Throughout history men have feared madwomen, burning them as witches, confining them in asylums and subjecting them to psychoanalysis – yet, they have also been fascinated, unable to resist fantasizing about them. For their new release, Carolyn Sampson and Joseph Middleton have created a programme that explores the responses of a variety of composers to women whose stories have left them vulnerable and exposed. As a motto they have chosen an aphorism by Nietzsche: ‘There is always some madness in love, but there is also always some reason in madness.’ Brahms’ Ophelia Songs, composed for a stage production of Hamlet, appear next to those by Richard Strauss and Chausson, while Ophelia's death is described by both Schumann (in Herzeleid) and Saint-Saëns. Goethe’s mysterious and traumatized Mignon appears in settings by Hugo Wolf as well as Duparc, while his ill-used Gretchen grieves by her spinning-wheel in Schubert's matchless setting. Sadness and madness tip into witchery and unbridled eroticism with Pierre Louÿs's poems about Bilitis, set by Kœchlin and Debussy. Sampson and Middleton end their recital as it began, with a suicide by drowning: in Poulenc’s monologue La Dame de Monte-Carlo, the elderly female protagonist has been unlucky at the gambling tables and decides to throw herself into the sea.

Pianist and music teacher Artur Balsam was born in Warsaw on February 8, 1906. He attended the Helena Kijenska-Dobkiewiczowa Conservatory (now Academy) of Music established at the beginning of the 20th century in the Polish city of Lodz. After that he went to the Hochschule für Musik in Berlin, where he continued his studies with Artur Schnabel. A mere 12 years elapsed between his concert debut in 1918 and his success at the 1930 Berlin International Piano Competition; shortly after winning that competition, he was awarded the Mendelssohn Prize for chamber music in 1931 in Munich. Balsam matured into a sought-after partner at the piano: having won the Mendelssohn Prize together with the violinist Roman Totenberg, he toured the USA the following year with the brilliant young Yehudi Menuhin. After the rise to absolute power in Germany of Adolf Hitler at the head of his Nazi party, Balsam emigrated to the United States. He settled in New York in 1940, made a name for himself on the American chamber music scene and was the favorite accompanist of many famous soloists, especially in the years from 1940 to the early Seventies of the last century. He frequently partnered the great violinists Nathan Milstein and David Oistrakh, also playing for Joseph (violin) and Lillian (viola) Fuchs, Leonid Kogan (violin), Zino Francescatti (violin), Pierre Fournier (cello) and Mstislav Rostropovich (cello). Balsam was the pianist of the NBC Symphony Orchestra under Arturo Toscanini for five years. He was also a piano soloist for other leading orchestras.

The present 10-album compilation illustrates Louis Kentner as a successful soloist, chamber musician and concert pianist. A highly gifted musician, Kentner studied from 1911 to 1922 at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest, attracting early attention in 1916 with a concert performance of Chopin. At the Music Academy, he studied piano with Arnold Székely, chamber music with Leó Weiner and composition with Hans Koessler and Zoltán Kodály. He made his official debut at the age of 15 (1920) and began concert tours of European cities, attracting particular attention for his interpretations of Chopin and Liszt. He won the Liszt Prize in Budapest and the Chopin Prize in Warsaw. In 1933, Kentner gave the first Hungarian performance of Béla Bartók’s Second Piano Concerto (conducted by Otto Klemperer); in London in 1946, the first performance in Europe of the composer’s Third Piano Concerto under Sir Adrian Boult. Bartók’s artistic oeuvre found a special place in Kentner’s heart.

REVIEW:

Profil’s 10-disc Louis Kentner collection offers a diverse, if somewhat skewed, representation of the Hungarian-born/London-based pianist’s large recorded output. Among his sessions with violinist Yehudi Menuhin included here, the 1961 Ravel Trio, 1954 Chausson concerto, the 1956/57 Brahms sonatas, and 1950 Walton sonata represent their collaboration at its equitable best. However, two entire CDs given over to their 1951 Bach sonatas capture Menuhin on raspy and intonationally tenuous form, notwithstanding Kentner’s sensitive contributions. On the other hand, Kentner’s Dvorák “Dumky” Trio with violinist Henry Holst and cellist Anothony Pini was the 78 era’s point of reference.

I like the genial interaction between Kentner, clarinetist Reginald Kell, and violist Frederick Riddle in Mozart’s wonderful “Kegelstatt” Trio, while the pianist’s intense and angular partnership with violinist Jeno Lener in Beethoven’s A major Op. 30 No. 1 sonata makes the music sound positively contemporary. Kentner’s otherwise run-of-the-mill 1959 Mozart C minor K. 491 concerto stands out for the pianist’s own harmonically wild first-movement cadenza. The 1958 Brahms B-flat concerto with Adrian Boult is riddled with slapdash articulation and glaring wrong notes from the soloist, compounded by slack ensemble elsewhere (the slow movement’s misaligned clarinet/piano in measures 59 and 61).

