Principal cast includes: Michael Kermoyan, Cris Alexander, Adolph Green, John Reardon, Nancy Walker, Betty Comden, George Gaynes.
Producers: Goddard Lieberson, Irving Townsend, John McClure.
Recorded at the Columbia 30th Street Studio, New York, New York on November 13, 1958 and May 31, 1960; Manhattan Center, New York, New York on June 18, 1963. Includes liner notes by Didier C. Deutsch.
All tracks have been digitally remastered.

10 years after Seong-Jin Cho's first prize victory in the 2015 Warsaw Chopin Competition, during which the young Korean pianist ascended into stardom with a Deutsche Grammophon discography that includes Liszt, Brahms and Debussy, he prepares a monumental body of work for the 150th birthday anniversary of Maurice Ravel. 2 CD Digipak set.

"Bavouzet’s Haydn is unmatched in its zest and its wit. But it is also substantial, informed and deeply rewarding."

--The New York Times on Bavouzet's Haydn Sonatas cycle, 2022

Jean-Efflam Bavouzet’s survey of Haydn’s piano sonatas reaches its conclusion with this 11th and final volume. As with the previous releases, the acclaimed pianist has included repertoire from different periods of Haydn’s career to create a recital of interest in its own right, as well as the completion of the series.

Jean-Efflam notes: ‘It has been eleven years since the launch of this project to present Haydn’s sonatas, not in their chronological order, but as collections juxtaposing works from different periods. The program for this final album was actually the first one to be devised: I wanted to place side by side the very first and the very last sonata. Then the idea of fleshing out the sonata cycle with other major pieces began at volume four, with the addition of the famous Variations in F minor, and finally this last volume is made up of as many sonatas as other types of works. The complete series is thus able to offer music lovers all the sonatas identified to date, together with the other major keyboard works.’

REVIEWS:

Renowned bass-baritone Adam Plachetka celebrates the Year of Czech Music with an anthology of Czech evening songs by Antonin Dvorak, Bedrich Smetana, Zdenek Fibich and Josef Suk. All based on love poems for Vitezslav Halek's Vecerni pisne (Evening Songs), these songs provide a panorama of great Czech music, also zooming in on lesser-known repertoire. Plachetka performs them together with pianist David svec. Bass-baritone Adam Plachetka frequents the world's most prestigious opera houses, and is a MET regular, equally at home in dramatic and comic repertoire. He returns to PENTATONE after having released Molieri, combining opera arias by Mozart and Salieri, in 2022.

Puerto Rico-born composer Roberto Sierra is internationally renowned for his integration of Caribbean music with the Western idioms he acquired during studies in Europe. The character of Kandinsky ranges from the intimate to the bold and virtuosic, responding with fresh and surprising impressions to a selection of Wassily Kandinsky's unique paintings. The 'Clarinet Sonata' explores the intricate swing of Caribbean mixed meters and instrumental colors in a work of stunning expressiveness and virtuosity. Sierra's longest chamber work to date, 'Treinta y tres formas de mirar un mismo objeto,' was composed for Cheryl Seltzer and Joel Sachs, and is also one of the most substantial works in the repertoire for two performers at a single piano. This recording was made possible in part by grants from the New York State Council on the Arts, a State Agency, and Cornell University.

“No matter how one might try, one cannot be unkind to Mr. Bertini: he can bring one beside oneself with his friendliness and all his finely fragrant Parisian expressions; his music has the feel of pure satin and silk.” In his Neue Zeitschrift für Musik Robert Schumann gave numerous fellow musicians who rubbed him the wrong way a solid piece of his own mind, but he never found anything to hold against Henri Bertini, a French composer who was twelve years his senior. Although he was a little indirect in his praise, he was right: in the music of this once highly esteemed pianist, piano teacher, and composer there is nothing irritating, nothing that might offend good taste – and yet we never have the impression that here we have a composer who eliminated every trace of »modernity« merely to win public favor. Friendliness apparently was a characteristic trait of this musician who was born in London in 1798 and died in Meylan, near Grenoble, in 1876. He never attempted to go at everything headfirst to prove that it was possible to shatter the sound barrier. His countless études and learning pieces were so very popular internationally because a natural music flows in them, offering welcome expressive opportunities to the pupil. And his finely crafted chamber compositions – from the duo sonata to the nonet – form a catalogue’s trove of treasures combining a very fine ear with great narrative talent. Two of these magnificent pieces from the late 1830s – the Piano Trio op. 43 and the Nonet op. 107 – inaugurate this vibrant work series that would be a top wish for a complete recording edition and definitely in every way represents a valuable contribution to the repertoire.

