Born in 1968, the Swiss composer Richard Dubugnon writes music that has been described as ‘driven by a playful modern sensibility’ (New York Times). His work list includes all genres, from solo pieces to large orchestral works, such as the Helvetia Symphony, scored for the same forces as Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. He has also written for smaller orchestra, however, and this disc is bookended by his two chamber symphonies. Chamber Symphony No.?1 was composed in 2013, and in his liner notes the composer admits to influences from Arnold Schoenberg and Franz Schreker, as well as Olivier Messiaen: ‘if passionate gestures evoke the decadent Vienna of the turn of the 20th century, the overall harmonic color remains quite “French”… Switzerland is, after all, half way between Vienna and Paris.’ In contrast, the initial inspiration for Chamber Symphony No. 2 (2017) was a visual one – a stained-glass panel from 1658 commemorating the first members of Musikkollegium Winterthur, for which the work was written. Dubugnon creates a chaconne based on the colours of the stained glass, but also includes a Bach fragment in allusion to a reference on the panel to Psalm 150. These elements are used in various ways throughout the piece, which ends in a big accelerando. Framed by the symphonies is the concerto Klaveriana for piano, orchestra and obbligato celesta. Featuring a wide range of piano techniques, the concerto is unusual in that it incorporates an important part for the celesta which functions as a mysterious reflection of the piano. The album is a first on BIS from Musikkollegium Winterthur under its conductor Thomas Zehetmair, with Noriko Ogawa as the soloist in Klaveriana.

Although born in Sweden, Klas Torstensson has spent most of his working life in the Netherlands following his studies in Utrecht in the early 1970s. Stylistically, he may call to mind Varèse, Xenakis and – perhaps more distantly – Stravinsky. First and foremost, however, Torstensson’s music is personal and distinctive. It is often nourished by his experiences of nature: rough granite, the sea, ice in the frozen Baltic inlets, the polar ice cap. His Lantern Lectures were composed in the aftermath of his opera The Expedition, about an ill-fated journey to the North Pole. While occupied with the opera he had received commissions from several different ensembles, and he therefore decided to write a cycle of works for these ensembles – compositions to be performed separately or as ‘movements’ forming a greater whole. The four lectures portray fundamental elements and phenomena in Nordic nature: bedrock with stratified memories of its violent origins (Solid Rocks I & II), traces of the Northern Lights (Aurora Borealis) and potholes, cylindrical holes drilled into the bedrock under glaciers (Giant’s Cauldron). They all involve 12 to 15 players, and are connected by Brass Links, brief interludes for trumpet, horn and trombone. Lantern Lectures is here performed by Norrbotten NEO, an ensemble dedicated to the promotion of contemporary chamber music, conducted by Christian Karlsen.

All World Premiere Recordings

Grammy Award-winning Third Coast Percussion, whose artistry blends “creative fearlessness with reverent precision” (BBC Music Magazine), offers an album of enterprising collaborations and world-premiere recordings of works written or arranged expressly for the Chicago-based percussion quartet, representing four different approaches to composing concert music.

Danny Elfman’s Percussion Quartet, structured like a four-movement symphony, shares distinctive traits heard in his Grammy-winning, Oscar-nominated films scores, as well as hints of African balofon, Indonesian gamelan, and Shostakovich. Great admirers of composer Philip Glass, Third Coast arranged Glass’s solo piano Metamorphosis No. 1 for marimba, vibraphone, glockenspiel, and melodica. Rubix emerged from Third Coast Percussion’s improvisational collaboration with virtuosic, cutting-edge flute duo Flutronix, who also perform on the recording. Critically acclaimed electronic musician and composer Jlin (Jerrilynn Patton) composed her seven-movement Perspective as electronic tracks, without music notation. Third Coast transformed this work of “beautiful complexity” into a version they could perform live as a quartet.

REVIEW:

Unlike a lot of academic music for percussion ensembles, Danny Elfman makes his quartet sing sweetly, leaning heavily on the warm sounds of the marimba interlocking with tinkling tubular chimes and pitched metal pipes.

The flute duo Flutronix's piece, Rubix, features punchy flutes dancing over a chilled out vibraphone, and foggy episodes where marimba, whirly tube and bowed flexatone provide an evocative backdrop of light and shadow.

Footwork is the hyper-beat music born in Chicago's underground dance competitions and house parties in the late 1990s. On Third Coast Percussion's album, the style undergoes a mesmerizing transformation in a seven-movement suite called Perspective, by Jerrilynn Patton, who goes by Jlin.

Third Coast Percussion, with albums like Perspectives, continues to push percussion in new directions, blurring musical boundaries and beguiling new listeners.

