American violinist Jennifer Koh’s Bach & Beyond Part 3 concludes her critically acclaimed series of recordings based on her groundbreaking, multi-season recital series of the same name that The New York Times has called “indispensable.” Koh, “a virtuoso with quirky and wonderful ideas” (San Francisco Chronicle), again pairs two of J.S. Bach’s landmark Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin with Bach-inspired 20th- and 21st-century works. On this series-finale album, Bach’s florid and fanciful Sonata No. 2 in A minor and Sonata No. 3 in C major, celebrated for its colossal Fuga movement, frame Luciano Berio’s expressive, chaconne-like Sequenza VIII and Pulitzer Prize winner John Harbison’s alluring For Violin Alone, a dance suite inspired by Bach’s partitas, written for Koh (a world-premiere recording).

REVIEW:

Jennifer Koh returns, with the third and final installment in her Bach & Beyond series. With Part 3, we have another two-disc program, framed by two Bach sonatas–No. 2 in A minor BWV 1003, and No. 3 in C major BWV 1005–and filled out by Luciano Berio’s 15-minute-plus Sequenza VIII and John Harbison’s For Violin Alone, composed in 2019 for Koh and here receiving its world-premiere recording. Koh’s Bach, as noted in my two previous reviews, is polished, passionate, and presented with requisite attention to notational detail, but also with a lived-in, well-thought-out sense of phrasing and melodic flow that arises from the score, from an understanding of the all-important harmonic underpinning–an approach practical and just a bit personal, but never with a hint of posturing.

For this series we especially appreciate how carefully and purposefully Koh has chosen her program partners. We’re not expecting direct stylistic similarity, of course–Bach joining hands with Berio and Harbison is not the point. Rather, what Koh is interested in is some manner of influence or inspiration, arising either in some indirect, complementary way from Bach (Harbison), or by means of a more symbolic, technically oriented tribute to the master’s revolutionary, matchless conceptions (Berio).

Berio’s focus is not Bach per se, but rather takes off, sets its trajectory, and develops its very specific “violinistic” gestures and effects from the well-laid platform of virtuoso solo-violin technique established by the German genius in his ground-breaking sonatas and partitas. There’s no direct reference to Bach, yet the liner notes reference Berio’s comments that this work “becomes inevitably a tribute to that musical apex that is the Ciaccona from J.S. Bach’s Partita in D minor where…past, present, and future violin techniques coexist.” Not surprisingly, this is not a sit-back-and-relax experience; it’s a sit forward and hear the not always “pretty” expressions and explorations of a modern composer putting an instrument through its paces.

Harbison’s For Violin Alone hews closer to solo-violin Bach, its six movements plus epilogue more suite than sonata, its structural elements and integral melodic and harmonic components providing the fertile material for often wide-ranging, albeit tonal, thematic exploration, single lines punctuated by pertinent double-stops that anchor the harmony. Koh is especially effective in the way she articulates these double-stop passages, notably one extended sequence at the end of “Ground”, and throughout Duet and Epilogue.

Ultimately, for me the takeaway from these programs is the ingenuity, the majesty, the audacity of Bach’s imagination and the un-improvable manner in which he realized it. Whatever comes after, by however accomplished a composer, owes a huge debt to Bach’s inimitable and totally original conceptualization and realization of the instrument’s technical and expressive capabilities. Throughout these first-rate performances, Koh takes her time, to the benefit of the music–no rushing, no gratuitous theatrics–and yet is fully capable of exploding into an energetic fury of bow and fingers that leaves you impressed with both the violin and Koh’s command of its unique voice and power.