Troubled Times: Music and Espionage in Renaissance England explores sacred music written amid the religious and political instability of 16th-century England. Performed by The Queen's Six with The Rose Consort of Viols, the programme examines how composers navigated shifting allegiances, censorship, exile, and suspicion, from the Henrician Reformation to the Elizabethan settlement. Works by Byrd, Taverner, Morley, Philips, Ferrabosco, and others reflect strategies of adaptation, concealment, and survival, whether through recusancy, foreign travel, or service at court. Placing music within it's historical context, the recording highlights the complex relationship between faith, power, and artistic expression during a period of sustained upheaval.

For its final concert of the 2021–22 season and Osmo Vänskä’s last as artistic director, the Minnesota Orchestra chose to present Mahler’s mammoth Eighth Symphony, which calls for one of the largest complement of performers in the history of music, a symbol of the communitarian spirit of collective cultural, social, and religious-philosophical endeavor in what has been referred to as a ‘Mass for the Masses’.

Mahler’s Eighth Symphony, unlike his others, reveals no contrary despairing voice. It is instead a monumentally affirmative expression of human spiritual achievement achieved through the union of two seemingly incompatible texts: the Latin hymn Veni Creator Spiritus and the conclusion of the second part of Goethe’s Faust. Its première in Munich in September 1910 gave rise to the greatest triumph of Mahler’s career, and a rollcall of European royalty and the artistic élite attended the final public rehearsal and the performances.

The Minnesota Orchestra and Osmo Vänskä are here joined by Carolyn Sampson, Jacquelyn Wagner, Sasha Cooke, Jess Dandy, Barry Banks, Julian Orlishausen, Christian Immler as well as the Minnesota Chorale, the National Lutheran Choir, the Minnesota Boychoir and the Angelica Cantanti Youth Choir.

With this new album the award-winning Latvian Radio Choir conducted by Sigvards Kļava is turning its attention to the music of Alexander Grechaninov (1864–1956), one of the masters of Russian liturgic music. Grechaninov’s All-Night Vigil is a fitting continuation to the choir’s albums of sacred music by Sergey Rachmaninov and Pyotr Tchaikovsky. Together with the two latter names, Grechaninov’s All-Night Vigil, completed in 1912, belongs to the central repertoire of Russian liturgic music. Unlike the Vigils by Rachmaninov and Tchaikovsky, Grechaninov’s work was written primarily for concert use. Grechaninov’s All-Night Vigilis a bright, optimistic work full of light. Grechaninov used old traditional Slavic chants as the basis of this work and selected the uplifting, solemnly glorious chants to emphasize the character of joy, exultation and jubilance.

The Latvian Radio Choir (LRC) ranks among the top professional chamber choirs in Europe and its refined taste for musical material, fineness of expression and vocal of unbelievably immense compass have charted it as a noted brand on the world map. The repertoire of LRC ranges from the Renaissance music to the most sophisticated scores by modern composers; and it could be described as a sound laboratory –the singers explore their skills by turning to the mysteries of traditional singing, as well as to the art of quartertone and overtone singing and other sound production techniques.

REVIEW:

While there is no mistaking the urgency of the composer’s calls for mercy in his ‘Great Doxology’, or the joy unleashed in the final hymn to the “Victorious Leader”, the overall tone of the work is gentle, soothing, and altogether loving. As the composer told us, his aim was “to create a harmonic dress for our simple church songs”. For Slavic fire and brimstone, then, you’ll have to look elsewhere.

The Latvian Radio is one of the world’s finest choirs and sounds it here. Informative notes, texts, and an English translation round out an offering that any choral aficionado would be proud to claim.

-- American Record Guide

Dan Laurin has released around thirty albums on BIS since the beginning of his collaboration in 1987. Laurin’s recorder music spans the globe and across the years, from England to Japan, and from the Renaissance to today. This latest release journeys to early 18th century France, and features composers such as Nicolas Chedeville, Anne Danican Philidor, Charles Dieupart, Marin Marais, and more.

