As long as you accept the premise of the arrangement style presented here, i.e. Romantic and virtuosic, you will love all seven works.

Sebastian Bohren’s new album La folia is an affectionate homage –to Ida Haendel, one of his heroes; to fiddlers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries; and to the violin itself. The Swiss violinist says, “It is also like a hall of mirrors, as some tracks invoke the spirits of two or three violinists.” From an early age, Sebastian was immersed in a lineage of violinists who favored Romantic transcriptions of Baroque repertoire, studying with a pupil of the great Ukrainian-born violinist Nathan Milstein. Later in life, he fell under the influence of violinist Ida Haendelon YouTube, watching her perform Corelli’s La folia variations. “She played this amazing virtuoso cadenza, and I was captivated. ”So arose the concept of a program reflecting the ethos of La folia, the ear-catching theme which has fascinated composers for centuries, from the Baroque era’s Tomaso Antonio Vitali and Giuseppe Tartini to latter-day Ottorino Respighi and Fritz Kreisler. Sebastian captures the sound world with sincerity, playing on two different violins, the 1710 “King George” Stradivarius, and a Guadagnini made in 1761.

REVIEWS:

A collection of arrangements in the spirit of Corelli’s La Folia sonata, but given a Romantic virtuoso twist for violin and strings. Sebastian Bohren curated the well thought-out selection and is a dazzling soloist. A quite unexpected delight.

-- MusicWeb International

Bohren is a skilled violinist, and his 1761 Guadagnini violin is a lovely instrument. He strikes a comfortable balance between HIP and Romantic styles, applying a tasteful vibrato that never seems excessive or inappropriate. He plays with affection, engages well in dialogue with the two string ensembles that participate, and demonstrates a strong technique. His playing in Tartini’s famous “Devil’s Trill” Sonata is brilliant.

-- Fanfare

In Bohren’s hands Respighi’s 1921 edition of Tartini’s Sonata in A is truly engaging, with gratifying attention to small-scale phrasing and sonorous scordatura timbres.

-- BBC Music Magazine

For this second instalment in their Nielsen cycle, Edward Gardner and the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra are joined by the flautist Adam Walker for a programme that combines the Flute Concerto, the Third Symphony, and the tone poem Pan and Syrinx. Nielsen began work on the Third Symphony in 1910, some seven years after he had completed his second symphony ‘The Four Temperaments’, and the work was premièred in Copenhagen in 1912. In his album note, Paul Griffiths describes the work’s eventual title, ‘Sinfonia espansiva’ as a fifth temperament – Joviality. In the second movement, uniquely in his symphonic output, Nielsen calls for (wordless) voices – solo soprano and baritone. It was also the first of his symphonies to be commercially released on record – Erik Tuxen conducting the Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra. Composed in 1926, the Flute Concerto is a late work, and demonstrates Nielsen’s stylistic evolution towards the new modernism. The soloist engages in repeated interactions with other instruments within the orchestra, most notably the clarinet and the bass trombone. Pan and Syrinx dates from 1918, and is based on the ancient legend which tells how the amorous god Pan invented the pan flute whilst pursuing the nymph Syrinx.

This year, legendary cellist Antonio Meneses celebrates his 60th birthday and the 40th anniversary of winning first prize and the gold medal at the 1982 Tchaikovsky Competition. Shortly after that triumph Antonio made a renowned recording of Brahms’ Double Concerto with conductor Herbert von Karajan. He revisits the composer’s music on his 11th recording for AVIE and his first of Brahms’ two cello sonatas, generously paired with a selection of lieder arrangements. Antonio mines Brahms’ baritonal sound world, extracting the full expressive range of the cello. Similar qualities infuse a selection of seven Lieder in arrangements that sound so effective on the cello that one cannot help but wonder whether somewhere in the back of his mind Brahms had the sound of the instrument – he was, after all, an accomplished player in his youth, and it would remain central to his chamber music output throughout his life.

Franco Alfano possessed an innate melodic facility combined with a talent for unexpected timbres. From the neo-Classical Divertimento to the noirish post-war Nenia, the lightness of touch of Amour… Amour… to the impressionistic Una danza and luxuriously orchestrated Suite romantica, each work reveals a different aspect of this multifaceted composer. This release of world premiere recordings features the Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano conducted by Giuseppe Grazioli who makes his Naxos début.