-- NPR. org (Tom Huizenga)

Anthony McGill, principal clarinet of the New York Philharmonic, and pianist Gloria Chien, a frequent performer with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, make their commercial recording debut as a duo on Here with You, an album of early and late German Romantic masterworks they’ve treasured throughout their 15 years of mutual admiration and musical collaboration. It’s a project that embodies, in the artists’ words, a “shared expression of beauty and friendship.” Johannes Brahms and Carl Maria von Weber were accomplished pianists who wrote for — and performed with — the leading clarinetists of their day. Brahms’ Sonata No. 1, Opus 120, spotlights fast-paced, intense dialogues between the two players, while his Sonata No. 2 explores the clarinet’s entire tonal range. Weber’s Grand Duo Concertant has been described as “a double concerto without orchestra” showcasing sheer virtuosity for both instruments. The Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s newest Mead Composer-in-Residence, Jessie Montgomery wrote Peace in 2020 as a response to the global pandemic. McGill and Chien offer the world-premiere recording of the clarinet and piano version.

Engage, Exchange, Connect. That is what this young American piano trio is all about, on stage as well as on this album, it's very first. Experience the group at it's revelatory best in these idiomatic and fresh interpretations of early-twentieth-century American piano trios, by Foote, Korngold and Bernstein. As reported by WXQR radio, "Neave is actually a Gaelic name meaning 'bright' and 'radiant', both of which certainly apply to this trio's music making." Praised for their "heart-on-sleeve performances" (Classical New Jersey), the Neave Trio has been described as "A consummate ensemble" (Palm Beach Daily News), "A revelation" (San Diego Story), and "A brilliant trio..." (MusicWeb International), one that has "exceeded the gold standard and moved on to platinum" (Fanfare).

Ivan Ilic came across these transcriptions, scarcely known at all, through the most unlikely and serendipitous sequence of events. Carl David Stegmann (1751 – 1826) was a tenor, keyboard player, conductor, and composer, who worked mostly in the field of opera. Employed by the Court Theatre in Mainz (where he sang in the first German-language production of Don Giovanni), he also gave a number of acclaimed performances in Frankfurt. Trained as an organist, he made transcriptions of string quintets by Mozart and Beethoven’s Trios, Op. 9 as well as keyboard transcriptions of twenty-five of Haydn’s symphonies. Ivan Ilic writes: ‘It is unclear to me whether these transcriptions were ever meant to be played as concert repertoire, in public. Nevertheless, the enthusiasm I have encountered wherever I have played them has persuaded me to make this recording, to allow more people to hear Stegmann’s idiomatic arrangements.’

This re-release of Herbert Howells’ Hymnus Paradisi and A Kent Yeoman’s Wooing Song forms part of the new Hickox Legacy series commemorating the life and career of that great conductor. Mestro Richard Hickox’s lifelong commitment to British music in general is well-known, as is his work with the challenging, intricate music of Howells. This disc displays extremes of Howells’ emotional language - from the intense and powerful Hymnus to the sprightly and rather flirtatious Wooing Song – communicated masterfully by Hickox and his associates.

Twenty five years after their last recording of piano duets on Chandos, the Canadien pianists Louis Lortie and Hélène Mercier return in a watershed collection of magnificently played duets by Rachmaninoff including the two suites and an arrangement for his Symphonic Dances. The Lortie/Mercier piano duo have known one another since their early teens, and have a considerable collaborative discography that showcases their affinity for the art of 4 hands and 2 pianos performances and repertoire.

If Chopin ‘invented’ the Mazurka, then surely by the same token Grieg ‘invented’ the Lyric Piece. Over his lifetime he published ten volumes of Lyric Pieces, containing 66 individual works.

Born in Bergen, Grieg studied in Leipzig and became established as Norway’s leading composer, successfully synthesizing Norwegian folk music with the forms and conventions of the German tradition. While he was internationally acclaimed for his Piano Concerto and the incidental music to Peer Gynt, the vast majority of his output lies not in large-scale works, but in smaller, more intimate forms, especially songs and, of course, his Lyric Pieces.

Peter Donohoe writes: ‘as a teenager I expanded my knowledge of the music of Grieg to include many solo piano pieces as well as the better-known orchestral works. I was beguiled by his style, and the reason remains somewhat intangible. Although one is able to identify the originality of Grieg as a composer – the Norwegian folk element in his music, his natural gift for memorable melodic lines, his occasional diversions into unique and extraordinarily forward-looking harmonies, and, to some degree, his emotional naïveté – there is a unique, unidentifiable kernel in his output that defies analysis, as is true of the work of all the great composers... All these works are pristine examples of his diverse and original style – Norwegian with a Germanic flavour – and it has been a huge and satisfying pleasure to return to them to create this and future recordings.’

