Violinist Alena Baeva joins Alpha Classics for several recordings, starting with an album of chamber music with pianist Vadym Kholodenko, her favourite partner. Together they offer an eclectic and unusual programme of Schubert's fearsome and magnificent Fantasy for violin and piano, composed a year before his death… This is followed by Stravinsky's joyous and boisterous miniatures in a collection entitled Divertimento, proposed as an abridgement of the ballet Le Baiser de la fee (The Fairy's Kiss). Olivier Messiaen composed a Fantaisie for his first wife, the violinist Claire Delbos, but the work was not published until 2007. Die Marchenbilder by Schumann complete the programme. Initially a pupil at the Moscow Conservatory, Alena Baeva later left Russia and was taught by Shlomo Mintz, Mstislav Rostropovich, Boris Garlitsky and Seiji Ozawa. At just 16, she won the Grand Prize in the Henryk Wieniawski International Competition, and many other prizes followed. Alena Baeva plays the Guarneri del Gesù "ex-William Kroll" of 1738. Ukrainian pianist Vadym Kholodenko was awarded the Van Cliburn Gold Medal in 2013.

Médée, a tragedy in a prologue and five acts on a libretto by Thomas Corneille, was Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s first and last collaboration with the Académie Royale de Musique. The work was premiered on 4 December 1693, when Charpentier was exactly fifty years old and at the height of his career. Louis XIV attended the performance, proving that it was an eagerly awaited event. Yet this sombre drama, which disconcerted the public, was withdrawn after just ten performances, and not heard again until 1976. A specialist in the French repertory and a close associate of the Centre de musique baroque de Versailles, where he has followed all the advances in research and historically informed performance for thirty-five years, Hervé Niquet has endeavoured, in presenting this new Médée, scrupulously to apply all the scholarly findings available to us today.

Clair Obscur (Alpha 727), dedicated to German lieder with orchestra, explored the antagonism between light and shadow. Reflet conjures up the nuances and transparencies of French melodies. There is in reflection the idea of an echo, the shadow of a disquieting double, of a plural, diffracted sparkle… A clash of deceptive mirages, a kaleidoscope of senses and flashes of light, it interweaves in strange parallels the score of our lives, adorned with gold and illusions", writes Sandrine Piau. Berlioz, Gauthier, Britten, Hugo, Verlaine, Baudelaire, Duparc, Koechlin, Ravel, Mallarmé... the encounters between these composers and poets"create in me a firework display of colours and shimmers", concludes the French soprano, who is making her 14th recording for Alpha Classics.

REVIEW:

Here is a whole album that makes up a single, sublime musical utterance. One feels that every note is almost foreordained as the program opens with classic orchestral songs from Berlioz, Henri Duparc, and the less common Charles Koechlin, proceeding into darker, more mysterious realms with Ravel’s Three Mallarmé Songs, and ending with the youthful ebullience of Britten’s Quatre chansons françaises. Piau’s voice is delicate, soaring, and richly beautiful; one of the miracles of the current scene is its durability and versatility. Her support from conductor Jean-François Verdier, leading the Victor Hugo Orchestra, is confidently smooth, never intruding on the spell Piau weaves.

 

-- AllMusic.com (James Manheim)

Two Te Deums go head to head! The famous one by Marc-Antoine Charpentier and a completely new one by Henry Desmarets. Charpentier and Desmarets, remarkable composers of both sacred music and opera, shared a taste for Italian music and travel, but they also shared the disadvantage of having spent some time in Jean-Baptiste Lully's 'shadow'! Desmarets' life was somewhat tormented, between disgrace and exile; it was while he was superintendent of music at the Court of Lorraine that he composed two Te Deums, including the Te Deum"de Lyon". Written for the same ensemble as Charpentier's famous Te Deum, it uses trumpets and timpani for the grandiloquent sections. It is a true work of craftsmanship, notably in the variety of instrumentation, but also in its alternation of different vocal forces.

