Finnish pianist-composer Olli Mustonen’s recordings of Preludes and Fugues by Bach and Shostakovich were released in 1999 and 2004. “Perhaps only an artist as innovative and convincing as Mustonen could have made it work as well as it does,” wrote BBC Music Magazine of the first volume. Of the second, Gramophone wrote that “one cannot deny either the brilliance or imagination of his playing”. Mustonen boldly alternates between the composers’ works: Andrew McGregor wrote for the BBC that “it becomes harder to hear where Bach ends and Shostakovich begins, and less important to separate them … I recommend it without hesitation or reservation.” Mustonen’s 1998 recording of Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations “contains moments of absolutely spellbinding playing, with textures of wonderful clarity and a deeply imaginative approach to the music,” said BBC Music Magazine of an interpretation still considered iconoclastic today. It is reissued here along with a second disc of Beethoven featuring works including the E major sonata op. 109.

"The performances on these discs have one thing in common: they are almost shockingly direct, so that one hears the mind of the composer Hindemith working behind every note. Anyone used to the readings of Mozart’s K.428 and Beethoven’s Op. 96 by, say, the Busch or Smetana Quartets may feel a lack of colour and nuance here. ..And yet, if the listener is patient, much will be gained by attending carefully to this no-frills approach." (Tully Potter)

Volume 2 in Thomas Adès and the Britten Sinfonia's collaborative performances of the works of Beethoven and Barry; specifically the Beethoven Symphony Cycle and a selection of Barry’s works. This CD features Beethoven’s 4th, 5th and 6th symphonies, interspersed with Barry’s 'Viola Concerto' (featuring Lawrence Power) and piece for orchestra and bass 'The Conquest of Ireland' (featuring Johsua Bloom).

Gerald Barry grew up in rural Ireland. His music shows us how his upbringing had an effect on his compositional style - giving a piece a title such as Beethoven would suggest an attempt at emulating his legacy nearly two centuries after his death. Do not be fooled by this however; his music shows his major influence from radio, moving from the sublime and the ridiculous with carefree abandon. "...the most striking orchestral contribution to this year’s anniversary celebrations that’s come my way." (Presto Classical) "This set cuts pristine interpretations of Beethoven’s early symphonies with Gerald Barry’s 21st-century zesty homage ... Adès and the Britten Sinfonia present tightly knit performances [of the Beethoven Symphonies], and dynamic subtleties are largely preserved in the concert recordings." (BBC Music Magazine)

REVIEW:

Volume two of Thomas Adès’s Beethoven symphony cycle with added Gerald Barry continues to illuminate both composers. Under Adès, the Britten Sinfonia provide lean, though certainly not mean, performances of Beethoven’s middle three symphonies. There are a few scrappy moments, the wind almost getting ahead of themselves in the Fourth’s slow movement, but generally this is stylishly incisive Beethoven. Barry’s pieces are no mere filler.

– BBC Music Magazine

Both of these quartets are transcriptions of quintets for winds and piano by their respective composers but the links that bind them go much deeper. In the year after Mozart’s death, Beethoven began the draft of a work for the unusual instrumental ensemble of four wind instruments and piano. He was inspired by the similar work by Mozart, which had largely emancipated winds from their role in Harmoniemusik, employing them instead in the sophisticated ambience of chamber music. In this performance, following Beethoven’s own practice, the cadenzas in his quartet are improvised.

With this recording of chamber music composed by Beethoven at three key moments in his life, Alpha begins a collaboration with the WDR of Cologne and its various ensembles. Here a group of chamber musicians from the symphony orchestra presents the string quintets op.29 (1801) and op.104 (1817), thus linking Beethoven’s exuberant early period with that of the worry, discouragement and anguish caused by the conflict over custody of his nephew Karl. The album comes to a majestic conclusion with the Fugue, op.137 (1817).