– ClassicsToday.com (10/10; David Hurwitz)

Lullabies for Mila is dedicated to Alessio Bax’s daughter, Mila. The album begins with a moving dedication: “This album is not only a carefully curated playlist of soothing classics to calm a baby and perhaps make him or her fall asleep quicker. It is also a gift from parents to their children, with the hope that they will share music with their loved ones, not just to entertain them but also to enrich their lives.”; This disc compiles works from Bax’s past Signum albums, including performances with Southbank Sinfonia and Lucille Chung. It also contains a new recording of the Grieg’s Nocturne from his Lyric Pieces.; Alessio Bax is a celebrated and award-winning pianist. Gramophone says “His playing quivers with an almost hypnotic intensity,” and the Dallas Morning News calls it “an out of body experience.” He has performed as a soloist with over 100 orchestras.

In June 1995, a virtually unknown group of Japanese musicians embarked on the monumental task of recording the complete sacred cantatas by Johann Sebastian Bach. Almost eighteen years later, on 23rd February 2013, the Bach Collegium Japan and Masaaki Suzuki – by then household names in the international music world – reached their goal when they finished recording the 55th release of a series which, in the meantime, had been met with overwhelming acclaim worldwide. Made in conjunction with the final cantata recording, this film commemorates the occasion. Besides performances of the three last cantatas – Gloria in excelsis Deo, BWV191, Lobe den Herrn, meine Seele, BWV69 and Freue dich, erlöste Schar, BWV30 – the film includes interviews with Masaaki Suzuki and key members of Bach Collegium Japan as well as behind the-scenes footage.

REVIEWS:

This disc is essentially Volume 55 of the Bach Sacred Cantata series with an extra chorus and added video. At least two reviews are elsewhere on the Music Web International site. The addition of 25 minutes or so of interviews with the soloists, chorus members, players, engineers and Suzuki himself make this celebratory issue fascinating to watch and hear. A secondary bonus is the presence of subtitles during the four performances, making it far easier to stay with Bach’s religious message. The air of dedication hanging over all the activity is actually quite inspiring, and rightly so, for this series is a landmark in recording history, up there with the Solti Ring. Not only has a complete set of the sacred cantatas been committed to disc but they are in period style, in SACD surround and they are superbly well documented. Reviewing this has cost me money because I realised that I could no longer resist buying the recently released, complete remastered set on BIS SACD9055, not only for the missing few dozen cantatas I gained, but also for the old CD-only issues being newly minted as SACD surround. And, I might add, for the useful indexes to help navigation around the 55 discs!

The performances of the three cantatas on this Blu-ray are of course superb; from the most prominent soloists to the back desk of the violins, all are now seasoned performers, and it shows. Each cantata appears to be a single performance with only the audio and video team and the microphones as audience. The singers move smoothly out of their place in the chorus to the front to sing their solos and then walk back into place. It is all impressively smooth and unfussy. The addition of the great Dona Nobis Pacem chorus from the B minor Mass acts as a wholly appropriate closing tribute. The surround sound, unusually not in DTS Master Audio but LPCM Surround 5.0, is excellent as always. Even those who have purchased the final volume of the series should obtain this too. You might even be tempted to raise a glass to the series as you watch the performers and engineers do just that on your screen.

-- MusicWeb International

The cembalo-obbligato sonata reached its zenith in the middle decades of the eighteenth century; thought to date from the last fifteen years of J.S. Bach’s life, the composer was a pioneer of this compelling form, and for the soloistic role of the harpsichord in ensemble music. Critically acclaimed Amsterdam-based viola da gamba player Robert Smith joins with the celebrated Italian harpsichordist Francesco Corti to present a new recording of four prime examples of this genre, Bach’s three Sonatas for viola da gamba and harpsichord along with a sonata by his close contemporary Christopher Schaffrath. Completing the album is a new work by Robert Smith – based on Henry Purcell’s Dido’s Lament this innovative new work for the instrument absorbs broad influences from both the eighteenth century and the heavy-metal band Metallica.

Alessio Bax plays an Italian inspired programme, picking his favourite pieces taken from a rich history of music from one of the most romantic countries in the world.