REVIEW:

Franco Alfano (1875–1954) remains a marginal figure in musical life despite a fair degree of coverage in record catalogs. Yet he is a thoroughly original composer, one who possessed an innate melodic gift combined with a talent for unexpected timbres, as can be heard in the lavishly orchestrated Suite romantica. The half-hour work is heard on this album in a very colorful and expressive, excellently performed interpretation.

With Una danza, completely different colors are expressed and one may hear an influence of Debussy. This is followed by Nenia, a somewhat melancholy solo piece for accordion, sensitively played by Davide Vendramin, which finds its counterpart in the Aria of the Divertimento, even if the outer movements are very lively and playful.

The program, pleasing and excellently played, ends with the Waltz Amour… Amour…, originally composed for piano in 1901 and orchestrated in 1928.

-- Pizzicato

CORO Welcomes The Choir of Magdalen College, Oxford, to the label.

In their first recording for CORO, The Choir of Magdalen College, Oxford, under the direction of Mark Williams, explore the repertoire that has provided the bedrock of the college’s musical life for the last 500 years, all of which was written for the end of the day.

Much music associated with evening time is naturally calm and soothing, satisfying those seeking transcendental beauty in the form of unchallenging ‘sound baths’. However, this collection also seeks to challenge, contrasting contemporary settings with music from the 16th century. We hope, through this range of works, to capture something of that liminal space between day and night characterized by Evensong and to lead the listener into that ‘peace that passes all understanding’.

The album showcases works by composers from John Sheppard to Joanna Marsh and features much-loved pieces such as Hubert Parry’s Lord, let me know mine end and John Tavener’s The Lord’s Prayer, as well as new additions to the Evensong repertoire such as Grayston Ives’ In pace and Piers Connor Kennedy’s O nata lux.

Having released their debut album In motion in 2020, the musicians that make up United Strings of Europe (USE) return with another innovative program: Renewal. The title refers in part to the fact that the majority of the works included are heard in arrangements and adaptations tailormade for the ensemble by Julian Azkoul, who also directs it from the violin. In Winter’s House by Joanna Marsh and Caroline Shaw’s and the swallow are both originally choral works while a second work by Shaw, Entr’acte, was conceived for string quartet, but is here heard in the composer’s own version for string orchestra. A similar treatment has been given Mendelssohn’s F minor String Quartet, one of the composer’s final works, written in reaction to the unexpected death of his beloved sister Fanny. For the centerpiece of the disc, Osvaldo Golijov’s Three Songs, USE is joined by soprano Ruby Hughes. The three songs were written for different occasions, but were rearranged by the composer to form a single work, capturing various strands of his immigrant identity as well as specific moments of inspiration, both felicitous and tragic. This is the first time all three songs appear with string orchestra on album.

Classical Music

Vienna around 1900 was a melting-pot in several ways: a city attracting artists from the entire Austro-Hungarian Empire where bohemian writers and musicians rubbed shoulders with aristocrats and establishment figures, and where late-Romanticism co-existed uneasily with the Wiener Moderne aesthetic of the fin-de-siècle. In the visual arts, Jugendstil (or Wiener Secession) was all the rage: its curlicues, floral patterns and fluid lines were seen everywhere – in architecture, interior design and graphic arts. In music, the term is usually associated with composers such as Mahler, Zemlinsky and Korngold, but also early works by Alban Berg and Arnold Schoenberg. Following on three previous acclaimed recital albums on BIS, Camilla Tilling and Paul Rivinius have devised a programme with songs by these very composers, written between 1898 and 1916. The songs range from the Einfache Lieder by a teenaged Korngold to Zemlinsky’s set of Walzer-Gesänge based on Tuscan folk poems and the much-loved Rückert-Lieder by Mahler. Schoenberg is represented by his Op. 2 collection 4 Lieder and his student Berg by the set of Sieben frühe Lieder, from 1905–08.

Sergei Prokofiev virtually grew up at the keyboard – he composed for the piano from early childhood, and the instrument was his workshop and laboratory. Well before the end of his student days he had absorbed the virtuoso techniques of Rachmaninov and Scriabin, and to these he added his own brilliant, sharp-edged virtuosity, marked by a keen contrast between dramatic, hard-driven passages and more intimate and gentle lyrical moments. His nine sonatas therefore hold a very special place in his output and represent his language at its most personal, free of any external dramatic, verbal or visual associations: they contain the essential Prokofiev. Freddy Kempf has previously recorded four of the sonatas to critical acclaim: ‘Kempf is joyfully exuberant, flashing through every savage challenge with the assurance and instinct of a born virtuoso’ (Gramophone). With this release, he adds another three sonatas to his discography, starting with Sonata No. 3 in A minor which Prokofiev premièred in Petrograd in April 1918. Three weeks later he left Russia and only returned in 1936, after seventeen years spent in the USA, Germany and France. Premièred in 1944, Sonata No. 8 is the third and last of the so-called ‘War Sonatas’ – possibly less virtuosic than its predecessors, it has a wide emotional range, with unexpected depths. His final, ninth sonata Prokofiev wrote for Sviatoslav Richter, saying: ‘Don’t think it’s intended to create an effect.’ Often almost improvisatory, it was the last work he completed before the infamous 1948 decrees that disciplined many Soviet composers, and the first performance did not take place until 1951.