“You don’t need a teacher; what you need is an audience.” Those were the words of the great pianist and teacher Alfred Cortot, after the young Rudolf Firkušný had auditioned for him in Paris. Born in southern Moravia in 1912, Firkušný and his mother moved to Brünn after the death of his father. The boy’s musical ability was already in evidence at the domestic piano, where he enthusiastically played by ear tunes that he had heard. A friend of the family accordingly recommended him to the local conservatory, whose teachers included Leoš Janácek. Firkušný’s relationship to Janácek and his works would do much to shape his international career. Janácek concentrated principally on music theory and composition. His career as a concert pianist began in London in 1933 and he was soon playing in the great centres of music across Europe. He travelled to New York in 1938 and went on to tour North and South America. The German occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1939 prompted him to take refuge in Paris, from where he travelled to the USA by way of Portugal in 1940. The persecution and expulsion of Jews from large parts of Europe resulted in a tremendous enrichment of American cultural life by Jewish émigrés. Under the direction of Erich Leinsdorf, the Metropolitan Opera soon assembled a Wagner ensemble of world-class singers; conductors like William Steinberg and George Szell placed their stamp upon orchestras with new repertoire, and the concert halls opened their doors to European soloists. A celebrated concert of 1941 in New York’s Town Hall gave Rudolf Firkušný his own opening to a successful career in the New World. This was further enhanced by his grand tour of South America in 1943 and showed no sign of abating when he returned to his native Czechoslovakia after the end of the war.



REVIEW:

Really special are the violin sonatas op. 120 Nos. 1 & 2 in the version for viola and piano, with violist William Primrose clearly dominating the interpretations. The various piano pieces are technically excellent. A highlight is the very sensitively played sonata by César Franck with the Vienna-born violinist Erica Morini, an artist who formed an ideal duo with Firkusny. Their performances of the Beethoven sonatas in this collection are excellent too. This box also contains only one of Beethoven’s concertos, the Fifth, in a grandiose, energetic and lean interpretation. Firkusny (1912-1994) plays brilliantly and with the greatest precision. But the superiority of the performance is ultimately due to the perfect collaboration between Firkusny and the conductor William Steinberg, who allows the Pittsburgh Symphony to play just as transparently and precisely with a springy, slender sound. Firkusny plays the Piano Sonatas No. 8 (Pathétique), 14 (Moonlight), 21 (Waldstein) with the greatest clarity and attention to detail, with little pedal, and it is certainly not bad to hear these works sometimes so objectively and yet excitingly. Profil’s collection also includes more or less inspired solo recordings of works by Schumann, Schubert, Mozart and Debussy, a very good Piano Sonata in B minor by Chopin, rich in details and sensitively played, as well as Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition played with bravura.

Really special are the violin sonatas op. 120 Nos. 1 & 2 in the version for viola and piano, with violist William Primrose clearly dominating the interpretations. The various piano pieces are technically excellent.

Another highlight is the very sensitively played sonata by César Franck with the Vienna-born violinist Erica Morini, an artist who formed an ideal duo with Firkusny. Their performances of the Beethoven sonatas in this collection are excellent too.

Firkusny's playing in the Beethoven Fifth is brilliant, exhibiting the greatest precision. But the superiority of the performance is ultimately due to the perfect collaboration between Firkusny and the conductor William Steinberg, who allows the Pittsburgh Symphony to play just as transparently and precisely with a springy, slender sound.

Firkusny plays the Piano Sonatas No. 8 (Pathétique), 14 (Moonlight), 21 (Waldstein) with the greatest clarity and attention to detail, with little pedal, and it is certainly not bad to hear these works sometimes so objectively and yet excitingly.

Profil’s collection also includes more or less inspired solo recordings of works by Schumann, Schubert, Mozart and Debussy, a very good Piano Sonata in B minor by Chopin, rich in details and sensitively played, as well as Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition played with bravura.

– Pizzicato (Remy Franck)

The custom of marking the name-day of Princess Esterhazy with a newly composed Mass began in the 1790s and for many years was carried out by Joseph Haydn. In 1807 Beethoven was commissioned and responded with his Mass in C major. Coolly received at court, it is a celebratory work of large-scale brilliance. The cantata Meeresstille und gluckliche Fahrt is set to Goethe’s poems and contrasts calm with exuberance. In 1803 Beethoven set two numbers from Vestas Feuer, written by Emanuel Schikaneder, the librettist of Mozart’s die Zauberflote.

In summer 1987, nine years after he first requested permission to emigrate, the 35-year-old Russian pianist Vladimir Feltsman was finally allowed to leave the Soviet Union. Feltsman, who had studied at the Moscow Conservatory with the legendary Yakov Flier and won first prize at the prestigious Long-Thibaud Competition in Paris at the age of 19, arrived in New York amid a welter of publicity. CBS Masterworks offered him a recording contract, while President Ronald Reagan welcomed him to the White House for a recital that was glowingly reviewed in the New York Times.

