Search results: Search results
397 results
Products
-
On SaleLeonard Pennario: Complete RCA Album Collection
CD$59.98$44.99Sony Masterworks
Feb 08, 201919075899272 -
![]()
-
![]()
-
On SaleRos - Songs of Christmas / Pedersen, Norwegian Soloists’ Choir
SACD$21.99$15.99BIS
Nov 19, 2013BIS-2029 -
In the Spirit of Freedom
$24.99CDGramola Records
Nov 28, 2025GRAM99352 -
![]()
-
![]()
-
![Beethoven: Sonatas: Pathetique - Moonlight - Waldstein - Appassionata / Biret [DVD]](//arkivmusic.com/cdn/shop/files/3968245-2707210.jpg?v=1785640091&width=800)
On SaleBeethoven: Sonatas: Pathetique - Moonlight - Waldstein - Appassionata / Biret [DVD]
DVD$25.99$12.99Idil Biret Archive
Sep 10, 20212110687 -
![]()
-
![]()
-
On SaleTurkish Piano Music (The Best of)
CD$32.99$16.49Idil Biret Archive
Sep 10, 20218504058 -
![]()
-
![]()
-
Stenhammar: Piano Music / Scafarella
$20.99CDPiano Classics
Jun 25, 2021PCL10225 -
![]()
-
![]()
-
On SaleMaria Bach: Piano Quintet & Cello Music / Hülshoff, Canpolat, Karmon, Triendl, Grauman
CD$20.99$10.49Haenssler Classic
Apr 01, 2022HC21051 -
![]()
-
![]()
-
On SaleKreisler, Strauss & Waxman: Love Music
CD$18.99$9.49Naïve
Mar 01, 2024V8122 -
SOUND OF HERBERT VON KARAJAN
$18.99CDWARNER CLASSICS
Feb 02, 2018WCL566686.2 -
On SaleViolin Lullabies / Pine
CD$19.99$14.99Cedille
Apr 30, 2013CDR 139 -
On SaleIdil Biret: Archive Edition, Vol. 19
CD$14.99$10.99Idil Biret Archive
Jan 03, 20208571404 -
GOOD NIGHT
$17.28CDERATO
Nov 06, 2020EAO524243.2 -
PIANO CONCERTOS
$17.49CDWARNER CLASSICS
Sep 30, 2003WCL57562.2 -
On SaleLorin Hollander: Complete RCA Album Collection
CD$46.98$23.48Sony Masterworks
Jun 24, 202219439928782 -
ACHUCARRO RECITAL AT GUGGENHEIM MUSEUM
$27.99DVDEUROARTS
Sep 01, 2023ERAR269598DVD -
![]()
-
![]()
-
On SaleMozart: Piano Concertos, Vol. 3 - K. 450 & 451; Quintet K. 452 / Bavouzet
CD$21.99$16.99Chandos
Nov 16, 2018CHAN 20035 -
![]()
-
![]()
-
Cikada Live - Huddersfield/Donaueschingen
$18.99CDLAWO Classics
Feb 09, 2024LWC1262 -
![]()
-
![]()
-
Sibelius: Piano Music / Eero Heinonen
$20.99CDPiano Classics
Jan 01, 2021PCL10220 -
![]()
-
![]()
-
On SaleChamber Music by Erich Wolfgang Korngold / Beatson, Eusebius Quartet
CD$20.99$15.99SOMM Recordings
Oct 15, 2021SOMMCD 0642 -
![]()
-
![]()
-
On SaleHolst: The Planets - Elgar: Enigma Variations / Litton, Bergen Philharmonic
SACD$21.99$15.99BIS
Jul 05, 2019BIS-2068
Leonard Pennario: Complete RCA Album Collection
“Nobody plays the piano better than Leonard Pennario,” wrote the eminent critic Andrew Porter in London’s New Statesman in 1952, when the competition would have included none less than Horowitz in his prime. That year, Pennario began recording for Capitol Records in Los Angeles, and a decade later he moved to RCA Victor, for which label he made a series of distinguished albums. To mark the tenth anniversary of Pennario’s death, Sony Classical is now pleased to reissue all of the pianist’s RCA recordings together for the first time in a single box.
Born in 1924 in Buffalo, New York, Pennario gave his first public performance there at the age of seven, later moving with his family to Los Angeles, where his teachers included the legendary Isabella Vengerova. His breakthrough came in 1936, when he made his orchestral debut deputizing for an indisposed soloist with the Dallas Symphony. On that memorable occasion, the twelve-year-old performed the Grieg Piano Concerto, a work he had never heard, let alone played, until a few days earlier.
