Classical Music

COPLAND; BRAHMS; FROST; LUTOSLAWSKI; PIAZZOLLA; HILLBORG; HOGBERG AUSTRALIAN CHAMBER ORCHESTRA; FROST (CLAR.); TOGNETTI (DIR.) DANCES TO A BLACK PIPE- CONCERTO FOR CLARINET AND STRING ORCHESTRA WITH HARP AND PIANO; HUNGARIAN DANCES NOS 1, 12, 13 & 21; KLEZMER DANCES FOR CLARINET AND STRINGS; DANCE PRELUDES (2ND VERSION); OBLIVION FOR CLARINET, SOLO VIOLIN AND STRINGS; ETC.

This is a hybrid Super Audio CD playable on both regular and Super Audio CD players.

A calendar filled with orchestral concerts and chamber recitals in many of the world’s most prestigious venues has given the clarinettist Martin Fröst ample opportunity to develop a wide range of encores, for every occasion. Known for the imaginatively themed concert programmes he devises with various musician friends, he has also explored a number of musical genres. These aspects of his artistry are both demonstrated on this constantly engaging disc, which includes immortal gems such as Rachmaninov’s Vocalise and Kreisler’s Liebeslied as well as pieces rather less usual in a classical context: Charlie Chaplin’s Smile and the klezmer traditional Let’s Be Happy rubbing shoulders with an improvisation over the Nat King Cole standard Nature Boy. Throughout the programme Fröst receives the expert support of the pianist Roland Pöntinen, a chamber music partner of long standing who has also been involved in devising many of the imaginative arrangements, for instance of Vittorio Monti’s Csárdás. Three other musical companions of Fröst’s make cameo appearances, with mezzo-soprano Malena Ernman joining the clarinet in the head-long flight of not one, but two bumble-bees. Torleif Thedéen’s cello sings a heartfelt Ave Maria above the gyrating accompaniment of Fröst’s clarinet, while Svante Henryson, also a cellist, plays in his own duo piece Off Pist, in which the clarinet and cello chase each other up and down alpine slopes. Martin Fröst’s spectacular career on disc began in 1995, with one of his first CD reviews, in In Tune Magazine, describing him as ‘A Swedish Clarinet Star’, and continuing ‘Fröst has everything – including genius’. More than 10 discs later his recording of Bernard Crusell’s three clarinet concertos caused the reviewer in French Classica-Répertoire to remark that ‘in every movement his playing hits upon the appropriate elegance, the perfect phrasing, the true colour, the required virtuosity, the necessary playfulness ... as he pursues his musical intentions all the way’ – a description that could equally well be applied to the present disc!.

This is a hybrid Super Audio CD playable on both regular and Super Audio CD players.



At last, a modern Nielsen to lead the field - and a future classic?

There are eight or so modern accounts of the Nielsen Clarinet Concerto in the catalogue, plus a few no less impressive that have come and gone. Most have fine qualities. Yet for sureness of idiomatic touch none dislodges Ib Erikson’s classic 1954 Danish accounts.

Closer to the mark than any modern rivals is this new issue from Martin Fröst, the clarinettist of the moment for all-round artistry allied to adventurous approach to repertoire. He seems to have Nielsen’s irascible masterpiece in his bloodstream, as surely as he has its technical contortions under his fingers. Vänskä ensures that the Lahti players are never fazed by the exposed edges in the accompaniment, and only the very drawn-out final bars come across as slightly self-conscious. Detail for detail, phrase for phrase, I would have to give this team the palm over the old Danish recording, even before considering BIS’s immeasurably superior sound quality. Even so, Erikson and Wöldike remain a benchmark for insight into the character of the piece.

Kalevi Aho’s Concerto starts arrestingly but without a trace of the attention-seeking that afflicts certain other clarinet concertos of recent times. There is something in Aho’s five continuous movements that recalls Nielsen’s directness and free-flowing succession of ideas, and the cadenza that forms the second movement even brings momentary echoes of Nielsen’s uncompromising skirls and flourishes. But the Finn’s sights are set more on the starkly elemental than on the quirkily personal. For Aho the Vivace con brio third movement is the “centre and culmination”, and it is certainly exuberant – dangerous, even – in its restless virtuosity, rather like Strauss’s Till Eulenspiegel driven mad by inner demons. After this a sad slow movement brings sober reflection, and an Epilogue concludes the work on a note of mystery.

