The Greek soprano Fanie Antonelou and German pianist Kerstin Mörk here join forces in an exciting project, entitled ‘Affinities’. In a carefully constructed sequence of 23 songs, they explore the kinship between Greek and German art songs – a varied one, filtered through friendships, family connections and teacher-pupil relationships. All the composers represented on the album studied and/or worked in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in the three great German-speaking musical centres – Vienna, Munich and Berlin – and include figures both well known (Schoenberg, Weill, Skalkottas and Mitropoulos) and less familiar (Emilios Riadis, Dimitrios Lialios, Ludwig Thuille). With twelve composers and even more poets involved, the subject matter of the individual songs is diverse indeed – from a café scene in Berlin (Der Abschiedsbrief by Kurt Weill in cabaret mode) to a hymn to Aphrodite, set by Dimitri Mitropoulos in a highly expressionistic free atonal idiom inspired by Schoenberg.

Songs of Solitude was conceived by the violist Hiyoli Togawa at a time when a virus was forcing people across the world into isolation and she herself needed to find a new rhythm of life as concert after concert was being cancelled. As she relates in the booklet to the disc, playing Bach – music that combines powerful emotions with a crystal-clear structure – became part of her daily routine, along with walks along the empty streets of Berlin. During these, the importance of remaining creative became even clearer to her, along with the idea to offer people the opportunity through music to reflect upon the difficulties of living through a pandemic. Having recently collaborated with the composer Kalevi Aho, she came upon the idea of asking him and a number of other composers to write for her – pieces that would ‘reflect life and work in the time of the coronavirus and that distil isolation in music’. The result is Songs of Solitude – works for solo viola commissioned from 11 different composers and interwoven with sarabandes from Bach’s cello suites. The individual pieces range from the meditative (Toshio Hosokawa reminiscing in his version of the traditional Sakura) to the defiant (Johanna Doderer’s Shadows). Some of them even provided Hiyoli with musical company – Aho’s Am Horizont requires her to play two parts on the viola while singing a third, and the piece by John Powell is written for nine voices, recorded in multitrack. The album was recorded in Berlin during three periods, June to October 2020, as the various pieces arrived and the restrictions in place at the time permitted.

The streets of eighteenth-century Madrid; a contaminated test-bombing site in Australia and a song from El Salvador provide some of the subject matter for this album by the United Strings of Europe (USE). Formed in 2012 by students at London’s Royal Academy of Music, the ensemble brings together outstanding players from across Europe. Artistic director is the Anglo-Lebanese violinist Julian Azkoul, who leads from the violin, curates programmes and arranges music for the ensemble. For In Motion, USE’s début recording, Azkoul has arranged Boccherini’s celebrated and atmospheric evocation of the Nocturnal Music of the Streets of Madrid, in a version that updates the original’s flirt with popular music. Far removed both geographically and in mood is Maralinga, Australian composer Matthew Hindson’s powerful and haunting work featuring guest soloist Amalia Hall. The programme opens and closes with works for string quartet, composed some 180 years apart in Vienna and New Zealand respectively and heard in bespoke arrangements by Azkoul. Reflecting the ensemble’s distinctive voice and multi-national heritage and the wide-ranging interests and stylistic versatility of its members, In Motion is a roller-coaster ride of an album.

The hurdy-gurdy is a European string instrument. Its exact origins are obscure but it seems to have developed in the 10th and 11th centuries A.D. as an instrument used in religious music. Most European countries have, or had, a type of hurdy-gurdy. Some are lavish, others very simple but despite the wide variety of shape, size and sophistication they all work on the same principle. A handle turned by the right hand of the player revolves a wooden wheel, the edge of which continuously bows one, two and occasionally three melody strings and various drone strings. The melody (chanter) strings pass over the wheel and through a wooden keybox mounted on the belly of the instrument. Sliding wooden keys are depresssed with the fingers of the left hand to produce the melody. The other strings pass over the wheel in the same way but they continue outside the keybox, straight to the pegbox and provide the drone accompaniment to the melody. The buzzing rhythmic sound, so characteristic of the instrument, is produced by the controlled vibration of a small, loose bridge (trompette) on the soundboard. The buzz is achieved by subtle momentary acceleration of the handle, and thus the bowing of the wheel, causing the trompette string and bridge to vibrate. This is, by far, the most difficult aspect of the instrument to master. In parts of France, particularly the central regions, the hurdy-gurdy continued to be very popular throughout the 19th and into the 20th century when it began to give way to newer instruments, particularly the accordion. Over the last fifteen years there has been a significant revival of interest all over Europe, with contemporary craftsmen perfecting its design, extending the choice of materials and developing new construction techniques. A new generation of musicians are taking to the instrument and exploring a range of musical possibilities that go far beyond its traditional folk dance music role.

There are two aspects underlying this recording by Raphael Feuillatre, First Prize winner at the prestigious Guitar Foundation of America Competition in 2018: original works for the guitar and transcriptions. Among the former is Villa-Lobos’s Prelude No. 5, part of one of the most evocative and Romantic guitar cycles of the 20th century, the Chopinesque brilliance of the inventive Valse by Barrios Mangore, and the compendium of virtuosity that is Llobet’s Variations on a Theme of Sor. The transcriptions range from Rameau, through Rachmaninov’s pianistic showcase, the Prelude No. 4, Op. 23, to the superbly evocative Alfonsina y el mar by Ariel Ramirez.