What we know as ‘Handel’s Opus 3’ is most likely little more than a brazen attempt by the London publisher John Walsh to make some quick money. In 1715, Walsh had issued a pirated edition of Corelli’s 12 Concerti Grossi Opus 6 which proved an instant success and left him constantly looking for similar opportunities. Almost 20 years later, perhaps in the knowledge that the royal protection granted to Handel’s musical output was about to expire, Walsh assembled a set of six orchestral pieces for a wide range of instruments. He prefaced them with a wholly misleading title-page – based on Corelli’s style-defining collection – and advertised them as Handel’s ‘Opera Terza’. It is likely that Handel never took part in the selection and organization of the individual movements, although he may have been involved in the revisions made when a reprint was necessary a few years later. Selected from various sources, the six concertos certainly don’t form an organic cycle – in complete contrast to the future Op.?6 concerti grossi, which Handel carefully conceived as a set. The fact remains that Opus 3 contains some of Handel’s best-loved music, in instrumental combinations that are colorful and often unexpected – aspects that Martin Gester and his musicians in the Tasmanian period band Van Diemen’s Band make the most of.

REVIEW:

Handel's op. 3 collection is a test for any group: staying true to the letter & spirit of the score, while keeping the music sounding fresh and alive. Martin Gester and his Tasmanian group Van Diemen's Band have done exactly that, in this wonderful new album from BIS. There's plenty of fire burning here, but it's within the context of impressive musical discipline and lightly-worn Historically Informed Performance scholarship. BIS provides the kind of direct and transparent sound that allows Early Instruments to flourish. This is a highly recommended release!

-- Music for Several Instruments

Schubert’s Schwanengesang here contains an extra song, Herbst D945. That song was not published as part of the posthumous compilation that Haslinger brought out and called “Swan Song”, but is another Rellstab setting from Schubert’s last year, as are the first seven songs of the original publication. Herbst was lost at that stage, as the only copy was written into a friend’s autograph album, and not rediscovered until the end of the 19th century. It might even have been a try-out for Aufenthalt which sits fifth in the published sequence, and which it resembles. Herbst follows that song on this disc, since as the baritone claims in the booklet “it is sometimes included in performance.” I don’t think it matters very much, but I have a slight preference for the cycle as it was first published. As Martin Chusid observes in his fine book on the cycle, “Whereas Herbst is a very good song, Aufenthalt is superb.”

That is not the only point of textual interest in this Schwanengesang. In preparing the work baritone James Rutherford and pianist Eugene Asti had to decide what keys to put these (originally high voice) songs in, and decided to put every song down a minor third, preserving the key relations at least. They even claim this might be the first time on disc this has been done (but one would need to listen to an awful lot of recordings to be quite sure). Of course this deepens and darkens the songs, which suits some more than others, the heavier songs like Der Atlas and Die Stadt tending to sound very imposing in these keys. And although BIS describe Rutherford as a baritone, he sounds more of a bass-baritone here. But then he has sung Hans Sachs at Bayreuth and Vienna, and the cast list in my score of Die Meistersinger says simply “Hans Sachs – Bass”.

The opening song Liebesbotschaft lacks a certain tripping lightness, but the next one Kreigers Ahnung suits Rutherford’s very fine voice perfectly, and one notices his impeccable German diction from the start. The third song, Frühlingssehnsucht shows that his large voice can deploy a lighter manner, and he really relishes the text. Ständchen, is the best known of all these songs and benefits here from a restrained but still ardent treatment. Following Aufenthalt with Herbst feels slightly like viewing a sketch after the finished painting, but both songs are so well done it seems churlish to complain. With the long (six minutes), slow and anguished In der Ferne the low voice makes its mark, as does the pianist in Abschied, with just the right tempo - a canter, not a gallop, that allows the singer to articulate the text. The performance of the Heine songs in the second part are if anything even more successful than the Rellstab ones, reaching a powerful climax with the rising hysteria of Der Dopplegänger. A properly charming account of the last song Schubert ever wrote, Die Taubenpost, closes a very satisfying version of Schwanengesang.

