Piano music is central to Valentin Silvestrov’s output. With its frequent allusions to lingering recollections of the past, this programme presents an overview of various creative periods. It begins with the composer’s reworkings of youthful sketches (Naive Musik), followed by Der Bote (The Messenger) with its beautiful Mozartian theme leading into a sonatina in the style of the 18th century. After recent works from Silvestrov’s self-defined ‘Bagatelle’ period, the recording concludes with the striking Kitschmusik, which engages with the music of Schumann, Chopin and Brahms. The Two Waltzes are dedicated to Elisaveta Blumina.

During his short life Erwin Schulhoff absorbed a wide range of musical styles. The jazz-inspired Partita includes witty takes on the tango, foxtrot and shimmy.

The works on this first volume of the complete piano works of Mieczysowski range from very early yet characterful Mazurkas and the remarkably intense Lullaby, his Opus 1, to the at times dissonant Piano Sonata No 1.

After a long wait, their new recording is finally here! This time the young Finns give the String Quartets of Shostakovich their attention. The Third Quartet may be considered something like the opposite of the composer's "classical" 9th Symphony - and one of the most beautiful of the cycle. The Fourth Quartet is rather lyrical and densely scored. The Seventh Quartet, undoubtedly a painful and personal work, was composed in memory of Shostakovich's first wife, who died in 1954.

The Finnish string quartet Meta4 has developed in recent years, to become one of the world's top quartets. Founded in 2001, the four musicians won the Shostakovich Competition (Moscow) in 2004, and later, in 2007, the Haydn Competition in Vienna. In the years since, the Meta4 Quartet has maintained a busy concert schedule performing in the great halls and musical centers of Europe. The quartet's repertoire includes works from Haydn to the present day, including many works especially written for them. Their first CD (a program of Haydn's op. 55 Quartets) received wide critical acclaim and several coveted awards including the Prize of the German Record Critics' Award and the 2010 Echo Klassik Award.

This set of George Enescu’s solo piano music traces a fascinating musical arc from his precocious years in Vienna and Paris, where he absorbed Brahmsian and French late-Romantic influences, notably in the Impromptus, to the brilliantly mercurial Piano Sonata No. 3. Whether in the Pieces impromptus, eloquent character pieces, or in the oceanic Piano Sonata No. 1, Enescu remains, in Pablo Casals’ words, “the greatest musical phenomenon since Mozart,” his unique musical language embracing Bach as well as the abiding vitality, and melancholy, of his native Romanian folk music. As a First Prize winner of the XIII George Enescu International Piano Competition in Bucharest, the XV José Iturbi International Piano Competition and the First European Union Piano Competition, Spanish pianist Josu De Solaun has been invited to perform in distinguished concert series throughout the world, having made notable appearances in Bucharest, Venice, Saint Petersburg, Washington, DC, New York, London, Paris, Leipzig, and all major cities of Spain. He is the only pianist from Spain to win the Enescu and Iturbi competitions in their respective histories, and was recently invited to a private reception with the King and Queen of Spain at the Royal Palace after winning the coveted Bucharest prize.

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Excerpts of reviews for the previously released volumes in thi set:

Enescu: Complete Works for Solo Piano, Vol. 1

His technique is excellent here. The concluding Sonata 1 is shot through with harmonic twists and driving rhythms, handled expertly.

– AMG

Enescu: Complete Works for Solo Piano, Vol. 2

De Solaun is a wonderful pianist, especially in the colorful worlds of the Second Piano Suite.

– AMG

Enescu: Complete Works for Solo Piano, Vol. 3

De Solaun never makes heavy weather of Enescu’s demanding writing, but lets expression lead at all times, no matter how intense the virtuosity.

– BBC Music Magazine

Grand Piano's Volume 2 of the cycle of complete piano works by the Russian born composer and pianist Alexander Tcherepnin focuses on Tcherpnin's early woks and includes world premiere recordings. Pianist Giorgio Koukl is the Prizewinner of many international music competitions including the H. Rahn competition (Switzerland) and the Alien Competition (Washington DC).

This is one of those discs that makes me want to shout with delight... A wonderful disc altogether!