The Seven Last Words of Christ refers to the seven short phrases uttered by Jesus on the cross, as gathered from the New Testament. Over the centuries the crucifixion has served as inspiration to countless composers, and settings of these utterances have become something of a subgenre, beginning in the Renaissance with early motets and continuing into our own time. By way of Cesar Franck and Sofia Gubaidulina, composers ranging from Heinrich Schutz to Tristan Murail have contributed versions using various combinations of voice and/or instruments. One of the best known of these settings is probably the one by Joseph Haydn. The one – or rather the four… A rather complicated story begins in 1785, when Haydn received a commission from Cadiz in Spain, at the other end of Europe. He was asked to compose seven slow movements, each ca 10 minutes long, to be played by an orchestra in alternation with the priest expounding on each of the seven words. Relishing this unusual challenge, Haydn accepted and ended up so pleased with the result that he immediately made a version for string quartet as well as authorising another one for keyboard. The work became so popular across Europe that ten years later the music was used one final time, in an oratorio for choir and orchestra. The work is here heard in the version for keyboard, performed by the French pianist Nicolas Stavy. He closes the disc with another unusual work in Haydn’s oeuvre, the Andante con variazioni, Hob. XVII/6, which has been described as ‘the deepest and most profound set of variations for piano composed between Bach and Beethoven’.

Left unfinished at the death of the composer, Gustav Mahler's Tenth Symphony has exerted an enormous fascination on musicologists as well as musicians – a kind of Holy Grail of 20th-century music. Recognized as an intensely personal work, it was initially consigned to respectful oblivion, but over the years, Alma Mahler, the composer’s widow, released more and more of Mahler’s sketches for publication, and gradually it became clear that he had in fact bequeathed an entire five-movement symphony in short score (i.e. written on three or four staves). Of this, nearly half had reached the stage of a draft orchestration, while the rest contained indications of the intended instrumentation. Over the years a number of different completions or performing versions of ‘the Tenth’ have seen the light of day. One of the most often performed and recorded of these is that by Deryck Cooke. Cooke himself insisted that his edition was not a ‘completion’ of the work, but rather a functional presentation of the materials as Mahler left them. Cooke’s performing version of the symphony is the one that Osmo Vanska has chosen to use for the seventh installment in his and the Minnesota Orchestra’s Mahler series, a cycle characterized by an unusual transparency and clarity of sound as well as musical conception.

REVIEW:

From the outset, Vänskä’s handling of the opening Adagio is sublime, its long themes opening up in endless waves thanks to the clean-toned Minnesota strings and the conductor’s perfectly judged balance between purposeful progress and emotional repose. BIS’s engineering is immaculate, simultaneously spacious and detailed, and presented with convincing weight and clarity. The contrast between the pristine pianissimo strings and the moment the Adagiofinally heaves its heart into its mouth is overwhelming.

The first Scherzo is nimble and fleet of foot, Vänskä’s insistence on delicacy over grotesquery tying it neatly to the first movement. Again, incident is brought out with considerable imagination and there’s some superb solo work from the Minnesota principals. This is musical storytelling at its finest.

In Vänskä’s hands the “Purgatorio” movement is a gossamer reflection of the younger composer in the carefree days of the Fourth Symphony upon which the clouds occasionally darken. Building his argument, Vänskä urges the fourth movement second Scherzo along while ensuring plenty of contrasts. “The devil is dancing this with me; madness, seize me and destroy me,” Mahler wrote at the top of this movement, ending with, “You alone know what it means. Ah! Ah! Farewell my lyre! Farewell, farewell, farewell, farewell. Ah! Ah!”.

Linking the two final movements is a dramatic coup. The sudden impact of the muffled drum – inspired by a funeral procession that Mahler and Alma witnessed from the window of their New York hotel room – is heart-stopping, as is the following progression in which the musical spools of Mahler’s life seem to gradually unravel towards that final page where Mahler scribbled, “für dich leben! für dich sterben! Almschi!” (To live for you! To die for you! Almschi!). Over 25 unmissable minutes, Vänskä interweaves the moving with the mercurial in a riveting demonstration of musical storytelling.

As this Minnesota cycle enters the final furlong, this Tenth is a major achievement.