The four extra songs filling the disc are all favourites, and all are well sung and played. The SACD sound is excellent, and the useful booklet notes are by the distinguished American Schubert scholar Susan Youens, no less. But of course Schwanengesang is the main thing, and there are many fine accounts to choose from. If you want Herbst embedded in the cycle, and in a really fine performance, then it is included by Goerne in both of his splendid versions (Decca and Harmonia Mundi), and by Schreier (Decca), but Fischer-Dieskau (DG), Bostridge (Warner), and Gerhaher (Arte Nova) omit it. Of the few women to record the cycle, Fassbaender (DG) has it in but Stutzman (Erato) does not. The best solution might be that of Holzmair (Decca) and Pregardien (Challenge) who add it to the CD as an extra, but not within the cycle, which also happens on the last volume (No.37) of the Hyperion/Graham Johnson version. That has the two parts of the cycle shared between two tenors, John Mark Ainsley and Anthony Rolfe Johnson. There are now so many good recordings of this cycle – all of those mentioned above are worth hearing, and several are worth owning. Goerne on Decca (live, with Brendel) is still my choice of the lower voice options, and Bostridge among the tenors. Fassbaender’s disc is a quite exceptional performance. But the long list of those worth really hearing now includes this fine version too.

– MusicWeb International (Roy Westbrook)

Very little is known about the origin of J. S. Bach’s seven Toccatas (BWV?910–916) or of their use. They are believed to have been written before 1717 or the end of Bach’s Weimar period – but it is quite possible that at least some of them were drafted before he arrived there in 1707, at the age of 22. The Toccatas are usually performed on harpsichord or piano – but even though they are ‘manualiter’ (intended to be played by the hands only) and do not call for pedal parts, they are also occasionally heard on the organ. In terms of style they are examples of the so-called stylus phantasticus – ‘the most free and unfettered method of composition’ – and belong to the North German organ tradition of the late 17th century. Each piece consists of several distinct and contrasting sections, interweaving strict counterpoint and fugal passages with freely rhapsodic material, and as such the toccatas differ from the two-movement prelude-and-fugue format which Bach later would put his own, indelible stamp on. With this disc, Masaaki Suzuki takes on some of the earliest of Bach’s extant harpsichord compositions, after having released acclaimed recordings of a wide range of later works, from the two-part Inventions to the two books of the Well-Tempered Clavier. However, he also brings his experience in performing the music of Bach’s North German predecessors to bear, for instance Buxtehude (BIS-1809) and Nicolaus Bruhns.

REVIEW:

Since completing his Bach cantata cycle, conductor and keyboardist Masaaki Suzuki has turned to Bach's keyboard music. The results have been consistently satisfying, as one would expect from this great contemporary Bach interpreter, but even Suzuki fans might have wondered what he would do with these six rarely played toccatas. There are more purely dramatic readings of these works, mostly played on piano, but Suzuki is attuned to this music, and his performances are not in the least colorless. Bach's intense Adagios, like that of the Toccata in E minor, BWV 914, and the irregular structures of the music have snap and surprise. Suzuki's 1982 harpsichord, based on an enlarged Ruckers instrument, is an excellent choice for the music, and anyone whose Bach collection is missing these remarkable works can do well with this choice.

-- ALlMusic.com (James Manheim)

On this ninth installment in Ronald Brautigam’s series of the complete piano concertos by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, the program consists of three works composed in 1776 and 1782-83. As on previous discs, Brautigam – whose ‘muscular yet sensitively nuanced command of Mozartian discourse’ has been described by BBC Music Magazine as central to the series – is supported by Die Kölner Akademie under Michael Alexander Willens, in a partnership that for each new recording becomes ever more intuitive and close-knit.

Review:

Ronald Brautigam and the Cologne Academy under Michael Alexander Willens offer stylish and enjoyable performances.

