The music on Presentiment, a 2018 release with four orchestral works by Rolf Martinsson, was described by one critic as ‘bold and uncompromisingly personal, eschewing avant-garde modernism and engaging us with solidly expert conventional techniques of composition and orchestration’ (MusicWeb-International.com). The present album features more of Martinsson’s music, performed by the Malmo Symphony Orchestra – a body with which Martinsson has enjoyed a close relationship as its composer in residence. In two of the recorded works, the orchestra – conducted by Paul Magi – is joined by another of Martinsson’s regular collaborators, the soprano Lisa Larsson. Larsson is the soloist in Ich denke Dein..., a song cycle setting five poems by Goethe, Rilke and von Eichendorff, and in Into Eternity, a longer work which in its second half incorporates two poems by the Swedish poet Karin Boye. Into Eternity was composed for the opening of the Malmo orchestra's new concert hall in 2015, and Martinsson wrote it, as well as Ich denke Dein..., with Lisa Larsson in mind. Larsson also appeared on the composer's previous monograph on BIS, in his settings of poems by Emily Dickinson; a performance that led one reviewer to proclaim her 'an expressive artist par excellence, who knows to savour every nuance of the poems' (klassik-heute.de).

The origins of the tango are debatable, but few would disagree in naming Carlos Gardel the first great figure of the genre. Beginning his career as a folk singer, Gardel is also generally regarded as the creator of sung tango, tango canción. In the course of some 25 years, he wrote a large number of songs, recorded numerous discs and acted in several films, achieving international stardom. All the Gardel songs heard here featured in films produced between 1932 and 1935. Lending its title to the present album, Guitarra, guitarra mía was the last song Gardel recorded, shortly before he died in a plane crash in June 1935. Only months earlier, he had encountered a young boy who had a walk-on part in his last film – a striking coincidence, as the boy was Astor Piazzolla, alongside Gardel the most influential figure in the history of the tango. In contrast to Gardel, however, Piazzolla was for a long time the black sheep of traditional tango, eager to explore art music and jazz and to incorporate elements of both in his own music, which became known as nuevo tango. Written for the ensembles that he played and toured worldwide with, pieces such as La muerte del ángel and Vuelvo al sur became immortal. Himself a bandoneon player, Piazzolla often included guitar in his ensembles, but did not compose for solo guitar until in the 1980s, when he wrote the Cinco Piezas that close the disc.

Along with numerous arrangements, these have entered the guitar repertoire and are here performed by the German guitarist Franz Halász, who on recent releases for BIS has impressed the critics to the point of winning a Latin Grammy Award in 2015 with a disc of chamber music by Radamés Gnattali.

REVIEW:

Not only does this bring the music of Carlos Gardel and Astor Piazzolla to a wider audience, with beautifully phrased performances throughout, but it leads us—for those like myself with little background in the Tango—to extensive video clips from the films Gardel made in the 1930s. Both well worth investigating.

-- Lark Reviews

On a number of previous recordings, the 40-odd members of the Swedish Chamber Orchestra and Thomas Dausgaard have shed a new light on the Romantic symphonic repertoire, with performances described as ‘tight’, ‘invigorating’, ‘transparent’ and ‘thrilling’. Complete cycles of the symphonies of Schumann and Schubert have appeared alongside individual discs with music by Dvorák, Bruckner and Tchaikovsky, as well as a recording of Johannes Brahms’s First Symphony, released in 2012. The disc was named Recommendation of the Month in the German magazine Fono Forum, while the reviewer in International Record Review described it as ‘an account to make one hope a complete traversal is in the offing’. Five years later that hope is nearing fulfilment, as the team’s recording of Symphony No. 2 is released. Composed during the summer of 1877, which Brahms spent at the idyllic Wörthersee, it is one of his sunniest works, often compared to Beethoven’s Pastoral symphony. It’s followed by the Haydn Variations, in which Brahms was able to combine one of his favourite musical forms – that of theme and variations – with his deep admiration for Joseph Haydn. (Fortunately, the discovery that the theme in question, known as the ‘St Antoni Chorale’, wasn’t by Haydn after all was made long after Brahms’s death.) The programme continues with other favourites in Brahms’s production, including his greatest commercial success in the form of three of the hugely popular set of Hungarian Dances for piano, here in orchestrations by Thomas Dausgaard. The album ends in similarly high spirits, with the Academic Festival Overture and its rousing and jubilant C major coda.