This album presents the songs from The Threepenny Opera in a new French translation by Alexandre Pateau. The recording was made at the 2023 Festival d'Aix-en-Provence during the run of the new production of the legendary work by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill in collaboration with Elisabeth Hauptmann, which features the troupe of the Comédie-Française and the musicians of Le Balcon, conducted by Maxime Pascal with Thomas Ostermeier as stage director. In this parody of an opera, the songs are the driving force behind the action and the characters ape the bourgeois lifestyle of the audience, the better to denounce the period of moral confusion they are going through. With Maxime Pascal at the helm of a dozen multi-instrumentalists from Le Balcon, we hear a version based on that of the first performance – hard-hitting and as close as possible to the tremendous creative energy deployed by the two creators of the work in the summer of 1928 – acted and sung by the troupe of the Comédie-Française, who rise to all its challenges with brio. Other special features of this album are a previously unrecorded song on a text by Yvette Guilbert and the linking texts between the songs read in French by Ostermeier himself. As Diapason wrote of this production, ‘Almost a century after its premiere, The Threepenny Opera has lost none of its subversive power.’

Andreas Staier’s informed and inspired interpretations have left their mark on the discography of both the harpsichord and the fortepiano and have enabled us to see Bach, Mozart and Schubert in a completely new light. This is Staier’s first solo album of a projected series for Alpha Classics, in which he also presents his own compositions for the first time. “Two motifs connect the works in this recording: the first is a ancient cantus firmus, a melody in long notes […] the second is the interval sequence of octave, fifth, sixth, and third. […] Anklange, my six pieces for harpsichord, grew out of several conversations I had with the composer Brice Pauset about what it means to compose in our time, and in particular what it implies to compose for historical instruments. This led me to ask myself how I could express and capture my own conception of music in notes, marked as it is not only by Byrd, Bach and Schubert, but also by the music of the 20th and 21st centuries."

REVIEW:

This release is a good example of Andreas Staier’s intelligent program building, both intellectually and musically speaking. Two motifs form a thread that runs through most of the works assembled here. One is the note sequence E–F-sharp–A–G-sharp–F-sharp–E that appears in Johann Caspar Ferdinand Fischer’s E major Prelude and Fugue from Ariadne Musica, Bach’s E major Prelude and Fugue from The Well-Tempered Clavier Book II, plus Froberger’s Fantasia II and Ricercar IV (the latter transposed to begin with G). The other motif is based on a sequence of intervals: octave, fifth, sixth, and third. Other pre-Bach composers include Louis Couperin and Johann Joseph Fux

At the recital’s midpoint, Staier features his own six pieces for harpsichord composed in 2020 that comprise a suite entitled Anklänge. His style forgoes tonality for the most part, yet his boundless palette of sonorities, his dramatic registral deployment, and his instincts for when and how to leave space all generate palpable tension and release. The fourth piece, for example, makes arresting use of thick spread chords that resonate for a long time under the fingers, while No. 6 features aphoristic lines that unfold like skywriting, with plenty of air between each utterance.

Indeed, resonance and breathing room characterize Staier’s performing style, which revels in the colorful variety of stops offered on his harpsichord modeled after a 1734 Hieronymus Albrecht Hass model. You’ll notice this in how Staier times and differentiates his arpeggiations of chords throughout the Couperin Pavane, as well as in the melting impact of his masterful finger legato in the Froberger Meditation. Surprisingly, Staier takes a forthright tempo for the aforementioned Bach Fugue, where his octave couplings have a rather upholstered effect that, for my taste, works against the music’s reflective and vocally oriented nature. Still, Staier remains the masterful instrumentalist and thinking musician that has long enamored me to his extensive and wide-ranging discography.

-- ClassicsToday.com (Jed Distler)

While Faure's Requiem is a monument of French sacred music, Gounod's Messe de Clovis is much less well known. It was composed from 1891 onwards as a tribute to Clovis who, like Joan of Arc, had become an iconic figure after the defeat of France in the Franco-Prussian war of 1870. The two works share a reflective and intimate character that gives the impression of a return to the purity of Gregorian chant, although this does not detract from the jubilant character of Faure's Requiem: "this warm, luxuriant sound leads to an elevation of the spirit", says Herve Niquet. The work is recorded here in it's 1893 version, in an orchestration that uses neither violins nor woodwind; a later version with full orchestra was published in July 1900. O salutaris by Louis Aubert (1877-1968) for soprano, violin, harp, organ and choir and L'Adagio for violin and organ by Andre Caplet (1878-1925) complete this programme, a co-production with the Palazzetto Bru Zane and performed with fervour by the Concert Spirituel.

