Anders Hillborg is Sweden's leading composer: born in 1959, he has devoted himself entirely to composition since 1982, and his music is performed by the world's leading orchestras and conductors. This release on Alpha is part of the partnership between the label and the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra. It features three works by the composer. Through Lost Landscapes (premiered in 2020) illustrates the richness of his musical world: spectacular sound textures, moments of extreme tension, and the interplay of light and shadow. 'When I compose, especially for orchestra, says Hillborg, I like very much to create sounds that you can't really identify.' The use of rare instruments and the influence of electronic music punctuate Sound Atlas, premiered in 2019, which is also reminiscent of the world of Sibelius. These two works, conducted by Pekka Kuusisto for the first and by Brad Lubman for the second, are recorded here for the first time. In 2013, at the request of Renee Fleming, he wrote The Strand Settings, based on texts by the Canadian poet Mark Strand Swedish soprano Ida Falk Winland delivers an inspired performance of it, again under the direction of Pekka Kuusisto.

For this fifth volume in the Lockenhaus Festival series, under the artistic direction of Nicolas Altstaedt, the cellist presents two works by the Finnish composer Olli Mustonen (born 1967, a student of Rautavaara), including Heavenly Lights (Taivaanvalot) for tenor, cello, and piano, performed here by Ian Bostridge, Nicolas Altstaedt, and the composer at the piano. The English tenor premiered the work in 2016 in it's original chamber version, recorded here for the first time. Mustonen will create an orchestral version in 2020, but the original piece is nevertheless titled Symphony: 'This work was a revelation to me the moment I discovered it. We are immersed in the era of Finnish bards and the folk poems of the Kalevala, a legendary and mystical world whose stories touch us all, regardless of our country of origin,' says Altstaedt. 'A closeness to folk art like the one Kodaly sought and found': his Sonata, Op. 4 (1909-1910), his Sonatina (1920), and the Sonata that Mustonen wrote in 2006-all for cello and piano-also make up this exhilarating and spellbinding program.

Georg Nigl and Alexander Gergelyfi present Die schone Mullerin in a version that is quite different from what we usually hear. Thanks to the use of a Tafelklavier (square piano) built around 1810 by Carl Withum, the baritone says he has 'renewed his experience of singing the Lied,' as the piano's range of timbres opens up new perspectives. Since the publication of Schubert's famous song cycle in 1824, the way the work is interpreted and received has changed drastically, due to the power of modern grand pianos' sound and the exponential growth in the size of concert halls. Whereas in Schubert's time, the intensity of expression and the power of the words themselves took precedence, 'to such an extent that one might think the instrument-that is, the accompaniment-becomes the starting point of the musical message,' says Nigl, who decided to add and recite Wilhelm Muller's texts that were not set to music, notably the prologue, the epilogue, and a few other poems. Following in the tradition of the 'Liederspiel' (song play), which was very popular in 19th-century Berlin salons, Nigl and Gergelyfi offer a profoundly renewed listening experience.

Joseph Haydn not only liked surprising his audiences, he also enjoyed a laugh, writes Christian Moritz-Bauer in the introduction to this sixteenth volume of the Haydn2032 complete recording of the symphonies. Take, for instance, the false conclusion of Symphony No. 90, composed in 1788: the music seems to have reached the last chord but, after a pause, the movement resumes to end with a powerful coda. Another example of Haydn's mischievous wit is the famous Andante "with the drumstroke" that forms the "surprise" of Symphony No. 94, a fortissimo chord designed to wake up audiences who dozed off towards the end of his concerts. In this volume focused on humour, Giovanni Antonini pays tribute to a great admirer of Haydn, Gioachino Rossini, by recording the sparkling opening Sinfonia of La scala di seta (The Silken Ladder), a one-act opera written in 1812.

After their explorations of Italian repertoire in Che fai tù? (MU-037) and French in Vous avez dit brunettes? (Alpha 761), Les Kapsber'girls, a vocal and instrumental ensemble founded by lutenist Albane Imbs in 2015, devotes it's third album to Baroque women composers: hidden talents, unrevealed destinies, few of these composers have had the opportunity to reveal their art, which is nevertheless very real. Recent research has made it possible to revive the fascinating works of composers such as Barbara Strozzi (1619-1677), Isabella Leonarda (1620-1704), Lucia Quinciani (1566-1611), Francesca Caccini (1587-1641), Antonia Bembo (c.1643-1715), and Francesca Campana (c.1615-c.1665), who spent sixty-nine years of her life in an Ursuline convent in Novara, although this did not prevent her from composing no fewer than two hundred works!