He opens the programme with a J.S. Bach transcription of a oboe concerto by Venetian composer Alessandro Marcello, which reveals a deep insight into Bach’s mind. This is followed by Rachmaninov’s last ever work for solo piano, which is incredibly eloquent, introspective and personal. The Dallapiccola continues this eloquent theme, showing some beautifully crafted dodecaphonism. The recording is rounded off with two pieces of Liszt, which take the listener on a multi-legged journey through hell, purgatory and heaven, with beauty and drama along the way.



REVIEW:

This Italian’s salute to his home country is inspired indeed. The standout performance is a spellbinding account of the Dante Sonata in which Bax masterfully combines scrupulous observation of Liszt’s agogics and dynamics (trusting the composer here really does pay dividends) with quite thrilling bravura in which he throws caution to the wind. Few accounts of the first two pages are so filled with menace and mystery.

– Gramophone

Cantata Collective, an ensemble “of San Francisco early music luminaries” (San Francisco Chronicle) inaugurates a major series of J. S. Bach’s choral works with a live recording of the composer’s St. John Passion. With celebrated conductor Nicholas McGegan, the toast of today’s new generation of vocal soloists and a three-to-a-part chamber choir, the Cantata Collective conveys the emotional intimacy and dramatic power of this monumental passion in a highly polished performance that led Early Music America to implore: “To the excellent musicians of Cantata Collective: More Bach Please!”

A MusicWeb International Recording of the Month for July 2022!

All in all Maria Bach left more than 400 works to posterity. Most (about 80%) are Lieder and choral works, followed by smaller-scale piano works; not unlike Edvard Grieg or Hugo Wolff, she was an expert in that field, though she did also compose three ballets, made up of small, orchestral piano pieces. Her most ambitious works then, are the few excursions she made into the realms of chamber music (solo cello sonata, cello sonata, piano quartet and quintet, string quintet and two string quartets), in which she ventured a confrontation with the traditions of the grand, established genres. On the present release, Oliver Triendl, Marina Grauman, Nina Karmon, Öykü Canpolat, and Alexander Hülshoff showcase Maria Bach’s chamber works, including the Piano Quintet “Wolga-Quintet”, the Cello Sonata, and the Suite for Cello Solo.

Review

[Maria Bach's] music is infused with French and Russian elements and one can quite hear why it was so appealing to Roger-Ducasse who ensured that her 31-minute Piano Quintet was performed at the Paris Conservatoire when she visited Paris in 1930-31. Like all good music it’s clearly susceptible to strongly divergent interpretive stances. The Hänssler team is anchored by Oliver Treindl, who in my experience is probably one of the most hard-working and often recorded of players. He’s also an athletic figure who ensures forward-moving tempi.

The eminent cellist Paul Grümmer was a family friend and Bach was fortunate he liked her music and played the Cello Sonata frequently. It’s modestly structured – three movements and 19 minutes in this reading by Alexander Hülshoff and Treindl – and has a ripe Brahmsian rhapsodic feel, with a warmly curvaceous lyricism in the Romanze second movement. As with the Piano Quintet the finale is full of dextrous animation.

The final work in the disc is the Suite for cello, a crisp four-movement affair that looks back to Popper, as the notes indicate, rather than [J.S.] Bach. After a sonorous, chordal Praeludium come the registral leaps of an etude-like Scherzo, an expressive Air and then another of her favoured variations for a finale – including a Tango-like one – which call for supple bowing. It’s a deft work, all the more so in not honouring [J.S.] Bach’s legacy in any obvious fashion.

In terms of amplitude and density of sound this disc is an impressive one. The players sound firmly engaged in what must have been unfamiliar repertoire. They’ve been backed up by some classy notes. For overt expression, choose this[.]