In the second half of the seventeenth century, London experienced an artistic golden age, with the arrival of many foreign musicians and the proliferation of theatres and concert halls wher e audiences came to listen to the stars of the moment. One of these musicians was the Italian Nicola Matteis, who arrived around 1660 and became the sensation of the London music scene. Purcell was only a child at the time and there is no record of their meeting, but it is very likely that he was familiar with Matteis's works, including his Ayres, recorded here for the first time in a version for four-part consort. Exploration of this London effervescence yields to some surprising discoveries, such as the music of a mysterious composer who published trio sonatas around 1715 under the name Mrs Philarmonica. Le Consort presents the very first recording of this highly interesting music, probably influenced by Corelli and very likely written by a woman composer who, given the conventions of the time, made use of a pseudonym. Her true identity is unfortunately unknown to us.

For me, whenever I play the Bach suites, all of a sudden I find myself visualising Giacometti's hands incessantly moulding the earthen clay until a face appears. Getting to grips with the Bach suites is very closely related to that sense. You have to dig deeply into the string to give birth to the phrase, to make sure it breathes correctly: a phrase that is perpetually becoming, endlessly making and remaking itself. I waited a long time before recording these suites. Then one day, or rather one night, I began. Then there was my meeting with Sarah Moon. When I first felt my longing to record the Bach suites, I dreamt constantly of her images; because whenever I look at them I think of the creation of the world, the separation of the waters, the earth appearing, all before the beginning of history. (Sonia Wieder-Atherton)

The Fourth is Sibelius's most difficult symphony. For some, it is his masterpiece. When the symphony was premiered on 3 April 1911 in Helsinki, one critic compared it to Barkbröd - tree bark eaten by the Finns in times of famine! It is fittingly a Finn, conductor Santtu-Matias Rouvali, who explores this symphony that lays bare our emotions. With his Göteborg Symphony Orchestra, he continues his cycle of the complete Sibelius symphonies, with the addition of the famous Valse Triste and the symphonic poem inspired by Swedish folklore called The Wood Nymph.

For their fourth recording on Alpha Classics, Paavo Järvi and the Estonian Festival Orchestra - who bring together the best Estonian talent and leading musicians from around the world each year in Pärnu - celebrate composers from Estonia and Poland, two nations closely connected by their history. Eduard Tubin (1905-1982) is a composer whose ten symphonies tower at the top of Estonian orchestral music. The same may be said about his stage works. World War II forced Tubin to emigrate to Sweden in 1944, where he spent the rest of his life. Suite from the ballet Kratt (Goblin) is based on Tubin’s ballet by the same name, which was also the first ballet in Estonian musical history… Musique funèbre by Polish composer Witold Lutoslawski (1913-1994), was composed in memory of Béla Bartók and its premiere commemorated the 10th anniversary of the Hungarian composer’s death. Bartók’s Orchestral Concerto inspired the Concerto for String Orchestra composed in 1948 by Grazyna Bacewicz (1909-1969). Ignored for many years, she is now one of Poland’s most popular female composers.

REVIEWS:

An imaginative program, played with conviction.

Paavo Järvi has long been a champion of the major Estonian composer Eduard Tubin (1905–1982). He gave us the first recording of Tubin’s last symphony, No. 11, and also recorded Symphony No. 5 with the Cincinnati Orchestra as a coupling for the Sibelius Second. More recently, Jarvi and his conductor-brother Kristian established the Estonian Festival, and with the Festival Orchestra Paavo has made exciting recordings of other Estonian composers, as well as Shostakovich.

This program consists of two works by Tubin: the suite from the ballet Kratt (The Goblin) and the Music for Strings (1962), along with the increasingly familiar Concerto for String Orchestra by Polish composer Grażyna Bacewicz, and Witold Lutosławski’s early masterpiece, Musique funèbre, written in memory of Bartók.

Kratt, which has been recorded complete elsewhere, is a vibrant, colourful score with a hint of Petrushka about it. There is not a dull moment in the 25-minute suite Tubin assembled in 1961, nor in his Music for Strings, where Jarvi relishes the mysterious textures of the first movement.

