Ivan Ilic came across these transcriptions, scarcely known at all, through the most unlikely and serendipitous sequence of events. Carl David Stegmann (1751 – 1826) was a tenor, keyboard player, conductor, and composer, who worked mostly in the field of opera. Employed by the Court Theatre in Mainz (where he sang in the first German-language production of Don Giovanni), he also gave a number of acclaimed performances in Frankfurt. Trained as an organist, he made transcriptions of string quintets by Mozart and Beethoven’s Trios, Op. 9 as well as keyboard transcriptions of twenty-five of Haydn’s symphonies. Ivan Ilic writes: ‘It is unclear to me whether these transcriptions were ever meant to be played as concert repertoire, in public. Nevertheless, the enthusiasm I have encountered wherever I have played them has persuaded me to make this recording, to allow more people to hear Stegmann’s idiomatic arrangements.’

"Bavouzet’s Haydn is unmatched in its zest and its wit. But it is also substantial, informed and deeply rewarding."

--The New York Times on Bavouzet's Haydn Sonatas cycle, 2022

This is Volume 4 in Jean-Efflam Bavouzet’s project to record the complete piano sonatas of Haydn. The last volume in the series was a Critic’s Choice in Gramophone, an Instrumental Choice in BBC Music, Editor’s Choice in Classic FM, and Recording of the Month in MusicWeb International.

In the words of Bavouzet himself: ‘Each volume of this ambitious, extended project will arrive over the years like a postcard, dispatched during my travels with scant respect for chronological considerations, but undertaken with the greatest passion for trying to convey as vividly as possible to twenty-first-century ears the boundless treasures of this sublime music.’

Jean-Efflam Bavouzet received a BBC Music Award in 2012 and a Gramophone Award in 2011 for his recording of works by Debussy and Ravel (with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Yan Pascal Tortelier). His recording of Bartók’s Concertos (with Gianandrea Noseda and the BBC Philharmonic) was short-listed for a Gramophone Award, and he has won multiple awards for his recording of the complete works for solo piano by Debussy.

REVIEWS

Bavouzet doesn’t disappoint. He leans towards passion...but melancholy also surfaces through rubato, embellished repeats, control of line, pace and dynamics. This is a performance of stature with not a trace of the slick superficiality that mars matters elsewhere.

--Gramophone

These are marvelous works: every one of them has something inspired to capture your attention. In Sonata No. 38, that would have to be the central Adagio, one of those touchstone classical melodies that seem to sum up all that was most beautiful in 18th century music. Sonata No. 40 has only two movements, an intricate opening Moderato and a charming concluding Minuet.

Like No. 38, Sonata No. 30 is a substantial work in three movements[.] Bavouzet’s aptly spiky articulation of the main theme reminds us that Haydn’s early sonatas were likely composed with the harpsichord in mind, but they lose nothing (and gain much) from being played on a modern piano. This program also includes the moody Variations in F minor. Bavouzet’s interpretation is aptly pre-romantic...Haydn’s original, shorter cadenza/coda, without that astonishing tragic eruption that vaults the music forward into the 19th century...Haydn lovers are in keyboard heaven.

--ClassicsToday.com (David Hurwitz)

"Bavouzet’s Haydn is unmatched in its zest and its wit. But it is also substantial, informed and deeply rewarding."

--The New York Times on Bavouzet's Haydn Sonatas cycle, 2022

We have now reached Volume 5 in Jean-Efflam Bavouzet’s project to record the complete piano sonatas of Haydn. This series has been going from strength to strength, every volume receiving consistently excellent reviews.

Haydn composed his solo keyboard sonatas between c. 1750 and 1795, during the period in which the piano was gradually taking the place of the harpsichord. The early sonatas are mostly short, light, and ‘easy’, tailored for amateur musicians and students. After 1765 Haydn composed several sonatas the scope and depth of which are completely new. Over a six- or seven-year period Haydn produced a sequence of ambitious sonatas of a difficulty that resulted in their being poorly circulated. In this latest volume of Haydn’s piano sonatas, Jean-Efflam Bavouzet again chooses a range of sonatas, planned to provide a balanced program characterised by different moods and temperaments.

He explains: ‘This is a long-term endeavour, in which, as the years go by, each album will be like a postcard sent from my journey. Although this journey does not greatly respect chronological considerations, it is being undertaken with the greatest passion so as to try and bring the limitless treasures of this sublime music to life as vividly as possible in our twenty-first-century ears.’ The previous volumes have elicited such comments as ‘A recording worth rushing to the shops for. Bavouzet plays these inventive masterpieces with real love’ (Classic FM on Volume 3) and ‘This series is turning into a real classic: Jean-Efflam Bavouzet has an infectious sense of witty fun that underlies so many of Haydn’s inventions’ (The Observer on Volume 4).