Classical Music

After the success of the first fourteen reissues, which restored to the limelight some of the gems of the early music repertory in the catalogues of our labels, here are fourteen new titles to allow listeners to renew acquaintance with further treasures of the Renaissance and Baroque (and even a journey through time thanks to Raphaël Imbert’s album Bach Coltrane), performed by some of the leading interpreters of the genre; most of these discs won one or more awards on their first release. As with the first series, the artists have been asked to contribute to the booklets, in which, with a few years’ hindsight, they talk about their conception of the works and how they went about recording them. The photographers of the Magnum agency illustrate the covers of the series with their work; this time the common design element is the colour yellow.In addition to the 13 titles shown below, the album FIRENZE 161 by LE POEME HARMONIQUE, VINCENT DUMESTRE, will also be reissued.

From experience, I have learned to have high expectations whenever I am dealing with a CD released by Alpha. In every single disc I have gotten from them so far, I note extreme care in all the aspects of production: exquisite art design, a beautiful detail of an excellent painting on the cover, informative liner notes (always including a lengthy explanation of the aforementioned painting itself, which never ceases to delight me!), exciting repertoire, marvelously performed and equally well recorded.

The present CD is no exception to the rule, and it has an extra bonus: it presents a very curious and almost unknown version of three Beethoven sonatas, skillfully transcribed by Pierre-Auguste-Louis Blondeau, who published them in 1808–09, for the benefit of the refined amateur. I would tell you more about this forgotten master, but you know what? You should really get this CD, and read the text: it will not only give you a very good idea about the composer and his artistic milieu, as well as a step-by-step commentary on the movements of each sonata (Michelle Garnier-Panafieu wrote the liner notes), but will also provide you with a knowledgeable article (by Denis Grenier) on the painting by Marie Éléonore Godefroid which graces the cover. To hear Beethoven in this new guise is fascinating and fun. At the same time, a surprise and an experience in déjà vu. No matter how much Beethoven himself used to condemn such transcriptions, somehow the music fits very well for the string quartet, and engages our interest right away. Evidently, a large part of the merit belongs to the musicians of Quatuor ad Fontes, who play with real zest and just the right touch of grittiness. After hearing the CD, I wondered whether I would not find the original version of these works a little bit subdued, from now on.

This is a very good recording, which should be valuable to anyone who loves Beethoven, as well as for those who hate him (maybe they will enjoy Blondeau more than they do the Viennese master). It is a must for all who are interested in the early Romantic period, or in transposition, or in string quartet repertoire, or who simply want to acquire a beautifully presented CD as a gift to someone special. In short: for practically everybody!

Laura Rónai, FANFARE

Recorded live in Tokyo on 20 May 2009 with the NHK Symphony Orchestra conducted by Tadaaki Otaka, this concert provides a new opportunity to take the full measure of the poetry deployed by Nelson Goerner. This poetic approach has come to be seen as the pianist’s trademark in his recordings of Chopin or Debussy. Yet his interpretation also shows unfailing virtuosity, with a precision and power that place him among the most eminent pianists of our time. This recording is one that Nelson Goerner was particularly keen to make, for he views Brahms’s Second Concerto as an immense masterpiece. Premiered in Budapest in 1881 with Brahms himself at the piano, the work enjoyed immediate success with critics and public alike. Now, more than 200 years later, the piece is receiving new life.

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REVIEW:

There is something particularly well-thought out about this performance that makes it compelling. Pianists and conductors can often take a very different view of this concerto with the result that the work can feel like two performances rather than a single performance. The intertwining of a narrative between the orchestra and the pianist – the essence of great chamber-music – is particularly strong here, but so, too, is the sense that both Otaka and Goerner are just letting Brahms’s score unfold. It often feels like an event, a rather special experience, but I suspect one that Nelson Goerner would probably play very differently under another conductor and orchestra.

– MusicWeb International

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

French music of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century abounds in fine and very original symphonic and concerted works that are rarely explored. During the symphonic revival initiated by Camille Saint-Saëns and César Franck, several famous virtuosos encouraged composers to write new works that were to leave their makr on the repertoire. One of those musicians was the pianist Louis Diémer, for whom César Franck composed his famous 'Variations symphoniques'. But we tend to forget that this masterpiece came into being largely thanks to the previous success of Franck's symphonic poem for piano and orchestra, based on a poem by Victor Hugo, 'Les Djinns'. At a time when composers were trying to get away from the traditional image of music, it opened up a new path that others were to follow. As for Jules Massenet's 'Piano Concerto', it represents the lesser-known side of a very great composer, who is remembered above all for his operas. It combines virtuosity and sensitivity, refinement and lyricism, not to forget the 'exotic' touch in the final movement, with the inspiration of Slovakian folk music. Recorded in Bilknet Concert Hall, Ankara, Turkey, on 16, 18 and 19 December 2005.