He conducts a full-blooded, vigorous performance of Bacewicz’s piece, especially in the finale where the composer combines neat counterpoint with rhythmic punch. Finally, we get a searing rendition of Musique funèbre, where the parallels to Bartók’s Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta are underlined as a basis for exploration. Sound quality in this imaginative program is excellent.

-- Limelight

Paavo Järvi and the Estonian Festival Orchestra present music by Estonian composer Eduard Tubin (1905–1982), opening the program with a colorful and entertaining suite from the ballet Kratt (Goblin). The suite from the ballet Kratt (1961) is based on Tubin’s ballet of the same name. The idea for this work was born in 1938 after his return from Budapest, where he had presented his compositions to Zoltan Kodaly. Kodaly recommended that he pay greater attention to the use of folk tunes.

Tubin obtained material from the Estonian folklore archive and selected thirty folk songs and instrumental pieces as the basis for the ballet. In Estonian mythology, a kratt (goblin) is created by humans but brought to life by the devil. Influenced by evil forces, the Kratt flies through the air, leaving behind a glowing trail of fire as he accumulates treasures for his master. But in return, the master sells his soul to the devil.

The first performance of Kratt took place in Tallinn on February 24, 1944, on the founding day of the Estonian Republic. The ballet was performed only six times before the National Opera Estonia was destroyed on March 9 in a in a bombing raid by the Russian Soviet Army when Russia annexed Estonia.

The score fell victim to the fire, but the instrumental parts and piano reduction were safe. Tubin took them with him when he fled to Sweden in 1944, and made a new score. In 1961, he was commissioned by the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra to compose the suite from the ballet. Tubin’s music for strings, which is no less tonally appealing, can also be heard, and Paavo Järvi lets it be played expressively.

Musique funèbre by Polish composer Witold Lutoslawski (1913–1994) was composed in memory of Bela Bartok. It is more of an homage than a lament or an elegy, and Järvi is wary of any sentimentality. Very exciting is the neoclassical Concerto for String Orchestra by Polish composer Grazyna Bacewicz, played with bouncy momentum in the outer movements and sublime delicacy in the Andante.

-- Pizzicato

It was in the second half of the sixteenth century that the guitar became fashionable in France: it was the instrument of the people, whereas the lute was associated with the intellectuals and the nobility. Henry Grenerin became a page (choirboy) in the Musique du Roi in 1641 and went on to invent a new way of playing the instrument and offer it music full of ‘freedom, mystery and ardour’, says Bruno Helstroffer. In the very first recording devoted to Grenerin’s music, Bruno revives this unjustly forgotten composer and makes the most of his long experience as both Baroque musician and exponent of today’s music. He became fascinated by this seventeenth-century composer, and his investigations led him to the Left Bank of the Seine, opposite the Louvre Palace, where Henry’s grandfather was a fisherman, hence the punning title L’âme-son [French hameçon = ‘fish-hook’, âme-son = ‘soul of sound’]. A saga that has also generated a book and a stage show about Grenerin – the first in the line of ‘guitar heroes’ that was to lead to Django Reinhardt and Jimi Hendrix!

More than 300 years after Antonio Vivaldi composed The Four Seasons, the most famous work in the history of music is still as lively and invigorating as ever. Now Le Concert de la Loge has recorded this Baroque treasure with it's founder and director, the violinist Julien Chauvin, as soloist. For the occasion, the Chateau de Versailles has loaned him an exceptional instrument: a Neapolitan violin by Nicola Gagliano, adorned with fleur-de-lys and inlaid decorations. This instrument, which was played by Yehudi Menuhin in the 1970s, comes from the 'collection de Madame Adela�de', named after one of Louis XV's daughters. It has not left the Chateau for almost a century and is in a perfect state of preservation. The main work is complemented by Vivaldi's no less celebrated 'La Follia' and an aria that is now famous in it's own right, 'Sovvente il sole' from Andromeda liberata, the score of which was discovered in Venice in 2002. It is performed here by the countertenor Paul-Antoine Benos-Djian.