This is one of those discs that makes me want to shout with delight. Not only is it the piano music of a neglected but brilliant composer but the sub-title Complete Piano Music 1 means there will be more. In fact there will be as many as eight volumes altogether. Hooray!
 
By his late teens, the accompanying booklet explains, Tcherepnin had already composed several hundred pieces. His father, Nikolay was a conductor, pianist and composer and, indeed the genes were passed on to Alexander’s son Ivan who was also a composer. Being born in what, as Confucius would, no doubt, have described as “interesting times”, the family had a difficult life from 1917 when they left for Tbilisi, Georgia, to escape the upheavals of the Russian Revolution, cholera and famine. Then they had to flee Georgia, following its annexation by the Soviet Union in 1921, for Paris where Alexander remained throughout the second world war before finally settling in the USA in 1948.
 
His corpus of work embraces all manner of genres including opera, ballet, orchestral, chamber, solo works, choral, band, music for films and the theatre and even compositions for accordion and harmonica, among others. Though I’ve yet to hear much of it I’ve always been particularly struck by his piano music which I’ve found original and exciting ever since I first heard it on a old vinyl disc. He’s another of those pianist composers from the early twentieth century who became masters of the piano miniature.
 
The disc opens with his 10 Bagatelles, op.5 from 1918, distilled from a much larger number of pieces begun when he was a mere 13 year old, and one of his best known compositions. It comes as no surprise to learn that fact as they are highly inventive and hugely satisfying works possessing a crystalline brilliance accompanied by a propulsive momentum that drives the music forward in a way that becomes almost addictive. They are pieces that stay in the memory for, though I never heard that old disc often and not for many years, I recognised the first two bagatelles as plainly as if I’d only listened to them last week. Years after he had written them Tcherepnin was embarrassed by their success regarding them as juvenile, though he relented later accepting their spontaneity. Artists can sometimes be too self-critical, finding it difficult to accept flashes of genius at an early age. These are certainly examples of that and while you listen just remind yourself that these were composed almost one hundred years ago - unbelievable!
 
Self criticism takes various forms and often includes destruction of works considered unworthy of publication - thank God that didn’t happen with the bagatelles! - and with Tcherepnin that was the fate of the first twelve of his 13 piano sonatas, written in his early teens. The fourteenth, later renumbered as his piano sonata no.1, is the sole survivor and listening to it you can only imagine what has been lost, with regret. It’s a wonderful piece that is rhythmically inventive and exciting and which reveals a creative talent that is simply mind-boggling for someone so young. The booklet’s authors find some similarities with Prokofiev’s earlier Toccata and describe it as “This distinctly Russian-sounding piece ...” I agree with this but also see parallels in Tcherepnin’s compositions with Medtner and aspects of Scriabin, Weinberg and even Shostakovich. With piano compositions of that era from that part of the world there seems to have been an inherent and instinctive prism through which these composers naturally viewed things musical.
 
The 9 Inventions, op.13 (1921) that appear on this disc as a world première recording are further proof of Tcherepnin’s compositional abilities. They are, like the bagatelles, short, brilliantly scored little gems. The booklet’s authors write that “... it is hard for the listener to escape the self-consciousness of the new compositional technique”. I obviously missed out on that and it makes me realise that sometimes it’s better not to be an expert so that I can enjoy things more easily.
 
Tcherepnin’s Sonata no.2, op.94 (1961) has an autobiographical aspect. It gives expression to a frightening episode in which Tcherepnin experienced a strange ringing in his ears. This persisted over two years but eventually disappeared of its own accord. I was not able to discern this in the music but enjoyed it for its own sake as yet more marvellous writing for the piano. Again it serves to emphasise his youthful abilities as this mature work did not leave the early works ‘in the cold’ by any means.
 
The final work on the disc is 10 Études, op.18 (1920) and another world première recording. As I listened to the opening of the first I thought of Chopin. I was interested to read that the booklet noted similarities with Chopin too but also with Prokofiev while others brought Rachmaninov to mind and again Chopin and Prokofiev. Which composer doesn’t draw on influences from others however. Those who make every conscious effort to plough a unique furrow often produce sterile works. These etudes are absolutely fabulous little masterpieces (no.8 lasts a mere 35 seconds!) and they round off the disc in a truly emphatic way. When you realise that these works, while they bear the date of publication of 1920, were in fact written when Tcherepnin was a young teenager you just have to marvel. Music seems to be an art-form that very young people seem able to master at an earlier age than just about any other. It would be staggering to come upon a novel or a painting, sculpture or a play created by anyone as young. On the rare occasions when it does happen we find it just that. In music it happens much more often. I thought of this only yesterday when I heard the string sextet written by the 11 year old Max Bruch.
 
