The expressive immediacy of Aram Khachaturian's music, with its sensuous melodic writing, vibrant orchestration and rhythmic drive, resulted in a popularity equaled by few composers of his generation. Composed in 1936, the Piano Concerto was the work that established Khachaturian’s name. Cast in the customary three movements, it is scored for a sizable orchestra, with notable contributions from both side-drum and military drum in the percussion section. In the second movement there is also an extensive solo for a so-called ‘flexatone’; it is often put forward that Khachaturian in fact intended the part to be played on the musical saw, as it is on the present recording. Thirty years after the Concerto, the composer returned to the genre with his Concerto-Rhapsody for piano and orchestra. This time the score offers prominent roles for the xylophone, marimba and vibraphone, which contribute towards making this one of the composer’s most colorful works. The demanding solo parts are here performed by the young Jordanian-Palestinian pianist Iyad Sughayer, with spirited support from the BBC National Orchestra of Wales under Andrew Litton. Sughayer made his acclaimed début as a recording artist with an album of Khachaturian's piano works and sandwiched between the two works with orchestra he here presents the piano version of one of the composer's best loved pieces, the Masquerade Suite with its yearning opening Waltz and closing Galop.

Performers and listeners alike have long gravitated to Louis Couperin's music more than to that of any other member of the French keyboard school of the time, probably because of its fascinating and surprising harmonic language. There are 129 pieces catalogued as authentic.

In making this new recording of all 129 pieces, Massimo Berghella has chosen to take the Preludes as starting points for ‘suites’ – 17 in all – which gather up the remaining dance movements into coherent sequences cast in the same key as the relevant Prelude.

Among the most distinguished active Italian harpsichordists, Massimo Bergella studied with Kenneth Gilbert at the Mozarteum in Salzburg and at the Accademia Chigiana in Siena. He has a 30-year-long career as a teacher himself, as well as a performance diary and discography that has taken him across Europe for recitals, broadcasts and recordings. Of a previous album of d’Anglebert, La Nazione remarked that Berghella ‘grasps the reconstructive necessity of the scores, performing them in all their poetic complexity.’

William Byrd was one of the greatest composers of the Renaissance. He was widely admired in his own time both at home and abroad and the influence he had on future generations of composers was immense. This programme explores the music of his influences, his colleagues and his pervading faith. In his 400th anniversary year, Byrd’s legacy is marked by the commission of two new pieces from acclaimed composer Dobrinka Tabakova, bringing his musical heritage firmly into the modern day. The two premieres, Arise Lord into thy rest and Turn our captivity, highlight the beauty of modern polyphony and showcase The Sixteen in a new light. The programme also features works by Van Wilder, de Monte, Clemens Non Papa and, of course, Byrd himself.

The Transcendental Études form a cycle of twelve pieces whose composition began in 1826 and was completed in 1851. Starting from the idea of an encyclopædic collection which, in the manner of Johann Sebastian Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier, Liszt’s Transcendental Études became something of a seismograph of his compositional aesthetic, first strongly under the influence of Paganini, later more in the style of character pieces. These études are among the most difficult works ever written for the piano. Together with Chopin’s Études, they serve as a basis for piano technique, some of them already prefiguring musical impressionism, and they had a significant influence on subsequent piano music, most notably that of Debussy, Rachmaninov, Bartók, and Ligeti.

In 2009, Haochen Zhang was the youngest pianist ever to receive the Gold Medal at the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. Since then, he has captivated audiences worldwide with a unique combination of deep musical sensitivity, fearless imagination and spectacular virtuosity. After two releases devoted to concertos (Prokofiev and Tchaikovsky, BIS-2381 and Beethoven, BIS-2581), Zhang returns to the solo recital with this disc devoted to some of the most important works in the repertoire of modern pianists.

REVIEW:

Haochen Zhang’s Liszt Transcendental Etudes are bound to attract intense scrutiny, in light of these works’ recent proliferation in the catalog and Zhang’s growing prominence on the international piano scene. The brief opening Prelude’s individual touches are totally borne out by the score: such as the accented ascending left-hand lines, or how the marcatissimo chords take on a slashing ferocity when played strictly in tempo, as opposed to the broadening one hears from most pianists.

Some may find the second etude too compulsively detailed where inner voices sometimes stick out to a fault, while the upward leggermente triplets are on the careful, studio-bound side. It takes a while for Paysage’s long lines to truly resonate and soar. Mazeppa’s thickets of notes hold no difficulties for Zhang’s technique, yet his clattery, undifferentiated textural layering pales next to the extraordinary three-dimensional perspectives revealed in Yunchan Lim’s 2022 Van Cliburn Competition semi-finals performance.