Few would now question the status of the Nielsen as the finest clarinet concerto of the 20th century. Time will tell with Kalevi Aho’s concerto in the 21st. In the short term it will probably daunt as many prospective soloists and orchestras as Nielsen’s work did in its time. But there can have been few equally impressive head-on engagements with the concerto medium in recent years. In sum, a CD of rare distinction.

-- David Fanning, Gramophone [5/2007]

This is a hybrid Super Audio CD playable on both regular and Super Audio CD players.

Classical Music

Includes work(s) by various composers. Ensemble: Hedos Ensemble. Conductor: Bernhard Böhm.

Mackerras unseated? This magical version from Australia comes close

Chandos certainly has guts, going toe-to-toe with Mackerras’s Gramophone Award-winning set. Hickox’s Australian forces need not fear the comparison. Cheryl Barker may not have the refulgent tones of Renée Fleming on Decca (who has?) but she is even more moving in conveying Rusalka’s desperation. Mackerras is still my must-own, but this runs it close.

-- Gramophone [3/2008]

German pianist Martin Stadtfeld recorded a special Christmas album featuring well-known Christmas melodies such as "Stille Nacht" (Silent night), "In the bleak midwinter" and "Maria durch ein Dornwald ging" and "Vom Himmel hoch" which are newly arranged by Martin Stadtfeld himself for "Christmas Piano". In addition, Stadtfeld contributed to "Christmas Piano" his own pieces, especially the eleven-part contemplative piano cycle "Christmas Time", two variations after Praetorius' "Es ist ein Ros' entsprungen" and two intermezzi after Praetorius' "Vom Himmel hoch". Already at the end of 2020, when no concerts could take place due to the pandemic, Stadtfeld had sent short musical Advent greetings to his audience via social media channels to cheer them up. The experience of this sharing and the positive response to his music gave him the idea for his new album. Right at the beginning, Stadtfeld's "Christmas Time" sounds, consisting of 11 atmospheric miniatures. Titles like "Happy Time", "Wish List" or "Anticipation" conjure up images of joyful anticipation and shining children's eyes during Christmas times. Just as in his own piano cycle, Martin Stadtfeld let's listeners participate in his Christmas imagination in his arrangements of traditional carols and pieces by classical composers. "Christmas Piano" also includes "Canonische Ver�nderungen �ber Vom Himmel hoch" (Canonical Changes on High Heaven) by Johann Sebastian Bach arranged for piano and trumpet, in which Martin Stadtfeld's brother Stephan also makes a guest appearance on the trumpet.

Merk: 20 Etudes for cello solo, Op. 11 (ed. M. Rummel)

In this album Clara Andrada, solo flutist of the Frankfurt Radio Symphony, performs three 20th century flute concertos together with the orchestra conducted by Jaime Martín. Malcolm Arnold’s delightful Flute Concerto No. 1 makes a pleasant addition alongside Nielsen’s and Ibert’s flute concertos. Jaime Martín, himself an excellent flutist, is a perfect companion to these works. This is the orchestra’s second album for Ondine, and continues the fruitful collaboration between Jaime Martín and Ondine that has already produced three albums previously. Clara Andrada de la Calleis one of the leading Flute players of her generation currently holding Solo Flute positions of both the Chamber Orchestra of Europe and the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra. Born in Salamanca, she commenced her musical studies with Pablo Sagredo and Magdalena Martínez at the Syrinx School of Music. Scholarships from the Spanish Ministry of Culture and the London Wall Trust Foundation enabled her to continue her studies at the Geneva Conservatory of Music under Prof. Emmanuel Pahud and Prof. J.D. Castellon as well as the London Royal College of Music under the guidance of Jaime Martín. As a Principal Flute player, she has worked with many leading orchestras, including the London Symphony Orchestra, London Philharmonic, Swedish Radio, Rotterdam Philharmonic, and NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra under esteemed conductors including Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Valery Gergiev, Colin Davis, Bernard Haitink, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Myung-whun Chung, and Lorin Maazel.

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REVIEW:

Competition abounds in Nielsen’s Flute Concerto of 1926 but Andrada is totally inside the unsettled, quixotic nature of the music and communicates lyrical passages with ardent conviction. Jaime Martín, himself a distinguished flautist, provides lithe and vibrant accompaniment in both the Nielsen and Ibert concertos, while Andrada herself directs the strings with impressive authority in the Arnold concerto. The quality of the recording in all three works is as bright and vivid as the performances.