Ravel composed his Piano Trio M67 just before enlisting voluntarily in the First World War. Inspired by the Basque country and its zortziko dance, the Trio ends with a sombre, almost anguished fourth movement. A mood inspired by the impending war? In his Piano Trio No.2, op.67, Shostakovich too is affected by the horrors of war and the death of a close friend. For the first time in the Russian composer’s output, we hear a Jewish theme, a danse macabre echoing the terrible events of the time. Another point in common between the two works is that both include a passacaglia. For the Busch Trio, it was self-evident that these two heart-rending works should be brought together on the same album.

REVIEW:

The Busch Trio has the depth of musicianship to encompass the very different emotions of these great 20th-century chamber works. In the Ravel, the music’s dreamlike quality comes across particularly vividly, without any indulgence. At the same time, there’s no lack of urgency in the more agitated full-blooded sections that have a tremendous visceral energy.

After the Mediterranenan glow of the Ravel, the Shostakovich come as something of a shock. The Finale is the most challenging movement both for the players and the listeners. The Trio focus on holding back for as long as possible, so that when the climax is eventually reached – with the forceful restatement of the Trio’s opening material – the impact is absolutely overwhelming.

-- BBC Music Magazine

For the seventh volume in this collection devoted to Mozart by the younger generation of soloists, the award-winning Austrian pianist Aaron Pilsan records the concerto K.459 with the ORF Radio Symphonieorchester in Vienna. French horn player Nicolas Ramez records one of his favourite concertos, the first of Mozart's four horn concertos. Finally, the young flutist Diren Duran performs the Andante for flute and orchestra K.315 before accompanying the harpist Elisabeth Plank for the divine concerto for flute, harp and orchestra K.299. The Orpheum Foundation, which has been supporting young musicians for over thirty years, has teamed up with Alpha Classics for a series of recordings devoted to Mozart's concertos on all instruments. The best soloists of the younger generation have been selected under the artistic direction of Howard Griffiths, a renowned Mozart conductor who believes that playing his music is like "looking in a mirror: you hear whether everything is in place, musicality, intonation, rhythm, phrasing" …

The title of this album evokes not only the life-long journey of all these musicians, but also a lasting friendship between soprano Barbara Hannigan and the Emerson String Quartet. One of the greatest string quartets of the last four decades, the Emersons will disband in October 2023.

Barbara and the Emersons were determined to record Schoenberg's Quartet No. 2 since they started performing the work together in 2015. "The sheer sonic scope of this work takes us on a voyage into previously uncharted territory" say the Emerson musicians. "It's like a tall, gnarly tree to climb (all the way to another planet, it seems), yet one with deep and emotional roots", continues Barbara Hannigan. "The soprano’s fin-de-siècle primal scream at the end of the 3rd movement, begging to be relieved of love, is a heavy hitter."

Melancholie is a rare and intimate work by the young Hindemith, "a gem of a piece" that the Canadian soprano has wanted to explore for many years. The fascinating Quartet Op. 3, composed by Berg in 1909 as he was finishing his apprenticeship with Schoenberg, features the quartet on its own. And to round out the album, pianist Bertrand Chamayou joins Barbara and the Emersons for another deeply moving encounter by way of Chausson's heartbreaking Chanson perpétuelle.

REVIEW:

This is the final release from the legendary Emerson String Quartet, disbanding nearly five decades after it was formed as a student group. Here, the group takes on monuments of 20th century music, mostly works that it has never recorded before. There are thorny works by Berg and Schoenberg, each on the edge of atonality; the Second String Quartet No. 2 of Schoenberg dispensing with a key signature altogether in the finale. The last two movements of this work feature a vocalist, and the precise, tense singing of soprano Barbara Hannigan makes a perfect foil for the Emerson. There are some little-known songs for voice and string quartet by the young Paul Hindemith, and a fascinating Chanson perpétuelle of Ernest Chausson, which fits the Infinite Voyage theme of the album even if it may not at first seem to be appropriate musically. All in all, this release will hang in listeners’ minds for a good long time, which is exactly what is desired from a valedictory release. Infinite, indeed.