Dazzling concertos would, of course, feature prominently in Pennario’s discography, and his first RCA Victor releases in 1964 included Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini and the Franck Symphonic Variations with Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops (High Fidelity: “immense dexterity and bravura”) and the two Liszt concertos with René Leibowitz conducting the London Symphony (Gramophone: “magisterial accounts of both works … it is a constant delight to listen to his effortless brilliance and power … vivid ‘hi-fi’ recording”).
Among the acclaimed solo recital albums in this set are a collection of popular short pieces by Beethoven, Schubert, Dvorák, Tchaikovsky, Rubinstein, Grieg, Falla, Debussy, Gershwin and Rachmaninoff which Pennario plays “with admirable care and impeccable taste” (High Fidelity) as well as both books of Debussy Préludes: “This is a most beautifully played set” (Gramophone).
Although Pennario became best known as a formidable virtuoso, he was also renowned for his performances of chamber music, and RCA documents his participation in the famous series given by Jascha Heifetz and Gregor Piatigorsky. Their performance of the Mendelssohn C minor Piano Trio was praised by High Fidelity for its “conception of restraint and grandeur … consistently maintained throughout all four movements”, and in the coupling of cello sonatas by Mendelssohn and Strauss, wroteGramophone, “Pennario plays admirably, matching Piatigorsky’s forceful musical characterization.”
REVIEW:
A notable characteristic of Pennario’s playing is his extraordinary articulation at extreme speed. As examples of transcendent technique and breathtaking clarity, the two Rachmaninov transcriptions on Disc 2 are hard to beat.
One could hardly complain about the quality of music-making here, yet without exception the piano could have been more forwardly placed. Was he too self-effacing for stardom? Too modest for his own good? Moot points, but Leonard Pennario demands to be heard, reassessed and, on this evidence alone, admitted to the piano Hall of Fame.
– Gramophone
SET CONTENTS:
DISC 1:
Rachmaninoff: Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, Op. 43
Franck: The Symphonic Variations for Piano and Orchestra, M. 46
Litolff: Concerto symphonique No. 4, Op. 102: Scherzo
Piano: Leonard Pennario
Conductor: Arthur Fiedler
Orchestra: Boston Pops Orchestra
DISC 2:
Liszt: Piano Concerto No. 1 in E-Flat Major, S. 124
Liszt: Piano Concerto No. 2 in A Major, S. 125
Piano: Leonard Pennario
Conductor: René Leibowitz
Orchestra: Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
DISC 3:
J. Strauss Jr.- Pennario: Kaiser-Walzer, Op. 437
Mendelssohn-Rachmaninoff: A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Op. 61: No 1 Scherzo
Saint-Saëns-Liszt: Danse macabre, Op. 40
Shostakovich: The Age Of Gold Ballet, Op. 22b: Polka
Prokofiev: The Love for Three Oranges, Op. 33: March
Ravel: La Valse, M. 72
Kreisler-Rachmaninoff: Liebesleid
Gounod-Liszt: Faust: Waltz
DISC 4:
Dvořák: 8 Humoresques, Op. 101, No. 7 in G-Flat
Tchaikovsky: 2 Pieces, Op. 10, No. 2: Humoresque
Rachmaninoff: 7 Morceaux de salon, Op. 10, No. 5: Humoresque in G
Rachmaninoff: Morceaux de fantaisie, Op. 3, No. 4: Polichinelle in F-Sharp Minor
Debussy: Children' Corner, L. 113, No. 6: Golliwog's Cake-walk
Gershwin: 3 Preludes, IGG 25
Schubert: Moments musicaux, D. 780, No. 3 in F Minor
Beethoven: Für Elise, WoO 59
Tchaikovsky: The Seasons, Op. 37a, No. 11: On the Troika in E
Grieg: Lyric Pieces, Op. 43, No. 6 "To Spring"
Grieg: Lyric Pieces, Op. 43, No. 1 "Butterfly"
Falla: Piezas Españolas, IMF 10, No. 4: Andaluza
Rubinstein: 6 Soirées à Saint-Petersbourg, Op. 44, No. 1: Romance in E-Flat
Tchaikovsky: 6 Pieces, Op. 19, No. 2: Scherzo humoristique in D
DISC 5:
Rachmaninoff: Piano Concerto No. 1, Op. 1
Rachmaninoff: Piano Concerto No. 4, Op. 40
Piano: Leonard Pennario
Conductor: André Previn