Jonathan Woolf 

Over the course of more than half a century, Wolfgang Rübsam has consistently brought new insights to bear on the keyboard music of Bach, firstly in sets of the canonic organ music for Philips, then the same for Naxos. In the last few years, his musicianship and understanding of Bach enriched by those decades of experience, he has turned to the harpsichord/piano repertoire for Brilliant Classics. A series of critically acclaimed albums has shed new light on The Well-Tempered Clavier, the Goldberg Variations, the Partitas and Toccatas with Rübsam’s performance of them on a lautenwerk – a ‘lute-harpsichord’ with a distinctive chime and colour which Bach himself would have been familiar with. Rübsam now returns to the organ, with new transcriptions and recordings of two Orchestral Suites and Chaconne from the D minor Partita for solo violin. While the Chaconne has attracted transcribers and arrangers ever since the 19th century, drawn magnetically to its evolving variations on a ground bass which accumulate an emotional power unusual even for Bach, the Orchestral Suites are much less often encountered outside their original garb. Yet we can be sure that Bach himself would have embraced Rübsam’s idea with enthusiasm. The Suites themselves are compilations of dances, probably not all originally designed for their eventual destination as high-class entertainment music for the concert series at Café Zimmermann in Leipzig, and Bach repurposed some of their movements as sinfonias and even choruses for his church cantatas. As in his fairly free transcription of the Chaconne, Rübsam has made full use of the instrument at his disposal, a magnificent Casavant instrument (1998) at the Church of St. Louis, in St. Paul, Minnesota. The booklet includes a full disposition for the organ as well as an essay introducing both the works and Rübsam’s uniquely imaginative approach to them. ‘If the sound of the lute-harpsichord highlights Bach’s debt to French lute music, especially in the First Prelude, the instrument clarifies that homage while Rübsam’s interpretation transcends it.’ (Fanfare, November 2018, The Well-Tempered Clavier, 96750)

“[Bach] speaks to us in his work in such clear terms that we may quite well call these fugues poems. (…) These have warmth, quiet joy, love. And running through all the poems, dressed in different guises, is the main theme, creating order, binding the work as a whole together: it is a safe bond in all its diversity. Over all lies the proximity of death.” (Enzio Forsblom)

In this new recording, Bach’s final magnum opus is played by Aapo Häkkinen on a harpsichord built in 1614 by Andreas Ruckers the Elder (1579–?1652) and which belonged to the composer John Blow (1649–1708), organist of Westminster Abbey and former teacher of Henry Purcell. A tradition exists that G.F. Handel had also played this harpsichord.

As the progenitor of a style whose influence more or less came to define the instrumental music of the High Baroque, Arcangelo Corelli (1653 - 1713) occupies a position in music history as unenviable as it is to his great credit. Just what made Corelli’s style seem strikingly novel to his contemporaries is a tricky question. To be sure, his standardization and popularization of certain formal tropes – most notably the succession of movement types in Sonate da Camera and Sonate da Chiesa – was a significant part of what his followers considered the ‘Corellian’ manner.

But Corelli’s actual compositional style, his way of organizing musical thoughts into phrases and motives, is fundamentally derived from the expressive capabilities of his chosen instrument, the violin. Certain melodic patterns used to modulate and to effect sequences (e.g., chains of sevenths and fifths) basically derive from specificities of violin technique that amplify an instrument with origins primarily in dance music into one that in Corelli’s hands, could imitate the rise and fall of the sung and spoken human voice. This tension between idiomatically instrumental techniques and the evocation of the voice is the defining characteristic of Corelli’s style throughout all his surviving works and would establish the “Roman School” as the supreme measure of musical taste for generations.

For this exploration of the 18th century’s Corelli Craze, the dynamic star trio of Mahan Esfahani, Hille Perl and Michala Petri unite to trace the Roman’s influence, (sometimes in name only...) on the musical legacies of Bach, Händel and Telemann, and of course two works from the pen of the celebrated Italian Master, himself. Gramophone about the Petri/Perl/Esfahani Trio’s Bach recording: “While the tonal and expressive range of the recorder, viol and harpsichord may appear constrained in comparison to, say, flute, cello and piano, in the hands of foremost players such as these, even a relatively lightweight work such as the C major Sonata, BWV1033, comes over as the ideal demonstration of a particular facet of the composer’s style and the performers’ abilities.”