REVIEW:

Donohoe, with a devotion to Grieg’s music dating back to his early years, clearly has the measure of this repertoire. He gets inside the gentler pieces, such as ‘Melancholy’ and ‘Summer Evening’, with beautifully poised playing. Grieg in his more overtly national mood, as in the famous and virtuoso ‘Halling’, is presented with infectious enjoyment and the simpler pieces are never patronized.

-- BBC Music Magazine

Alongside its ongoing and much lauded Haydn and Schubert series, both on-stage and on-record, the Doric String Quartet with this Mendelssohn album is adding a new milestone in its repertoire. Mendelssohn wrote and published these three quartets at very different stages in his life and they therefore outline the complete trajectory of his creative output. The early Op. 12, also called No. 1, was composed in London and includes many musical allusions to Beethoven, dead only a few years before its composition. These subtly contrast with Mendelssohn’s genially flowing energy. While Op. 44 No. 3, which incorporates many deft variations, developments, and combinations, follows an extended honeymoon tour and Mendelssohn’s twenty-ninth birthday, Op. 80 emerged from a bout of helpless depression after the sudden death of Mendelssohn’s older sister and confidante, Fanny. Mendelssohn described this quartet as a Requiem, and the nervous agitation often found in his music here bursts forth with full force. Resignation, agitation, and nostalgia shape the work, the almost shocking finality of which may be said to prefigure Mendelssohn’s own death only six months later.

-----

REVIEW:

Op. 44/3 is the longest of the quartets, and the outer movements can sometimes come across as prolix. The Doric’s performance steers clear of this trap – again through the controlled variety and technical ease of their music-making – as well as tripping the light fantastic in the scherzo, and laying bare the emotional ambiguity of the Adagio. I look forward to Volume 2.

– BBC Music Magazine

Featuring sensitive interpretations and a dazzling orchestral accompaniment, this release includes Four Mozart piano concertos punctuated by smaller Mozart tunes. Award-winning pianist Jean-Efflam Bavouzet enjoys a prolific recording and international concert career. He regularly works with orchestras such as The Cleveland Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, London Philharmonic, BBC Symphony and NHK Symphony orchestras, and collaborates with conductors including Vladimir Ashkenazy, Vladimir Jurowski, Gianandrea Noseda, François- Xavier Roth, Nicholas Collon, Gábor Takács-Nagy and Sir Andrew Davis amongst others. Bavouzet records exclusively for Chandos and his recording of Grieg’s Piano Concerto with Bergen Philharmonic under Edward Gardner has been nominated for the Concerto category of the 2018 Gramophone Awards. Together with Manchester Camerata and Gábor Takács-Nagy, Bavouzet has recorded several of Haydn’s Piano Concertos and embarked on the present series of Mozart concertos, which have been critically acclaimed.

This Chandos re-issue of Max Bruch’s Violin Concertos Nos. 2 and 3, recorded in 1998 by Lydia Mordkovitch (1944-2014) with Richard Hickox and the LSO is released in tribute to the late Russian-British violinist. • In the Violin Concerto No. 2, “Hickox draws radiant sounds from the LSO, and Ms. Mordkovitch ... plays with rapt dedication [and] breathtaking beauty…” (Guardian) • The third Violin Concerto’s robust, heroic opening concertante movement precedes a slow movement reminiscent of the same in the famous First Concerto and a rondo Finale dominated by a strongly rhythmic perpetuum mobile.

Chief conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra since 2013, Finnish conductor Sakari Oramo has a special affinity with the music of his compatriot Sibelius which this recording admirably demonstrates. Sibelius’ ever-popular ‘Lemminkäinen Suite’ is coupled here with ‘Spring Song’, and the lesser-known Suite from ‘Belshazzar’s Feast’. Sibelius composed the ‘Lemminkäinen Suite’ (also called the Four Legends, or Four Legends from the Kalevala), Op. 22, in the 1890s. Originally conceived as a mythological opera, Veneen luominen (The Building of the Boat), the suite is based on the character Lemminkäinen from the Finnish epic, the Kalevala. Sibelius’ music for ‘Belshazzar’s Feast’ was originally composed as incidental music for a play (by Hjalmar Procopé), in 1906. First performed in the Swedish Theatre in Helsinki in November of that year, conducted by the composer. The following year, Sibelius extracted four of the eight movements to form the more widely known orchestral suite we hear in this recording.