Orchestra: Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
DISC 6:
Debussy: Préludes, Livre 1, L. 117
DISC 7:
Debussy: Préludes, Livre 2, L. 123
DISC 8:
Schumann: Piano Concerto in A Minor, Op. 54
R. Strauss: Burleske in D Minor
Piano: Leonard Pennario
Conductor: Seiji Ozawa
Orchestra: London Symphony Orchestra
DISC 9:
Mendelssohn: Cello Sonata No. 2, Op. 58
R. Strauss: Cello Sonata, Op. 6
Cello: Gregor Piatigorsky
Piano: Leonard Pennario
DISC 10:
Mendelssohn: Piano Trio No. 2 in C Minor, Op. 66
Arensky: Piano Trio No. 1 in D Minor, Op. 32
Turina: Piano Trio No. 1, Op. 35
Cello: Gregor Piatigorsky
Violin: Jascha Heifetz
Piano: Leonard Pennario
DISC 11:
Beethoven: Piano Trio No. 2 in E-Flat Major, Op. 70
Brahms: Piano Trio No. 2 in C Major, Op. 87
Cello: Gregor Piatigorsky
Violin: Jascha Heifetz
Piano: Leonard Pennario
DISC 12:
Dvořák: Piano Trio No. 3 in F Minor, Op. 65
Franck: Piano Quintet in F Minor, M. 7, FWV 7
Cello: Gregor Piatigorsky
Violin: Jascha Heifetz
Piano: Leonard Pennario
Ros - Songs of Christmas / Pedersen, Norwegian Soloists’ Choir
n Christian symbolism, the rose is closely associated with the Mystery of the Nativity, and therefore with both Jesus Christ and Mary. The idea of the perfect flower, springing forth from a thorny stem, has - like the Nativity itself - captured the imagination of poets and musicians throughout the ages and from all stations of life. With this original and wide-ranging Christmas collection, Grete Pedersen - the artistic director of the Norwegian Soloists' Choir - has created what might be compared to a rosary, combining 12th-century hymns by Hildegard of Bingen with a carol by the Danish 20th-century composer Per Nørgård, as well as traditional Christmas psalms, in many cases sung to Norwegian folk tunes following age-old usages. Grete Pedersen and the choir have reached a wide international audience through four previous discs on BIS, ranging from collections of Grieg, or of Brahms and Schubert, to the folk-inspired White Night and, most recently, Refractions: the unexpected combination of three 20th-century giants - Berg, Webern and Messiaen - with their Norwegian contemporary Fartein Valen. On the present disc, the team is once again joined by the singer Berit Opheim and the violinist Gjermund Larsen - both with a background in folk music - as well as by Rolf Lislevand, internationally acclaimed lutenist, and the highly respected jazz bassist Bjørn Kjellemyr.
In the Spirit of Freedom
Beethoven: Sonatas: Pathetique - Moonlight - Waldstein - Appassionata / Biret [DVD]
In November 1949, at the age of eight, Idil Biret entered the studios of ORTF (Radiodiffusion Television Francaise) in Paris and made her first recordings; these were works by Couperin, Bach, Beethoven and Debussy. In the following decades she made nearly 100 LPs and CDs, released on ten record labels (Pretoria, Vega, Decca, Atlantic/Finnadar, Pantheon, EMI, Naxos, Marco Polo, Alpha, BMP) and many recordings for radio and television stations around the world. These included the complete piano works of Brahms, Chopin and Rachmaninov as well as the Sonatas of Boulez and the Etudes of Ligeti. The Idil Biret Archive (IBA) is now bringing together her past and present recording; as the copyrights are obtained, old recordings no longer available commercially are being released together with her new recordings. The transcriptions by Liszt of Beethoven's Symphonies, originally recorded for EMI, and the newly recorded 32 Sonatas and all the Piano Concertos of Beethoven were released by IBA and also made available in a box set. All the Piano Concertos of Liszt, Tchaikovsky, Schumann and Grieg and the nine LPs recorded for Atlantic/Finnadar in New York which include works by Boulez, Webern, Berg, Ravel and Stravinsky were also released. The present album features Beethoven’s Piano Sonatas Pathetique, Moonlight, Waldstein, and Appassionata. IBA is distributed worldwide by Naxos.
