Many eminent 20th-century composers have been fascinated by the expressive capabilities of the harpsichord, and this selection unites the instrument's traditional idioms with progressive and highly personal sensibilities. Sir Lennox Berkley's music evinces a distinct French influce, while Howell's Clavichord is a series of musical portraits of the composer's distinguished friends. Gavin Bryars has deep roots in the avant-garde, but After Handel's "Vesper" is virtuosic yet expressive, while John Jeffrey's Four Little English Dances are delightful tributes to the harpsichord's lyricism. Christopher D. Lewis performs.

Bach wrote his six Suites for unaccompanied cello at Cöthen, about the year 1720. It is thought that the first four, at least, were written either for Christian Ferdinand Abel, bass viol player at Cöthen, or for Christian Bernhard Linike, more probably the latter. Abel, appointed to Cöthen in 1715 is not known to have been a cellist, while Linike was distinguished rather as a player of the cello and in this capacity had been appointed to the musical establishment of the court in Cöthen in 1716, thus rejoining former colleagues from the Prussian court musical establishment, disbanded in 1713 by Friedrich Wilhelm I on his accession to his father's throne. Both musicians were friends and colleagues of Bach. The original autograph of the suites is lost and the earliest copy is that made by the Gräfenroda organist and composer Johann Peter Kellner in about 1726. This is followed by that in the hand of Bach's second wife, Anna Magdalena, made probably in 1727 or 1728 for the Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel chamber musician Georg Heinrich Ludwig Schwanenberger, who had visited Leipzig at the time and taken lessons in thoroughbass from Bach, for whose daughter Regina Johanne he stood as godfather. Each of the six cello suites opens with a Prélude. Suite No. 1 in G major, BWV 1007, has an introductory movement in which the changing harmonies are made clear in arpeggiated form. The usual Allemande and Courante are followed by a slow Sarabande, with a repeated Menuet II framing a G minor Menuet II. The suite ends, as it should, with a Gigue. Suite No. 2 in D minor, BWV 1008, opens again with an elaborate Prélude, ending with a series of grandiose arpeggiated chords. Once again the Allemande and Courante lead to a Sarabande and a D minor Menuet I is repeated to frame a D major Menuet II, before a lively final Gigue. Suite No. 3 in C major, BWV 1009, has a Prélude that is marked Presto in a slightly later source. This opens boldly with a descending scale and an arpeggio that ends on the resonant bottom string of the instrument. A relatively elaborate Allemande is paired with a simpler Courante, followed by a stately Sarabande, a well-known movement that leads to the still more familiar pair of Bourrées, the second in C minor. The suite ends with an energetic Gigue. The fourth of Bach's cello suites, the Suite in E flat major, BWV 1010, opens, like the others, with a demanding Prélude. An Allemande follows, paired with a Courante, leading to a contrasting slow Sarabande. A busier first Bourrée is followed by a second that is simpler in texture and in the same key. The last movement is a lively Gigue. The fifth and six of Bach's cello suites differ in various ways from the first four. The fifth, the Suite in C minor, BWV 1011, was originally written in scordatura, a practice sometimes found in string music of the period, with the top A string of the instrument tuned down to G. The opening Prélude has a slower, embellished introduction before an extended faster fugal section in triple metre, it's fugal texture largely implied. An ornamented Allemande is duly followed by it's companion Courante and a slow Sarabande that strangely avoids the chordal pattern of it's predecessors. A first Gavotte is repeated after the unusual compound rhythm of the second Gavotte and the suite ends with a Gigue in dotted rhythm. The sixth of the suites, the Suite in D major, BWV 1012, is written for a five-string instrument, with an additional top string tuned to E. It has been suggested that Bach wrote this more difficult suite for the viola pomposa, a five-string viola that found occasional use from 1725 to about 1770. It seems, however, that Bach designed this work for the violoncello piccolo, a smaller form of cello, designed for more elaborate solo work and one that he uses elsewhere. The Prélude opens with the characteristic sound of bariolage, as the player repeats the note D on alternate strings. The Allemande has elaborate figuration and the companion Courante again exploits the wider possible range of the five-string instrument. A Sarabande is followed by a pair of Gavottes, played in alternation, and the suite ends with the customary and here demanding Gigue.

In his piano music, as in his symphonies and string quartets, the English composer David Matthews (b. 1943) marries the idiom of classical tradition with that of his own day. His 2009 Piano Concerto, Mozartian in spirit, contains both a tango and a blues; his Piano Sonata of 1989 includes jazz elements, and his 1997 Variations feature both further blues and a homage to Beethoven. The mood of the music on this CD ranges from contemplative introspection to fiery, rhythmic energy. David Matthews describes the Finnish pianist Laura Mikkola as ‘a marvellous exponent of my music’. This disc is released to mark David Matthews’ 70th birthday in March.