This disc is a simply brilliant introduction to anyone who hasn’t come across Tcherepnin before and who loves 20 ^th century piano music. The works are played superbly by Giorgio Koukl who has already recorded all of Martin?’s piano works to great acclaim. A wonderful disc altogether!
 
-- Steve Arloff, MusicWeb International 

The four works in this second of three volumes devoted to Enescu's piano music range over a period of more than 30 years. The earliest is the joyful, ebullient Suite "Des cloches sonores", Op. 10 which covers a wide expressive range including use of the melancholy Romanian song, the doina. The Piano Sonata No. 3, Op. 24 is a mercurial, puckish works, both spiritred and contemplative, and the Piece sure le nom de Faure is a charming souvenir from one composer to another.

The program included in this album spans almost twenty years of composer Erwin Schulhoff’s career. Tracks included are Suite dansante en Jazz (1931), 9 Kleine Reigen (1913), Ostinato (1925), 5 Etudes de Jazz (1926), and Zez Confrey's Kitten on the Keys (1921). The influence of jazz, ragtime, Expressionism, and Dada are clearly heard in these works, some of which are rarely recorded. Caroline Weichert breathes new life into this music. Booklet notes are available in English and German.

March 2012 marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of Xavier Montsalvatge, one of the most important Spanish composers of the 20th century. Included on this anniversary CD are some of his finest pieces: the famous “Cinco canciones negras,” a poignant song cycle featuring infectious Latin American rhythms; the “Poem Concertante,” first championed by the internationally acclaimed violinist Henryk Szeryng, and the “Concierto breve” for piano and orchestra. This recording has assembled three world-class soloists: American pianist Jenny Lin, mezzo-soprano Lucia Duchonova, and American violinist Rachel Barton Pine.

This is a DSD (Direct Stream Digital) recording

This is a DSD (Direct Stream Digital) recording

This is a DSD (Direct Stream Digital) recording

This album received the 2006 Grammy Award for "Best Instrumental Soloist Performance (without Orchestra)."
All tracks have been digitally mastered using 24-bit technology.

This is a DSD (Direct Stream Digital) recording

Sermons and Devotions

Principal cast includes: Jim Walton, Ann Morrison, Lonny Price, Sally Klein, Jason Alexander, Terry Finn, Liz Callaway, Daisy Prince, Tonya Pinkins.
Additional personnel includes: Paul Gemignani (conductor).
Composed by Stephen Sondheim.

Strasfogel, I.: Franz Schreker Book / Scherzo No. 1 / Schrek

Includes work(s) by Claude Debussy, Max Reger, Arnold Schoenberg, Alexander Alyabyev. Ensemble: Linos Ensemble.

The Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, the city's glittering new landmark, opened in January 2017. "Light & Dark" is the world's first recording of a solo organ recital in the Grand Hall. Featuring a range of appealing contemporary works, the album showcases the wide tonal spectrum of the Elbphilharmonie's organ. Built by the Bonn-based firm Klais, the organ is an instrument of superlatives. 4,765 pipes extend over five rows of seats, their lengths ranging from just eleven millimeters to an imposing ten meters. Thanks to the very open structure of the hall's "white skin" around the organ, audiences can actually look inside the instrument and some of the pipes have been coated such that they can be touched without leaving any marks. The organ fits perfectly into the spectacular architecture and has a very impressive sound. "There's nothing this organ can't do," Iveta Apkalna enthused. "It's warm and rich, with many beautiful fundamental tones that sound from everywhere, and from the depths. The sound embraces the audience." With it's modern selection of repertoire, seemingly tailor-made for both the organist and the instrument, the album compellingly draws listeners into a fascinating world of sound. At the heart of the recording is the work that gives the album it's name - Sofia Gubaidulina's "Light and Darkness", a piece of great extremes that penetrates every fiber of the body. Two composers, Aivars Kalejs and Lucija Garuta, hail from the organist's native Latvia, and the album also includes works by Leo� Janacek, Gyorgy Ligeti, Dmitri Shostakovich, and Thierry Escaich. Iveta Apkalna has made an album that brings to life the qualities of this organ with a modern and extremely diverse selection of works. Iveta Apkalna is one of the world's most famous organists and, as titular organist, knows the Elbphilharmonie instrument like no other musician. She is fully committed to seeing the glittering beauty of the organ better represented in concert halls. Iveta Apkalna is a cultural ambassador of Latvia and dedicates this album to her country.