Happily, Zhang’s fusion of breathtaking speed and felicitous poetry make for a Feux Follets worthy to mention alongside those of Sviatoslav Richter and Minoru Nojima. The pianist builds Vision in steadily moving blocks, and wisely starts out less loudly than Liszt indicates in order for the fortes and fortissimos to make a stronger impact. He takes more than usual dramatic advantage of Eroica’s fermatas, while his muted deliberation in the main section transforms the music into more of a funeral than military march.

To my ears, Zhang’s swiftness and clipped articulation in Wilde Jagd’s broken octaves and rapid-fire chords evokes not so much a royal hunt as a Road Runner cartoon. However, the lyrical Ricordanza features some of Zhang’s most direct, and stingingly proportioned pianism in the cycle. His forthright pacing and wide dynamic scope in Harmonies du Soir convey a similar impression. While it’s impressive how Zhang shapes and controls No. 10 to the extent that he does with little help from the sustain pedal, the effects draw more attention to themselves rather than to the music’s underlying agitato subtext. By contrast, the pianist’s variety of touch and timbre minimizes the tremolo texture’s potential for fatigue and monotony.

In sum, you may not agree with all of Zhang’s interpretive decisions, yet he clearly is a thinking and often stimulating virtuoso who leaves a strong imprint on these oft-recorded works. With that in mind, I prefer the conceptual consistency and more settled musicality of an earlier BIS Liszt Etudes from pianist Laszlo Simon (a/k/a Joyce Hatto, for those who remember the scandal we helped to uncover back in 2007). I also should mention that Yunchan Lim’s stunning Liszt cycle from the Cliburn is imminent from Steinway & Sons, hence its inclusion among the reference versions.

-- ClassicsToday.com (Jed Distler)

Stravinsky, Bartok and Martinu were established international figures when they wrote these works for violin, travelling across Europe as well as the United States. With the onset of World War Two, all three composers would ultimately emigrate because of their rejection of fascism. In an age of political upheaval and cultural displacement, each of them found an individual approach to reinventing the language of tonal music, laying down roots in the west without abandoning their Eastern European identities. While the Russian-born Stravinsky was experimenting with possibilities of modern violin technique in his concerto, Martinu took these efforts a step further in his Suite concertante by blending the sounds of his native Bohemia with the colours of French neo-classicism. In the Rhapsodies, Bartok turned to the folk music of Hungary and Romania.

Frank Peter Zimmermann, joined here by the Bamberger Symphoniker and its conductor Jakub Hrůša, continues his exploration of the great violin works of the 20th century after his acclaimed recordings of works by Hindemith (BIS-2024), Shostakovich (BIS-2247) as well as Martinu and Bartok (BIS-2457), a recording unanimously acclaimed by the critics, gaining a Diapason d’or and named ‘Concerto Choice’ by BBC Music Magazine, ‘Editor’s Choice’ by Gramophone and one of Classica’s ‘Chocs de l’annee’.

REVIEW:

With Jakub Hrůša and his super-attentive Bamberg orchestra, Frank Peter Zimmermann trumps the self-confident projection of his younger self. Stravinsky’s framing movements seem defter now, particularly the opening Toccata with its chortling bassoons.

-- Gramophone

Their interpretation of Stravinsky’s Violin Concerto becomes an equally sarcastic and seriously elaborated confrontation. Even in the opening Toccata, taken from the baroque form, the notes buzz and chirp like a summer meadow full of birds and insects. In general, the performers give the work a floating lightness that dispels everything earthly. At no point do you notice the technical demands.

In the two arias, too, the participants maintain the intensity and musical pressure. The concluding Capriccio then gives Zimmermann another opportunity to let his violinistic fireworks leap, jump, and shine in an artfully choreographed manner. He knows he is in the best of company with his accompanists, as they also carry the sarcastic aspects of the score as well as demonstrating the ambiguity with pointed articulation.

Bartok’s rhapsodies are constructed in two parts, like a Csárdás, which has a slow and a fast part. Bartok has retained much of the character of the music here, which he borrowed from folk melodies. The performers know how to show this raw side of the music of the people with verve and well-dosed energy.

The first version of the Suite concertante already had a difficult genesis, as Martinů was, to put it casually, lovesick during its composition. The elegiac music of the meditation therefore has a special depth of expression, which Zimmermann and his accompanists shape with deep feeling.

Martinů created the fundamentally new second version of the suite primarily at the request of the soloist Samuel Dushkin. The Aria from this version links up with Stravinsky’s concerto, as does the same original soloist. Many of the elements that characterize Martinů’s works – references to Czech folk music, vitality, changing rhythmic patterns and a mostly traditional harmony that does not exclude harsh dissonances – can also be found in the suite.

Zimmermann also demonstrates his violinistic skills in the suite, which are characterized by elegance and mastery of the instrument, in an engaging and memorable, yet spontaneous manner, so that the suite shines with fresh brilliance and brings Martinů to the trapeze. Hruša and the Bambergers are still to be found at his side and are audibly at ease with the music of their not only geographical neighborhood.

-- Pizzicato