![Beethoven: Sonatas: Pathetique - Moonlight - Waldstein - Appassionata / Biret [DVD]](http://arkivmusic.com/cdn/shop/files/3968245-2707210.jpg?v=1785640091&width=800)
Turkish Piano Music (The Best of)
In November 1949, at the age of eight, Idil Biret entered the studios of ORTF (Radiodiffusion Television Francaise) in Paris and made her first recordings; these were works by Couperin, Bach, Beethoven and Debussy. In the following decades she made nearly 100 LPs and CDs, released on ten record labels (Pretoria, Vega, Decca, Atlantic/Finnadar, Pantheon, EMI, Naxos, Marco Polo, Alpha, BMP) and many recordings for radio and television stations around the world. These included the complete piano works of Brahms, Chopin and Rachmaninov as well as the Sonatas of Boulez and the Etudes of Ligeti. The Idil Biret Archive (IBA) is now bringing together her past and present recording; as the copyrights are obtained, old recordings no longer available commercially are being released together with her new recordings. The transcriptions by Liszt of Beethoven's Symphonies, originally recorded for EMI, and the newly recorded 32 Sonatas and all the Piano Concertos of Beethoven were released by IBA and also made available in a box set. All the Piano Concertos of Liszt, Tchaikovsky, Schumann and Grieg and the nine LPs recorded for Atlantic/Finnadar in New York which include works by Boulez, Webern, Berg, Ravel and Stravinsky were also released. The present album is a showcase of Turkish Piano Music and is made up of recordings made between 1958 and 2021. IBA is distributed worldwide by Naxos.
Stenhammar: Piano Music / Scafarella
| Carl Stenhammar (1871-1927) trained as a pianist, and Brahms’s epic D minor Concerto held no fears for him. His writing for the instrument is accordingly bold and heroic from the outset, as his G minor Sonata from 1890 demonstrates. Held together by Wagnerian leitmotifs but often drawn into Schumannesque dreaming, the four-movement Sonata wears Austro-German passion on its sleeve, and Brahms continued to be a clear influence on Stenhammar’s piano writing in the three Fantasies Op.11 from 1895, but the harmonies are now clearer and more limpid, in the manner of Chopin but also singing with a more native Swedish or at least Nordic accent. Still more Franco-Russian in idiom are the Three Small Pieces from the same year, in the spirit of Grieg’s Lyric Pieces and Tchaikovsky’s The Seasons, each distilling Stenhammar’s individual melodic style within a minute or two. The high point of his solo piano output – as distinct from the mighty Second Piano Concerto which has found a place on the fringes of the Romantic repertoire – is reached with the Late Summer Nights Op.33, a five-movement cycle of concise tone-pictures which ventures into speculative harmonic realms like Fauré’s late Nocturnes, demanding the most refined of responses from the pianist. The Italian pianist Paolo Scafarella is fast becoming a Stenhammar specialist. He has been engaged to record the concertos with the Orchestra Filarmonica Campana in Pagani, near Naples, and he performs in the major halls of his native country. This release marks his debut on Piano Classics. |
Maria Bach: Piano Quintet & Cello Music / Hülshoff, Canpolat, Karmon, Triendl, Grauman
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
Kreisler, Strauss & Waxman: Love Music
Following her lyrical and witty complete recording of Mozart’s Keyboard Sonatas, issued by naïve in March 2023, Yeol Eum Son invites Svetlin Roussev to join her in enfolding himself in the enticingly subtle harmonic intricacies of Germanic post- Romanticism.
For their second recital as a duo, the Bulgarian violinist and the Korean pianist follow the course taken by works written over a period of slightly more than half a century by composers or famous performers upon whom Richard Wagner exercised crucial influence. They take on almost every genre – cinema, opera, chamber music, transcription – treating it in the lyrical, large-scale manner of the Bayreuth master. During their unexpected, fascinating journey, Svetlin Roussev and Yeol Eum Son chart a variety of pathways, from Waxman to Strauss.
So many different worlds! To begin, two figures who made their indelible mark on the music written for Hollywood. Of German-Polish origins, in 1946 Franz Waxman (Rebecca, Sunset Boulevard, A Place in the Sun, Prince Valiant) wrote, at Jascha Heifetz’s request, a paraphrase on themes from Wagner’s Tristan et Isolde, actually an adaptation of a section of the score he composed for the film Humoresque (Warner Brothers, 1947). In summary, a manifesto in music of an impossible love – to which, at the end of the disc, an extremely rare transcription one of the better known Wesendonck-Lieder, credited to the great virtuoso Leopold Auer, forms a response.