Lisa Oshima was born in Tokyo, Japan and began studying the violin at the age of four. She graduated with a soloist diploma from the Toho Gakuen School of Music college where she studied with Kenji Kobayashi. She continued her studies with Dr. Felix Andrievsky as a postgraduate at the Royal College of Music where she was awarded the Yehudi Menuhin Award, Ian Stoutzker Prize, and Isolde Menges Prize, and graduated with distinction in 2000. She has won numerous competitions including the 18th International Violin Competition ‘Premio Rodolfo Lipizer,” and the 20th Viotti International Music competition Valsesia. For her new release, she has brought together some of Prokofiev’s greatest compositions for violin. Each and every work on this recording has been chosen by the artist for very personal reasons- not only to show the multifaceted versatility of Prokofiev, but also because of the powerful emotions they summon. The artist writes of these selections, “These works by Prokofiev never fail to grab my heart. I hope you will enjoy…”

Since Marina Baranova first played Clair de Lune as an eager nine-year-old a question had stayed with her: Was there another side to Debussy's music, one influenced by his turbulent private life and tempestuous relationships? "When you think of the great impressionist painters, you think of light, and hope, and love," she says. "But Debussy adored the darkness of Baudelaire, and was heavily influenced by Wagner. The titles he gave his pieces also hint at hidden meanings, so I thought it would be interesting to explore this 'shadow' side and my feelings towards it." Now Marina Baranova's album Unfolding Debussy will be released to mark the occasion of the 100th anniversary of Claude Debussy's death in March 2018. Despite being "absolutely in love" with Debussy, Baranova had also grown tired of playing his work in the common, classical way. Coming back to his music, she resolved to discover new ways of playing while exploring this darkness, and set about deconstructing some of his best loved pieces. It was here she had a vision, and the concept of "unfolding" his work took shape. To emulate the richness of Debussy's original compositions, Baranova sought a broader palette and different textures. "Every instrument has it's own color," she says, and so a number of different pianos and keyboards were employed to help to weave her magic. An Una Corda, a Fender Rhodes, midi keyboards and a C. Bechstein grand piano all feature, as do a number of delays and arpeggiators; anything to match the mood and the colours she could see in her head. Unusually for a classical pianist, she took it upon herself to both write and sing lyrics for various tracks, something she claims "wasn't a decision, but an intuition. At the start, this wasn't my intention, but the words just came."

SCHNITTKE: Cello Sonatas Nos. 1 and 2 / Epilogue / Musica no

FRANCK: Symphony in D minor / RESPIGHI: Pines of Rome

Born in Niederpoyritz near Dresden in 1910, Rudolf Kempe was trained as a pianist and oboist at the orchestral school of the Sächsische Staatskapelle in Dresden between 1924 and 1928. After posts as an orchestra musician in Dortmund and Leipzig he made his debut as a conductor in Leipzig in 1935. After further conducting posts in Chemnitz and Weimar he was brought to Dresden in 1949 by Joseph Keilberth and made General Music Director of the Dresden Opera and Staatskapelle the following year. Semper’s famous opera house lay in ruins, like the whole of the city centre, whereas the evacuated Staatskapelle had survived the war and the post-war years largely intact. Kempe later recalled: “For my career, those were the happiest years of my life – the last glimpse of ‘Paradise’: with opera, concerts and chamber music all year round in the same place.” Eterna producer Dieter-Gerhardt Worm considers Rudolf Kempe to be one of the most significant conductors of the twentieth century and regards the recordings he made with the Dresden Staatskapelle as ideal: “There have surely been very few conductors who have fathomed the nature of the Staatskapelle so deeply and so widely exploited this orchestra’s potential as Rudolf Kempe. In the studio, he was a highly effective ‘worker’. Kempe was the only conductor I have known who did not explain to the musicians what he wanted of the orchestra but simply showed them.” Rudolf Kempe’s early death prevented the implementation of numerous planned projects with the Staatskapelle. When the present recording of Stravinsky’s Firebird ballet suite and Britten’s Sinfonia da Requiem was made in January 1976 none of the participants had an inkling that it would be Kempe’s last.