Largest church organ in Denmark

The great organ of Aarhus Cathedral is a true masterpiece of North European organ building tradition through four centuries and with 96 stops the largest pipe organ of Denmark. 2018-20 the organ was carefully restored and enlarged by the Danish organ builder Marcussen & Søn Orgelbyggeri Aps.

This publication tells the story of the restoration through text and extensive photo material and for the ?rst time documents the beautiful sounds of the restored instrument in a 2 CD anthology of organ music from Buxtehude to present time. Performers are the two organists Kristian Krogsøe and Anders Johnsson.

The American pianist Lorin Hollander was only 14 years old in 1958 when he recorded his first album for RCA, a personal selection of “22 Favorites” entitled Discovering the Piano. Its success led to a sequel the following year. Over the next eight years he produced an acclaimed series of releases for the Red Label, establishing an international career which would eventually encompass more than 2,500 appearances as a pianist, conductor and passionate advocate for arts education. Hollander has performed with many of the world’s leading orchestras and collaborated with conductors such as Bernstein, Szell, Ormandy, Leinsdorf, Previn, Haitink, Ozawa and Mehta. Sony Classical is now pleased to present a new 8-disc box set offering Lorin Hollander’s complete RCA discography for the first time on CD.

A child prodigy, he was born in New York City into a musical family – his father was associate concertmaster of the NBC Symphony Orchestra under Toscanini. Lorin began playing the piano at the age of three and within two years had memorized the complete first book of the Well-Tempered Clavier. At eleven, he made his Carnegie Hall début playing Mozart’s C major Concerto K 467. His list of distinguished teachers and mentors includes Eduard Steuermann, Olga Stroumillo, Leon Fleisher, Max Rudolf and Rudolf Serkin.

Sony’s Lorin Hollander box begins with those two early albums of “favorites” by Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Chopin, Mendelssohn, Liszt, Brahms, Grieg, Rimsky-Korsakov, Falla, Granados, Rachmaninoff and Paderewski. In 1963, with Erich Leinsdorf and the Boston Symphony, he premièred and recorded the Fantasy and Variations for Piano and Orchestra by Norman Dello Joio. RCA Victor’s release, a coupling with the Ravel G major Concerto, became Hollander’s international record début and found critical acclaim on both sides of the Atlantic. High Fidelity in the US wrote that “the eighteen-year-old pianist’s amazing digital skill and bravura are just what are demanded for the Fantasy and Variations”, while Gramophone in the UK, was grateful for “our first taste on records of the music of Norman Dello Joio, the 50-year-old New York composer who was at one time a pupil of Hindemith. The piano part is immensely athletic: Hollander scuttles up and down the keyboard with great efficiency, and the orchestra is equally on its toes.”

Hollander recorded further virtuoso concertos in 1964 and 1965. The Prokofiev Fifth, also with Leinsdorf and the BSO, was hailed as “a super-brilliant performance” by High Fidelity. Of the Khachaturian Piano Concerto coupled with Bloch’s Scherzo fantasque – made in London with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra under André Previn – High Fidelity wrote enthusiastically: “The Scherzo fantasque has many of the jagged dissonances and virile qualities of Bloch’s writing in the early Twenties. It is fiercely virtuosic and thus ideally suited to the percussive, tigerish Mr. Hollander. In the Khachaturian … Hollander’s work is also first-rate technically … I find the performance excellent.”

Two solo albums from 1965 and 1966 rounded out Hollander’s RCA discography, Mussorsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, coupled with works by Prokofiev and Rachmaninoff, and a coupling of Beethoven’s “Tempest” Sonata, the Schumann Arabeske, a Brahms Intermezzo and Myra Hess’s beloved Bach transcription “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring”. The set concludes with a curiosity, recorded for Columbia’s “Modern American Music Series” in 1973: the concert work for soprano and chamber ensemble fashioned by American composer Leon Kirchner from his opera Lily. Kirchner plays the piano part and conducts an ensemble featuring Lorin Hollander on celesta, clarinettist Richard Stoltzman, violinist James Buswell and violist Nobuko Imai. The soprano soloist is Diana Hoagland.  

