The piano was a constant throughout Luciano Berio’s life. Not only is there a considerable quantity of early chamber music which makes use of it, but it assumes a truly important role in any number of his works. The earliest work on this recording is the Petite Suite, written when Berio was 22 years of age. In spite of its very traditional name, the Piano Sonata is one of his last works, completed in 2001 to a commission from the Zurich Festival, but arising from an earlier, brief work called Interlinea, written in 2000 for Pierre Boulez’s 75th birthday.

Stellar Italian pianist Matteo Bevilacqua makes his Grand Piano debut with this album of Berio’s complete piano works. He is joined by Luca Trabucco in the works for piano four hands Canzonetta and Torch. 2023 marks the 20th anniversary of Berio’s death.

REVIEW:

In 2007, Andrea Lucchesini recorded most of Berio’s piano music. He had the immediate advantage of having worked on this music with Berio. What differences are there then, in how these two fine virtuosi perform Berio?

Take Sequenza IV. Lucchesini plays in a more exciting, brilliant way, and total playing time for the piece is slightly faster in his hands than Bevilacqua's. The latter’s reading, not surprisingly, is more relaxed, less flashy and more reflective. Bevilacqua also uses the third pedal, producing a sort of random hidden melody. I also prefer the recording.

The Six Encores are stylistically quite contrasted, but meld together successfully. Again, Bevilacqua takes his time. Entirely appropriately, he brings out a feeling of dreamy impressionism in three encores, for example Erdenklavier.

The Petite suite gets its first recording here. It is not really a neo-classical work. but can be thought of as Bach re-imagined through the a Prokofiev lens. The piece is often witty, vibrant, and most enjoyable. This recording may help it find a secure way into the general repertoire.

Cinque variazioni is dedicated to another Luigi Dallapiccola. Such music seems quite out of fashion nowadays, but nonetheless, this is a captivating performance. This also applies to Rounds, perhaps the most pointillistic work of the set, a sort of half-way house between Webern and Stockhausen’s Klaverierstücke.

Andrea Lucchesini premiered the Piano Sonata in 2001. Bevilacqua gives a thrilling and sparkling interpretation, but suspect he has learned a little something from Lucchesini: he enables the more dreamy qualities to come to the fore where necessary. There is a gripping drama here which holds the attention.

Two four-hand duets, Canzonetta and Touch, cap the program. They are small in duration but large in scope. Luca Trabucco is Bevilacqua’s very able partner.

Ivan Moody’s booklet notes feature a very perceptive essay and descriptions of the music.

-- MusicWeb International (Gary Higginson)

Principal trombonist of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Jörgen van Rijen is also much in demand as a soloist with a special commitment to promoting his instrument. Various composers have written new pieces for him, including James MacMillan and Theo Verbey, whose works are included on the present release together with Luciano Berio’s SOLO for trombone and orchestra. The present recordings were made at concerts with the Concertgebouw Orchestra, conducted by Iván Fischer, Markus Stenz and Ed Spanjaard respectively. They have previously been showcased on three different discs on the RCO’s own Live Horizon label, and are gathered together here for the first time. The album therefore highlights the versatility of van Rijen as a musician, but also of his instrument as perceived and presented by three very different composers.

Japanese-Canadian pianist Yoko Hirota stuns with impeccable pianism on SMALL IS BEAUTIFUL: MINIATURE PIANO PIECES. Originally recorded in 2009, this remastered edition brings out the intricacies of 20th- and 21st-century piano composition with a clarity that was previously unheard of. The first half of the album's track list reads like an exhaustive compendium of 1900's compositional celebrities: Schoenberg, Krenek, Ligeti, Berio. It's a brainy choice: the tracks on SMALL IS BEAUTIFUL aren't ordered by length, as one might intuit, but instead in geographical and roughly chronological order. Vienna's modernists may have laid the foundation, but North America's modernists took serial and atonal composition to the next level. And so, to do the matter justice, there is a splendidly representative selection of Elliott Carter’s oeuvre, along with pieces by Canadian composers - John Beckwith. Despite the immense differences in cultural background and era – the selection spans almost a century, after all – they are all united by one distinguishing feature: They are short pieces, with lengths between 31 seconds and six-and-a-half minutes. Yoko Hirota, who holds a doctoral degree in piano performance and currently teaches the piano at the Music Department of Laurentian University in Ontario, Canada, plays all of these pieces with academic precision, regardless of their respective geographical or temporal provenance. A recording veteran with six previous contemporary albums under her belt, her grasp of the modernist zeitgeist is not only palpable, but extraordinary. And it shows: there is a subtle lyricism even where traditional harmonies clash, a sensitivity not just for the musical language of the era, but for the greater principles that underpin them. SMALL IS BEAUTIFUL doesn't just serve as an index of contemporary piano composition and its roots, it's a worthwhile addition to a modernist record collection on merit of Hirota's powerful interpretation alone.