– BBC Music Magazine

This release grew out of the fascination of Robert von Bahr, founder and managing director of BIS Records, for the television series House of Cards. It wasn’t only – or even primarily – the script or the acting that grabbed him, however, but just as much the music. Said and done – Jeff Beal, the composer of the House of Cards soundtrack, was contacted and it was soon decided that he should compose a Flute Concerto for the virtuosic Sharon Bezaly. To complement the concerto a selection of music from the series was agreed upon, but with five seasons worth of installments to choose from, this quickly grew into a large-scale House of Cards Symphony which at 83 minutes takes up an album all on its own. So now the decision was made to record and present a lavish release, with three further works: Six Sixteen for guitar and orchestra (performed by Grammy winner Jason Vieaux), Canticle for strings and a brand new House of Cards Fantasy for flute and orchestra. The Norrköping Symphony Orchestra has received international acclaim for its recordings of the hyper-intense music of modernist Allan Pettersson, but here, under the direction of the composer himself, it has taken to the new idiom and welcomes the additional instruments necessary to bring out that House of Cards feeling: electric guitar and bass guitar, drum kit, piano and flugelhorn.

This recording of the Tchaikovsky Piano Trio might well may be among the best.

In Russian chamber music, a rather special tradition evolved around the piano trio, with a number of composers turning to the genre to write ‘instrumental requiems’. First out was Tchaikovsky with his Piano Trio in A minor, Op. 50, ‘à la mémoire d’un grand artiste’, and he was followed by composers such as Rachmaninov, Arensky and Shostakovich. In the case of Tchaikovsky’s trio, the ‘grand artiste’ was the pianist Nikolai Rubinstein, and Tchaikovsky chose the trio genre as he felt that a piece for solo piano would be too lightweight and one with orchestral accompaniment would be too showy. The work is in two movements, a Pezzo elegiaco (‘elegiac piece’) and a set of variations, and it begins with the cello playing a moving lament which sets the tone for the entire first movement. The theme returns at the end of the second movement in the form of an impassioned funeral march. Seventy years later, when the Armenian composer and pianist Arno Babajanian (1921—83) wrote his Piano Trio in F sharp minor, he didn’t give it any subtitle, but there’s a grandeur and breadth of scale which rivals Tchaikovsky’s work – and the second movement is thoroughly elegiac in character. The trio is Babajanian’s best-known work, composed in the Romantic style of Rachmaninov, but also rooted in Armenian folk music, melodically as well as rhythmically. Performing the two works are Vadim Gluzman and Yevgeny Sudbin, both with Russian roots, joined by cellist Johannes Moser, and the three close the album with Sudbin’s arrangement of a brief Tango by Alfred Schnittke.

-----

REVIEW:

I will begin with what, strictly speaking, is merely the “other piece” on this disc: the piano trio by Arno Babajanian. I have never heard of him or what appears to be his best-known work, but the outstanding recording and startling advocacy of this starry chamber group makes me think I should have.

The piano trio opens with the violin and cello playing a dark theme together. The piano comes in with some lovely runs reminiscent of Rachmaninov’s second piano concerto (no bad thing, in my view). The second movement starts with a long violin melody over a syncopated piano accompaniment, not a million miles from Korngold or Prokofiev’s second violin concerto. The final movement opens with something of a shock, a jazzy passage in 5/8 time, but then the cello comes in with a lovely theme, and the two moods alternate until the end.

It is a delightful work with strong melodies and rhythmic complexity, which this trio plainly adore. It is wonderfully recorded, giving plenty of power to Johannes Moser’s cello work. I shall be taking it off my shelves frequently.

I have so far had to make do for Tchaikovsky’s Piano Trio opus 50 with an old Naxos recording by the Ashkenazy Trio (8.550467), still available. The coupling is Arensky’s trio, and I would not want to be without that. But this disc blows that version out of the water, both in terms of performance and recording. I cannot pretend to have heard all the hundreds of recordings of the work by world-renowned musicians which are out there – but this well may be among the best.

Once again, the recording of Moser’s cello has all the resonance of the real instrument; Sudbin’s piano is alert but self-effacing when it needs to be; Gluzman’s violin soars and inspires. Above all, the trio give the impression they are listening to each other and adjusting their performances accordingly.

The disc ends with a little bon-bon which I assume the group put in because they were enjoying themselves so much: the Tango from the opera Life with an Idiot by Alfred Schnittke. It is not really necessary, since the disc lasts almost seventy minutes without it, but it is great fun, for us as well as for the artists.

– MusicWeb International

It was when Delphine Constantin-Reznik took up the post as harpist in the Norrköping Symphony Orchestra that she first came across the name Anton Pratté, well-known in his lifetime as a harpist and composer. Her research into the music and activities of this forgotten master has now resulted in the very first recording of any of his numerous compositions for the harp. Anton Edvard Pratté was born in Bohemia into a family that ran a touring puppet theatre. He came to Sweden as an adolescent, and soon made a name for himself, performing music of his own as well as by others.