The programme continues with Erich Wolfgang Korngold, a child prodigy in Vienna during the 1910s. The famed Mariettas Lied – the best-known moment in his opera Die tote Stadt – and the sublime nocturne from his incidental music for Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing (the Scene in the Garden) remain as much moments of lyric intensity as truly cinematographic, deliciously intoxicating love scenes. But lovers also know how to frolic, and if already in Korngold they readily do so, the three more light-hearted pieces by Fritz Kreisler will place them in everyday, commonplace scenarios, where laughing reigns.
The keystone of the programme is unarguably the magnificent Sonata for Violin and Piano that Richard Strauss composed in 1887. He was 23 years old, and still heavily influenced by Schumann and Brahms, even Grieg. Svetlin Roussev and Yeol Eum Son make its case with radiant commitment, sensitive to the spirit stirring in the young Richard, then already in love with the soprano Pauline de Ahna, who would become his wife.
Beyond Wagner, this highly original album above all celebrates that moment of falling in love when, overwhelmed, the heart quivers, to the point of being transformed.
SOUND OF HERBERT VON KARAJAN
Violin Lullabies / Pine
VIOLIN LULLABIES • Rachel Barton Pine (vn); Matthew Hagle (pn) • ÇEDILLE 90000 139 (68:35)
BRAHMS Wiegenlied. YSAŸE Rêve d’enfant. REBIKOV Berceuse. BEACH Berceuse No 2. SCHWAB Berceuse Ecossaise. RESPIGHI Berceuse. GERSHWIN Summertime. FALLA Nana. FAURÉ Berceuse. SIBELIUS Berceuse No. 6. VIARDOT-GARCIA Berceuse No. 3. HOVHANNES Oror. STRAVINSKY Firebird: Berceuse. RAVEL Berceuse sur le Nom de Fauré. CLARKE Lullaby. SCHUBERT Wiegenlied. SCHUMANN Cradle Song. DUROSOIR Berceuse No. 4. GRIEG Berceuse. ANTSEV Au Berceau. R. STRAUSS Wiegenlied. SIVORI Berceuse. BERAUD Petite Reine Berceuse. STILL Mother and Child. REGER Wiegenlied
What a beautiful recording this is! It fills a real need as well. A mother or father can put this recording on and relax listening to its clear and present sound while feeding and bonding with the baby. This album also gives us a chance to see how composers from different cultures and different eras handled this particular type of composition. The CD opens with the universally loved Brahms Lullaby , which Rachel Barton Pine says her mother sang to her. You may have had the same experience. Mine sang it to me in German. Johannes Brahms wrote his Wiegenlied or Cradle Song in 1868 to celebrate the birth of a second son to his Viennese friends Arthur and Bertha Faber. Eugène Ysaÿe wrote his Rêve d’Enfant for his own son, Antoine, who would later be his father’s biographer and publisher. In 1913, he actually recorded it, too, at a very slow tempo. Pine and Hagle play the Ysaÿe and Brahms pieces at moderate tempos and with great delicacy of tone. Their notes fall as gently as rose petals. Vladimir Rebikov is a little known composer whose music leads into the compositions of Debussy, Scriabin, and even Stravinsky. Pine plays Amy Beach’s Berceuse (lullaby) using a warm toned mute that evokes daydreams. Listening to her play it is a calming antidote to everyday stress. Ludwig Schwab’s lullaby clothes the baby in an aural tartan coverlet as Pine and Hagle play the composer’s version of a Scottish tune. Pine also renders Respighi’s long-lined melody with a warm-toned mute while Hagle plays the piano part with the fleetest of fingers. We all know the tune of George Gershwin’s Summertime, but Pine gives us her own fascinating take on it. Pine uses a mute with a rather mysterious tone for Manuel de Falla’s Spanish Nana. Its words, “Sleep little star of the morning,” might hit a familiar note with parents! Gabriel Fauré’s pastel tones and Jean Sibelius’s charming melody bring us back to cooler lands and sweet invitations to slumber. Research shows that neither Rebecca Clarke nor Amy Beach had children, so of the women composers represented here only the famous singer and pianist Pauline Viardot-Garcia could have sung her lullaby to her own baby. The music of Alan Hovhaness always had a hint of mystery and this early lullaby is no exception. Pine and Hagle play it smoothly, so that its inventive harmonies fascinate the ear. The Firebird is a ballet based on a folk tale about a magical creature that sings at night and pecks at golden fruit. Its eloquent music spices up the middle of this disc with its unique harmonies.