REVIEWS:

The BBC Symphony's chief conductor brings deep insights to bear here. It is thrilling to hear the rarity Spring Song played with full acknowledgement that this is rather more than a seasonal ditty. We once again come close to the heart of Sibelius in an unlikely place.

– Gramophone

The Lemminkäinen Suite has tended to be viewed as an important staging post on Sibelius’s path to the symphony. What Sakari Oramo shows is that it’s a marvellous achievement in its own right, and as such not quite like anything else. Superbly recorded, this is a Lemminkäinen Suite to treasure.

– BBC Music Magazine

Following the success of their previous album, English Music for Strings, John Wilson and his Sinfonia of London turn their attention to the music of Henri Dutilleux. His ballet Le Loup was composed as a commission for Roland Petit’s dance company and premièred in Paris in March 1953. Rarely recorded – this is the first recording by a non-French orchestra – the work unfolds in three tableaux and tells a convoluted tale of a bridegroom who jilts his bride (to run away with a gypsy) by persuading her that he has been changed into a wolf. Over time she discovers that the wolf is real, but her feelings turn from terror to love and when the alarmed villagers hunt the wolf, she defends him and dies at his side. The album is completed by three world première recordings of new orchestrations (by Kenneth Hesketh) of wind solos written for the Paris Conservatoire in the 1940s. Both the Sarabande et Cortège and Sonate pour hautbois are virtuosic tours de force for their soloists, as is the Sonatine pour flûte, which displays the lyricism, agility, and sparkling incisive qualities of the flute in what became Dutilleux’s most-performed work.

"Bavouzet’s Haydn is unmatched in its zest and its wit. But it is also substantial, informed and deeply rewarding."

--The New York Times on Bavouzet's Haydn Sonatas cycle, 2022

Jean-Efflam Bavouzet’s survey of Haydn’s piano sonatas reaches its conclusion with this 11th and final volume. As with the previous releases, the acclaimed pianist has included repertoire from different periods of Haydn’s career to create a recital of interest in its own right, as well as the completion of the series.

Jean-Efflam notes: ‘It has been eleven years since the launch of this project to present Haydn’s sonatas, not in their chronological order, but as collections juxtaposing works from different periods. The program for this final album was actually the first one to be devised: I wanted to place side by side the very first and the very last sonata. Then the idea of fleshing out the sonata cycle with other major pieces began at volume four, with the addition of the famous Variations in F minor, and finally this last volume is made up of as many sonatas as other types of works. The complete series is thus able to offer music lovers all the sonatas identified to date, together with the other major keyboard works.’

REVIEWS:

Winner of a 2022 German Record Critics’ Award!

To welcome the spring, British ensemble I Fagiolini puts aside its beloved Monteverdi to uncover its own national heritage: the best of John Wilbye's classic Golden Age madrigals. Whilst his oeuvre may have been small (just 75 works that we know of and most just a couple of minutes long), time and again, in these exquisite cameos, Wilbye delivers what might be reckoned the ultimate madrigal experience. The plangent dissonance of ‘Draw on, sweet night’ and ‘Weep, weep, mine eyes’ perfectly evoke English melancholy, while ‘Sweet honey-sucking bees’ and ‘Adieu, sweet Amaryllis’ are such sheer pleasure to sing that many listeners will scrabble to unearth old scores. This album is, in a nutshell, 75 minutes of madrigalian bliss! Rediscover or enjoy anew this central part of English choral culture, strangely out of fashion for so long, sung by a group that has matured into the repertoire like a good wine.

“No matter how one might try, one cannot be unkind to Mr. Bertini: he can bring one beside oneself with his friendliness and all his finely fragrant Parisian expressions; his music has the feel of pure satin and silk.” In his Neue Zeitschrift für Musik Robert Schumann gave numerous fellow musicians who rubbed him the wrong way a solid piece of his own mind, but he never found anything to hold against Henri Bertini, a French composer who was twelve years his senior. Although he was a little indirect in his praise, he was right: in the music of this once highly esteemed pianist, piano teacher, and composer there is nothing irritating, nothing that might offend good taste – and yet we never have the impression that here we have a composer who eliminated every trace of »modernity« merely to win public favor. Friendliness apparently was a characteristic trait of this musician who was born in London in 1798 and died in Meylan, near Grenoble, in 1876. He never attempted to go at everything headfirst to prove that it was possible to shatter the sound barrier. His countless études and learning pieces were so very popular internationally because a natural music flows in them, offering welcome expressive opportunities to the pupil. And his finely crafted chamber compositions – from the duo sonata to the nonet – form a catalogue’s trove of treasures combining a very fine ear with great narrative talent. Two of these magnificent pieces from the late 1830s – the Piano Trio op. 43 and the Nonet op. 107 – inaugurate this vibrant work series that would be a top wish for a complete recording edition and definitely in every way represents a valuable contribution to the repertoire.

