The Orchester Wiener Akademie and it's conductor Martin Haselb�ck continue the Resound Beethoven series, performed on period instruments and scrupulously respecting the orchestral layouts of 200 years ago. Volume 8, the last volume of the series, is devoted to two emblematic works, both of them dedicated jointly to Prince Franz Joseph Maximilian Lobkowitz and Count Andreas Kirillovich Razumovsky: Symphonies nos. 5 and 6. Each of these symphonies has a name attached to it. While the Fifth Symphony is sometimes called the 'Fate' Symphony for more or less determined reasons, Beethoven himself named the Sixth 'Pastoral', thus pursuing the venerable tradition of the musical pastorale while conferring a new dimension on it. The Orchester Wiener Akademie recorded these two works in the Landhaus Saal of the Nieder�sterreich Palais, Beethoven's favorite concert venue. Between 1819 and 1827, all his nine symphonies were performed there at the 'Concerts spirituels' founded by Franz Gebauer, and it was in this same palace that the Austrian Revolution of 1848 began.

GRARE: Follow / Fugitives / Koan

This album marks the third release in the collaboration between the Ensemble Intercontemporarin and Alpha. This time the musicians of the ensemble and their conductor, Matthias Pintscher focus on American music: Intégrales by Edgar Varèse, Music for Wind Instruments by John Cage, Instruments I for six instruments by Morton Feldman, Elliott Carter's Concerto for clarinet and ensemble, Steve Reich's WTC 9/11 for string quartet, Sean Shepherd's Blur, and David Fulmer's Within his bending sickle's compass come for solo horn and ensemble. More than ninety years of creativity and musical profusion at the heart of the global city that the Ensemble Intercontemporain celebrates today. This album is being released to coincide with the fortieth anniversary of the EIC: forty years of discoveries and of promotion of contemporary music at the highest level of performance.

-----

REVIEW:

This excellent compilation — excellent in its musical choices and in its performance — is a marvelous balm to my ears. The two youngest composers demonstrate that at least some American music produced today challenges my expectations and proposes new possibilities for form, timbre, and harmony.

– American Record Guide

After making several albums of chamber music by Brahms and Schubert, the cellist Marie-Elisabeth Hecker now records a large-scale concerto, showing the full range of her talent. Composed between 1918 and 1919, Elgar’s Concerto op.85 was poorly received at its first performance but has since become established as one of the key works in the cello repertoire. To complete the programme, Marie-Elisabeth Hecker rejoins her chamber music partners, the violinists Carolin Widmann and David McCarroll, the violist Pauline Sachse and the pianist Martin Helmchen, in Elgar’s Piano Quintet, composed at the same time as the Concerto and premiered in London in 1919.

"Tremendous fun!", "Scintillating!", wrote the journalists of Diapason and Classica about the most recent recording of Olivier Fortin and his ensemble, devoted to the rarely heard Romanus Weichlein, which received every honor from the French musical press (Diapason d'Or, Choc de Classica, FFFF Telerama). This year, the Canadian harpsichordist and his loyal band have decided to record Telemann, the 250th anniversary of whose death will be commemorated in 2017. Two anonymous musicians from the city of Hamburg wrote in 1728 that "Handel composes music" but Telemann composes "music and affects". The overture-suites by Telemann presented on this recording are written in a "mimetic' style: Les Nations, the Concerto Polonois, La Bizarre and the Burlesque de Quixotte explore a vast range of subjects and, even more than all his other works, reveal a man of the theatre, widely read, curious a humorist and a shrewd observer of the physical and political world around him.

During his lifetime, Rameau enjoyed a glittering reputation and was admired by all Europe, while Debussy’s Hommage à Rameau proves that his fame survived down the centuries. But what do we know about the rest of the Rameau family? After a highly acclaimed album devoted to the Forqueray family (ALPHA247, Gramophone Editor’s Choice, Choc of the year 2016 in Classica, Grand Prix de l’Académie Charles Cros), our harpsichordist-genealogist Justin Taylor sets out on the trail of Jean-Philippe’s son Claude-François and his nephew Lazare. To be sure, Rameau’s genius dwarfs all around him, as is demonstrated by such pieces as La Livri, La Poule and L’Égyptienne, not to mention the magnificent Nouvelle Suite in A minor, but the music of his descendants has its own interest. Justin Taylor introduces us to a work by Claude-François Rameau (La Forqueray) and the Sonata no.1 in E major by Lazare Rameau. He switches from the splendid harpsichord of the Château d’Assas (a two-manual instrument of the first half of the eighteenth century, attributed to the Lyon-based maker Donzelague) to the 1891 Érard piano of the Musée de la Musique in Paris for Debussy’s tribute to his great predecessor.

