vivid. More than a collector's item which should attract the interest of all music lovers - Ravel aficionados in particular. Sonics and booklet notes are first-rate.

-- Classical Music Daily



Ravel grew up in Paris during la belle epoque, the thirty-odd years prior to 1914 when Paris was the unquestioned artistic center of the world. The fin de siecle years saw him enter the Paris Conservatoire. He was an immensely gifted youth, and one by one his early compositions began to show a real mastery of conception and execution-before the 1800s were out, he had produced such assured works as Habenera, Menuet antique, several fine songs, and Pavane pour une infante defunte.

Ravel's status as one of the most popular composers of all time rests to a large extent on the phenomenal success of Bolero. Yet there is much more to this endlessly intriguing man's work than the "seventeen minutes of orchestral tissue without music": childhood fantasy, Spain, the Orient, American jazz, the theater, clockwork toys and all the things mechanical, preoccupied Maurice Ravel throughout his life, and echoes of each can be found in all corners of his music.

This is an album featuring favorite piano works by Ravel, performed beautifully by Taiwanese-American pianist Stephanie Shih-yu Cheng. She currently is Chair of the Keyboard department at the Lamont School of Music at the University of Denver.

Named a Concerto Choice in BBC Music Magazine September 2022!

The Orchestre de la Suisse Romande and its Music and Artistic Director Jonathan Nott continue their acclaimed series of 20th-century masterpieces on PENTATONE, together with star pianist Francesco Piemontesi, presenting piano concertos by Ravel and Schoenberg alongside Messiaen’s Oiseaux exotiques. Each of these composers redefined 20th-century music in a highly personal way, and the works recorded here share a connection to the United States which one would perhaps not expect right away from these European master composers. While Ravel and Schoenberg’s piano concertos provide the most original and colourful 20th-century contributions to this genre, Messiaen employs a similar scoring to express his profound reverence for nature in Oiseaux exotiques. These challenging and multifarious scores fit Piemontesi, Nott and the orchestra like a glove.

Francesco Piemontesi is among the most-cherished pianists of our age, and presents the third fruit of his exclusive collaboration with PENTATONE, having released the acclaimed Schubert - Last Piano Sonatas (2019) and Bach Nostalghia (2021). The Orchestre de la Suisse Romande is one of the world’s most respected orchestras with a vast PENTATONE discography. This is their third release on the label with their Music and Artistic Director Jonathan Nott, after Strauss, Debussy & Ligeti (2018) and the gloriously received Debussy & Schoenberg,Conductor:Pelléas et Mélisande (2021), containing Nott’s new arrangement of Debussy’s opera.

REVIEWS:

Francesco Piemontesi’s musicianship is both deft and searching. Here are stellar interpretations of three very different concerto-type works, ordered into a journey from easier listening to more difficult.

You have to envy the citizens of Geneva, regularly able to hear music-making on this level from their resident orchestra and conductor. Add a pianist in Francesco Piemontesi’s class, and here are stellar interpretations of three very different concerto-type works, ordered into a journey from easier listening to (notionally at least) more difficult.

Ravel was so determined to avoid portentousness in his winsome G major Piano Concerto the first work heard on the disc — that it can easily sound trite in performance. Any such risk vanishes in the presence of Piemontesi’s brand of musicianship, which is at once deft and searching; a special moment is the sequence of trills decorating the melody in the first movement’s cadenza, marvellously judged to sound as if the notes are somehow gliding, rather than stepping from one to the next.

Without any compromising sense of a soft- focus paraphrase, the music is nonetheless delivered with a sureness of touch and purpose that absorbs and, as often as not, beguiles the ear.

--BBC Music (Malcolm Hayes)

Young Steinway Artist Han Xiang David Xu is an active Chinese-Canadian concert pianist, who maintains deep interest and extra-musical possibilities in other art forms, including ballet, painting, and Taichi. As a martial art practitioner, Xu is heavily influenced, his MMus dissertation was on Taichi Principals and Piano Performance Techniques. For the past few years, Xu has studied many other styles of martial arts and even received his certificate as a professional instructor for Functional Range Conditioning. To go further with his research on the subject, Xu took another Master of Science degree from Royal College of Music. His thesis is on Experience of Fundamental Martial Arts Training for Young Concert Pianists.

After moving to Vancouver, David began studies with Ian Parker, before eventually graduating and studying at the Eastman School of Music, where he studied with Professor Rebecca Penneys. He continued his studies at the Royal Academy of Music in London, under the tutelage of Pascal Nemirovski, and graduated with high honors. Xu has given several recital tours across China over the past few years, with stops in Beijing, Tianjin, Shenzhen, Chongqing, Xiamen, and Guangzhou.

His album Sonatas on Canvas received prizes in three categories in the Global Music Award: Classical Solo Piano, Album, and Emerging Artist. He is a prize winner in many competitions including the Rome International Piano Competition, International Music Competition Paris Grand Prize Virtuoso, and Canadian Music Competition. In 2019, he was invited to feature in a new Jaguar commercial for their new XFL sedan. Aside of being a concert pianist he is also an educator. In the past few years Xu has adjudicated in many major international piano competitions.

Ravel’s early masterpiece, Daphnis et Chloé, was commissioned by Serge Diaghilev for his Ballets Russes, and was premièred in the Théâtre du Châtelet in July 1912. Described by Ravel as a ‘symphonie chorégraphique’ (choreographic symphony), the work was performed just twice in that 1912 season, and was given only three more performances the following year. Press reaction was muted, and it is now much more often performed as a concert work than as a ballet. Daphnis, a shepherd, and Dorcon, a cowherd, dance for the privilege of a kiss from Chloé. Daphnis wins the contest and Chloé’s kiss leaves him in ecstasy. Chloé is kidnapped by a band of pirates; Daphnis prostrates himself before the god Pan. The pirates are celebrating their successful raid in their camp when Pan appears and frightens them all away. Some shepherds find Chloé (with Pan’s help) and reunite her with Daphnis.

This recording uses John Wilson’s new performing edition of the work, a project which Wilson took on during the pandemic lockdown in 2020. He writes: ‘The standard performing materials for Daphnis et Chloé have long been the subject of much discussion among orchestral players, conductors, and musicologists. Aside from a mass of errors in the 1913 published full score, the orchestral parts contain many hundreds of inconsistencies, omissions, and wrong notes. It became apparent that numerous changes made by Ravel in rehearsals were transferred directly into the parts but not carried over into the full score. I have tried to rationalise such (and other) inconsistencies as best I could to arrive at what is, I hope, a useful practical performing edition in which the parts match the full score in every detail and – crucially, for a work of such complexity – everything is carefully laid out and easy to read.’