After two previously successful discs, devoted to Scarlatti and Clementi, pianist Olivier Cavé pursues a Bach project. Bach never tired of copying by hand the music of others. He reproduced and adapted works, namely Italian music, as a way of achieving personal synthesis and creation. These beautiful transcriptions are precisely at the origin of one of his master pieces, the Italian Concerto.

REVIEW:

Olivier Cavé is a Swiss pianist who worked with Maria Tipo. His program is unusual for a pianist: the transcriptions are rarefied fare even for harpsichordists, but they work beautifully on the piano. Cavé stresses their lyrical qualities: the slow movement of S 974 (after Alessandro Marcello) has a melody that’s worthy of any aria Bach ever wrote; and Cavé phrases it beautifully, adding a limpid, singing tone as well. I haven’t heard such beautiful cantabile piano tone in years—what a great Debussy pianist Cavé would make! The Italian Concerto, too, is more refined and delicate than most piano performances, and the approach works beautifully for the early variation set and the evergreen Capriccio on the Departure of the Beloved Brother. Altogether, an exquisite release.

— American Record Guide

Classical Music

Marked by the experiments of Luigi Nono or Helmut Lachenmann, and by his practice of seventeenth and eighteenth century music, French composer Brice Pauset is pursuing an original path, marked by his rhetorical questioning of earlier forms of music. This is music in tune with our own culture and, at times, would transmit its evidences. The vocal issue remains central, even in Brice Pauset’s catalogue: “The voice as an instrument,” he writes, “the voice as identity (and it then literally becomes human), and finally, the voice as an instrument of identity. It is only at this moment that the musical and political can carry on a dialogue, and that music can attempt to express its time.” Performed by the WDR Sinfonieorchester & Chor Koln, Ensemble Recherche, and Arditti Quartet, this is an album of great intensity served by first-rate performers!

Classical Music

Lucid music. Vivacity, wit, intensity, foldings and unfoldings of the pointillist material, embracing the thing itself and its contradiction- sensuality, drollery, dances, abysses like sudden draughts of air. Movement and standstill… Music that slaps, pinches, bites, muffles, growls. Here Pesson reinvigorates what might already be his own classicism (Carmagnole); draws a pencil moustache on Mozart, who is more than willing to wear it (Transformations du Menuet K. 355); hounds his language so far into the corner that it seems different, and probably becomes so, in the intransigent light of Opalka (Blanc merite); a language that ramifies and scintillates in Proust (Ne pas oublier coz rouge dans jour craquele); grows geometric in Perec (Neige bagatelle); and denudes itself in ‘enfantines’ (Musica ficta). The Ensemble Cairn, a faithful partner of the label, under its director Guillaume Bourgogne, leads us into territories that could hardly be droller.

Classical Music

French composer Thierry Pecou studied at the Paris Conservatoir Superieur. While there he won first prizes in orchestration and composition. Since then he has gone on to composer over 80 works, which have also been highly awarded. For this album, he features his Les Liaisons Magnetiques and Les Machines Desirantes. Performed by Ensemble Variances, this music is inspired by the composer’s relationship with the “Other or the Elsewhere,” and pre-Columbian Mexico.

Mentioned by Dante amongst 'the most illustrious poets of his time, Thibaut de Champagne (1201-1253), also called 'Thibaut the Songwriter', was one of France's greatest trouvères (or 'musician-poet' in langue d'oïl). He left us some sixty songs, cultivating highly varied musical genres: songs of love and of the crusades, pastourelles, hymns to the Virgin, jeux-partis... Count of Champagne and King of Navarre, grandson of Marie de France and great-grandson of Eleanor of Aquitaine, he was chosen by the Holy See and numerous barons to lead a new crusade in 1239. A seal from 1226 portrays him on horseback, brandishing his sword. This disc proposes an anthology of his compositions, all coming from the very famous songbook copied at the end of the 13th century: the 'King's manuscript'. As a counterpoint to the songs and in harmony with them, it also presents motets and instrumental dances representative of the musical repertoires of the period.