Maurice Ravel’s music envelopes the listener in its gossamer fabric and its colors dance in the air. Rebecca Clarke was a violist and her contribution makes use of the violin’s lower strings. The delicate radiance of Pine’s rendition holds the listener in thrall. Like the Brahms, Schubert’s Cradle Song is a familiar tune. Here it is rendered in flawless form complete with gorgeous double-stopping. The Schumann Slumber Song is one of his lesser-known pieces. Like the Durosoir that follows, it massages the ears. So do the charming Grieg and Antsev pieces. I hope we get to hear more of the latter’s music. Pine and Hagle’s version of Richard Strauss’s Cradle Song strikes a delicate balance between lullaby and concert aria. Like Respighi, Camillo Sivori wrote his music with the long lines of bel canto and topped it off with a challenging finale that Pine tosses off with ease. Victor Beraud is the pen name of British composer G. Frank Blackbourne. He wrote his Lullaby for a Little Queen for piano. Edward Elgar then arranged it for violin and piano. African-American composer William Grant Still wrote his warm toned and inviting yet intense Mother and Child in 1943. Max Reger’s Cradle Song , a dreamy invitation to sleep, shows a very different side of his creativity. In addition to the music on this CD, there is a download available with three more lullabies: Alexander Iljinsky’s Berceuse No. 7 from the opera Noure and Anitra, Xavier Montsalvatge’s Nana, and Betty King Jackson’s Lullaby. These three show the variety of cultures that lullabies cover. Pine and Hagle play each of them idiomatically with great attention to detail and the ultimate in musical values. This is a truly beautiful disc and I think it will have great appeal to our readers.
FANFARE: Maria Nockin
Idil Biret: Archive Edition, Vol. 19
In November 1949, at the age of eight, Idil Biret entered the studios of ORTF (Radiodiffusion Television Francaise) in Paris and made her first recordings; these were works by Couperin, Bach, Beethoven and Debussy. In the following decades she made nearly 100 LPs and CDs, released on ten record labels (Pretoria, Vega, Decca, Atlantic/Finnadar, Pantheon, EMI, Naxos, Marco Polo, Alpha, BMP) and many recordings for radio and television stations around the world. These included the complete piano works of Brahms, Chopin and Rachmaninov as well as the Sonatas of Boulez and the Etudes of Ligeti. The Idil Biret Archive (IBA) is now bringing together her past and present recording; as the copyrights are obtained, old recordings no longer available commercially are being released together with her new recordings. The transcriptions by Liszt of Beethoven's Symphonies, originally recorded for EMI, and the newly recorded 32 Sonatas and all the Piano Concertos of Beethoven were released by IBA and also made available in a box set. All the Piano Concertos of Liszt, Tchaikovsky, Schumann and Grieg and the nine LPs recorded for Atlantic/Finnadar in New York which include works by Boulez, Webern, Berg, Ravel and Stravinsky were also released. Among the recent new releases are Liszt's Etudes and the piano transcription of Berlioz's Harold en Italie, Schumann's Carnaval, Fantasie and other works, all five Piano Concertos of Hindemith and, in the Archive Edition, the early LPs made in France for Pretoria (Schumann, Brahms), Vega (Bartok, Prokofiev, Brahms, Beethoven) and Decca (Rachmaninov). IBA is distributed worldwide by Naxos.
GOOD NIGHT
PIANO CONCERTOS
Lorin Hollander: Complete RCA Album Collection
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
ACHUCARRO RECITAL AT GUGGENHEIM MUSEUM
Mozart: Piano Concertos, Vol. 3 - K. 450 & 451; Quintet K. 452 / Bavouzet
This third volume in the series from the electrifying combination of Jean-Efflam Bavouzet and Manchester Camerata under Gabor Takacs-Nagy explores the final two of the six piano concertos of the year 1784, on which Mozart staked his reputation as both a performer and composer. Alongside these works features the pioneering Quintet for Piano and Winds, also from 1784, the first written for this combination of instruments and a work which Mozart regarded as his finest to date. The consecutive Kochel numbers of the three piano works hint at a remarkable story: not only were they all written in the same extraordinarily productive year, but all were completed in the same month, March, when Mozart was just twenty-eight years old. The two concertos form a pair, and in letters to his father Mozart makes it clear that he wrote them for his own performance: “Nobody but I owns these new concertos in B flat and D,” adding in another letter, two weeks later, “I consider them both to be concertos which make one sweat.” Heard in this context, Bavouzet’s playing is all the more astonishing.