Principal Conductor and Music Director of the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich since October 2019, Paavo Järvi continues his complete cycle of Tchaikovsky’s symphonies, following a first volume devoted to Symphony no.5 and the symphonic poem Francesca da Rimini. This second volume features Symphonies nos. 2 and 4. The Fourth, composed in 1878 and nicknamed the ‘Fate’ Symphony because of its somber coloring, which may recall the neuroses attributed to Tchaikovsky, is one of his most frequently performed. The Second Symphony, composed in 1872 and much less frequently performed in concert, is known as the ‘Little Russian’ because Tchaikovsky drew on Ukrainian folk tunes. The very first movement begins with a solo horn version of the folksong ‘Down by Mother Volga’

Pierrot lunaire, premiered in Berlin in 1912, is a series of twenty-one short melodramas for voice and five instruments on German translations of poems by Albert Giraud. Here the composer first introduces Sprechgesang (speech-song), a technique that revolutionised declamation. Schoenberg wanted the piece to be ironic, at once tender and grotesque, in the manner of cabaret songs. Patricia Kopatchinskaja, the violinist who is also an occasional actress, had long dreamt of playing and reciting this unique work. It was a pain in her arm preventing her from playing the violin that one day propelled her into the role of narrator: ‘All my life I have felt that I was Pierrot. Every time I played this piece on the violin when I was a student, I would say the words in my head.’ She has now played and performed Pierrot in many venues around the world, including the Berlin Philharmonie, several cities in the United States, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Sweden. Now she has assembled a number of her musician friends and decided to record it for posterity. Schoenberg’s Phantasy op.47 and Six Little Piano Pieces op.19 complete the programme, along with works by Webern (Four Pieces for violin and piano op.7) and Schoenberg’s arrangement of Johann Strauss’s Kaiser-Walzer (Emperor Waltz) op.437.

Behzod Abduraimov joins Alpha for several recordings, starting with this ‘kaleidoscope of miniatures’ – miniatures that are in fact fairly gigantic, and showcase the Uzbek pianist’s extreme virtuosity and sensitivity. ‘Each movement is in itself a miniature, and taken together they form a kaleidoscope of human emotions and images of all kinds,’ says Behzod Abduraimov. In his view, the pieces in Debussy’s Children’s Corner are not intended for young piano students, but ‘for adults, so that they can immerse themselves in the world of children with a little nostalgia and a lot of humor.’ When it comes to Chopin, ‘each prelude has a different musical essence, creates its own atmosphere. Together they form an arc spanning the distance from the first prelude to the last. So I tried to consider them as a whole.’ Finally, Mussorgsky evokes in ten highly expressive movements the paintings at an exhibition held in posthumous tribute to his friend Viktor Hartmann. A ‘Promenade’ heard several times suggests Mussorgsky himself strolling through the exhibition. For Behzod Abduraimov, the “Promenades” play a key role in this cycle: they create the atmosphere before each painting.

REVIEW:

Each of the three works that Behzod Abduraimov presents in this program consists of small, strongly individual pieces that ultimately add up to more than the sum of their parts. Abduraimov’s impressive interpretations bear this out; he manages to tap into each piece’s character, while unifying them by way of timing and carefully thought out tempo relationships.

In Debussy’s Children’s Corner, for example, the pianist’s measured pace allows breathing room to his distinctions between legato and detached articulation. The foreground and background components emerge in clear and consistent perspective throughout Jimbo’s Lullaby and Serenade for the Doll, while the clipped phrasing of Golliwog’s Cakewalk conveys more bite and rhythmic spring than usual.

Even in a catalog awash with distinctive Chopin Preludes cycles, Abduraimov’s stellar technique, intelligent musicianship, and feeling for nuance stand out. Note No. 3’s alluringly shaded left-hand runs, No. 5’s cross-rhythmic definition, and the crystalline shimmer of No. 8’s busy textures. Abduraimov’s fleet poise in virtuoso showpieces like Nos. 16, 19, 22, and 24 veer closer to the classicism of Pollini’s 1974 traversal than to the improvisatory Argerich or Arrau’s epic dynamism.

A few textual observations: Unlike Pollini, who executes No. 9’s controversial dotted eighth- and 16th-note pattern to conform to the accompanying triplet, Abduraimov plays it as written. However, like Pollini (as well as Alfred Cortot and Ivan Moravec), Abduraimov favors the “traditional” E-natural on the final beat of No. 20’s third measure, rather than the “controversial” Urtext E-flat that Arrau, Rudolf Serkin, and Alexandre Tharaud prefer.

