James Rhodes has no formal academic musical education or dedicated mentoring. The title of the debut album “Razor Blades Little Pills and Big Pianos”, hints at the suffering that dogged Rhodes’s childhood and early adult life. Classical music became his solace and key to his survival. It was Bach, Beethoven and Chopin, not Faith Hope and Charity, that offered comfort. In 1993, mental health issues stopped him taking up a scholarship to the Guildhall. Suffering further setbacks due to health issues it was not until 2008, when Rhodes met his present manager, Denis Blais, that he was encouraged to record his first album. This enabled him to bare his soul and put many of the ghosts of the past to rest. With Blais, Rhodes also created a distinctive and unique approach to how the classical piano repertoire should be presented. Uncomfortable with the austere and traditional ‘white tie and tails’ recital they decided it was time for the performer to communicate directly with the audience. Rhodes was going to introduce his own programme notes and share what it takes to perform these works of art using fascinating anecdotes about the composers and his own life experience. Delivered in his unique trademark stand-up style he creates an immersive experience that has won him and classical music a dedicated new following. His new album, presented here, shows the same no-holds-barred approach to these time-honored classics.

Traditionally, Switzerland has an important and impressive heritage regarding festivals for classical music, among them the famous Lucerne Festival, rooting back to the so-called "Concert de Gala" in the gardens of Richard Wagner's villa at Tribschen in 1938 conducted by Arturo Toscanini. This release features the fascinating variety and the many facets of the classical festival scene in Switzerland. The selection of the works takes the importance of big names and well known works into account, but also presents modern or even avant-garde approaches or less well known chamber music works.

The world’s leading orchestras, conductors and soloists, outstanding concert venues like the KKL Culture and Convention Centre by the renowned architect Jean Nouvel in Lucerne, a breathtaking landscape: there are many reasons for falling in love with the Swiss music festivals. The Swiss festivals now draw more than 500,000 classical music enthusiasts to the shores of Lake Lucerne or the Verbier mountains every year. And the numbers of visitors is growing from year to year. With this release, you will understand why.

CONTENTS:

DISC 1:
Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. 3 in C Minor, Op. 37    
Francesco Piemontesi, piano
Chamber Orchestra of Europe / Roger Norrington, conductor

Mozart: Symphony No. 39 in E-Flat Major, K. 543    
Francesco Piemontesi, piano
Le Cercle de L'Harmonie / Jérémie Rhorer, conductor

DISC 2:
Mozart: Symphony No. 40 in G Minor, K. 550    
Mozart: Symphony No. 41 in C Major, K. 551, "Jupiter"    
Le Cercle de L'Harmonie / Jérémie Rhorer, conductor

DISC 3:  
Elgar: Introduction and Allegro, Op. 47  
Schumann Quartett
CHAARTS Chamber Artists 
Felix Froschhammer, concert master

Kancheli: Chiaroscuro for Violin and Orchestra    
Sebastian Bohren, violin
CHAARTS Chamber Artists
Andreas Fleck, conductor

Schumann:
Dein Angesicht, Op. 127 No. 2    
Lehn' deine Wang' an meine Wang', Op. 142 No. 2    
Es leuchtet meine Liebe, Op. 127 No. 3    
Mein Wagen rollet langsam, Op. 142 No. 4    
Ian Bostridge, tenor
Saskia Giorgini, piano

Ralph Vaughan Williams: On Wenlock Edge: V. Bredon Hill    
Ian Bostridge, tenor
Casal Quartett

Purcell: The Fairy Queen, Z. 629: O Let Me Weep    
Regula Mühlemann, soprano
Robin Müller, violin
CHAARTS Chamber Artists

DISC 4:  
Brahms: Piano Trio No.1, Op. 8    
Jonian-Ilias Kadesha, violin
Vashti Hunter, cello
Joonas Ahonen, piano

Blum: Luzerner Kreisel    
Silke Gäng, mezzo-soprano
Oliwia Grabowska, piano

Gesualdo: Madrigals, Libro 6: II. Beltà poi che t'assenti    
Davos Festival Kammerchor