REVIEWS:
Jean-Efflam Bavouzet has joined forces with Gábor Takács-Nagy and the Manchester Camerata to record the complete Mozart piano concertos. This is the third volume in the series. Bavouzet has won awards for his recordings of Haydn, Debussy, Prokofiev and Grieg. This recording shows that he is also a born Mozartian.
The three works on this recording all date from 1784 when Mozart was newly married and beginning to forge a freelance career for himself. The Piano Concerto in D Major K451 uses trumpets with timpani and has a distinctive military character. Takács-Nagy’s tempo is spot on in the opening movement marked Allegro assai. He and the Manchester Camerata open the movement with vibrancy and dynamism, and bring an infectious enthusiasm to Mozart’s springy dotted rhythms. Bavouzet’s phrasing and passagework are a model of classical decorum, and he uses subtle rubato to superb effect. There is excellent interplay between piano and orchestra, with phrases passing seamlessly between the players. The music is beautifully characterised. The militaristic opening theme gives way to the camp, whimsical second subject. The Manchester Camerata’s woodwind section are enchanting at the start of the slow movement. Bavouzet brings charm and restraint to the movement before giving us a moment of heart-stopping poetry in the interlude before the return of the opening them. The finale has enormous fizz and sparkle. There is tight, spirited interplay between soloist and orchestra. Bavouzet brings enormous energy to the increasingly elaborate passagework. It is impossible not to be swept along with the joys of music-making.
This is an outstanding recording and is worthy to sit alongside the great Mozart concerto recordings such as those by Perahia and Uchida.
-- MusicWeb International
Cikada Live - Huddersfield/Donaueschingen
Seven Disobediences
Seven Imperatives is my answer to the tradition of character pieces for piano, such as Debussy’s Préludes and Grieg’s Lyric Pieces; short, relatively simple but concise miniatures with a motto, and usually with one prevalent sentiment—like a musical short story. The title of each of the seven pieces is an imperative consisting of four letters: Seek! Push! Lean! Etc.
One of the pianists who has taken the Imperatives into his repertoire, is Kenneth Karlsson—central to the founding and artistic development of Cikada. So, when Donaueschinger Musiktage asked me to write a work for Cikada for their concert there in 2018, I seized the opportunity to explore another cornerstone of the piano literature: In a solo concerto, you see a whole orchestra dutifully following a brilliant ego that is completely dominating the stage. Beethoven’s last piano concerto was even called the Emperor Concerto, an epithet the thoroughly anti-authoritarian composer would have hated.
As I transformed Seven Imperatives (2001) into the “concert” Seven Disobediences (2018), I looked into Cikada’s beautiful collaborative social and artistic structure. When Kenneth, “The Emperor” (Italian: imperatore) gives his imperatives to his fellow musician, how do they react? Well, when he tells them to spin, they happily spin together with him, but when he says “SINK!”, they do the opposite and rise gracefully towards the sky. Towards the end, they all leave their positions and their instruments and gather around the piano’s big body to caress it and make it purr by fondly knocking on its shiny, black surface in loving disobedience.
-Rolf Wallin
Sibelius: Piano Music / Eero Heinonen
Eero Heinonen has long been a champion of the composer’s neglected output for piano. With this recording he continues to make the case for music that does not easily give up its secrets but, in the right hands, sings with Sibelius’s unique voice. Sibelius was not himself an accomplished pianist, but he wrote for the instrument – at which he composed – throughout his career, and maintained that, while often overlooked, its time would come. In recent years his prophecy has come true, especially with the Op.75 suite of five pieces which he composed in 1914 and titled ‘The Trees’. They move from a Tchaikovskian melancholy common to much of his earlier piano output, through impressionist studies of light and darkness, to the kind of sombre, dissonant harmonies in the final piece (‘The Spruce’) which call to mind orchestral masterpieces such as En Saga and Tapiola. Rather than cherry-picking from a considerable output, Eero Heinonen has chosen to present four complete opus numbers which nevertheless encapsulate the range of Sibelius’s piano writing. In the Six Impromptus Op.5 of 1890-93 he successfully integrates elements of Finnish folk music within the idiom of fantasy inherited from Schubert and Chopin. The 10 Pieces Op.24 were written between 1895 and 1903 – formative years for the composer, in which he moved away from his German-influenced training and discovered for himself a more distinctively Finnish voice, but in this context still within the genre of salon pieces. These are the works most directly comparable with Grieg’s Lyric Pieces. Then, before the Op.75 masterpieces, he wrote a trio of Sonatinas Op.67 in 1912, around the same time as the troubled Fourth Symphony. The first of them, as played here by Eero Heinonen, shares some of the symphony’s austere idiom and introvert nature.