SET CONTENTS 

DISC 1:
• Rimsky-Korsakoff (arr. Rachmaninoff): Flight of the Bumblebee
• Granados: Spanish Dance in E Minor, Op. 5, No. 5 "Playera - Andaluzia"   
• Schubert: Momento Musical In F Minor, Op. 94, No. 3
• Mendelssohn: Venetian Boat Song, No. 6
• Chopin: Etude in C Minor, Op. 10, No. 12 "Revolutionary"
• Paderewski: Menuet célèbre in G Major  
• Falla: Ritual Fire Dance
• Liszt: Liebestraum No. 3
• Chopin: Für Elise (Albumblatt)  
• Chopin: Prelude in C Minor, Op. 28/20  
• Brahms: Waltz in A-Flat Major, Op. 39/15 
• Debussy: Claire de lune   
• Chopin: Waltz in C Sharp Minor, Op. 64/2
• Beethoven: Minuet No. 2 in G Major
• Mozart: Piano Sonata No. 16 in C Major, K. 545: I. Allegro "Sonata Facile"
• Mozart (arr. Hollander): Minuet (From "Don Giovanni") 
• Bach: Two-Part Invention No. 13 in A Minor, BWV 784   
• Schumann: Album für die Jugend, Op. 68: X. Fröhlicher Landmann, von der Arbeit zurückkehrend.  
• Schumann: Album für die Jugend, Op. 68: II. Soldatenmarsch. Munter und straff
• Schumann: Träumerei 
• Grieg: Anitra's Dance
• Chopin: Etude in G-Flat, Op. 25, No. 9 "Butterfly" 

DISC 2:

• Chopin: Polonaise in A-Flat Major, Op. 53
• Chopin: Scherzo No. 2 in B-Flat Minor, Op. 31 
• Liszt: Hungarian Rhapsody No.6 in D-Flat Major, S.244/6 
• Liszt: Mephisto Waltz No. 3, S.216 
• Brahms: 3 Intermezzi, Op. 117/2
• Brahms: Rhapsody in G Minor, Op. 79/2 
• Rachmaninoff: Prelude in C-Sharp Minor, Op. 3/2  

DISC 3:

• Dello Joio: Fantasy and Variations for Piano and Orchestra
• Ravel: Piano Concerto in G Major  
Lorin Hollander, piano / Boston Symphony Orchestra / Erich Leinsdorf, conductor

DISC 4:

• Prokofiev: Violin Concerto No. 1 in D Major, Op. 19 [Erick Friedman, violin]    
• Prokofiev: Piano Concerto No. 5 in G Major, Op. 55    
Lorin Hollander, piano / Boston Symphony Orchestra / Erich Leinsdorf, conductor

DISC 5:

• Khachaturian: Piano Concerto in D-Flat Major, Op. 38  
• Bloch: Scherzo fantasque, B. 78
Lorin Hollander, piano / Royal Philharmonic Orchestra / Andre Previn, conductor

DISC 6:

• Mussorgsky: Pictures at an Exhibition
• Rachmaninoff: Prelude In C-Sharp Minor, Op. 3/2 
• Prokofiev: Toccata, Op. 11

DISC 7:

• Beethoven: Sonata No. 17 in D Minor, Op. 31/2 "The Tempest  
• Bach, J. S. (arr. Hess): Choral: "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring"  
• Brahms: Intermezzo in B-Flat Minor, Op. 117/2
• Schumann: Arabeske, Op. 18 

DISC 8:

• Kirchner: Lily (1973) 
Diana Hoagland, soprano / Columbia Chamber Soloists / Leon Kirchner, pianist/conductor
• Kirchner: String Quartet No. 2 (1958)
Lenox String Quartet