If anything, Abduraimov opens himself more to the inherent drama in Mussorgsky’s Pictures, yet without doing violence to the music. It’s true that the pianist reinforces octaves here and there, and adds effective right-hand tremolos to Gnomus, yet such emendations enhance rather than distract from Mussorgsky’s intentions. Abduraimov’s steady tread in the Promenades allows the music’s asymmetry to speak for itself. He takes his time over Bydlo’s oxcart ostinatos, yet never drags, and eschews the capricious and cutesy tempo changes that younger pianists deem necessary in the Unhatched Chicks Ballet.

The repeated notes of Samuel Goldenberg and Schmuÿle are as perfectly aligned and voiced as the rapid alternating chords of the Limoges Marketplace coda. And to hear how one can produce massively resonating sonorities without banging, check out The Great Gate at Kiev’s climactic pages. Debussy, Chopin, and Mussorgsky add up to a triumphant triumvirate in Abduraimov’s hands, together with Alpha’s first-class engineering.

– ClassicsToday.com (10/10; Jed Distler)

London, February 1719: the birth of the Royal Academy of Music. George Frideric Handel was appointed musical director. German-born Handel, having spent four years in Italy, wanted to make London the new capital of opera. The only language to be sung on the stage of the King’s Theatre was to be Italian, and two other composers, Attilio Ariosti and Giovanni Battista Bononcini, were imported from the Italian peninsula. Both men were string players and contributed a new instrumental sweep to the company. Public enthusiasm reached considerable heights: thirty-four operas- more than 460 performances in all- were given at the Royal Academy over a period of nine years. Handel premiered his masterpieces Giulio Cesare in Egitto, Ottone and Radamisto. Ariosti and Bononcini also enjoyed great success between 1720 and 1723, notably with Coriolano (Ariosti) from which the sublime aria ‘Sagri numi’ is taken. ‘Royal Handel’ is a musical portrait of the first Royal Academy of Music. Eva Zaicik and her partners in Le Consort celebrate the prodigious variety of the Handelian genius and introduce us to previously unrecorded arias by Ariosti and Bononcini: ‘We are captivated by the ghostly sonorities of ‘Stille amare,’ the engulfing fury of “Agitato da fiere tempeste,” the virtuosity of ‘Gelosia, spietata Aletto,’ the swirling excitement of ‘L’aure che spira,’ the ascetic counterpoint of ‘Ombra cara’ and the poignancy of ‘Deggio morire’.’

This recording presents the double concerto for violin, cello and orchestra of the Spanish composer Francisco Coll, born in 1985. Les Plaisirs Illuminés, a title inspired by Dalí’s painting of the same name, is rooted in Spanish traditions, including flamenco, yet is resolutely modern: ‘Its music is very lively rhythmically, it dances and sings- but at the same time it is very abrupt, always in search of extremes,’ says Patricia Kopatchinskaja. For this world premiere conducted by the composer, she is reunited with a longstanding partner who pursues an equally brilliant international career, the cellist Sol Gabetta. The program also features Stravinsky’s Concerto in D for string orchestra, composed in 1946 at the request of Paul Sacher for the twentieth anniversary of the Basler Kammerorchester and the Musica concertante for twelve strings by the Hungarian-born Swiss composer Sandor Veress, premiered by the Camerata Bern in 1966. A year earlier, the Argentinian composer Alberto Ginastera wrote his fascinating Concerto for Strings. A kaleidoscope of colors and sounds from all over the world.

REVIEWS:

Musica concertante and Ginastera’s Concerto are both concerti grossi, which allows Kopatchinskaja to take on the roles of concertante soloist, section leader and indeed director, as both works, following Camerata Bern tradition, are given without a conductor. As such, she is very much part of an ensemble of equals, and the playing throughout is superb in its focus, precision and concentration.

– Gramophone (Editor's Choice; January 2021)

Two threads run through this adventurous disc – the spirit of Béla Bartók and the Camerata Bern’s prowess – but the force of personality at the centre of it all comes from the violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja. It opens with Sándor Veress’s Musica concertante per 12 archi, written in 1965-6 for the then newly formed Camerata Bern, and which in this performance comes across with fiery, searing spirit.

– BBC Music Magazine

415 or 440? Period or modern instruments? Here, we will hear a 'modern' violin and organ, at a pitch of 440 therefore, illustrating with virtuoso fingers a fertile page of the rediscovery of Bach at the beginning of the twentieth century. Concertos and cantata sinfonias transcribed by Marcel Dupré (and reputed to be 'unplayable' because of their difficulty), sonatas and partitas for violin interpreted in the spirit preceding the baroque revival.