Chamber Music by Erich Wolfgang Korngold / Beatson, Eusebius Quartet
SOMM Recordings throws new, invigorating light on the Chamber Music of Erich Wolfgang Korngold, performed by the Eusebius Quartet and pianist Alasdair Beatson. Hailed by musicologist Nicolas Slonimsky as “the very last breath of the romantic spirit of Vienna”, Korngold’s stellar beginnings in Europe’s concert halls and opera houses were later overshadowed by his success in America where his soaring symphonic signature forged the template for the Hollywood soundtrack. But, as Korngold authority Brendan G Carroll notes in his informative booklet essay, the composer’s “relatively small body of chamber works... is no less impressive and actually offers a succinct distillation of his style and voice, often to considerably profound effect.”
The earliest work here is the string quartet arrangement of the suite drawn from his 1920 incidental music to Shakespeare’s Viel Lärmen um Nichts (Much Ado About Nothing). Its glowing Intermezzo is heard in the world premiere recording of Tom Poster’s sumptuous new arrangement. The following year’s Op.15 Piano Quintet was composed shortly after Korngold’s opera Die tote Stadt (The Dead City), and, Carroll notes, “its flamboyant, heroic melodic style owes much to the residual influence of that epic score”. The Op.26 Second String Quartet from 1933 “is one of the most intensely ‘Viennese’ works Korngold ever wrote.” The jolly, bubbling humor of its opening gives way to a rich, expansive Larghetto before concluding with a spirited hymn to that most Viennese of dance forms, the waltz.
Praised as “excellent” by The Sunday Times, the Eusebius Quartet was formed in 2016 and is making its debut on SOMM Recordings. Alasdair Beatson’s previous SOMM releases include his enthusiastically reviewed recording debut, coupling Schumann, Grieg, Brahms and Berg (SOMMCD 086), and a Mendelssohn recital (SOMMCD 104) hailed by Classic FM for its “highly sensitive playing of rare insight”.
Holst: The Planets - Elgar: Enigma Variations / Litton, Bergen Philharmonic
It is striking that two of the true classics in English orchestral music were composed within the short space of some fifteen years around the turn of the previous century. Edward Elgar's Enigma Variations have charmed as well as fascinated listeners since the first performance in 1899. In 14 remarkably diverse variations Elgar demonstrates his compositional mastery while creating miniature portraits of his closest friends, as well as of his wife and himself. By turns gentle, idyllic, tempestuous and boisterous, the pieces – which often run seamlessly into each other – nevertheless make up a coherent whole, like a group portrait taken during a country weekend. As for the enigma of the title, Elgar – who loved puzzles – maintained that another melody ‘went with’ the theme, and musicologists have searched for the answer ever since, without success.
In 1916 Gustav Holst completed another set of musical character sketches – his suite The Planets, in seven movements. These have little to do with astronomy and even less with the Roman deities whose names they carry. Holst was rather inspired by astrology and the suite actually concerns human character as influenced by the planets. The concept – like that of Elgar's variations – provides for a variety of moods and expressions, and in his score Holst took full advantage of these possibilities. To achieve this he made use of a large orchestra including much percussion, two harps, celesta, organ, two sets of timpani. He also included parts for certain unusual instruments such as bass flute, bass oboe and tenor tuba, and – in the final movement – a female chorus. Performing the programme in the warm acoustics of Bergen's Grieg Hall, the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra under Andrew Litton give it their all in this sonic spectacular.
REVIEW:
Established collectors will probably have multiple performances of these works in their collection. They may not have them coupled together, however, and that is a bonus, especially for those lucky youngsters coming new to these works and for whom this disc is the perfect choice. Superbly recorded and with an excellent insert note by Philip Borg-Wheeler, it carries a most convincing performance of The Planets and a revelatory one of the ‘Enigma’ Variations.
– MusicWeb International