– Gramophone

The famous traditional Chinese tale of La Fresque ('The Painting on the Wall') tells of two travellers who take shelter at a small temple, one of whom becomes so enraptured by the image of a beautiful girl in a fresco that he is transported into another dimension. Angelin Preljocaj, one of France's leading contemporary choreographers, explores this mysterious relationship between representation and reality with a spectacular and unforgettable ballet filled with dynamic action, emotive lyricism and powerful responses to the music of Nicolas Godin, one half of the celebrated music duo Air. La Fresque has been admired for it's 'breath-taking scenes' (La Terrasse) and it's 'dark and splendid beauty' (L'Humanit�).

Wonderfully evocative British choral music written recently, from three fine but lesser-known composers and the better-known Michael Berkeley. For the Williamson Missa Tertia, the singers are joined by the Choir of St. Mary Magdalene, Oxford.

The starting-point for this unique recital is a true Mozart rarity, the Sonata for bassoon and cello K292 which Mozart wrote in 1775, pairing the bass members of string and wind families not to comic effect but rather demonstrating their expressive versatility and contrasting tone-colors, in the hands of sufficiently practiced performers; the Sonata is accessible by only the most skilled amateur performers such as its original dedicatee, the nobleman, pianist and occasional bassoonist Thaddaus Wolfgang von Dürnitz. The count’s considerable musical gifts may be judged from the teenaged Mozart’s dedication of the Piano Sonata K284 in the same year: one of the composer’s first works of absolute genius, notably in the extraordinary landscape of its long theme-and-variation finale. The bassoon-and-cello sonata may not rival K284 for lightly worn profundity, but in its Andante we may still hear the teenaged composer attaining an idiom of sublime gravity which anticipates masterpieces such as the Sinfonia Concertante K364. Rarer still on album is the creative output of Dürnitz himself, represented here by four sonatas for bassoon and keyboard from a collection of six. He evidently cultivated a particular facility at the top of the intrument’s range, notably in the elegiac introduction to Sonata No.3. Dürnitz was no dilettante musician, to judge from his ready assimilation of Classical-era convention and the kind of virtuoso writing in the quick movements that challenges conceptions of the bassoon as a sturdy accompaniment to more agile musical companions. Between these two composers in the register of fame falls the French composer Francois Devienne, four years younger than Mozart and author of six Duos Concertants Op.3 for two bassoons in around 1782; Carmen Mainer Martin presents two of them here, with the second part arranged for cello in the same disposition as Mozart’s sonata.

“I compose music because I love it. I love melodies, I love singing. And I have found out with pleasure that there is a public out there who is very interested in my music whenever I publish it. That’s fantastic! I refuse to just compose music designed to be discovered and understood by future generations.” With these words Carlos Guastavino (Santa Fe, 1912 - Buenos Aires, 2000) expressed himself, aware that his art belonged to those who wanted to hear and sing it, reneging on the customary exercise of the composer who seeks to be recognized by the umpteenth harmonic discovery never before tried out. Guastavino enriched the young voice of the Argentine people with his music, giving it a unique and identifiable tone, supporting the tip of his feet in a folklore to which he gave wings to surpass himself. “Cinco canciones argentinas” (Five Argentinean songs), Op. 10. This work exemplarily shows the most characteristic features of what has come to be known as Ginastera’s period of objective nationalism. Namely, the use of folkloric elements and tonal techniques together with other techniques which are typical of atonalism, especially in piano accompaniment.

Vinyl LP pressing. Martin Kohlstedt's 2020 album, Flur is the German composer's way forward in a time of no clear paths. To deliver it's ten tracks, Martin turns inwards - not for answers, but rather, for a way of working with doubts and uncertainties themselves.

Vinyl LP pressing. Martin Kohlstedt creates dazzling musical pieces, tapestries of sound that grow organically from the keyboards of his piano and synthesizers. Such is the reputation that he has built in his native Germany that his latest album, 'Str�me' (currents), has been created in collaboration with the chorus of one of the country's most revered musical institutions, Leipzig's Gewandhaus. 70 voices blend and intertwine to mesmerising effect with the sounds created by Kohlstedt himself.

Premiered just a few months before the French Revolution, Gr�try's Raoul Barbe-bleue is an op�ra comique with musical and dramatic implications so remarkable they even inspired Offenbach. Raoul Barbe-bleue depicts a cruel gentry from a political point of view, and even dares to mock through comic effects. The mysterious atmosphere that emerges from the drama (reminiscent of Weber's singspiel) stems from refined and elegant musical writing that cannot be compared to Gr�try's naive and simple early works. This premiere recording from Apart�, featuring a brilliant cast under the direction of Martin Wahlberg, reveals a considerable richness that will appeal to both the neophyte and the specialist.