Note: World Premiere Recordings.

Pulitzer Prize recipient and GRAMMY award-winner Aaron Jay Kernis is one of America’s most performed composers. Both works on this album exemplify his creative approach to orchestral composition, sharing elements in common, such as virtuoso percussion writing and the use of variation form. Color Wheel is an exuberant miniature concerto for orchestra with a wide array of contrasts, while Symphony No. 4 ‘Chromelodeon’ explores the coexistence of opposing musical forces to powerful, pensive, and touching effect. Champions of new American music, the Nashville Symphony and its music director Giancarlo Guerrero had premiered numerous works, and received 13 GRAMMY Awards including two for Best Orchestral Performance. Among their award-winning recordings include works by Michael Daugherty, Stephen Paulus, and Jennifer Higdon.

-----

REVIEW:

Passing through many moods, Color Wheel often employs orchestral virtuosity that explores every department in depth, the strings providing the bed-rock around which the wheel revolves. It is a sizeable score of some twenty-two minutes, that gives a showpiece for the fine Nashville Symphony and their conductor, Giancarlo Guerrero, the final passage a climax of monumental proportions. The recordings come from 2016 and 2019 but match one another perfectly, the extent of detail in the densely scored passages of Color Wheel is an achievement for the sound team. Those collecting the ‘American Classics’ series will be delighted.

– David's Review Corner (David Denton)

Conductor Robert Trevino’s fourth album release on Ondine is focused on the late works of composer Einojuhani Rautavaara (1928–2016), one of Finland’s most celebrated composers after Sibelius and known worldwide for his Neo-Romantic, even mystic compositions. Together with violinist Simone Lamsma and the Malmö Symphony Orchestra the artists are presenting four final orchestral works by the celebrated composer.

Two of the works are world première recordings. In his late period, Rautavaara received several communications from the world’s leading violinists requesting him to write works for them. He was able to oblige them, creating several extensive works featuring solo violin. Fantasia (2015) for violin and orchestra is a work of soft Neo-Romantic harmonies and soaring melodic lines. In 2014, Rautavaara was asked to write a new Violin Concerto. This commission resulted in Deux Sérénades for violin and orchestra which remained unfinished at Rautavaara’s death: the second movement was sketched out, but only its beginning was orchestrated. Kalevi Aho, an accomplished composer of symphonies and concertos who studied composition with Rautavaara at the turn of the 1970s, fleshed out the orchestration in 2018. Lost Landscapes (2005/15) was originally written as a violin sonata, but Rautavaara began orchestrating the work in 2013. The first movement was premiered at the contemporary music festival at Tanglewood in July 2015, but the full premiere of the work took place in Malmö in March 2021, with Simone Lamsma as soloist. In the Beginning (2015) is a concise overture-type work commissioned for a concert opener. The titles of his works were important for the composer, forming part of the ‘aura’ of the work and often even constituting the initial impulse for writing the piece in the first place.

REVIEWS:

There is a transcendent intensity to Rautavaara’s music which is heightened by this writing for strings. All of the music here is relatively recent, the earliest from 2005, but here rearranged for these forces. Lost Landscapes, Fantasia, In the Beginning and Deux Serenades (completed by Kalevi Aho, after the composer’s death) are the four works here. Music to be immersed in and a fitting presentation of some of Rautavaara’s last work.

-- Lark Reviews

All these violin concertante works are attractive, but they are also all rather similar, and there is a preponderance of slow music. So they are best not listened to all at the same time. In the Beginning is different: it shows another side of the composer and perhaps has the best music on the disc.

We have a cosmopolitan team here. The soloist, Simone Lamsma is Dutch, has performed widely and already made a number of recordings. Robert Trevino is American and is a rising star. The Malmö Symphony Orchestra is one of Sweden’s leading orchestras. They all provide assured performances. The recording is sympathetic and the booklet informative. The Fantasia and Deux Sérénades have each been recorded by their commissioners but coupled with different composers, so the Rautavaara fan will find this the most convenient way to collect these works.