Carl Conducts … Classical Festival Favourites

Acclaimed by audiences and critics alike, the Israeli artists Sivan Silver and her partner Gil Garburg set new standards in the high art, often too little appreciated, of the duo on one or two pianos. + Their new recording, consisting of two highly virtuosic works by Igor Stravinsky, “Le sacre du printemps” and “Petrushka”, finds the duo debuting as exclusive artists on the Berlin Classics label. + Stravinsky arranged his ballet music, some of the most revolutionary works of the 20th c., both for orchestra and for four hands, making great demands of his pianists both technically and comparatively. + Ms. Silver and Mr. Garburg were well on the way to promising solo careers when they paired up first privately and then at the piano. + They relish the constant contrast between recitals as a duo and orchestral concerts, between intimate pieces that call upon them as a unity, works conceived as dialogue, and those in which they sit at two pianos and summon up the massed power of a full orchestra.

Piano Music: Grand-Mondain

On Navona Records' WITHIN EARTH, Houston string quartet Apollo Chamber Players, described as "... infectious... intimate... provocative... fun... " (Gramophone Magazine) presents an album that demonstrates the contemporary possibilities in string music, continuing Apollo's innovative 20x2020 project. The album contains three new multicultural commissions, as well as a contemporary work by Alexandra Du Bois. Leo Brouwer's Nostalgia de las Monta�as is an homage to his affection for Brazil's lush mountains and landscapes, and reflective of his love of Afro-Cuban and Brazilian dances and rhythms. The three-movement work plays to the Apollo Chamber Players' passion for contemporary music as well as to the individual talents of the performers. The irregular metric patterns, distantly reminiscent of Brazil's varied dance music, require an extraordinary steadiness and sense of rhythm, which is demonstrated impeccably. Matthew Dudzik's cello part impressively keeps the rest of the music in line. But also the viola, played by Whitney Bullock, gets it's share of glory: in Christopher Walczak's Four Dreams, it is the middle voice that ties the three-movement quartet together, this time thematically. Remarkably, during the entire album, it is almost impossible to differentiate between the first and second violin: both Anabel Ramirez Detrick and Matthew J. Detrick, respectively, play with great empathy to both the music and their fellow quartet members. M�y [Cloud] by Vu Nh�t T�n and Vanessa V� (the latter a Emmy and Grammy Award winner and Academy Award Contributor) is scored for string quartet and the ��n b?u, a Vietnamese monochord zither. The result is ethereal, otherworldly, and like a cloud, changes constantly over the course of nearly 20 minutes, eventually fading away without a trace. The final track, the album's namesake Within Earth, Wood Grows by Alexandra du Bois is the musical interpretation of a line in the I-Ching. Again, the ��n b?u features prominently, and yet, this time, it is the overall team spirit that shines through, between Apollo and the guest ensembles WindSync, Kinetic and Loop 38. Indubitably, it is the same spirit of unity which lends the Apollo Chamber Players their emotionally charged, homogenous sound, and the same spirit which led them to commission the contemporary works presented here.

A stroll along the Seine – Notre Dame reflected in the waters below – the Eiffel Tower illuminated in evening skies – bistro conversations echoing in the streets of the Left Bank. + Parisian scenes such as these come to mind when listening to the nuances of pianist Kathryn Goodson’s debut Navona Records release, Belle Nuit, a collection of works from La Belle Époque and beyond, with arrangements for piano and wind instruments. + Ms. Goodson & friends express the imagery of love, loss, and passion through works by Debussy, Duparc, Fauré, Franck, Messiaen and more.