– Limelight (Clive Paget)

On two highly praised albums, Susanna Mälkki and her players in the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra have released recordings of Béla Bartók’s three scores for the stage – The Miraculous Mandarin, The Wooden Prince and Bluebeard’s Castle, all written before 1918. The team now takes on two of his late orchestral masterpieces. Composed in 1936 for the Basel Chamber Orchestra, Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta is one of the purest examples of Bartók’s mature style, with its synthesis of folk music, classicism and modernism. One immediately striking feature is the unusual instrumentation: two string orchestras seated on opposite sides of the stage, with percussion and keyboard instruments in the middle and towards the back. In 1940, during the Second World War, Bartók emigrated to the U.S.A., where he initially found it difficult to compose. In 1943 he received a prestigious commission from the Boston Symphony Orchestra, however, and in less than eight weeks he composed the Concerto for Orchestra. In it he worked with contrasts between different sections of the orchestra, and the soloistic treatment of these groupings was his reason for calling the work a concerto rather than a symphony.

REVIEW:

There hasn’t been a coupling of these two iconic works this successful in, well, decades. Usually the pieces get divided between different performers, or if it’s the same forces throughout, one work comes off better than the other. Not here. Start with the Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta. No one (except possibly Reiner) attempts to play it at Bartók’s indicated timings–around six+ minutes per movement. Everyone is slower, and often rightly so, but sometimes rather too much slower. Mälkki sounds just about perfect: in the range of seven minutes per movement, with an eerily flowing opening fugue, a ferocious second movement Allegro, a terrifying Adagio (listen to those timpani glissandos at the bottom of the texture), and a finale that features an imaginative and characterful flexibility of tempo, highlighting its dance-like character. The Helsinki strings play with extraordinary discipline, even if some of the “special effects” such as col legno bowing could resister more strongly. Never mind. It’s a great performance.

So is that of the Concerto for Orchestra. Perhaps the best thing I can say about it is that it sounds like a genuine collaborative effort between conductor and orchestra. Mälkki keeps the music flowing, reveling in the fine ensemble that the Helsinki Philharmonic has become: the brass fugato in the first movement, the “games of pairs” in the second, or the eerie woodwind solos in the brooding Elegia–nothing here is less than world-class. In the finale, Mälkki finds an idea balance between hard-driving forward movement and precision of articulation. She also keep something especially exciting in reserve for the coda, which dashes away thrillingly. BIS has captured the entire production in powerfully present, tactile sound that really lets you hear down through the ensemble, from top to bottom. This really is an exceptional release. If you love this music, be sure to hear it.

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

The music of Michael Jarrell has been said to “examine states of dream and unreality, searching for a moment of truth” – a truth which is often found in the lowest sonorities and slowest tempi, a place where time stands still. His works are often interrelated, not only by a certain sensitivity or a distinctive tone, but also by the recurrence of particular features that he reworks in different contexts. The present disc combines two recent concertos, each of them performed by its dedicatee. In July 2019, three years after they gave the first performance of Émergences-Résurgences, Tabea Zimmermann rejoined l’Orchestre National des Pays de la Loire and Pascal Rophé in order to record the work. In the liner notes Jarrell describes his method in the concerto in visual terms: ‘Curves, colors, chiaroscuro or strong lines; I tried to integrate a pictorial dimension into the scheme of this piece…’ Jarrell’s fourth violin concerto, 4 Eindrücke, is even more recent, and was first performed in 2019 in Tokyo’s Suntory Hall by Renaud Capuçon and Pascal Rophé conducting. As suggested by its title, the work is in four contrasting movements, of which the second stands out in that the soloist plays only pizzicato throughout. Framed by the two concertos is an orchestral work from 2009 which takes its title from Lucretius: ‘the sky, recently so clear, suddenly becomes horribly murky’. Although the work lacks a programme as such, the title paints in words the abrupt contrast between what the composer describes as ‘great expressive violence’ and an atmosphere that is ‘gentle, calm and full of inwardness’.

The phrase memento mori has its origins in classical antiquity, but the injunction to remember one’s own mortality has been a feature of different cultures and religions throughout the ages. Just as death is universal, so is our need to adjust to this fact, and to consider our lives with it in mind. The arts are, and have been, an important means in helping us do so, which is why the laments gathered on this album speak to us all. The Austrian ensemble klingzeug has gathered examples from across 500 years – from the "Planh" (plaint) by Raimbaut de Vaqueiras, a Provençal troubadour of the early 13th century, to Locatelli’s Sinfonia funebre. Two of the most famous of all musical laments have also found their way onto the disc, albeit not in the form we normally hear them; transferred to a violin, Dido’s Lament from Purcell's Dido and Aeneas has become a song without words, while Dowland’s "Lachrimae" is heard in one of the many arrangements made of it, here by the German composer Johann Schop.