Pratté gave concerts across Sweden, as well as in Norway and Finland, and in the 1840s even went on an extensive tour of Europe, performing in Berlin (where members of the Prussian royal family were in the audience), Vienna and Prague. But much of his life was spent in the area around Norrköping where he taught the daughters of wealthy landowners and for a while conducted the local orchestra society – the forerunner of the Norrköping Symphony Orchestra heard in the Grand Concert which opens the present disc. This is followed by two works for solo harp, both making use of traditional tunes from Sweden and Norway respectively.

Born in Albania in 1958, Thomas Simaku studied composition at the State Conservatory of Music in Tirana. He moved to England in 1991, where he was able to immerse himself in the music that had been banned in his native country, and especially that of Ligeti and Kurtág. This, as well as his earlier experience of working with Albanian folk musicians, had a lasting effect on his own music – but as Simaku himself puts it: ‘when it comes to creativity, one should at least try to speak with one’s voice, however small that might be.’ He often composes for specific performers and the present album highlights his collaborations with Quatuor Diotima and with the pianist Joseph Houston. Catena I, the opening work as well as the most recent one on the programme, was written for Houston, while the String Quartets Nos. 4 and 5 were destined for Diotima, of which Simaku has said that ‘one cannot fail to notice their individual and sensitive approach to sound and color, and their huge range of expression. I have tried to embody these idiosyncratic qualities in both quartets.’ Houston also plays two works written by Simaku as tokens of his respect for two composer colleagues: L’image oubliée d’après Debussy and Hommage à Kurtág. These frame the piano quintet con-ri-sonanza which has also given its name to the entire album, after the sonic qualities it embodies: consonanza, risonanza, con risonanza …

There are many questions surrounding Johann Sebastian Bach’s ‘Six Solos for violin’, or the Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin, as they are usually called today. When did he compose them, and why, and for whom? In what circumstances were they performed? And why would a master of polyphony choose to write for a melody instrument with limited scope for polyphony or chords? We can only guess at the answers – which makes the works all the more fascinating. The legendary violinist George Enescu famously described the set as ‘the Himalayas of violinists’, but for more than 200 years they were primarily regarded as pedagogical exercises rather than compositions worthy of the concert hall. Felix Mendelssohn and Robert Schumann tried to popularize them by making versions with piano accompaniment, while Busoni did away with the violin altogether in his transcription of the famous Chaconne from Partita No. 2. But since Yehudi Menuhin made the first complete recording of the Sonatas and Partitas, between 1929 and 1936, they have become a staple during violin recitals, on disc and in concert. Fascinating performers and audiences alike with their architectural perfection as well as their emotional range, these are works that lend themselves to very different interpretations, and on this recording it is the Bach of Finnish violinist Jaakko Kuusisto we hear. Himself a composer – as well as violinist and conductor – Kuusisto remembers beginning to study individual movements from the set at the age of ten. The music has been with him ever since, and to him ‘no other works for the violin provide a higher challenge or greater beauty’.

REVIEW:

Kuusisto plays with an offhanded, technical nonchalance, as if there were neither any of the traditional expectations or technical hurdles to overcome. Everything sounds so organic and natural that listening becomes increasingly enjoyable. The musical detail can certainly be heard, yet Kuusisto does not force that conspicuously on the listener.

– Klassikheute.com (Germany)

This is the first ever album devoted to the chamber music of Helena Munktell, one of the earliest female composers in Sweden. The daughter of an industrialist, Munktell received private lessons in piano and song from an early age, but soon also training in music theory and composition. In 1877 she visited Paris, where two of her sisters lived, and during the next thirty-odd years the city would be a second home to her. Here she studied with composers such as Benjamin Godard and Vincent d’Indy, and became a member of Société Nationale de Musique (SNM), an organization promoting French music and providing opportunities for young composers to have their works performed. A selection of Munktell’s songs had been performed, in Swedish, at a Society concert in 1892 and in 1900 they were heard again, but now in the French versions released the same year by the reputed musical publisher Alphonse Leduc. The Dix Mélodies are finely crafted musical scenes displaying a wide expressive range and variety of moods. Five years later another SNM concert saw the first performance of Munktell’s Violin Sonata in E flat major, by none other than the renowned Romanian violinist George Enescu. Franck’s famous A major Sonata, which Munktell knew well, served as an important source of inspiration in regards to the cyclic form and harmonic writing. The sonata soon appeared in print, now from E. Demets, another French music publisher. The third work on this album is a small-scale piano trio, probably an early work and possibly composed for performance at one of the musical salons at the Munktell family home in Stockholm.