One of Respighi’s masterpieces, Gli uccelli (The Birds) includes transcriptions of birdsong and music of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in writing of evocative, captivating lyricism. Trittico botticelliano, an illustration of three paintings by Botticelli, employs dance rhythms, modal melodies and a variant of the medieval hymn Veni, Veni Emmanuel in deft, often sublime fashion. The Suite in G major, cast for strings and organ in the form of a Concerto grosso, is heard on this première recording in its original edition.

Germany’s oldest Mozart festival celebrates its 100th anniversary in 2021. The present jubilee boxed set presents previously unpublished treasures from the archive of the Bavarian Broadcasting. All live recordings from the Baroque Imperial Hall at Würzburg Residence are digital remasters.

This BR-KLASSIK CD features recordings of concerts on February 28 and March 1, 2013 in the Philharmonie im Gasteig.

Zubin Mehta is closely associated with the city of Munich and the orchestras based there. From 1998 to 2006, he was General Music Director of the Bavarian State Opera in Munich, and has similarly close ties with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra.

Tchaikovsky wrote his Symphony No. 5 in E minor, op. 64, the so-called "Fate Symphony,” in 1888. All four movements of the work are permeated by the so-called “fate” theme. Together with his fourth and sixth (“Pathétique”) symphonies, the fifth is one of Tchaikovsky's most popular.

Franz Liszt's symphonic poem "Mazeppa" is based on a poem by Victor Hugo and uses musical material from the composer’s fourth "Etude d'exécution transcendante" from 1846. The symphonic poem was composed in 1850 during Liszt's tenure as court conductor in Weimar, and was first performed on April 16, 1854. Liszt's symphonic poem describes the wild ride across the steppe of the emaciated and exhausted Ivan Masepa (Mazeppa), tied to the back of a horse. He is finally rescued by Cossacks, who take him to Ukraine.

A Saami Requiem is an extraordinary meeting-place of musical cultures – western classical, Saami yoik, folk-dance, electric rock, blues, improv and more. It takes the form of a journey to Saajva, the Kingdom of Death in Saami religious practice. In this death Mass the Swedish organist Gunnar Idenstam and Saami artist Ola Stinnerbom provide a parallel to the Christian Requiem, with Ola Stinnerbom as noite, the shaman who acts as guide to the Kingdom of Death – and back to this life, celebrated in the uplifting closing hymn. Some of the percussion sounds are sampled from traditional Saami drums made by Ola Stinnerbom after ancient models; the electric guitars provide a link to rock groups like Deep Purple, and Gunnar Idenstam’s unmistakable style marries the French organ tradition with the captivating world of Swedish folk-music.

REVIEWS:

Is it recommended? It is, and not least on account of its amalgamation of traditional with composed music such as leaves a tangible emotional resonance. Idenstam and Stinnerbom’s succinct annotations cover the background to this project and take the listener deftly yet surely through its various stages.

-- Arcana.FM

The first half of the 18th century was a period of intense evolution for instruments belonging to the flute family, as materials (wood to metal), sizes and ranges all developed prior to the key-system devised in the 19th century. The recorder (or pair thereof) which plays the starring role in the poignant sinfonia to Bach’s Actus Tragicus of 1708 is quite different to the lambent, creamy-toned flute played by Frederick the Great and for which he wrote the trio sonata belonging to the Musical Offering of 40 years later. Whether composed by JS or his son CPE, the sonata BWV1020 has a sunny disposition belying its minor key even in the lovely central Adagio. This version of BWV1039 – originally designed as a sonata for viola da gamba, BWV1027, then transcribed for two flutes and continuo – features the dark and velvety tone of the tenor recorder in D. Unlike most other recordings of the Flute Sonata BWV1032, Stefano Bagliano and Andrea Coen have completed the first movement from the point where 46 bars are missing from Bach’s manuscript, resulting in a more satisfying, musical experience. The chorale ‘O Mensch, bewein dein Sunde gross’, as the meditative climax of the Orgelbuchlein collection, proves delightfully amenable to an arrangement where the chorale line is taken by the melody instrument, and the two instruments pick out the liveliest inner workings of the Canonic Fugue from the Musical Offering as well as a pair of Contrapuncti from The Art of Fugue (Nos. 6 & 9). Two trio works originally composed with organ in mind round out the collection, which finds Andrea Coen adroitly shuttling between harpsichord and a chamber organ. With wonderfully varied textures and a poetic sensibility to be expected from these two experienced Baroque-era specialists, it’s a Bach album to treasure.