Born in 1968, the Swiss composer Richard Dubugnon writes music that has been described as ‘driven by a playful modern sensibility’ (New York Times). His work list includes all genres, from solo pieces to large orchestral works, such as the Helvetia Symphony, scored for the same forces as Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. He has also written for smaller orchestra, however, and this disc is bookended by his two chamber symphonies. Chamber Symphony No.?1 was composed in 2013, and in his liner notes the composer admits to influences from Arnold Schoenberg and Franz Schreker, as well as Olivier Messiaen: ‘if passionate gestures evoke the decadent Vienna of the turn of the 20th century, the overall harmonic color remains quite “French”… Switzerland is, after all, half way between Vienna and Paris.’ In contrast, the initial inspiration for Chamber Symphony No. 2 (2017) was a visual one – a stained-glass panel from 1658 commemorating the first members of Musikkollegium Winterthur, for which the work was written. Dubugnon creates a chaconne based on the colours of the stained glass, but also includes a Bach fragment in allusion to a reference on the panel to Psalm 150. These elements are used in various ways throughout the piece, which ends in a big accelerando. Framed by the symphonies is the concerto Klaveriana for piano, orchestra and obbligato celesta. Featuring a wide range of piano techniques, the concerto is unusual in that it incorporates an important part for the celesta which functions as a mysterious reflection of the piano. The album is a first on BIS from Musikkollegium Winterthur under its conductor Thomas Zehetmair, with Noriko Ogawa as the soloist in Klaveriana.

Kalevala, the Finnish national epic, begins with the creation of the world – from a duck's egg – and goes on to relate a series of tales of magic and adventure. One of the most memorable characters is Kullervo, a flawed hero whose tragic story is told in the course of six songs or runos. These describe multiple murders, rape, incest and finally suicide – a powerful brew that has inspired several Finnish artists. Among them is Jean Sibelius, who in 1891 was a young music student in Vienna. At home in Finland a wave of nationalism was gaining momentum and the Kalevala was an important symbol in the struggle for independence from Russia. Sometimes called a choral symphony, Sibelius's Kullervo was premiered in 1892, receiving a mixed reception and the work was soon overshadowed by the First Symphony. Only in the 1970s did it became more widely known, at which time the score caused something of sensation. Faithful to the urgency and brutality of the score, the present recording was made at live performances at Symphony Hall in Minneapolis, with Osmo Vänskä directing the forces of the Minnesota Orchestra, joined by their Finnish guests Lilli Paasikivi, Tommi Hakala and the eminent YL Male Voice Choir.

Friends of long standing as well as regular partners in chamber music, Michael Collins and Stephen Hough bring their combined musical insights and expertise to bear on Johannes Brahms’s sonatas for clarinet and piano. Together with the composer’s trio for clarinet, cello and piano and clarinet quintet, the sonatas are among the most treasured works in the repertoire of the instrument – but it is partly down to good luck that we have them at all. When Brahms in 1891 heard the clarinetist Richard Mühlfeld, principal clarinet of the Meiningen Court Orchestra, he had already announced his retirement. He was enraptured by Mühlfeld’s playing and its vocal qualities, however, and made a ‘comeback’: during the following couple of years he composed all four of his clarinet works. These were written especially for Mühlfeld, whose spirit does seem to pervade the two sonatas – we hear an unusually sunny and lyrical Brahms, with plenty of opportunity to sing for both instruments. When the sonatas were published, they appeared with alternative viola parts to replace the clarinet, and soon violin versions prepared by the composer were also brought out. For the opening work on the disc, Michael Collins has therefore taken a leaf out of Brahms’s book, by adapting the composer’s Violin Sonata No. 2, another late work. The amount of adaptation needed is small: a lot of the violin writing fits the clarinet well, and the sonata share much of the songlike quality of the two ‘real’ clarinet sonatas.

REVIEW:

Clarinetist Michael Collins must have lived with the two Op. 120 sonatas for all his professional career. That seems abundantly clear from his superb playing in both of those sonatas. His Brahmsian experience is also evidenced by his highly persuasive and idiomatic adaptation of Op 110. As for Stephen Hough, his Brahms credentials are well known, not least for his splendid recordings of the piano concertos (review) and, more recently, of the late piano pieces (review). It was a great idea to bring these two fine musicians together for this project and the idea has paid off handsomely.

The production values are high. The recorded balance is ideal and the instruments are reproduced truthfully. I listened to the stereo layer of this SACD and was very satisfied with the results. As I’ve already indicated, Stephen Johnson’s essay is excellent.