Dalbavie: Palimpseste für Flöte, Klarinette, Violine, Viola, Violoncello und Klavier    
Àgnes Vass, flute
Joonas Ahonen, piano

Dickkopf: Paris    
Davos Festival Männerchor

DISC 5:
Beethoven: Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 61    
Lily Francis, violin
Festival Orchestra / Willem de Bordes, conductor

Enescu: Romanian Rhapsodies, Op. 11: No. 1 in A Major 
Jonian-Ilias Kadesha, violin
Festival Orchestra / Daniel Bard, concert master

DISC 6:  
Beethoven: Piano Trio No. 5 in D Major, Op. 70 No. 1 "Ghost"    
Candida Thompson, violin
Xenia Jankovic, cello
Paolo Giacometti, piano

Enescu: Octet in C Major, Op. 7    
Daniel Bard, violin

DISC 7:  
Bach: Jesu, meine Freude, BWV 227    
Britten: Hymn to St. Caecilia
Gabrieli Consort & Players
Paul McCreesh, conductor

DISC 8:  
Mozart: Requiem in D Minor, K. 626    
Elgar: They Are at Rest
Gabrieli Consort & Players
Paul McCreesh, conductor

DISC 9:  
Haydn: Symphony No. 6 in D Major, Hob. I:6 "Le Matin"    
CHAARTS Chamber Artists  
Gregory Ahss, concert master

Sollima: Fecit Neap 17
Giovanni Sollima, cello
CHAARTS Chamber Artists  
Gregory Ahss, concert master

Schönberg: Verklärte Nacht, Op. 4    
Felix Froschhammer, violin
Gregory Ahss, violin
Lawrence Power, viola
Razvan Popovici, viola
Maximilian Hornung, cello
Andreas Fleck, cello  

DISC 10: 
Webern: Sechs Stücke für großes Orchester, Op. 6    
Orchestra of the Lucerne Festival Academy / Susanna Mälkki, conductor 

Neuwirth: Trurliade - Zone Zero
Victor Hanna, percussion
Orchestra of the Lucerne Festival Academy / Susanna Mälkki, conductor 

Rihm: Gruss-Moment für Pierre Boulez
Ligeti: San Francisco Polyphony
Orchestra of the Lucerne Festival Academy / Matthias Pintscher, conductor

DISC 11: 
Shostakovich: From Jewish Folk Poetry, Op. 79  
Shostakovich: Cello Sonata in D Minor, Op 40    
Rachmaninoff: Cello Sonata in G Minor, Op. 19    
Bloch: From Jewish Life, IEB 6
Sol Gabetta, violin
Bertrand Chamayou, piano

DISC 12:  
Mahler: Symphony No. 5    
UBS Verbier Festival Orchestra / James Levine, conductor

DISC 13: 
Bach: Concerto for 4 Keyboards in A Minor, BWV 1065    
Martha Argerich, piano
Evgeny Kissin, piano
James Levine, piano
Mikhail Pletnev, piano

Haydn: Symphony No. 88 in G Major, Hob. I:88    
Verbier Festival Chamber Orchestra / András Schiff, conductor

Rachmaninoff: Cello Sonata in G Minor, Op. 19    
Lynn Harrell, cello
Yuja Wang, piano

Ysaye: Sonata for 2 Violins in A Minor, Op. posth.
Joshua Bell, violin
Leonidas Kavakos, violin

When the ORFEO label was established in Munich 40 years ago, few would have predicted that the record company would develop into a firmly established player in the classical music market. One of the label’s priorities in the early years was vocal music, with opera rarities top of the list and, since the mid 1980s, the re-use of historic tape recordings. Big names featured on the label’s own productions, while ORFEO also developed into a talent factory for discovering and nurturing young artists. This Legendary Pianists 10-disc boxed set continues the series marking ORFEO’s 40th anniversary and features nine pianists in historical and modern recordings dating from the 1950s to the 2000s.