Martin Kohlstedt creates dazzling musical pieces, tapestries of sound that grow organically from the keyboards of his piano and synthesizers. Such is the reputation that he has built in his native Germany that his latest album, 'Str�me' (currents), has been created in collaboration with the chorus of one of the country's most revered musical institutions, Leipzig's Gewandhaus. 70 voices blend and intertwine to mesmerising effect with the sounds created by Kohlstedt himself.

Martin Kohlstedt's 2020 album, Flur is the German composer's way forward in a time of no clear paths. To deliver it's ten tracks, Martin turns inwards - not for answers, but rather, for a way of working with doubts and uncertainties themselves.

altogether this is as tempting a Hummel collection as any we know... His G major (mandolin) Concerto here in even more agreeable form, as Op.73 Piano Concertino, and Martin Galling is even more persuasive, helped by a very spirited backing in Berlin... also La Galante, a lilting Rondo for solo piano... Zukerman and Faerber return for Hummel's Bassoon Concerto, impressive to be discussed in the same breath as Mozart's, particularly with this splendid soloist, who is deliciously jocular in the characterful finale. The disc concludes with Septet Militaire, Op.114: the very happy finale, with it's ingenious upward scale, is most felicitous (Gramophone)

There is an energy that a strong family dynamic can stir. A parent viewing the world through their children's eyes generates a wide spectrum of feelings. It is with his family as a source of strength that bassist and composer Joe Martin created the music for his new recording, �toil�e. Martin, himself a product of a musical upbringing, lives with his Parisian-born wife in Brooklyn where they have been raising their young Franco-American family of two sons and a young girl, whose middle name �toile inspired the name of the recording. // Originally hailing from the Midwest, Martin moved to New York City in the mid-90s and has since carved a place at the forefront of jazz as one of the most respected and sought after bassists in the City. His skills as an accompanist and his unique solo voice have propelled bands led by Mark Turner, Gilad Hekselman, Chris Potter, Edward Simon, Anat Cohen, Kurt Rosenwinkel, and many more. Melodic and poetic, �toil�e is a musical tapestry that captures both his writing and bandleading talents. For this session, he assembled a group he leads regularly in New York: Mark Turner, Kevin Hays, and Nasheet Waits.

2017 release. Sometimes it is just a matter of timing and proximity that makes attractive collaborations possible. For years, singer/songwriter Rebecca Martin knew that she wanted to work with pianist/vocalist/composer Guillermo Klein. Klein's recent relocation to upstate New York, where Martin had made her home, made the opportunity of making music together possible. The beautiful results of their work can be heard on The Upstate Project. Martin is well known for her elegant songwriting and performance, commingling jazz and folk music. Aside from her solo work, she has regularly collaborated with a coterie of celebrated musicians, including Kurt Rosenwinkel, Paul Motian and Tillery, the celebrated vocal trio featuring Becca Stevens and Gretchen Parlato. Always community minded, Martin has become an advocate of sorts for collaboration in her musical and social endeavors, most notably in her adopted home of Kingston, New York. For his part, Klein has become a celebrated songwriter and composer, utilizing elements of jazz, modern classical, rock and Argentinean folkloric music. He had spent more than a decade living outside of the United States, both in Spain and Argentina, before returning and settling in Beacon, New York, a short distance from Martin.

WHEN I WAS LONG AGO

Rebecca had come down to New York from rural Maine and had a band called Once Blue with singer guitarist Jesse Harris. Their album on EMI still sounds playful and timeless, as if Blossom Dearie had recorded with Steely Dan. a series of projects followed: an album of standards, MIDDLEHOPE; a lovely album of her own songs, PEOPLE BEHAVE LIKE BALLADS; a collaborations with legendary drummer Paul Motion, that lead to a fine CD, ON BROADWAY 4 or THE PARADOX OF CONTINUITY. THE GROWING SEASON is an album of songs about motherhood, about living in the world and living in your body. There is an effortlessness about it, buoyed by the lighter-than-air rhythms of drummer Brian Blade, the supple rightness of Larry Grenadier's beautiful emphatic bass, the otherworldly chording's of guitarist Kurt Rosenwinkel, all anchored by Rebecca's elegant songs, lovely, picked guitar and smoky, generous voice. It's a voice that seems to leave nothing out: sex and death and breakfast and wind in the trees and tax forms and laughter and night. All at once.