Hailed as an “epic traversal of solo violin repertoire” and a “monumental achievement” (Chicago Tribune), American violinist Jennifer Koh’s complete Bach & Beyond recordings, pairing J.S. Bach’s violin sonatas and partitas with 20th- and 21st-century works inspired by Bach’s groundbreaking masterpieces, are now available in a convenient, economical boxed set offering all three albums for the price of two. Bach & Beyond Part 1 features Koh’s “alluring performances” (The New York Times) of Bach’s Partitas Nos. 2 and 3, Eugène Ysaÿe’s Sonata No. 2, Kaija Saariaho’s Nocturne, and the world-premiere recording of Missy Mazzoli’s Dissolve, O My Heart, commissioned for Koh by the Los Angeles Philharmonic. The Newark Star-Ledger cited the violinist’s “distinctive voice over a range of styles.” Toronto’s The Whole Note said of Bach & Beyond Part 2, “Koh, as always, is superb, her intelligence and interpretation always matching her outstanding technique” in Bach’s Sonata No. 1 and Partita No. 1, Bela Bartok’s Sonata for Solo Violin Sz. 117, BB 124, and Saariaho’s Frises. Koh’s Bach & Beyond Part 3 earned BBC Music Magazine’s and ClassicsToday.com’s highest ratings for performance and recording quality. The Strad admired Koh’s “eloquent, artful, yet unadorned playing” in Bach’s Sonatas Nos. 2 and 3, Luciano Berio’s Sequenza VIII, and the world-premiere recording of John Harbison’s For Violin Alone, written for Koh. AllMusic said, “Koh’s series is highly recommended to those in search of an experience that will reward repeated hearings.” Audiophile Audition called it a “remarkable three-disc effort, recommended to all with a good degree of urgency.”

Excerpts of reviews from previously released volumes included in this set:

Bach & Beyond, Part 1

Koh makes short work of the Bach pieces—not in a bad sense: she just nails these works with a confident technique and a free-flowing, un-mannered style that remains true to Bach yet reminds us that a modern violinist is at the helm. Although ostensibly “modern”, the works by Saariaho and Mazzoli still incorporate time-honored traditions of solo-violin writing and don’t stray into what some might call “experimental” territory. These are both very ingratiating and accessible works to anyone who appreciates interesting, involving, intelligently written new violin music.

– ClassicsToday.com (10/10)

Bach & Beyond, Part 2

Koh’s Bach is amazing as usual–so fluid and delivered with such a sensitively nuanced, confident authority. A personality emerges: is it Koh? is it Bach? It’s either or both, but ultimately, who cares? This is exceptional Bach playing. Throughout, Koh is in command, from the dazzling explications of the Bartók Fuga and Presto movements, to the sometimes frighteningly audacious dynamic and timbral assertions of the Saariaho.

– ClassicsToday.com (10/10)

American violinist Jennifer Koh’s Bach & Beyond Part 3 concludes her critically acclaimed series of recordings based on her groundbreaking, multi-season recital series of the same name that The New York Times has called “indispensable.” Koh, “a virtuoso with quirky and wonderful ideas” (San Francisco Chronicle), again pairs two of J.S. Bach’s landmark Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin with Bach-inspired 20th- and 21st-century works. On this series-finale album, Bach’s florid and fanciful Sonata No. 2 in A minor and Sonata No. 3 in C major, celebrated for its colossal Fuga movement, frame Luciano Berio’s expressive, chaconne-like Sequenza VIII and Pulitzer Prize winner John Harbison’s alluring For Violin Alone, a dance suite inspired by Bach’s partitas, written for Koh (a world-premiere recording).

REVIEW:

Jennifer Koh returns, with the third and final installment in her Bach & Beyond series. With Part 3, we have another two-disc program, framed by two Bach sonatas–No. 2 in A minor BWV 1003, and No. 3 in C major BWV 1005–and filled out by Luciano Berio’s 15-minute-plus Sequenza VIII and John Harbison’s For Violin Alone, composed in 2019 for Koh and here receiving its world-premiere recording. Koh’s Bach, as noted in my two previous reviews, is polished, passionate, and presented with requisite attention to notational detail, but also with a lived-in, well-thought-out sense of phrasing and melodic flow that arises from the score, from an understanding of the all-important harmonic underpinning–an approach practical and just a bit personal, but never with a hint of posturing.

For this series we especially appreciate how carefully and purposefully Koh has chosen her program partners. We’re not expecting direct stylistic similarity, of course–Bach joining hands with Berio and Harbison is not the point. Rather, what Koh is interested in is some manner of influence or inspiration, arising either in some indirect, complementary way from Bach (Harbison), or by means of a more symbolic, technically oriented tribute to the master’s revolutionary, matchless conceptions (Berio).

Berio’s focus is not Bach per se, but rather takes off, sets its trajectory, and develops its very specific “violinistic” gestures and effects from the well-laid platform of virtuoso solo-violin technique established by the German genius in his ground-breaking sonatas and partitas. There’s no direct reference to Bach, yet the liner notes reference Berio’s comments that this work “becomes inevitably a tribute to that musical apex that is the Ciaccona from J.S. Bach’s Partita in D minor where…past, present, and future violin techniques coexist.” Not surprisingly, this is not a sit-back-and-relax experience; it’s a sit forward and hear the not always “pretty” expressions and explorations of a modern composer putting an instrument through its paces.

Harbison’s For Violin Alone hews closer to solo-violin Bach, its six movements plus epilogue more suite than sonata, its structural elements and integral melodic and harmonic components providing the fertile material for often wide-ranging, albeit tonal, thematic exploration, single lines punctuated by pertinent double-stops that anchor the harmony. Koh is especially effective in the way she articulates these double-stop passages, notably one extended sequence at the end of “Ground”, and throughout Duet and Epilogue.

Ultimately, for me the takeaway from these programs is the ingenuity, the majesty, the audacity of Bach’s imagination and the un-improvable manner in which he realized it. Whatever comes after, by however accomplished a composer, owes a huge debt to Bach’s inimitable and totally original conceptualization and realization of the instrument’s technical and expressive capabilities. Throughout these first-rate performances, Koh takes her time, to the benefit of the music–no rushing, no gratuitous theatrics–and yet is fully capable of exploding into an energetic fury of bow and fingers that leaves you impressed with both the violin and Koh’s command of its unique voice and power.

– ClassicsToday.com (10/10; David Hurwitz)