REVIEW:

David Matthews’s 2009 Piano Concerto, with string orchestra, is an approachable, joyfully tonal work that should appeal to pianists and audiences seeking a diverting, fresh 20-minute extension of the worlds of Britten and Tippett, with excellent craftsmanship and minimal complication. It would take an act of desperation not to enjoy it, and unless you are a firebreathing modernist you will.

Speaking of “firebreathing”, the earlier Piano Sonata (1989), in three continuous movements, is far more acerbic and breathlessly dramatic. Prokofieff may be a distant influence, but the language is more relentlessly dissonant, and some would call it “advanced”. It’s pretty exciting, and like most of this composer’s work is unfailingly musical.

The 1997 Variations is an imaginative and very effective set built on a theme of descending thirds very distantly related to Brahms, but its treatment is very much of our time. Always with a distant flavor of tonality in the background, the seemingly improvisatory work holds the attention until the quiet, bluesy close.

Dionysus Dithyrambs (2007, 2004) are two brief pieces inspired by Nietzsche. Scriabin lurks, especially in the pieces dealing with Nietzsche’s insanity, most obviously in the wild final piece (‘Esultante’) with its whiffs of Tristan toward the end. Tristan gets up to dance in the final piece on the program, ‘One to Tango’ (1990, rev 1993), a pleasant but not trivial coda.

This should be of interest to pianists looking for high-quality end of century repertoire.

The excellent Finnish pianist Laura Mikkola acquits herself nobly.

-- American Record Guide

The firm of M. Welte and Söhne’s NYC branch on 5th Ave. lasted from 1865 until 1917, under the name M. Welte and Sons. Established by the founder’s son, Emil Welte (1841–1923) lived in the USA permanently, only rarely visiting Freiburg. A recording studio with a grand piano for making piano recordings and a recording organ as well occupied this fine 5th Ave. address. Piano recordings of the Welte firm were thus not only made in Freiburg im Breisgau from 1905 until 1932, but also in New York. Featuring organists Clarence Eddy, Samuel Atkinson Baldwin, Lynnwood Farnam, Richard Epstein and Edwin H. Lemare.

The piano is a beautiful instrument, and this special release brings together some of the most moving and romantic classics in the piano repertoire. With over two hours of this enchanting music to enjoy, sit back, relax and lose yourself in the timeless melodies of masters including Beethoven, Brahms, Chopin, Debussy, Liszt, Mendelssohn, Scarlatti, Schubert and Schumann. Savour the tender lyricism of Liszt's famous 'Liebestraum', Debussy's elegant Arabesques and evocative 'Clair de lune', the emotional drama of some of Beethoven's best-loved Adagios for the piano, and the beguiling melodies of Schubert's Impromptus and Chopin's 'Raindrop' Prelude - to name but a few of the many wonderful moments in this collection. These captivating piano works are performed by Misha Goldstein, who has made many acclaimed recordings for Brilliant Classics.

Gioachino Rossini’s remarkable life and career is well known: the opera composer who, with the world at his feet, appeared to retire at the age of 37. He had around 17 years of huge success with operas such as Il Barbiere di Siviglia, and after completing his last opera Guillaume Tell, he had another 39 years of ‘silence’. The second period of his life was in fact anything but silent, and Rossini would later turn up with pieces such as the Stabat Mater and the wonderful Petit messe solennelle.

More private were the creations which became collected as the Péchés de vieillesse or ‘Sins of Old Age’, which are contained in fourteen volumes. Some of these are for voice and piano, others, such as volume IX, include pieces with strings, harmonium and horn, the solo piano works from which appear at the end of this programme. Album de Chaumière or ‘The Cottage Album’ is the no doubt ironically twee title given to volume VII, the first of the albums for solo piano. This consists of 12 pieces ranging from titles such as Petite polka chinoise to works of a grander scale such as Une pensée à Florence. Rossini’s attitude with these works is frequently ironic and often deceptive. Confronted with a title such as Prélude inoffensif, one might expect something other than the extended lyrical aria which in fact appears. The generally light character of many of the pieces is interspersed with more searching, funereal atmospheres such as that in Un profound sommeil, and Un cauchemar – literally ‘A Nightmare’. In these pieces we are not so very far removed from the symbolic cries of the owl in Leoš Janá?ek’s ‘On a Overgrown Path.’ On the complete opposite there are parody-like pieces such as the bombastic Marche which closes Vol. VII.