Music Director Emmanuel Krivine and the Luxembourg Philharmonic devote this CD to two emblematic, major works from late in Béla Bartók’s life: the Second Violin Concerto (1939) and the Concerto for Orchestra (1944). + For the Violin Concerto, both Zig-Zag Territoires and the Orchestra invited the Albanian-born Tedi Papavrami, an international soloist of high repute, artistic and intellectual standards to record this 20th c. masterpiece + Mr. Papavrami’s recent recording of Eugène Ysaÿe’s complete violin sonatas for ZZT received tremendous press notice, astonishing the critics.

Nicknamed ‘the poet of the piano,’ Nelson Goerner has an impressive discography, including his recent multi-award-winning Chopin and Debussy CDs. For this disc, Goerner tackles Beethoven’s Sonata No. 29 ‘Hammerklavier’, and his Bagatelles Op. 126. Of his Hammerklavier, the great composer said, “Here is a sonata that will make pianists work hard.” Goerner rises to this challenge beautifully, playing the forty-five minute work with passion and emotion.

-----

REVIEWS:

Goerner’s Hammerklavier is about flight, variety of shapes, sounds, ideas and precision of communication. Phrases are imbued with life and meaning but, equally importantly, they are separated by breath, lending them intelligibility. If ever there were an effortless Hammerklavier finale, this is it.

– Gramophone

The Hammerklavier has received several amazing recordings in recent years, and Nelson Goerner’s is one of them. It is also a highly individual though never quirky account.

– BBC Music Magazine

ALLA NAPOLETANA, VILLANESCHE &

To celebrate 30 years of the Concert Spirituel, Hervé Niquet pays homage to the French musical patrimony of the 17th and 18th centuries, to whose exploration he remains passionately devoted. In close collaboration with Benoit Dratwicki and the Centre de Musique Baroque de Versailles – which also celebrated its 30th anniversary in 2018 –they have devised an intriguingly unconventional programme idea. Following the example of Louis XIV, who in 1671 asked Lully to create a Ballet of ballets consisting of extracts from the thirty or so ballets that the composer had put on at court, they have conceived ‘An Imaginary Opera,’ a veritable ‘Opera of Operas’: around thirty extracts, with well-known repertoire alongside rarities – some completely unknown and unpublished – have been put together to create a plot centered around three dramatic archetypes of the period: a princess in love, a witch queen (her rival) and a courageous prince. All the themes of French baroque opera are illustrated in turn, according to the rules of the genre: battle, tempest, sorcery, love duets, religious invocations, and sleep. The virtuoso arias, dazzling ballets and imposing ceremonial choruses are by Lully and Rameau, naturally – but also by Campra, Marais, Bertin de La Doué, Destouches, Stück, Gervais, Colin de Blamont, Rebel, Francœur, Montéclair, Leclair and Dauvergne. Brilliantly brought to life by the very finest of today’s baroque lyric artists, this recording was made at the Opéra Royal de Versailles.

Until the end of the Ancien Régime, one of the main activities of composers – and one of their chief means of subsistence – was that of maître de chapelle or Kapellmeister, directing the music performed at religious services attended by the princely families who employed them. Although this mostly concerned ordinary occasions, sometimes even on a daily basis, such composers also had to provide music tailored for specific and sometimes unexpected events, such as a military victory that had to be celebrated by a Te Deum or, more sadly, the death of a sovereign. For this five-album set, Alpha Classics has assembled eight requiems, from Antoine de Févin’s Mass of the Dead for Anne of Brittany to Luigi Cherubini’s Mass for the return to France of the remains of Louis XVI.

Julien Chauvin and Le Concert de la Loge join Alpha and launch a new cycle devoted to Mozart. This project is a natural continuation of Julien Chauvin’s work of rediscovery focusing on the interpretation of the music of Haydn and his contemporaries in Paris in the late eighteenth century. The first recording assembles the majestic and grandiose Symphony no.41 in C major, known as the Jupiter, the Violin Concerto no.3 in G major and the Overture to Le nozze di Figaro. Julien Chauvin is, of course, the soloist in the violin concerto and, with his Concert de la Loge (which is no longer ‘Olympique’, since the French National Olympic Sports Committee forced the ensemble to amputate its name in 2016, despite the fact that it dates from...1782), they embark on a Mozartian marathon that promises to be electrifying!