-- MusicWeb International

With this new album the award-winning Latvian Radio Choir conducted by Sigvards Kļava is turning its attention to the music of Alexander Grechaninov (1864–1956), one of the masters of Russian liturgic music. Grechaninov’s All-Night Vigil is a fitting continuation to the choir’s albums of sacred music by Sergey Rachmaninov and Pyotr Tchaikovsky. Together with the two latter names, Grechaninov’s All-Night Vigil, completed in 1912, belongs to the central repertoire of Russian liturgic music. Unlike the Vigils by Rachmaninov and Tchaikovsky, Grechaninov’s work was written primarily for concert use. Grechaninov’s All-Night Vigilis a bright, optimistic work full of light. Grechaninov used old traditional Slavic chants as the basis of this work and selected the uplifting, solemnly glorious chants to emphasize the character of joy, exultation and jubilance.

The Latvian Radio Choir (LRC) ranks among the top professional chamber choirs in Europe and its refined taste for musical material, fineness of expression and vocal of unbelievably immense compass have charted it as a noted brand on the world map. The repertoire of LRC ranges from the Renaissance music to the most sophisticated scores by modern composers; and it could be described as a sound laboratory –the singers explore their skills by turning to the mysteries of traditional singing, as well as to the art of quartertone and overtone singing and other sound production techniques.

REVIEW:

While there is no mistaking the urgency of the composer’s calls for mercy in his ‘Great Doxology’, or the joy unleashed in the final hymn to the “Victorious Leader”, the overall tone of the work is gentle, soothing, and altogether loving. As the composer told us, his aim was “to create a harmonic dress for our simple church songs”. For Slavic fire and brimstone, then, you’ll have to look elsewhere.

The Latvian Radio is one of the world’s finest choirs and sounds it here. Informative notes, texts, and an English translation round out an offering that any choral aficionado would be proud to claim.

-- American Record Guide

Austrian composer Thomas Larcher (b. 1963) is one of the great symphonists of our era. This album by the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra and conductor Hannu Lintu includes the first recording of his 2nd Symphony, ‘Kenotaph’, and the song cycle ‘Die Nacht der Verlorenen’ performed by the world-known baritone Andrè Schuen. Larcher’s symphony was written in 2015–2016 to a commission from the National Bank of Austria for its bicentenary. The premiere was given by the Vienna Philharmonic under Semyon Bychkov at the Musikverein in Vienna in June 2016. Larcher’s work, originally intended as a concerto for orchestra, engages with tradition as a fertile background, while still embodying the sound and consciousness of our time. The subtitle to Larcher’s work was motivated by the painful awareness of the thousands of refugees who have drowned in the Mediterranean. The work can also be understood as a more general meditation on human tragedy and an exploration of profound existential issues. Larcher ties the material of the work together with a strong sense of dramaturgy, intense emotional expression and a feeling for musical narrative. The song cycle ‘Die Nacht der Verlorenen’ for baritone and large ensemble sets fragments by Ingeborg Bachmann (1926–1973) that were posthumously published. Bachmann’s dark texts inspired Larcher to write intense and compelling music that is entirely in tune with the mood of the poems. Overall, the work is dominated by slow, meditative and often dreamlike and unreal moods, effectively underpinned by delicate and carefully designed scoring that conjures up a multitude of colors and shades.

Welsh pianist Llyr Williams is widely admired for his profound musical intelligence and the expressive and communicative nature of his interpretations. The complete 8 album collection of Llyr Williams’ Schubert series – previously released as individual digital volumes over 2019 to 2020. These recordings were made following a critically-lauded recital series at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama by Williams. Together they showcase the detailed examination given by Williams to these pieces, which is “warm, yet detailed” (Piano International). The accompanying booklet includes background notes on each piece, as well as an essay by US composer William Bolcom on his completion of Schubert’s unfinished Sonata in C major, D. 840. “These precious five minutes alone are worth a whole string of concerts” (Le Devoir) “ease into melting loveliness” (Classical Source) “Remarkable artistry and authority” (The Guardian)

REVIEW

In live performances such as these, one would expect a certain amount of casualness and distraction, a tendency to slur over passages, rush an accelerando to impress the audience and miss the occasional staccato dot or complete grace note. That is not the case. Williams brings to each work, no matter how slight or monumental, the same integrity and an honoring of the composer’s voice. Technically, I can’t help but be impressed, even amazed, by the strength of his playing and the consistency of pressure on each finger. Yet, there is an overarching individual expressiveness that conveys, as few others can, the unique wistfulness of the Schubert “sound”, the composer’s yearning for recognition and, later, for health, and knowing full well what little time he had in which to accomplish so much. I have never before heard the essential Schubert discerned and revealed at this level of perfection.