Alessandro Marangoni is a young pianist and a rising star whose reputation will in no way be harmed with these recordings. Whatever one thinks of these ‘Sins of Old Age’ they are certainly a fascinatingly enigmatic and eclectic mixture of Rossini in all moods. Fans of the Petit messe solenelle must certainly investigate these pieces, as the thick piano chords and bouncy bass lines which crop up in that work are certainly not absent here. Fans of Rossini’s operas are also kept well fed with rich melodic invention, if performed instrumentally rather than vocally. This Naxos recording is very good, with a rich, deep piano sound, if captured in a rather dry and tubby acoustic. The impression is one of a front room soirée rather than a concert hall performance, which isn’t such a bad thing for these pieces. I do however feel that a slightly more sympathetic space might have helped Alessandro Marangoni when trying to give a more legato feel, or in varying the colour and mood. The pieces come across a little on the lumpy side sometimes, and the contrast between some of the works is less startling than might otherwise have been the case.

This new series will have to compete with the recordings by Stefan Irmer on MDG, and although there is no information on the instrument used in the Naxos recording – other than that it is a Steinway & Sons from the Angelo Fabbrini collection, it gives the impression of being an older instrument, a quality it would then share with the MDG recordings. The bass has a pleasant rounded quality, and the usual Steinway brightness only really shines through in the upper registers at higher volume. Any reservations I may have can be accounted for as a matter of personal taste, so nothing I say should stop anyone from dropping into their local retailer and bagging this remarkable release forthwith. This is going to turn into another of Naxos’s eminently collectable sets, and on this showing will prove to be worth it at almost any price.

-- Dominy Clements, MusicWeb International

For his latest solo album in a growing catalog of increasingly critically praised recordings for Signum Classics, Alessio Bax returns with a program of rich and evocative works for piano by Modest Mussorgsky and Alexander Scriabin. The Italian-born, NYC-based pianist Alessio Bax creates “a ravishing listening experience” with his lyrical playing, insightful interpretations, and dazzling facility. “His playing quivers with an almost hypnotic intensity,” says Gramophone magazine, leading to what Dallas Morning News calls “an out-of-body experience.” “…a pianist of refreshing depth.” (International Piano) Alessio Bax plays Beethoven, released in 2014, was a Gramophone Editor’s Choice: “'Even when compared to legendary performances of this sonata (Kempff, Richter, Gilels, Brendel, etc), this performance stands its ground in music to test the technique and intellect of even the greatest pianists.”

From the early 19th century up until the early 20th the piano was your home entertainment center, before radio and recordings were invented or widely available. This meant that if you wanted to check out Brahms’ new symphony or Verdi’s new opera, either you had to attend a live performance or play it on the piano, usually with friends or family members. This is why most orchestral, choral, operatic, and chamber works were disseminated in the form of four-hand piano arrangements.

As an avid duet player, Robert Schumann not only wrote delightful original pieces in this genre but also supervised four-hand arrangements of his works, although he created relatively few of these himself. At first Otto Dresel’s arrangement of the A major String Quartet Op. 41 No. 3 met with Schumann’s approval; nevertheless, the composer made revisions, adding slower metronome indications to better accommodate the piano’s extended register and sonority. In fact, Schumann listed this arrangement in his catalog of works. Here the Dresel/Schumann A major quartet receives its premiere recording as part of the first of a projected seven-disc survey of Schumann piano duet arrangements by the composer, his friends, and associates.

You can’t help but respect the Eckerle Piano Duo’s meticulously calibrated ensemble values and rhythmic exactitude, although a slightly faster second movement basic tempo might convey the composer’s agitato directive more effectively. Surprisingly, the Piano Quintet’s strong textural contrasts and sense of interplay between musicians loses very little in translation to the piano duet medium, possibly due to Clara Schumann’s intelligent balancing of registers and liberal yet discreet deployment of octave doublings.

By contrast, Theodor Kirchner’s transcription published by C. F. Peters is more conservatively laid out for two players, and consequently is less interesting to hear, although much easier to play. Again, the Eckerle Duo has worked out the balances, tempo relationships, dynamic scaling, and pedaling to an impressively polished degree; you’ll never hear the Scherzo’s ornaments so uniformly and accurately articulated, for example. At the same time, I prefer the shapely exuberance, supple playfulness, and conversational give and take that the Duo d’Accord brings to its Oehms Classics world-premiere recording. Piano-arrangement mavens considering this release may be further tempted by its excellent sound, plus Joachim Draheim’s well-written and informative booklet notes.