-- AllMusic.com (James Manheim)

For her second recital with piano, mezzo-soprano Adele Charvet reunites with Florian Caroubi, who has been her regular duo partner since 2015. Together they celebrate the belle epoque of the great French melodists (Massenet, Debussy, Faure) and their proteges,�including Chausson, Hahn, Koechlin, Aubert, Caplet, Messager, Enesco, Albeniz, Madeleine Dubois and Nadia Boulanger, as well as the much less known�Xavier Leroux and Ernest Moret. This is a programme about lines of descent and musical transmission, energised by the texts of great poets such as Verlaine, Mallarme, Maeterlinck, Banville, Leconte de Lisle, Lou�s and Toussaint.

Johann Sebastian Bach hardly ever left his native Saxony; yet he was always up to date on what was going on elsewhere in Europe. Naturally; he paid close attention to innovations from Italy; the cradle of the concertante style; and instilled transalpine sparkle in his brilliant counterpoint; especially in his keyboard works. Proof of this may be found in the pieces based on originals by the Venetians Antonio Vivaldi and Benedetto Marcello; in which Bach transcends everything with his polyphonic genius. In the large-scale Italian Concerto; the future composer of the Goldberg Variations revisits Corelli and; once again; Vivaldi. After several solo recordings devoted to musical dynasties (La Famille Forqueray; La Famille Rameau and Les Frères Francoeur); Justin Taylor sets off on a voyage of exploration of Bach and Italy.

The pianist Lukas Geniušas has recorded the original version of Rachmaninoff’s Piano Sonata no.1 in the composer’s Swiss home Villa Senar (Sergei & Natalia Rachmaninoff) and on his own piano, an unusually long Steinway & Sons model, presented to the composer and concert pianist by the manufacturer to mark his sixtieth birthday. The difference between the original version of Sonata no.1 and the second version, shorter by more than 100 bars, is not just a question of length, according to Lukas Geniušas: ‘There is a lot lost between the first and second editions. I know it goes against the grain, but I would name this sonata to be one of, if not the best Rachmaninoff’s solo piano work. Its shattering might, its splendor and scale can only be likened to the Third piano concerto, which was written soon after.’ The programme is completed by four preludes from the Op. 32 set.

The Simply Mozart adventure, dedicated to his last three symphonies, comes to an end with this third volume and the 39th symphony. The programme also includes the overture to Cosi fan tutte ("a statement of the opera in miniature", according to Julien Chauvin) and the Sinfonia concertante for violin and viola. Composed one year after Mozart's second trip to Paris, the Sinfonia concertante was directly inspired by the Parisian practice of having several soloists enter into dialogue with the orchestra; this was very much in vogue at the end of the 18th century. "Mozart left his mark on us and on our hearts with it's second movement, one of the most poignant that he was ever to write," says Julien Chauvin; here his violin dialogues happily with the viola of Amihai Grosz, who has already made two recordings for Alpha Classics (ALPHA634 & 1013).

Tenor Reinoud Van Mechelen concludes his trilogy dedicated to hautes-contre with "Legros; Gluck's haute-contre". Joseph Legros (1739-1793) was a singer at the Paris Opéra; renowned for his extraordinary musical abilities; wide range and brilliant high notes. “His contemporaries appreciated the fact that his vocal delivery was not forced and that his taste was less mannered than that of his predecessors. His pronunciation was perfect and his face pleasing; although he did not cut a graceful figure and his stage acting left something to be desired” writes Benoit Dratwicki; of the Centre de Musique Baroque de Versailles; which is a partner in this series... Legros sparked renewed interest among modern composers for the haute-contre voice. The first to write for him were La Borde; Trial and Berton. Then came Gossec (Alexis et Daphné) and Grétry (Céphale et Procris). In 1774; Gluck's arrival in Paris marked a turning point in Legros's career: he made a name for himself in Orphée et Eurydice; caused a sensation in Iphigénie en Aulide and Iphigénie en Tauride... The title roles in Amadis de Gaule by J. C. Bach and Piccinni's Atys were the last roles in which he shone. After Legros; the haute-contre voice gradually disappeared; giving way to that of the "true tenor"; a more powerful voice; but one that had difficulty tackling the high register of the old repertoire...