This is a disc which will grace any Brahms collection.

-- MusicWeb International

Internationally acclaimed for his music for orchestra (17 symphonies and 31 concertos to date), Kalevi Aho has also composed chamber and solo works. The present disc combines six such pieces, ranging across the composer’s career. The earliest work on the disc is the Bach-inspired Sonata for solo violin from 1973, reminding us that during his years at the Sibelius Aacademy (1968 – 71), Aho studied the violin as well as composition. Another early piece, Prelude, Toccata and Postlude, also started out as a solo work – this time for the cello – before developing into a duo. From the other end, chronologically speaking, is the ample Piano Sonata No. 2 from 2016, with a duration of some 25 minutes. This time it is Beethoven who has provided inspiration, and the composer describes the work as ‘a commentary on the Hammerklavier Sonata, in which Beethoven’s motifs are frequently “misquoted” and developed in a different direction.’ The sonata closes the programme but not before giving us an opportunity to hear three further works involving the violin – a second solo piece, In memoriam Pehr Henrik Nordgren, written in memory of Aho’s fellow composer and friend, Lamento for two violins and Halla (‘frost’) for violin and piano. Performing these works are four highly respected Finnish musicians, the violinists (and brothers) Jaakko and Pekka Kuusisto, Samuli Peltonen (cello) and Sonja Fräki, pianist and Aho specialist.

REVIEW:

The two pieces written to mourn fellow musicians are, in fact, the best. Lamento was created for the funeral of the violinist Sakari Laukola, who died young in 2001. Jaakko Kuusisto’s sincerity obvious and his tone particularly strong and beautiful high up.

– Gramophone

A brief glance at the list of contents is enough to reveal who the singer is – only Anne Sofie von Otter could have come up with a programme as varied and wide-ranging. And only von Otter could hold it together seamlessly by finding the resonances between these very different pieces, and bringing them out with a rare ability of embracing different singing styles and expressive registers: to paraphrase Bernstein in his A Simple Song, Anne Sofie von Otter never fails to ‘sing like she likes to sing’. From Liszt to Pärt and from Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony to Richard Rodgers’ Sound of Music, von Otter is supported by her long-time accompanist Bengt Forsberg, here at the organ instead of his usual piano. At various points in the programme they are joined by a number of musical friends, in the organ loft of St James’s Church in central Stockholm – the very church where the young von Otter began her singing career as a chorister and, together with Forsberg, gave one of her very first public concerts.

-----

REVIEW:

A Simple Song’ is a thoughtful, even challenging recital, given extra colour by the fact that Forsberg, her longtime song partner, here swaps his piano for the organ of the Stockholm church where the young von Otter started singing as a teen. This is a delightful, surprising and thought-provoking programme – difficult to classify, perhaps, but very easy to enjoy.

– Gramophone

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

REVIEWS:

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

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

-- MusicWeb International

BIS ecopak Yevgeny Sudbin has previously recorded Beethoven’s piano concertos – releases which have received international acclaim, for instance on the website ClassicsToday.com: ‘A Beethoven experience you will not want to miss.’ For his first disc featuring solo works by Beethoven, Sudbin has chosen the two final sonatas and the Six Bagatelles, Op. 126 – late works written between 1821 and 1824, just a couple of years before the composer’s death. There are numerous anecdotes that testify to the fact that Beethoven was highly temperamental. But in his liner notes to this disc, Sudbin writes of another, contrasting side to the composer: ‘warmth, generosity and wisdom – with unexpected outbursts of cheeky humour – are also unmistakably among Beethoven’s qualities and particularly evident in the works on this recording’. If Beethoven’s 32 piano sonatas form one of the most important collections of works in the history of music, then the final ones belong to his crowning achievements. Various musicians and musicologists have commented on them, hearing a hard-won triumph of the spirit in the great fugue of the final movement of Op. 110, and interpreting Op. 111 – and especially its second movement, the famous Arietta – as a last farewell. The set of Bagatelles was composed only months after Beethoven had completed his monumental Ninth Symphony. It became the last work for piano to be published in his lifetime, and together the six brief pieces form a distillate of a lifetime of writing for and playing the piano.