-- Jed Distler ClassicsToday.com

Composer Christopher Roberts’s four serene yet deeply emotive pieces for solo qin (a Chinese zither-like instrument) are quiet, sparce, slightly eerie, almost Feldmanesque. Performed by the composer, who learned the qin while living and teaching for many years in Taiwan. This is a 30-minute CD EP/single. “So Confucius walks into a bar, just in time for Bill Evans’s last set, and after closing time pulls out his qin for a few solos … That’s the vibe that Christopher Roberts captures in these intimate nocturnal musings where crystalline harmonics dance among gutsy bass slides while elegant harmonies whisper their most private thoughts. A truly haunting recording.” [John Schneider, Host of KPFK’s Global Village] “The most Chinese of instruments, the qin has roots in the ancient literati tradition…. Having studied its classical tradition in Taiwan, the quixotic Roberts (also a double bassist) also brings his own traditions of jazz, blues, and solo improvisation to the table. While starting somewhere near its traditional core, Roberts bends his instrument in new directions entirely, turning it westwards even as he faces east.” [Gramophone magazine] “‘Exotic’ is a relative term. Gorecki's music is exotic compared to Lloyd Webber’s, Ligeti’s music is exotic compared to Gorecki’s, and Christopher Roberts’ music is exotic compared to nearly any music you are likely to think of.… Last Cicada Singing integrates Eastern and Western music so well, finding their common ground in calm reflection of natural sounds and processes. Sit back, relax, contemplate.” [Malcolm Tattersall, Music & Vision] “You-are-there-grade realism. The recording is Christopher Roberts’ hauntingly beautiful and stunningly well-recorded Last Cicada Singing [Absolute Sound magazine] “Mesmerizing sounds...quiet, sparse, serene music.” [Michael Barone, Minnesota Public Radio]

Jean-Claude Henriot (b. 1949) was born into a family of musicians. As a child, Henriot fixated his conception of great music upon Beethoven. His first great musical experience was of listening to a recording of the ‘Emperor’ Concerto. For this album Henriot has opted to venture outside of the frequently performed piano sonatas by programming Beethoven’s Bagatelles, Fantasia in G minor, Andante Favori, and 32 Variations in C minor. All of the works on this release were composed between 1803 and 1825, during the composer’s late period when the fullness of his potential had been reached.

PIANO PHANTOMS • Michael Lewin (pn) • SONO LUMINUS 92168 (65:56)


NIEMANN Ghosts: Night on the Fleet. LYAPUNOV Round of Phantoms. GRIEG The Goblins’ Wedding Procession at Vossevangen. LAUSIG The Ghost Ship. MEDTNER Wood Goblin. DVO?ÁK Goblins’ Dance. GOOSSENS A Ghost Story. TROYER Ghost Dance of the Zunis. KASKI Night Music of the Mountain Goblin. VALLIER The Ghosts at Restormel. BOLCOM Graceful Ghost Rag. FARJEON Some Goblins and Gnomes and Things. PRICE The Goblin and the Mosquito. BAINTON Goblin Dance. HILLER The Dance of the Phantoms. RIVÉ-KING March of the Goblins. SCHUBERT Spirit Dance (arr. Heller). SCHUMANN Ghost Variations


Theme recordings don’t always work, simply because the gimmick of the theme doesn’t always produce music of outstanding quality, but in this disc pianist Lewin seems to have been inspired by the learning of new pieces and thoroughly enjoyed making the disc. I, for one, also enjoyed listening to it.


A large part of the reason for my enjoyment was the fact that despite this “ghosts and goblins” theme, most of the music is really of a high quality. Little if any of it seems to have been written for effect, but merely to explore unusual melodic or harmonic structure by channeling ghostly titles. A quick glance at the list of composers immediately shows several whose reputations as good composers are undisputable—Niemann, Grieg, Medtner, Dvo?ák, Schubert, and Schumann—yet even the music of such composers as Sergei Lyapunov, Carl Tausig, Eugene Goossens, and Ferdinand Hiller are played here with consummate skill and high artistic commitment. Lewin, who won top honors in the Franz Liszt International Piano Competition and the William Kapell International Competition, is evidently an artist committed to excellence in phrasing and interpretation. Not for him the easy route of empty virtuosity: Lewin brings a fine sense of direction and continuity to everything he plays, and the result is a fascinating recital devoid of music one has heard time and time again.