When Feltsman made his Carnegie Hall debut two months later, the Times hailed him as “an artist of wide musical interests who on this occasion included three pieces from Messiaen’s Vingt Regards sur l’Enfant Jésusto set off more popular works by Schubert and Schumann … Mr. Feltsman took an aptly spacious and relaxed approach to the first two movements [of Schubert’s A major Sonata D 664)] … He then let loose in the more brilliant Allegro finale with an impressive display of breathtaking scales … In the Messiaen, Mr. Feltsman drew out its great, clashing sonorities and made light of its technical terrors. At the conclusion of Schumann’sSymphonic Etudes, any lingering doubts about Mr. Feltsman’s pianistic strengths or artistic instincts were blown away.”

Interest in Feltsman’s pianism had already been piqued before the pianist set foot in the New World by a performance, released by CBS in 1986, of the Chopin Preludes recorded in Moscow. “Feltsman sweeps through the 24 Preludes with genuine poetic bravura,” wrote the Los Angeles Times. “There is a daring and Romantic fire in the playing which only add to the agony of his plight.”

Now Sony Classical is reissuing that Carnegie debut recital from 1987, a Russian Chopin recording that preceded it and an even earlier Schubert recital, from Paris in 1978, along with all the other Feltsman performances captured by CBS mics before his collaboration with the label ended in 1989. Among them are a live Liszt recital including the B minor Sonata and a live Rachmaninoff coupling of the Third Concerto andRhapsody on a Theme of Paganini with Zubin Mehta and the Israel Philharmonic: “Feltsman’s pianistic control compels admiration. He is a commanding player.” (Gramophone).

He also recorded the First and Third Tchaikovsky concertos with Washington’s National Symphony Orchestra under Mstislav Rostropovich, who, wrote Gramophone’s reviewer, “coaxes out playing of the very highest quality – rich-toned, idiomatic in inflexion, with just the right degree of thrust when required … [Feltsman’s] is a relatively laid back view of the First Concerto – no screaming in the outer movements, no flash-fingered shallowness in the central prestissimo of the slow movement. The big first movement cadenza is wonderfully fluid and continuous, and the transition into the following coda is a dream. There is much sensitive dialogue between piano and orchestra, well captured by the recording … a performance one can learn from, and the Third Concerto goes splendidly.”

Feltsman’s last CBS recording featured the first two Prokofiev Piano Concertos and ten pieces from Romeo and Juliet: “One has only to hear the refinement of colour he produces in ‘Romeo bids Juliet farewell’ … or the clarity and lightness of articulation in the First Concerto to realize that he possesses not only formidable fingers but very considerable artistry … The LSO under Michael Tilson Thomas produce excellent support … Again [in Concerto No. 2] there is splendid pianism from Feltsman and cultured playing from Tilson Thomas and the LSO.”

SET CONTENTS:

DISC 1:
Chopin: Préludes, Op. 28

DISC 2:
Schubert: Fantasy in C Major, Op. 15, D. 760 "Wanderer"    
Schubert: Moments musicaux, Op. 94, D. 780    

DISC 3:
Schubert: Sonata for Piano in A Major, Op. 120, D. 664    
Messiaen: Vingt regards sur L'enfant-Jésus    

DISC 4:
Schumann: Symphonic Études (Variations) in C-Sharp Minor, Op. 13    
Rachmaninoff: Prélude in G-Sharp Minor, Op. 32, No. 12    
Beethoven: 6 Variations on an Original Theme in D Major, Op. 76    

DISC 5:
Rachmaninoff: Piano Concerto No. 3 in D Minor, Op. 30    
Rachmaninoff: Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, Op. 43    
Conductor: Zubin Mehta
Performer: Israel Philharmonic Orchestra

DISC 6:
Prokofiev: Piano Concerto No. 1 in D-Flat Major, Op. 10    
Prokofiev: Piano Concerto No. 2 in G Minor, Op. 16 (1923 Version)    
Prokofiev: 10 Pieces from Romeo and Juliet, Op. 75: No. 10, Romeo and Juliet before Parting    
Conductor: Michael Tilson Thomas 
Orchestra: London Symphony Orchestra 

DISC 7:
Liszt: Sonata in B Minor
Liszt: Tre Sonetti di Petrarca
Liszt: St. Francis d'Assise: La predication aux oiseaux

DISC 8:
Tchaikovsky: Piano Concerto No. 1 in B-flat minor, Op. 23
Tchaikovsky: Piano Concerto No. 3 in E-flat Major, Op. 75: Allegro brillante
Conductor: Mstislav Rostropovich 
Orchestra: National Symphony Orchestra