REVIEW:

This edition should be quite intriguing to collectors who surely will find a set of names quite different from what they might have chosen. It does not claim to be definitive; a collection, not the collection. There are ten CDs in the box featuring nine artists recorded live or recorded for broadcast, giving a sense of hearing an actual performance that contributes a heightened sense of you-are-there. Repertoire consists of mainly concertos from Bach to Brahms, via Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert and Schumann. Also, a handful of variations, etc. This is a most attractive collection of pure pleasure.

-- The Whole Note

But for Kempff at his most unbridled you need to hear 1956 WDR Cologne radio recordings of Beethoven’s Op 111 and Schumann’s Fantasie, where bass chords are augmented and the sense of uplift is so acute that you could as well be listening to Schnabel, Cortot, or Fischer live. The disc is one of 10 in Orfeo’s Legendary Pianists, which opens with the player Furtwängler described as ‘the troubadour of the piano’, Géza Anda, who fits that description like a glove in Beethoven’s First Concerto recorded in Munich under Rafael Kubelík, whereas Brahms’s Second Concerto with the same artists fans the flames with consistent intensity, the second movement especially. In the same collection, Gulda plays concertos by Beethoven and Schumann, a rather brittle-sounding Oleg Maisenberg is compelling in Schubert (including the Wanderer Fantasy), Konstantin Lifschitz brings a Gouldian tautness to the seven Bach keyboard concertos (greatly extending the cadenza in BWV1052’s finale), Carl Seemann is characteristically considered in Mozart’s Concertos K449 and 503, Gerhard Oppitz plays Brahms’s Third Sonata (the second movement being significantly broader than on his RCA recording) and we’re given the Third and Fifth Beethoven Concertos from the cycle that Rudolf Serkin and Kubelík recorded in 1977, a much-underrated set.

-- Gramophone

To this day, Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 is one of the most popular pieces of classical music in the world. But what is it about this global hit? The film charts the success of the symphony around the globe and encounters passionate amateur musicians and musical personalities. Watch as Greek conductor Teodor Currentzis works on Beethoven’s Ninth with his ensemble, MusicAeterna. Follow Chinese composer and Oscar winner Tan Dun as he creates a new composition inspired by the great Beethoven symphony. Experience the Orchestre Symphonique Kimbanguiste in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, as they play the Ninth. Visit a favela in Brazil, where Beethovens’s music helps people get off the streets. Be amazed as a choir of 10,000 in Japan sings the final chorus of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, with great enthusiasm. Learn how Paul Whittaker helps make Beethoven accessible for deaf people. And find out how British DJ Gabriel Prokofiev performs a symphonic remix of Beethoven’s Ninth.

Born July 10, 1923, in Tiflis (later named Tbilisi), Georgia, Rudolf Kerer (also spelled Kehrer) was descended from Swabian immigrants and grew up within the Pietist community in Georgia. He began piano studies at six, and by twelve qualified for the gifted class at the Tbilisi Conservatory. In 1938, he performed in public Tchaikovsky's first Piano Concerto. In October 1941, Kerer and his surviving family were deported as enemy aliens to Kazakhstan. Without a piano, he devised a “table piano,” a table on which he painted a keyboard, so he could “practice.” By 1949-at 26-he had given up his dream of a musical career but in 1954, in Uzbekistan, he was accepted at the state conservatory as a student in the class of Zelma Slonim-Tamarkina. Three years later, Kerer graduated, and began teaching piano in Tashkent. Four years later, in 1961, he competed in the second All-Union Competition in Moscow and won the first prize. Following this winning, Kerer became a professor at the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory. He performed throughout the Soviet Union but was not allowed to concertize abroad. In 1988, at 65, he was allowed to serve on the jury of the Beethoven competition in Vienna. He remained there to teach at the Musikhochschule for eight years. Later, he moved to live in Zurich, where he died on October 29, 2013. This release hears him performing some of music’s most beautiful piano concertos and sonatas.