Seventy years ago, on the 29th July 1951, Wilhelm Furtwängler conducted Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 at a concert marking the reopening of the Bayreuth Festival after seven years of silence following the Second World War. It was a momentous occasion, and the concert was broadcast by Bavarian Radio and transmitted across the world, for instance by Swedish Radio. Using the analogue mono tape as digitized by Swedish Radio, the present disc reproduces the broadcast as it would have been heard by listeners in Sweden: we have chosen to not change anything, not to ‘brush up’ the sound, not to clean and shorten the pauses or omit audience noises within the music, but to keep the original as it was. In this way we hope to recreate the feeling of actually sitting in front of an old radio in 1951, listening to this concert – a true historical document.

REVIEW:

Nothing else in the realms of recorded music is quite like it and I would urge you to share the experience...I’m not claiming that this performance will suit every mood or even every taste, but if and when it does hit target it will leave you changed for ever.

-- Gramophone (Editor's Choice, March 2022)

With this programme of music for cello and piano, Steven Isserlis and Connie Shih transport us to the world immortalized in Marcel Proust’s a la recherche du temps perdu – the Parisian high society and its glittering salons. For the composers of the time these provided a perfect platform for the introduction of new works, performed by the finest musicians in France for a sympathetic, educated and rich (!) audience. And for the music-loving Proust they offered countless opportunities to meet the composers that he so admired (and others that he may have admired a bit less…) The first of these to make his appearance in the programme is no one less than Proust’s one-time lover and lifelong friend, Reynaldo Hahn, with a brief set of Variations chantantes on a theme from a baroque opera. He is followed by Gabriel Faure, whose music Proust gushed about in a letter to the composer: ‘I could write a book more than 300 pages long about it.’

Proust was less expansive about Saint-Saëns’ music even if he admired him as a pianist, but the composer’s First Cello Sonata is nevertheless the centrepiece of the programme, before Henri Duparc and Augusta Holmes make their appearance. These were both students of Cesar Franck, whose iconic Violin Sonata in A major (here in the version for cello) closes this programme of ‘salon music’ – in the best possible sense of the term.

REVIEW:

The writings of Marcel Proust are suffused with music. Proust depicted the world of the Parisian salons of the late 19th century, where both music and literature flourished. This release by cellist Steven Isserlis and pianist Connie Shih does not depict a specific event, but it does plunge the listener into Proust's world. Isserlis brings the necessary heat to the Franck sonata, an arrangement of the composer's cello sonata that the composer himself sanctioned. Another draw is Shih's accompaniment work, distinctive and appropriately intense. For lovers of French music, this is a standout release.

– AllMusicGuide.com (James Manheim)

The Kalevala is a compilation of mostly original folk poetry, arranged into fifty extensive runos (‘poems’) by the Finnish physician and folklorist Elias Lönnrot. Beginning with the creation of the world, it develops into a series of separate episodes which nevertheless form a rich whole, introducing epic characters such as Väinämöinen, Lemminkäinen and Kullervo. The collection first appeared in 1835, with a final, extended version being published in 1849, and was soon hailed as Finland’s ‘national epos’ – a sensitive matter given that the country had been subjected to Russian rule since 1809. It came to play a major part in Finland’s national awakening and had a massive influence on Finnish art in the late 19th century, but its role in the national consciousness remains important even today. The present album, from the Lahti Symphony Orchestra and Dima Slobodeniouk, brings together Kalevala-related works spanning the period between 1897 and 1943. No such collection could overlook Sibelius, who composed several works inspired by the epos. Included here is a rarity – the first recording of the 1897 version of Lemminkäinen in Tuonela, from the Lemminkäinen Suite. Finnish composers from later generations all had to find a way out from under Sibelius’s shadow – especially so when composing works based on the Kalevala. The portraits of Kullervo which bookend the disc, by Leevi Madetoja and Tauno Pylkkänen, are both compact works in contrast to Sibelius’s large-scale ‘choral symphony’ on the same theme, and when Uuno Klami used bold and primitive colors in his five-movement Kalevala Suite, he was looking towards Stravinsky rather than his countryman.