–ConcertoNet.com (Linda Holt)

The American pianist Lorin Hollander was only 14 years old in 1958 when he recorded his first album for RCA, a personal selection of “22 Favorites” entitled Discovering the Piano. Its success led to a sequel the following year. Over the next eight years he produced an acclaimed series of releases for the Red Label, establishing an international career which would eventually encompass more than 2,500 appearances as a pianist, conductor and passionate advocate for arts education. Hollander has performed with many of the world’s leading orchestras and collaborated with conductors such as Bernstein, Szell, Ormandy, Leinsdorf, Previn, Haitink, Ozawa and Mehta. Sony Classical is now pleased to present a new 8-disc box set offering Lorin Hollander’s complete RCA discography for the first time on CD.

A child prodigy, he was born in New York City into a musical family – his father was associate concertmaster of the NBC Symphony Orchestra under Toscanini. Lorin began playing the piano at the age of three and within two years had memorized the complete first book of the Well-Tempered Clavier. At eleven, he made his Carnegie Hall début playing Mozart’s C major Concerto K 467. His list of distinguished teachers and mentors includes Eduard Steuermann, Olga Stroumillo, Leon Fleisher, Max Rudolf and Rudolf Serkin.

Sony’s Lorin Hollander box begins with those two early albums of “favorites” by Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Chopin, Mendelssohn, Liszt, Brahms, Grieg, Rimsky-Korsakov, Falla, Granados, Rachmaninoff and Paderewski. In 1963, with Erich Leinsdorf and the Boston Symphony, he premièred and recorded the Fantasy and Variations for Piano and Orchestra by Norman Dello Joio. RCA Victor’s release, a coupling with the Ravel G major Concerto, became Hollander’s international record début and found critical acclaim on both sides of the Atlantic. High Fidelity in the US wrote that “the eighteen-year-old pianist’s amazing digital skill and bravura are just what are demanded for the Fantasy and Variations”, while Gramophone in the UK, was grateful for “our first taste on records of the music of Norman Dello Joio, the 50-year-old New York composer who was at one time a pupil of Hindemith. The piano part is immensely athletic: Hollander scuttles up and down the keyboard with great efficiency, and the orchestra is equally on its toes.”

Hollander recorded further virtuoso concertos in 1964 and 1965. The Prokofiev Fifth, also with Leinsdorf and the BSO, was hailed as “a super-brilliant performance” by High Fidelity. Of the Khachaturian Piano Concerto coupled with Bloch’s Scherzo fantasque – made in London with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra under André Previn – High Fidelity wrote enthusiastically: “The Scherzo fantasque has many of the jagged dissonances and virile qualities of Bloch’s writing in the early Twenties. It is fiercely virtuosic and thus ideally suited to the percussive, tigerish Mr. Hollander. In the Khachaturian … Hollander’s work is also first-rate technically … I find the performance excellent.”

Two solo albums from 1965 and 1966 rounded out Hollander’s RCA discography, Mussorsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, coupled with works by Prokofiev and Rachmaninoff, and a coupling of Beethoven’s “Tempest” Sonata, the Schumann Arabeske, a Brahms Intermezzo and Myra Hess’s beloved Bach transcription “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring”. The set concludes with a curiosity, recorded for Columbia’s “Modern American Music Series” in 1973: the concert work for soprano and chamber ensemble fashioned by American composer Leon Kirchner from his opera Lily. Kirchner plays the piano part and conducts an ensemble featuring Lorin Hollander on celesta, clarinettist Richard Stoltzman, violinist James Buswell and violist Nobuko Imai. The soprano soloist is Diana Hoagland.  

SET CONTENTS 

DISC 1:
• Rimsky-Korsakoff (arr. Rachmaninoff): Flight of the Bumblebee
• Granados: Spanish Dance in E Minor, Op. 5, No. 5 "Playera - Andaluzia"   
• Schubert: Momento Musical In F Minor, Op. 94, No. 3
• Mendelssohn: Venetian Boat Song, No. 6
• Chopin: Etude in C Minor, Op. 10, No. 12 "Revolutionary"
• Paderewski: Menuet célèbre in G Major  
• Falla: Ritual Fire Dance
• Liszt: Liebestraum No. 3
• Chopin: Für Elise (Albumblatt)  
• Chopin: Prelude in C Minor, Op. 28/20  
• Brahms: Waltz in A-Flat Major, Op. 39/15 
• Debussy: Claire de lune   
• Chopin: Waltz in C Sharp Minor, Op. 64/2
• Beethoven: Minuet No. 2 in G Major
• Mozart: Piano Sonata No. 16 in C Major, K. 545: I. Allegro "Sonata Facile"
• Mozart (arr. Hollander): Minuet (From "Don Giovanni") 
• Bach: Two-Part Invention No. 13 in A Minor, BWV 784   
• Schumann: Album für die Jugend, Op. 68: X. Fröhlicher Landmann, von der Arbeit zurückkehrend.  
• Schumann: Album für die Jugend, Op. 68: II. Soldatenmarsch. Munter und straff
• Schumann: Träumerei 
• Grieg: Anitra's Dance
• Chopin: Etude in G-Flat, Op. 25, No. 9 "Butterfly" 