As a master student of Arnold Schönberg, Walter Goehr was particularly fond of New Music, but as a conductor he devoted himself to compositions from previous centuries. The present recording of a concert from 1955 with Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, which he recorded with the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra and Chorus, documents that he did this very successfully. Goehr was born in Berlin, but, being a Jewish man, he was forced to seek employment outside of Germany after working for Berlin Radio in 1932. He was invited to become music director for the Gramophone Company, and thus moved to London. It was during this time he conducted the London Philharmonic Orchestra in the premiere recording of Bizet’s Symphony in C. He was in high demand as a guest conductor for orchestras all across Europe, including the ensemble heard in this historic recording.

Tamsin Waley-Cohen and Huw Watkins return with the start of a Beethoven Violin Sonata Cycle – here recording the 1st, 5th and 8th sonatas. Gramophone Magazine said “The heart gives a little leap at the prospect of...a duo as engaging and intelligent as Tamsin Waley-Cohen and Huw Watkins.” This cycle is sure to be one of the highlights of Signum’s year, as well as of Beethoven 250. Beethoven’s twelve violin sonatas add up to a comprehensive exploration of the possibilities and potential of writing for the two instruments on equal terms – possibilities that he was ideally placed to understand. The three sonatas on this recording are waypoints on a journey, crafted by a composer who was both violinist and pianist, and who never ceased exploring the practical possibilities of the instruments for which he wrote.

REVIEW:

Their complementary personalities meet most harmoniously in the Spring Sonata’s Adagio, where Watkins draws an appealing, fortepiano-like resonance from the piano and Waley-Cohen’s phrasing taps the music’s pastoral roots. Each of the three sonatas inhabits its own costume, made to measure.

–Gramophone (Editor's Choice, August 2020)

“The pupil Beethoven was here!” – the young piano virtuoso Ignaz Moscheles caught sight of this sentence in block letters on a note in the house of his teacher Antonio Salieri, Kapellmeister to the Viennese court. “A man like Beethoven still has something to learn from somebody like Salieri? How much more do I!” thought the fourteen-year-old acolyte of the arts and ardent admirer of Beethoven. It is indeed noteworthy that Beethoven, who by 1808 was already widely acknowledged as a genius, was still ready to take advice from Salieri. The two musicians must first have met in the mid-1790s; Beethoven made his first appearance as a soloist in Vienna in March 1795 with a piano concerto of his own that Salieri conducted. He was already known as a virtuoso and instrumental composer, but had yet to make his mark in the prestigious genre of opera. Beethoven began at that time to pursue his goal of employment in the operatic sphere and was evidently aware of his relative lack of experience in the field of vocal music. Salieri for his part was Vienna’s unchallenged authority on the subject and had been so for decades. The sociable and well connected maestro never charged his students, and Beethoven made good use of the offer of free lessons over the years. He thanked Salieri for his generosity by dedicating his op. 12 Violin Sonatas to him and by composing a set of variations on a Duettino from Salieri’s opera Falstaff ossia Le tre burle.

Around 1800 Vienna was, alongside Paris, one of the European centers for guitar performance. The instrument was well suited for the idiom of Viennese classicism and ideal for domestic music-making and it was promoted by figures such as the virtuoso Mauro Giuliani and the composer/publisher Anton Diabelli. But Beethoven, the towering giant of musical Vienna, seems to have been unmoved by the charms of the guitar – while instead composing for its sibling, the mandolin. Duo Halász, the husband and wife team of Franz and Débora Halász have now rectified this, by appropriating Beethoven’s four extant pieces for mandolin and piano (WoO?43 and 44) as well as adapting some other early compositions, including the Serenade in D major for flute and piano and the Variations on Mozart’s ‘Se vuol ballare’ for violin and piano. In doing so they follow the example of an eminent guitarist and contemporary of Beethoven, namely Ferdinando Carulli, whose 1825 arrangement of the Variations on Mozart’s ‘Ein Mädchen oder Weibchen’ closes the programme. Franz and Débora Halász have made a number of recordings for BIS, together and separately, to critical acclaim, including a Latin Grammy Award for their disc Alma Brasileira with chamber works by Radamés Gnattali.