REVIEWS

This is the fifth volume of Haydn Piano Sonatas by Jean-Efflam Bavouzet. I’ve collected all the volumes so far, and with each successive one, Bavouzet goes from strength to strength. All the elements are present - elegance, wit, stylish phrasing and crisp and incisive playing. Formidable technique and musicianship enable him to realize his vision. Chandos’ sound quality is enhanced by a sympathetic acoustic, enabling the listener to discern every nuance and detail.

--MusicWeb International (Stephen Greenbank)

Bavouzet singles out the first movement of Sonata No. 12 for its purity and simplicity, and it is exquisite—and exquisitely played. He became so fascinated with the minor-key trio of the minuet that he included his own musings on it, at much slower tempo, as a bonus track. This isn’t a gimmick. It is fascinating to see an artist become so deeply engaged with the music, particularly music usually so taken for granted or ignored.

The first three sonatas here, Nos. 12, 15, and 37 have three movements, but not necessarily in the obvious fast-slow-fast form, as the opening Andante of No. 12 reveals. The remaining three, Nos. 54-56 (Hob. 41-43) have two movements each...The largest movement here is the opening Andante con espressione of the D major Sonata (No. 56), which lasts more than eight minutes and contains a world of feeling.

In short, these are lovely works, and Bavouzet’s thoughtfulness, dedication to the cause, and immaculate technique are everywhere in evidence, just as they have been on previous releases in this series. Try this disc. It will make you feel young, or keep you that way if you already are.

--ClassicsToday.com (David Hurwitz)

The Seven Last Words of Christ refers to the seven short phrases uttered by Jesus on the cross, as gathered from the New Testament. Over the centuries the crucifixion has served as inspiration to countless composers, and settings of these utterances have become something of a subgenre, beginning in the Renaissance with early motets and continuing into our own time. By way of Cesar Franck and Sofia Gubaidulina, composers ranging from Heinrich Schutz to Tristan Murail have contributed versions using various combinations of voice and/or instruments. One of the best known of these settings is probably the one by Joseph Haydn. The one – or rather the four… A rather complicated story begins in 1785, when Haydn received a commission from Cadiz in Spain, at the other end of Europe. He was asked to compose seven slow movements, each ca 10 minutes long, to be played by an orchestra in alternation with the priest expounding on each of the seven words. Relishing this unusual challenge, Haydn accepted and ended up so pleased with the result that he immediately made a version for string quartet as well as authorising another one for keyboard. The work became so popular across Europe that ten years later the music was used one final time, in an oratorio for choir and orchestra. The work is here heard in the version for keyboard, performed by the French pianist Nicolas Stavy. He closes the disc with another unusual work in Haydn’s oeuvre, the Andante con variazioni, Hob. XVII/6, which has been described as ‘the deepest and most profound set of variations for piano composed between Bach and Beethoven’.

Growing up in Vienna, with its great Lied tradition, Hans Gál had written about 100 songs before leaving secondary school. He later destroyed them, along with all his other works composed prior to 1910, but between 1910 and 1921 he wrote many more. Except for the five songs of Op. 33, these were never published, and Gál himself would later refer to them as ‘laid aside’. Many of these songs were publicly performed at the time, however, often with the composer at the piano. Through the initiative of Christian Immler and Helmut Deutsch, 26 of the ‘laid-aside’ songs are now being made available to a modern audience. A labor of love for the performers, the project has had the support of the composer’s family – in fact the recording was produced by Hans Gál’s grandson, Simon Fox-Gál. The songs provide a missing link in Gál’s creative development, and show him engaging with a wide variety of poets, extending back from the twelfth-century (Walther von der Vogelweide) to contemporaries, such as Hermann Hesse and Richard Dehmel, by way of the classics (Heine, Mörike). Reflecting a taste for the exotic which was fashionable at the time, the selection also includes settings of poems by Rabindranath Tagore. The performers close their recital with the Op. 33 set, the only songs that Hans Gál did publish during his long career.

REVIEW:

This is a treasure-trove of songs in the tradition of Richard Strauss, melodically radiant and full of sensitivity to atmosphere. Immler is ideally suited to them, with expansive, radiant tone and splendid diction; Helmut Deutsch sets his peerless pianism at the disposal of composer and singer.

– BBC Music Magazine

Paganini’s violin, the legendary ‘il Cannone’, made by Giuseppe Guarneri del Gesù in 1743, is one of the most important musical instruments in the history of Western music. Paganini was the greatest virtuoso of his time, acclaimed throughout Europe and an inspiration to performers and composers alike. On his death, he bequeathed ‘il Cannone’ to his home city of Genoa, where it is permanently housed under high security in the Town Hall. It has been heard on record just a handful of times. Francesca Dego was given the honor of recording with it after the success of her first performance on the instrument, in October 2019, when she was invited to play Paganini’s First Violin Concerto at the Paganini Celebratory Concert at Teatro Carlo Felice, in Genoa. Francesca Dego comments: ‘Spending a few enchanted days recording with this priceless treasure was unforgettable. I was overwhelmed when I was first handed the instrument that had caressed the ears of Schumann, Schubert, Goethe, Rossini, Bellini, Berlioz, Chopin, Heine, and so many more. I remember standing in that very room as a young girl, hypnotized, staring at history behind glass, fingers tingling at the thought of touching it. And suddenly there I was, holding Paganini’s violin. I feel so privileged to be able to share the soul of ‘il Cannone’ in a new recording. I remember thinking long and hard about the ideal programme and carefully selecting a series of works paying homage to Paganini. The ‘Cannon’ has pretty much only ever been used to record music by Paganini, so the idea of its celebrated tone teaming up with composers who idolized the Italian virtuoso throughout history is really exciting to me!’