Huw Watkins’ song cycle Echo, composed for soprano Ruby Hughes and premiered in 2017 at Carnegie Hall, is at the center of this artfully crafted recital. Setting texts by five different poets, the cycle is a work centered on melancholy – on transience, remembrance, and in the final song a numbed cry of inconceivable loss. As such it permeates the entire program, adding a new and unexpected depth to that which precedes as well as follows. Another strand of the recital is the idea of how composers across the ages have addressed and echoed one another lovingly in their music – often in the most nuanced and unconscious way. Bach’s solo keyboard works capture something of a sense of timelessness, or more accurately, inspire an emotional connection that transcends time. A similar affinity seems to inform Britten’s folksong arrangements and his realizations of Bach’s Geistliche Lieder as well as the Purcell realizations by Thomas Adès and Tippett. A different kind of echo is created by the inclusion of Britten’s version of Dafydd y Garreg Wen(David of the White Rock) – a nod to the performers’ shared Welsh heritage. Closing the disc, three songs by contemporary British composers admired by both Watkins and Hughes also resonate with the previous works, bringing the program full circle.

REVIEW:

Here, in a recital that includes two world premieres, Hughes and longtime collaborator Huw Watkins combine contemporary works with works from centuries past. Somber themes connect them: the transience of life. Loss. Grief.

Watkins’s five Echo songs are exceptionally beautiful. Listen to the falling cascades in his setting of Emily Dickinson’s “For Each Ecstatic Instant.” Admire how vocally responsive Hughes is in the Purcell, how fragile and precious she sounds in Errollyn Wallen’s “Peace on Earth,” and how much she can communicate with barely a whisper of sound. Marvelous.

-- Stereophile

In the course of this highly original programme, Terje Tønnesen and his Camerata Nordica tell us tales of madness and love, of battles and delusions. Building on imaginative scores by Biber, Telemann and Purcell, Tønnesen himself and Mikhel Kerem has fashioned even more colorful arrangements that bring human follies and passions to the fore. In the course of the disc we are treated to rousing drum solos, a trio of Hungarian folk musicians makes a guest appearance in Biber's "joking sonata" and a Swedish nyckelharpa adds color to the plaintive Aria in Battalia, before the listener is telescoped into the famous battle scene itself. Featured soloist soprano Karin Dahlberg gives us memorable portraits of madness in three English "Mad Songs", and throughout the programme the members ofthe ensemble with equal conviction play their instruments, bay as a pack of hounds and groan as wounded musketeers. The result is a pageant fit for a street performance during a carnival - at turns absurd, burlesque, frightening and moving.

Albert Camus once wrote ‘when I describe what the catastrophe of modern man looks like, music comes into my mind – the music of Gustav Mahler’. If asked to specify a particular work, it is quite possible that Camus would have proposed Symphony No. 6 in A minor – the symphony that Bruno Walter claimed portrayed ‘a terrifying, hopeless darkness, without a human sound’. Nevertheless, the period during which Mahler wrote his Sixth was one of the most successful and happiest of his life – prior to any marital difficulties, at the time of the birth of his second daughter Anna, his professional reputation growing. Alma Mahler, in her memoirs, suggested that the symphony was in fact predicting instances of future distress in the composer’s own life, and she and various commentators have proposed various interpretations of different elements. Most famous of these are possibly the hammer strokes in the Finale, falling, according to Alma, like ‘blows of fate’ on the ‘hero’ of the symphony. But Osmo Vänskä has a reputation for engaging with even the most iconic scores at face value, avoiding preconceived ideas and ‘time-honored’ traditions.

His and the Minnesota Orchestra’s recording of Mahler’s Sixth follows upon the 2017 release of the composer’s Fifth Symphony. Nominated to a 2018 Grammy Award, that interpretation has been described as ‘at once committed and detached, intense and transcendentally timeless’ (Norman Lebrecht) and ‘an exceptional performance that promises great things to come’ (allmusic.com).

REVIEWS:

The Finnish maestro opts for the revised order of middle movements, the searing andante preceding the scherzo, with its “old fatherly”, Ländler-like trio. The Minnesotans shine in the eerie sonorities of the finale, building to another allegro energico, but ending, movingly, in the minor tonality.

– Sunday Times (UK)

The interpretation here is intensely focused and utterly compelling, and the playing is impassioned and unnervingly vivid in the multichannel format, so listeners who loved the exceptional analog versions by Solti and Tennstedt or modern digital recordings by Abbado, Tilson Thomas, and Pappano can be sure that Vänskä's audiophile version ranks just as high in quality. The integrity of the performance and the expressive heights that are achieved carry the day and make Vänskä's recording essential for Mahler buffs.

– All Music Guide