Under the title Gli impresari, The Impresarios - i.e. The directors of the theatre troupes that Nikolaus I, Prince Esterházy engaged to perform in his opera houses - this album gathers together some of the orchestral works by Joseph Haydn linked by their origin and their reception; they were originally conceived as theatre music, before their metamorphosis into symphonies. The period from 1772 onwards, when Karl Wahr was responsible for the summer theatre programme at Esterháza, saw the peak of the multidisciplinary collaboration taking place between the court music directed by Haydn and companies engaged from outside. At the end of 1775 and the beginning of 1776, while Joseph Haydn was occupied in transforming his music for Collé's comedy into a symphony for concert performance, Karl Wahr was enjoying enormous success with his theatrical entertainments in the ballroom at the theatre in Salzburg. It was there, on 3 January 1776, that Thamos, King of Egypt was staged, a heroic drama whose choruses, musicologists now believe, were composed by none other than Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart; for this Salzburg performance he also composed four instrumental entr'actes (recorded for this release) as well as a melodrama and a Don Giovanni-esque descent into hell.

Following on from the success of the Red and Yellow series (a total of twenty-eight reissues), which have restored to the limelight the treasures of the label’s Baroque music catalogues, here are fourteen new titles offering a chance to renew acquaintance with further gems of the Baroque as well as a number of rarities. This third series also expands to embrace the Classical repertory (Mozart, Haydn etc.) and other cultures, notably those of the East, in recordings that form an integral part of Alpha’s identity and history. The fourteen reissues are performed by the leading musicians in the relevant repertory; most of these discs received one or more press distinctions on their first release. They are accompanied by full booklets, with articles in three languages (English, French, German) and richly illustrated chronologies. A wide range of photographers have provided the cover illustrations for the series, this time with the colour blue as the unifying thread.

Although the turn of the twentieth century marked the golden age of French song, the genre was generally accompanied on the piano and only rarely orchestrated by its composers. But Camille Saint-Saëns, a great lover of poetry, was also a champion of the orchestrated mélodie and the French coloristic style. He also wanted to counterbalance the overwhelming popularity of operatic arias in concert programmes. An immense admirer of Victor Hugo, Saint-Saëns set many of his poems to music, including L'Enlèvement, Rêverie, and Le Pas d'armes du Roi Jean, regarded as one of his masterpieces. Exoticism and a certain sense of the supernatural run through such songs as Danse macabre, one of the most popular pieces of classical music, but always heard nowadays either in its version for orchestra alone or performed by a singer with piano accompaniment. Of the twenty-five mélodies with orchestra listed in the catalogue of Saint-Saëns, nineteen are recorded here, all of them for the first time! With interpreters of the calibre of Yann Beuron and Tassis Christoyannis, the words are perfectly served here and the composer’s coloristic talents heard from the very first bars. This release of world premiere recordings is a genuine event that enables us to rediscover a whole segment of the history of vocal music, a renaissance made possible by the Fondation Bru Zane.

After a Bach album, the tenor Reinoud Van Mechelen and his ensemble A Nocte Temporis present a programme of French music devoted to Nicolas Clérambault (1676–1749), a precociously gifted composer who published four volumes comprising a total of twenty-one cantatas. Reinoud van Mechelen offers us an anthology of these Cantates Françoises – Le Jaloux with its final air ‘Dieu des Amants’, Apollon, L’Amour guéri par l’amour and Pirasme et Thisbé (based on Ovid’s Metamorphoses) – set as a succession of recitatives, airs and simphonies, as in a tragédie lyrique. The young Flemish tenor, now aged thirty, pursues an intensive solo career with the leading Baroque conductors (Christie, Pichon, Niquet) but is also keen to develop his personal projects and his ensemble: ‘I’m a purist but without elitism. Music has to appeal to people. Perhaps that requires them to make an effort and depends on different criteria from the somewhat sensationalist criteria of society, politics and money. But music must be more than a simple distraction, and many people actually want it that way’, he told the Belgian newspaper Le Soir in 2017, when the Prix Caecilia named him ‘Artist of the Year’.