‘Going all the way back to the Celts and the Druids, the term nemeton designates a place where forces and energies are crystallized, generally clearings where solemn or ritual actions were performed. The best-known nemeton is certainly Stonehenge. The architectural marvel of Chartres Cathedral is built on a nemeton. In composing this piece for solo percussion, I wanted to depict a “place” of this kind by means of sound. I’m utterly fascinated by the instrumentarium of this work, consisting chiefly of metal, wood and skin instruments that don’t have their own “specific” resonance. The trajectories between the different tones condition and define the energy charge, rather as if two beings, in the mad hope of an encounter, were rushing towards each other’, writes Matthias Pintscher as an introduction to one of the pieces in this monograph of works composed between 2000 and 2018: it also includes his violin concerto Mar’eh, the concerto for piano and ensemble Nur, Beyond for flute, Verzeichnete Spur, Lieder und Schneebilder, Celestial Object I & II and Occultation.

Les Kapsber’girls, an ensemble of four singers and instrumentalists directed by the lutenist Albane Imbs, has already released its debut album (Che fai tù?, released on Muso) which received several awards. The group now joins Alpha for several recordings, starting with Vous avez dit Brunettes? – ‘brunettes’ being the name of the chansons that lovers crooned in each others’ ears by the Bassin d’Apollon or among the groves of the Petit Trianon at Versailles Palace, undeniably light in character yet powerfully authentic. Seventeenth-century France was home to a host of artists whose talent served the nobility and the bourgeoisie, who were extremely partial to these airs. Performing them as vocal solos or duets with lute or viol, Les Kapsber’girls bring back to life, more than three centuries later, these works published by Ballard & Fils, printers to the Sun King, alongside such little-known composers as Julie Pinel and Giuseppe Saggione.

Ever since that first angelic night, Christmas has been celebrated in song. In the baroque period, many composers such as Charpentier have composed original masterpieces based on simple folk tunes. Here in a special double album edition are baroque carols from the choir of La Maîtrise de Radio France, with Les Musiciens de Saint Julien, as well as the best-known French Christmas carols (Les anges dans nos campagnes, Venez divin messie...) from the Maîtrises of Radio France and Notre-Dame de Paris. The two internationally renowned children’s choirs combine to celebrate the Nativity and share with us these timeless songs.

This project comes into the category of a 'reconstruction', inspired by studying Dalmatian, Gregorian, and Glagolitic sources. This repertory, sung in the local vernacular though it belonged to the Roman rite, was preserved in manuscripts written in the Glagolitic alphabet used in medieval Croatia. The archaic beauty of the text is fabulously illustrated here by images of incredible aesthetic refinement.

Anna Prohaska asked Wolfgang Katschner and the Lautten Compagney at the outset of the coronavirus crisis whether they shouldn’t spontaneously organize a musical get-together in this period. This has now resulted in Redemption. This is a sequence of music selected solely from Bach cantatas, compiled in keeping with the aforenamed conceptual association. Redemption has multiple meanings, for instance: can music give us consolation in times of sickness and crisis; can it open up emotional and contemplative spaces for us; is it redemptive for us as musicians to be the “instruments” in engendering music and therefore spirituality? Besides Anna as soloist and three other singers, Redemption features a larger group of musicians – around twenty instrumentalists. These musicians serve a dual role: they expertly accompany the arias that Anna sings and they also represent the concept of human interaction and a shared collective experience which has been missing during these times.

We are familiar with the flamboyant baritone Laurent Naouri, a distinguished exponent of the four villains in Les Contes d'Hoffmann from Paris to The Metropolitan Opera New York and an unforgettable Golaud in Pell�as et M�lisande. But here it is a much more intimate Naouri, the lover of melodies by Faure, Debussy and Poulenc, who invites us to a rendezvous: 'Here is a repertory I've been performing for more than thirty years, sometimes not without a certain frustration: for how can you achieve the intimacy suggested by a poem like Baudelaire's Le Jet d'eau- it almost pillow talk- when the vocal style forces you to "project" the voice? Although classical art song authorizes you to sing piano or pianissimo, it's still inconceivable to whisper in the listener's ear. To whisper, you need a microphone, and there we leave the world of the melodie and enter the world of "chanson," as that term was understood at the beginning of the radio era. I had already been thinking about these questions for a few years when I met the jazz guitarist Frederic Loiseau. We started off our collaboration with Les Berceaux, a melodie that Yves Montand had already sung in a "chanson" style. Encouraged by the result, we looked for other songs that we felt could benefit from this intimate treatment."

CHANTS DES MOMENTS PERDUS EN MASSIF CENTRAL