...Gervasoni not only writes notes, he writes about the distance that can be found between and around them, the very distance that Emily Dickinson refers to in her poems. That distance contains the hidden meaning of Philip Levine's poetry, the upheaval and the plenitude of man that Francis Ponge conjures up out of staring eyes, here transmuted into listening tension. - Ph. Albera

The supernatural drifts of the compositions brought together in this recording, served by the power and playing technique of Severine Ballon, reveal unexpected facets of expressiveness in the contemporary cello. Fully engaged in the renewal of its repertoire, Severine Ballon especially favors conversing and working with the composers, in the intimacy of the 'sound factory'. Having initiated numerous creations to which this recital admirably bears witness, here she offers us a tailor-made program in the heart of the compositional process. Once again, what could have been likened to risk-taking allows Severine Ballon to affirm, forcefully and with conviction, her artistic identity, her commitment and her very particular place in the world of the contemporary cello.

Quatuor Schumann and Gyula Stuller propose a truly fresh and transparent reading of these two masterpieces of Robert Schumann's literature for piano and strings. Unanimously celebrated by the critics for their first Chausson-Fauré record, published under the Aeon label, this young ensemble of Swiss musicians shows perfect delicacy and clarity, as well as hypersensitive romanticism. Indeed, one can hardly wish for a more appropriate or more complete vision of what constitutes the true spirit of chamber music, where each individual surpasses himself without ever losing the unity of the group.

Andreas Staier made a spellbinding recording of Schubert's monumental A minor sonata D. 845 for Teldec in the mid-1990s. His remake for AEON is bookended by a two-movement work from Brice Pausnet, written specifically for Staier and his Christopher Clarke fortepiano. Taking its cue from D. 845, Kontra-Sonate processes Schubert's stark unison melodic writing and toccata-like patterns through Pausnet's essentially atonal vocabulary. His style is largely characterized by gesture as opposed to rhythm, and as a consequence, even the most rapid flourishes have a slow moving, decorative effect. As the music progresses, I find myself less interested in Pausnet's note choices and more fascinated with the subtlety with which he deploys the fortepiano's extraordinary pedal and percussion effects, registral differentiation, and unpredictable intonation. The continuity and caring precision of Staier's performance minimizes the music's static, academic countenance.


If Staier's angular and dynamically vivid Schubert A minor remake seems more settled and less impetuous than in the aforementioned Teldec version (especially in the last two movements), it's probably due to a more distant microphone placement than Teldec's tighter pickup. Is the una corda pedal responsible for those harp-like sonorities in the first-movement development section? What a gorgeous, totally unexpected sound! This is a profoundly fascinating release, but why do projects like this invariably include booklet notes packed with poetic, conceptual, philosophical, and mythological hooey?
--Jed Distler, ClassicsToday.com

Born in Catalonia and Arnold Schönberg's sole Spanish student, Roberto Gerhard is, after Manuel de Falla, the boldest and most brilliant representative of the music of his country. Forced into the exile by the Spanish civil war, he became a British citizen and spend his last years in Cambridge. Although they never met, the connection with the Arditti Quartet seems to have been preordained, as illustrated by this superb recording of what can be considered the composer's masterworks.

Some of the most inventive cello repertoire of the modern day is presented on this new release by Aeon.; Accompanied by electronics, these works inspire a sense of wandering, adventuring, and experimentation, discovering new realms of tonal possibilities.; Arne Deforce and Yutaka Oya blend seamlessly in this atypical pairing.

'I often compose in allegro, scherzo, or allegro vivace mode', declares Régis Campo at the risk of being seen as an agitator in a troubled age when the requiem with its trail of litanies and lamentos is invading the musical landscape. Régis Campo has decided to be at the epicentre of happiness. Should cheerfulness in music be banned nowadays? He sweeps away this view at a stroke: he composes his happiness, in search of music devoid of all heaviness. - Omer Corlaix