As the celebration of the 250th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth approaches, and following a much-admired version of the Diabelli Variations (Alpha 386 – Gramophone Editor’s Choice), Martin Helmchen has decided to record his complete piano concertos in the company of musical partners with whom he has a special affinity, Andrew Manze and the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin. They devote this first volume to the Concertos nos. 2 and 5, giving lovingly polished performances of these two masterpieces of the piano repertory. Composed even before Concerto ‘no. 1’, the ‘Second’ Concerto was premiered in Vienna in 1795, when Beethoven was only twenty-five years old, but underwent several revisions before being published in its final version in 1801. Concerto no. 5 is the last that Beethoven composed. Though completed in 1808, it was not premiered until 1811. Beethoven normally gave the first performance of his concertos himself, but this time his increasing deafness meant he was unable to do so.

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REVIEW:

Theirs is to all appearances a straight-down-the-middle approach. Yet it does stand high and proud for its artistry, poetry, stylish musicianship and, perhaps above all, rapport between soloist and conductor. This really does feel like a meeting of minds.

– Gramophone

ISTANPITTA: Dances of 14th Century Florence

FRANCOEUR: Chamber Music

A pillar of chamber music repertoire, Schubert’s String Quartet No. 14 in D minor, known as Death and the Maiden, was written in 1824 after Schubert suffered through a series of debilitating illnesses and realized that he was dying. It is the composer’s testament to death, and is named for the theme of the second movement which was taken from an 1817 publication of the same title. “With the wonderful Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra we are presently exploring Schubert’s quatuor ‘Death and the maiden.’ Of course we have to include Schubert’s earlier song with the same title on the poem of Matthias Claudius. This song belongs to the medieval tradition of the dance of death. Therefore we also play “Toden Tanz” (with poor me dancing), an ancient death dance written up by the German organ player August Norminger… we also play one of Dowland’s Pavans from “Seven Teares.” Add to this “Moro lasso”… In between we also refresh our ears with other unsettling works by modern composers…” (Patricia Kopatchinskaja)

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REVIEW:

This being Patricia Kopatchinskaja, this is not your run-of-the-mill disc of Schubert’s Death and the Maiden. Instead, it’s a live recording led by the violinist of a concert in which the movements of Schubert’s string quartet – in Kopatchinskaja’s own string-orchestra version – are interspersed with other music to revealing effect. The quartet gets an energetic, edgy performance - sometimes nervy, occasionally playful. The whole makes for thought-provoking, refreshing listening – and what impresses most, as ever, is the sheer aliveness of Kopatchinskaja’s music-making.

– The Guardian (UK)

This reissue is a very useful reminder that there is much more to the world of early seventeenth century Florence than just the great work of Monteverdi, who composed Orfeo as a court opera in 1607. Sung drama was a special development in Florence, and music lovers looked for the right combination between poetry and music. The role of the camerate would have considerable significance in that development, which would lead, in full development, to opera as we know it.

There are special problems of setting words to music which remain potent for composers of all times. Is the priority music or text? In a preface of 1605, Monteverdi contrasted prima prattica with seconda prattica. In the former, the word must subordinate itself to the music, with emotional compass limited by musical values. In the latter, things are the other way about (a bit of a simplification, but sound enough), even if the expressiveness of the text means an unevenness in balance and harmony. Monteverdi’s Orfeo exemplifies seconda prattica. So too, in its own way, does Belli’s L’Orfeo Dolente, of 1616, the main piece on this recording, supplemented by extracts from contemporary works.

Belli’s work is not an opera in the sense that Monteverdi’s Orfeo is. Rather, it has the character of incidental music to Tasso’s play, Arminta, a set of numbers to draw out and heighten the key moments of the drama. The text of these verses is not by Tasso, but by Gabriello Chiabrera. Belli is today not well-known, but he was clearly a composer of distinctive voice; he worked at the Florentine Basilica of San Lorenzo from 1610 until 1613.

But this music is not just a piece of archaeological interest; it stands on its own very well in performances as varied, as musical and attractive as those on this disc. Singers are uniformly fine, both individually and in ensemble, with good diction and security of tone. Performances are informed, both musically and historically, as one would expect from such fine musicians.

– MusicWeb International (MusicWeb International)

Franz Liszt was 67 when he composed his Via Crucis, yet it did not receive it's first performance until 1929, 43 years after the composer's death. This work of his mature years is in 15 sections, retracing the Stations of the Cross that mark the stages of Christ's Passion, from being condemned to death to being laid in the tomb. Combining Gregorian chant, the Lutheran liturgy and the Latin, German and Aramaic languages, the Via Crucis shows real formal originality. A devout believer, Liszt gives us here his most important sacred work. He composed several versions: for mixed choir, soloists and organ (with the organ part optionally transcribed for piano), for piano solo, organ solo, and two pianos. After an album devoted to Janacek, the Collegium Vocale founded by Philippe Herreweghe is once again conducted by Reinbert de Leeuw in this new Alpha recording.

Classical Music