The day after presenting its European premiere, Kentner and Boult played Bartók’s Piano Concerto No. 3 in a BBC studio broadcast, first issued on CD by Pearl. Aside from the pianist’s momentary stumble in the final bars, Kentner offers a direct and clear reading of the piano part. Kentner’s 1930s and ’40s Liszt recordings generally make up in proficiency for what they lack in inspiration. For example, in La Leggierezza, Kentner almost always slows down before a climax, and generally keeps the left hand parked in neutral. The E-flat Paganini Etude’s descending octaves sound expertly rehearsed rather than demonic in the way of the great Horowitz and Arrau shellac versions. He brings brooding drama to the Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2’s opening section, but the “friska” doesn’t match the insouciance of Friedman or Moiseiwitsch.

While Kentner’s 1948 Liszt Sonata misses the fantasy and volatility of Cortot or Barerre, its clarity and classicism warrant respect. The same applies to Balakirev’s Islamey. In his pioneering Balakirev Sonata and the first of his two recorded Liapunov Transcendental Etudes cycles, Kentner’s tone opens up as his effortless fingers fuse bravura and poetry. Kentner is also on top form in Constant Lambert’s curious arrangement of Liszt’s Dante Sonata for piano and orchestra.

To sum up, Profil’s Kentner box offers undeniable attractions, not to mention its modest cost. But why waste two discs on Menuhin’s lousy Bach, when Kentner’s Chopin Scherzi and Ballades, 1963 Beethoven Hammerklavier, and 1963 EMI Liszt Années de Pèlerinage excerpts have yet to be reissued?

– ClassicsToday.com (Jed Distler)

Soirée captures the atmosphere of informal, domestic music-making. Czech star mezzo-soprano Magdalena Kožená offers an intimate and highly personal collection of international songs together with an outstanding group of musical friends, including Sir Simon Rattle, who makes his recording debut as a pianist. The German lied is represented by Brahms (Two Songs, Op. 91 and Five Ophelia Songs, WoO 22) and Strauss ("Morgen!"), the French chanson by Chausson (Chanson perpétuelle) and Ravel (Chansons madécasses), and 20th-century avant-gardism with Stravinsky’s Three Songs from William Shakespeare. In between these explorations, Kožená revisits her musical roots with a selection of Dvořák songs, arranged by Duncan Ward, as well as Janáček’s Nursery Rhymes.

Soirée is the second release of Magdalena Kožená’s exclusive collaboration with PENTATONE, after having presented the baroque cantatas recital album Il giardino dei sospiri in 2019.

REVIEW:

Kožená is very much at home in this repertoire. Her beautifully produced, glowing tone absorbingly catches the predominantly fleeting moods of these parlour songs. She is accompanied by a mix of seven instrumentalists, whose playing is first-rate; that includes Rattle in his recording debut as a pianist. Soirée was not recorded in the Rattle household but under studio conditions, using the renowned acoustics of Meistersaal, Berlin. The sound engineers for Pentatone provide remarkable clarity and satisfying balance on this hybrid SACD (I reviewed it on my standard player). In the booklet, Kožená gives a short foreword. The essay by James Parsons is helpful and easy to read. I am grateful for the full sung texts with English translations in the booklet.

Magdalena Kožená is at her most engaging in this exquisitely performed chamber collection of songs.

-- MusicWeb International

On this critically-acclaimed recording, Arabella Steinbacher brings together Bruch’s world famous First Violin Concerto with Chausson’s lush Poème and Korngold’s Violin Concerto, which is gradually gaining ground as a twentieth-century masterpiece. Steinbacher is joined by the Orquestra Gulbenkian under the baton of Lawrence Foster, with whom she has developed a congenial musical partnership over the years. BBC Music Magazine commented that “there is no doubting Steinbacher’s refulgent sound or the flair of her delivery” while MusicWeb International praised “the tingling climax of this Chausson.”

After a temporary absence, this album now returns to the physical market in an affordable Stereo re-issue. Arabella Steinbacher is a multiple award-winner with an extensive Pentatone discography spanning more than a decade. Lawrence Foster and the Orquestra Gulbenkian are also longstanding partners of the label.

Excerpt from review of the original SACD version of this release:

There is no doubting Steinbacher's refulgent sound or the flair of her delivery.

-- BBC Music Magazine

The late 19th century saw the expansion of the Neustadt; the German district of Strasbourg; recently listed as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO. Built during the same period; the three historic organs chosen for the complete recording of Johannes Brahms’ organ chorales are the precious witnesses to a time of exceptional artistic luxuriance. The three Fin de siècle composers whose works were additionally selected by Jean-Michel Douiller revive Brahms’s sonorous world as they breathe life into these three instruments: Ernest Chausson; Max Reger; and Gustav Busch. The works by Chausson and Busch are recorded for the very first time on the CD at hand.

Capriccio continues to celebrate its 40th anniversary with this retrospective of some of the greatest instrumental recordings in its catalog. The keyboard mavens: Ton Koopman in Bach-Senior, the great Christine Schornsheim in Bach-Sons Concertos, and Tzimon Barto, the muscular master of the soft touch, in Brahms. Wind-aces Burkhard Glaetzner (oboe), Eckart Haupt (flute), and Reinhold Friedrich (trumpet) playing baroque and classical period masters. The trusty Petersen Quartet and the inquisitive Linos Ensemble, who have always been an essential element of the repertoire exploration that soon became Capriccio’s hallmark, and the arch-musician Tabea Zimmermann and Vladimir Spivakov representing true highlights among the high strings. A generous and tasty synopsis of what this plucky label is about!