REVIEWS:

Dego has an expressive touch, skittering over the strings, yet finding plenty of attack in Szymanowski’s Trois Caprices. Corigliano’s Red Violin Caprices are at times spellbinding, descending into a guttural, harried chase. Leonardi accompanies sensitively throughout.

– BBC Music Magazine

If you’re keen to hear Paganini’s favourite plaything (or favourite fourstringed one, at any rate), performed with technical finesse and strong musicality while shown off by suitably polished engineering, then this amply does that job.

– Gramophone

The Brodsky Quartet here turns to the sunshine, bright colors, and deep passions of the South, performing Latin-inspired music for string quartet by composers who all possessed a strong connection to the “South” -- whether the Mediterranean or South America. Favorites and rarities are arm-in-arm, from Paganini’s famed Capricci to chamber gems from composers we think of today only in regard to operatic works. The expert and passionate ministrations of the Brodsky Quartet bring these works to dazzling life.

The Philadelphia-based baroque orchestra Tempesta di Mare here reveals an unparalleled musical legacy, presenting long forgotten works by the German baroque composer Johann Gottlieb Janitsch, confined for centuries to unexamined archives. The works formed part of an enormous music collection which belonged to Sara Levy, the great-aunt of Felix Mendelssohn. She was a distinguished harpsichordist, collector, and influential figure in the musical life of late-eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century Berlin. Removed from the Berlin Sing-Akademie towards the end of World War II, her musical library was for many decades considered lost or destroyed. It was unearthed in Kiev only in 1999 and returned to Germany in 2001, where it is now again accessible to the public. While there can be no doubt that the instrumental oeuvre of Janitsch matched the diversity of that of some of his more prominent Berlin colleagues, the emphasis of his compositional output lay on chamber music, especially Quadros, four of which are featured here. The typical, prevailing dialogic structure of the Ouverture grosso highlights the influence which thematic play had on the rest of his work.

The music of Michael Jarrell has been said to “examine states of dream and unreality, searching for a moment of truth” – a truth which is often found in the lowest sonorities and slowest tempi, a place where time stands still. His works are often interrelated, not only by a certain sensitivity or a distinctive tone, but also by the recurrence of particular features that he reworks in different contexts. The present disc combines two recent concertos, each of them performed by its dedicatee. In July 2019, three years after they gave the first performance of Émergences-Résurgences, Tabea Zimmermann rejoined l’Orchestre National des Pays de la Loire and Pascal Rophé in order to record the work. In the liner notes Jarrell describes his method in the concerto in visual terms: ‘Curves, colors, chiaroscuro or strong lines; I tried to integrate a pictorial dimension into the scheme of this piece…’ Jarrell’s fourth violin concerto, 4 Eindrücke, is even more recent, and was first performed in 2019 in Tokyo’s Suntory Hall by Renaud Capuçon and Pascal Rophé conducting. As suggested by its title, the work is in four contrasting movements, of which the second stands out in that the soloist plays only pizzicato throughout. Framed by the two concertos is an orchestral work from 2009 which takes its title from Lucretius: ‘the sky, recently so clear, suddenly becomes horribly murky’. Although the work lacks a programme as such, the title paints in words the abrupt contrast between what the composer describes as ‘great expressive violence’ and an atmosphere that is ‘gentle, calm and full of inwardness’.

Vienna around 1900 was a melting-pot in several ways: a city attracting artists from the entire Austro-Hungarian Empire where bohemian writers and musicians rubbed shoulders with aristocrats and establishment figures, and where late-Romanticism co-existed uneasily with the Wiener Moderne aesthetic of the fin-de-siècle. In the visual arts, Jugendstil (or Wiener Secession) was all the rage: its curlicues, floral patterns and fluid lines were seen everywhere – in architecture, interior design and graphic arts. In music, the term is usually associated with composers such as Mahler, Zemlinsky and Korngold, but also early works by Alban Berg and Arnold Schoenberg. Following on three previous acclaimed recital albums on BIS, Camilla Tilling and Paul Rivinius have devised a programme with songs by these very composers, written between 1898 and 1916. The songs range from the Einfache Lieder by a teenaged Korngold to Zemlinsky’s set of Walzer-Gesänge based on Tuscan folk poems and the much-loved Rückert-Lieder by Mahler. Schoenberg is represented by his Op. 2 collection 4 Lieder and his student Berg by the set of Sieben frühe Lieder, from 1905–08.