The Ensemble Intercontemporain and its new music director Pierre Bleuse pay homage to György Ligeti, whose centenary we celebrated in 2023: ‘Ligeti is one of the greatest composers of the twentieth century and certainly one of those who first made a powerful aesthetic impact on me personally!... This recording, which combines concertos and chamber music, highlights the EIC’s qualities as soloists and chamber musicians. And I’m not forgetting that Ligeti is an integral part of the repertoire of the Ensemble, which has performed his works extensively… So this is an ideal way of beginning my own story with the EIC’, says Pierre Bleuse, who brings his personal conception to these works and seeks to approach each score like ‘a virgin forest’. A noteworthy feature here is the new cadenza composed by Philippe Maunoury for the Violin Concerto, with Hae-Sun Kang as soloist. Renaud Déjardin (cello) and Dimitri Vassilakis (piano) perform the other concertos of this tribute program.

REVIEW:

The Paris ensemble’s new music director Bleuse sets out his stall with a wonderful all-Ligeti disc that honors a composer it has long been associated with. The violin concerto and the concerto for piano and orchestra are among the works on this beautifully realized recording. Utterly engrossing.

-- The Sunday Times (U.K.)

Two Brazilian artists pay tribute to Villa-Lobos and the Amazon rainforest…Sebastião Salgado is a world-renowned photographer who has been working since the 1990s to protect and restore the Atlantic forest and water resources of the Rio Doce valley in Brazil. The Italian-Brazilian conductor Simone Menezes is passionate about the Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos and his symphonic poem Floresta do Amazonas; for which she created a suite for large orchestra and soprano. Together they travel the world to present an exhibition of Salgado's photographs; combined with concerts conducted by Simone in which the photographs are projected; the photographer having associated each musical phrase with one of his images…The music of this monumental project has been recorded with the Philharmonia Zürich and soprano Camila Provenzale. Ten photos by Salgado; each more striking than the last; are included in the booklet that accompanies this recording; which is completed by another tribute to Amazonian nature; by Philip Glass; with an extract from his Aguas da Amazonia.

Anton Bruckner called his Symphony no.8 in C minor a ‘mystery’; others have seen it as an ‘apocalyptic’ work. For Paavo Järvi, it is the composer’s ‘most unusual symphony’ and the ‘pinnacle’ of his symphonic output. In the history of the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich, the Eighth Symphony occupies a special place, since it was the first Bruckner the orchestra performed – in 1905, twelve years after the premiere in Vienna of what was then the longest symphony in the history of music, and Bruckner’s only work to call for harps: ‘A harp has no place in a symphony, but I couldn't do otherwise!’, the composer reportedly said.

REVIEW:

This reading of the Eighth is more deliberate overall than an earlier venture of his. This is not a detriment, however, as Järvi and the Zürich orchestra maintain forward motion throughout. Bruckner enthusiasts will likely be happy that Järvi chose the Novak critical edition of the 1890 revised version. As expected, the conductor has this orchestra well-drilled and gets some strong performances from the musicians, especially from the large French horn group. While some will miss (and many prefer) the extra weight of the Berlin or Vienna Philharmonic, this interpretation is worthy of hearing and continues the promise of this ongoing survey. The sound from the orchestra's home hall is ideal, and Alpha does well to capture the full orchestral landscape.

-- AllMusic.com (Keith Finke)

Fascinated by the interplay of echoes from one past to another, Vincent Dumestre and Stéphanie d’Oustrac found an affinity in the project Mon Amant de Saint-Jean, their very first collaboration, and aimed to make it a unique musical adventure: a recital in which the atmosphere of the chansons of the Années Folles infuses early music with its sweet madness. In 1904, the great cabaret singer Yvette Guilbert was invited to the home of the Casadesus family, the founders of the Société des Instruments Anciens (Early instrument society): the Baroque fraternised with the café-concert. Around the same time, in the revue Paris qui chante, an aria by Scarlatti rubbed shoulders with the coarse language of Aristide Bruant and Paulin, while Gaston Dumestre, a singer at the cabaret Le Chat Noir (and one of Vincent’s ancestors!), sang chansons réalistes while accompanying himself on the theorbo presented to him by Oscar II of Sweden: ‘It is in language that we must seek the common driving force. These cabaret singers relished a very special flavour, a vigour, a raciness in the words of the Baroque era’, concludes Vincent Dumestre.