DISC 2:

• Chopin: Polonaise in A-Flat Major, Op. 53
• Chopin: Scherzo No. 2 in B-Flat Minor, Op. 31 
• Liszt: Hungarian Rhapsody No.6 in D-Flat Major, S.244/6 
• Liszt: Mephisto Waltz No. 3, S.216 
• Brahms: 3 Intermezzi, Op. 117/2
• Brahms: Rhapsody in G Minor, Op. 79/2 
• Rachmaninoff: Prelude in C-Sharp Minor, Op. 3/2  

DISC 3:

• Dello Joio: Fantasy and Variations for Piano and Orchestra
• Ravel: Piano Concerto in G Major  
Lorin Hollander, piano / Boston Symphony Orchestra / Erich Leinsdorf, conductor

DISC 4:

• Prokofiev: Violin Concerto No. 1 in D Major, Op. 19 [Erick Friedman, violin]    
• Prokofiev: Piano Concerto No. 5 in G Major, Op. 55    
Lorin Hollander, piano / Boston Symphony Orchestra / Erich Leinsdorf, conductor

DISC 5:

• Khachaturian: Piano Concerto in D-Flat Major, Op. 38  
• Bloch: Scherzo fantasque, B. 78
Lorin Hollander, piano / Royal Philharmonic Orchestra / Andre Previn, conductor

DISC 6:

• Mussorgsky: Pictures at an Exhibition
• Rachmaninoff: Prelude In C-Sharp Minor, Op. 3/2 
• Prokofiev: Toccata, Op. 11

DISC 7:

• Beethoven: Sonata No. 17 in D Minor, Op. 31/2 "The Tempest  
• Bach, J. S. (arr. Hess): Choral: "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring"  
• Brahms: Intermezzo in B-Flat Minor, Op. 117/2
• Schumann: Arabeske, Op. 18 

DISC 8:

• Kirchner: Lily (1973) 
Diana Hoagland, soprano / Columbia Chamber Soloists / Leon Kirchner, pianist/conductor
• Kirchner: String Quartet No. 2 (1958)
Lenox String Quartet

Gulda's “Symphony in G“, presented on this album, was discovered in the SWR archive in the course of research for the release of all the recordings the Austrian pianist made for the German Southwest Broadcasting Corporation (SWR). Until now nobody actually knew that this work existed for there are no indications of Gulda being commissioned or of a specific occasion for which he might have composed this symphony. Therefore, one listens here to the world première of a piece which – apart from being recorded in the studio on 20 November 1970 – has never been performed in public. At the beginning of the 1970s Gulda gave concerts that exclusively featured his own compositions. This also applies to his performance at the Heidelberger Jazztage in 1971, released here for the first time digitally and on album. Almost all of Gulda's jazz works, though often based on classical forms, cannot be played without knowledge of improvisation so as to “keep them away from bunglers” (as the pianist himself put it). One of Gulda’s few compositions without improvisation to be heard here is No. IV from the ten-part piano cycle “Play Piano Play”. “Prelude and Fugue" was probably Gulda’s favourite work and was the last piece of Gulda’s performance in Heidelberg. An exception on this album is Fritz Pauer's "Etude.” In 1966 Fritz Pauer won a prize in the jazz competition Gulda had initiated and so Gulda decided to include this work in the Heidelberg concert from 1971.

This third volume of our Michael Gielen Edition is devoted to music by Johannes Brahms, with all the recordigns taken from the archives of the Southwest German Radio. These recordings were made between April 1989 and January 2005. Michael Gielen enjoyed a felicitous involvement with Brahms' chamber music, particularly the late piano works where, in Schoenberg's words, the "progressive Brahms" is most evident. Maybe that's why Brahms' first piano quartet, orchestrated by Arnold Shcoenberg, sounds so ravishingly sharp under Gielen's direction. The solemnity of Schicksaslied calls for sincere commitment on the part of the conductor. Working as one, the Symphony Orchestra of Baden-Baden and Freiburg and Michael Gielen achieve an interpretation of this work that is both balanced and comforting.

-----

REVIEW:

Gielen proposes we listen to Brahms for the sake of his musical arguments rather than for the lustrous sounds that he's capable of conjuring, an approach that seems eminently sensible, and a valid alternative to various fleshier interpretive options.

– Gramophone