Although born in Sweden, Klas Torstensson has spent most of his working life in the Netherlands following his studies in Utrecht in the early 1970s. Stylistically, he may call to mind Varèse, Xenakis and – perhaps more distantly – Stravinsky. First and foremost, however, Torstensson’s music is personal and distinctive. It is often nourished by his experiences of nature: rough granite, the sea, ice in the frozen Baltic inlets, the polar ice cap. His Lantern Lectures were composed in the aftermath of his opera The Expedition, about an ill-fated journey to the North Pole. While occupied with the opera he had received commissions from several different ensembles, and he therefore decided to write a cycle of works for these ensembles – compositions to be performed separately or as ‘movements’ forming a greater whole. The four lectures portray fundamental elements and phenomena in Nordic nature: bedrock with stratified memories of its violent origins (Solid Rocks I & II), traces of the Northern Lights (Aurora Borealis) and potholes, cylindrical holes drilled into the bedrock under glaciers (Giant’s Cauldron). They all involve 12 to 15 players, and are connected by Brass Links, brief interludes for trumpet, horn and trombone. Lantern Lectures is here performed by Norrbotten NEO, an ensemble dedicated to the promotion of contemporary chamber music, conducted by Christian Karlsen.

The soulful sounds of the oboe and oboe d’amore infuse the expressive, lyrical new album of solo and chamber works by award-winning Canadian composer Christopher Tyler Nickel. The star of the show is Seattle Symphony principal Mary Lynch VanderKolk, whose artistry plays a vital role in Chris’ compositional process. He explains, “I find ways to incorporate her strengths and personality into expressing the music’s emotions.” The Oboe Sonata, dedicated to Mary, is by turns haunting and pastoral, navigating the full three-octave range of the instrument. The Sonata for Oboe d’amore demonstrates the large timbral and emotional range of the oboe’s lower-pitched cousin, from darkness to light.

Undaunted by the historic canon of iconic solo instrumental works already in existence, Chris – an oboist himself – created a tour de force with his Suite for Unaccompanied Oboe, a work Mary describes as “more cinematic” than his other concert works, not surprising perhaps given his countless award-winning TV, film, and theatrical scores. The album concludes with what is surely the only Oboe d’amore Quintet ever composed. The instrument’s plaintive tone takes center stage against the backdrop of string quartet, as the work moves from serenity, melancholy, and nostalgia, before ending with an invigorating finale that brings the inspiring album to a close.

REVIEWS:

Featuring the talents of oboist Mary Lynch VanderKolk, the new album Christopher Tyler Nickel: Sonatas and Chamber Music for Oboe and Oboe d’amore masterfully explores the full range and lyrical aspects of the oboe while spiritedly challenging its technical capabilities. Opening with the Oboe Sonata specifically composed for VanderKolk, Nickel’s own familiarity with the oboe is clearly demonstrated as he insightfully captures the strengths of the player – creating beautifully sweeping lines that showcase VanderKolk’s colourful and lyrical capabilities as she artfully navigates the dynamic and rhythmic passages in a way that only the most consummate performer could. Imagining the pensive sadness of the lone instrument at twilight is what one may experience as they listen to Nickel’s second piece of this collection, the Oboe d’amore Sonata.

The album concludes with the Quintet for Oboe d’amore for the namesake instrument and string quartet in a uniquely distinctive composition drawing the listener in with the dark, melancholic timbre of the double-reed instrument traditionally only heard in Baroque music, making this piece the first of its kind and a true testament to this Canadian composer’s proclivity for the oboe family and ability to fashion narrowly defined aspects of both music and the instrument into a broader phenomenon.

-- The Whole Note

Anthony McGill, principal clarinet of the New York Philharmonic, and pianist Gloria Chien, a frequent performer with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, make their commercial recording debut as a duo on Here with You, an album of early and late German Romantic masterworks they’ve treasured throughout their 15 years of mutual admiration and musical collaboration. It’s a project that embodies, in the artists’ words, a “shared expression of beauty and friendship.” Johannes Brahms and Carl Maria von Weber were accomplished pianists who wrote for — and performed with — the leading clarinetists of their day. Brahms’ Sonata No. 1, Opus 120, spotlights fast-paced, intense dialogues between the two players, while his Sonata No. 2 explores the clarinet’s entire tonal range. Weber’s Grand Duo Concertant has been described as “a double concerto without orchestra” showcasing sheer virtuosity for both instruments. The Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s newest Mead Composer-in-Residence, Jessie Montgomery wrote Peace in 2020 as a response to the global pandemic. McGill and Chien offer the world-premiere recording of the clarinet and piano version.