Indeed, eight of the pieces on this disc (those by Troyer, Kaski, Farjeon, Price, Bainton, Hiller, Rivé-King, and Schubert) are world premiere recordings, and I was particularly delighted to see a piece on this disc by Florence Price, whose Piano Concerto I prize so highly. By giving just as much attention and energy to the music of lesser-known composers, Lewin elevates their music so that it sounds indistinguishable from that of the acknowledged masters. In fact, the “lightest”-sounding work on this program was actually Dvo?ák’s Goblin’s Dance, a nice piece but by no means a great one, and even here Lewin does his level best to raise its quality. (Oddly enough, Goossens’s A Ghost Story was a better piece than Dvo?ák’s!)


Harry Farjeon’s Some Goblins and Gnomes and Things turned out to be an excellent piece, as was Price’s The Goblin and the Mosquito. Hiller’s Dance of the Phantoms is merely an enjoyable little romp, but how Lewin plays it! A real surprise, to me, was the piece by Julie Rivé-King, a native Cincinnatian who studied with Liszt and performed with Carl Reinecke. It is another charming piece, but not as insubstantial as one might imagine in advance of hearing it.


Lewin wraps up his program with Schumann’s Ghost Variations, a work completely unknown to me, written in 1854 when the then-schizophrenic composer had a dream that ghosts and angels dictated this theme to him. His wife Clara was apparently upset by the music’s “other-worldly origins” and refused to allow it to be published; thus it did not appear until 1939. As Lewin points out in the notes, the music is “fragile, gentle and intimate, painfully private,” but really and truly, not “ghostlike” at all. Thus we come to the end of this fascinating and original compilation of offbeat piano pieces. Bravo, Michael Lewin!


FANFARE: Lynn René Bayley

Michael Byron’s music, which has appeared on four previous Cold Blue CDs, tends to be harmonically rich, rhythmically detailed, and virtuosic. It is often praised for its ability to create uniquely dense constructions out of relatively limited means: “Byron creates maximalist effect out of minimalist means.” (ClassicalNet) “One is reminded…of the mobiles of Alexander Calder, which are both fixed and moving. And, like Calder’s work, Byron’s music is immediately comprehensible and beautiful, while it remains experimental.” (San Francisco Bay Guardian) “Byron’s music, like Ligeti’s, is instantly recognizable, perceptually challenging, beautifully proportioned and deeply satisfying.” (Paris Transatlantic) In the Village of Hope is a restless (and in some ways relentless) virtuosic harp solo performed stunningly by Tasha Smith Godínez. This ever-changing, ever-churning, ever-developing music is unlike anything else in the solo harp repertoire. A 23-minute CD EP/single. Musicologist/critic/author Eric Smigel wrote of this CD, “In the Village of Hope simultaneously lulls and rouses the listener with elegantly cascading counterpoint and lush harmonies animated by complex rhythms. Its kaleidoscopic variations evoke ethereal wind chimes, rendering both the calm and the storm in a single gesture.” Sequenza 21 called it “gorgeous music…a single 23-minute track that unfolds with such delicacy and grace that an hour of it would not seem too much.” Fanfare magazine wrote, “Originally categorized as a minimalist, [Byron] has composed music over most of his career that more accurately might be described as maximalist, because it is in a state of constant and often rapid flux…. In the Village of Hope sounds like the kind of music a harp might play on itself, for itself, and by itself…. One associates the harp with angelic matters, and while In the Village of Hope doesn't confound that association, this is a heaven that is far from being regular and predictable, and where one is ruled not by immutable Bible truths but by the constant fluctuations of the natural world. This is very pretty listening, and, as such, recommendable.” And Julien Cowley wrote in The Wire, “Harp notes trickling and tumbling like eddies in a stream…. Byron has compared In The Village of Hope to the play of wind chimes, an image that not only suggests the range of timbres elicited by harpist Tasha Smith Godinez, but also fits the character of a piece that seems to occupy its own space while some animating spirit runs through it.”

The project entitled In the Sphere of Sound as Crossroad of Cultures wants to draw a semantic and aesthetic musical path based on the investigation of timbres carried out by the Italian comporary composers from Giacinto Scelsi to Biagio Putignano. The program on this recording shows the interweaving of different musical perspectives in order to interpret the idea of sound as "a crossroad of cultures".

Narciso Yepes became a star at the beginning of the 1950s with the soundtrack of the movie Jeux Interdits; he could be easily considered as the only guitar soloist comparable to Andrés Segovia. Shy and reserved, Yepes took little advantage of his fame at the time, realizing few recordings, with most quickly deleted from the catalog. This faithfully re-mastered IDIS CD collects a set of recordings performed by Yepes during the years 1960-63, consisting of repertoire from the Renaissance to the 20th c.