The Scriabin Mystery is brought to vivid life by acclaimed French pianist Vincent Larderet and celebrates the 150th anniversary of the birth of the Russian composer. Making his AVIE debut, Larderet presents a comprehensive survey of the scope of Scriabin’s output and the evolution of his style, from his early, post-Romantic works influenced by Chopin and Liszt, through to the modernism of the 20th century in his final works. His harmonies famously colored by his synesthesia, Scriabin’s craft was a revolutionary fusion of freedom of expression underpinned by a sense of unity and geometric proportion, his psychologically complex constructions infused with incandescence and mysticism. Scriabin’s music has long held pride of place in Larderet’s repertoire. He offers a brilliant and broad overview of the composer’s evolution in chronological sequence, revealing the mystery of one of the most visionary composers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Scriabin’s life was tragically cut short at the age of 43, leaving his final work, Acte préalable, unfinished. Long thought lost, the sketches were re-discovered by composer and musicologist Manfred Kelkel, who used the material for his composition Tombeau de Scriabine. Vincent includes the Prelude of this work as a touching encore to The Scriabin Mystery.

"DEFINITELY year's-best list material." --Iowa Public Radio

The Knights, the bold Brooklyn-based orchestral collective, embody the spirit of exploration with The Kreutzer Project, a program that posits Tolstoy’s response to Beethoven’s “Kreutzer” Sonata: What exactly is it? I don’t understand. What is music? What does it do? And why does it do what it does?

Beethoven and Tolstoy in turn inspired Czech composer Leoš Janácek, whose first string quartet is also called “Kreutzer Sonata”. The Knights’ response to these iconoclastic touchstones is to reimagine the Beethoven as a “Kreutzer Concerto”, arranged by The Knights’ co-founder Colin Jacobsen, who is also the orchestrated version’s violin soloist; and the Janácek as orchestrated by The Knights’ co-founder and conductor Eric Jacobsen. They keep the canon going with Colin’s newly-composed “Kreutzings”, which makes buried allusions to both Beethoven and Janácek; and a commission from Anna Clyne, whose piece “Shorthand” takes its title from a line in Tolstoy’s novella: “music is the shorthand of emotion”.

REVIEW

Arranged by Colin Jacobsen as an orchestral concerto, the “Kreutzer” Sonata explodes into a promethean supernova. The opening bars (also performed by Jacobsen) are played with familiarity and a seemingly deliberate avoidance of showmanship. But then the expected texture of a piano is replaced by woodwinds, offering even more melancholy in the minor key through the hints of oboe and bassoon. The call-and-response echoes aspects of Beethoven’s actual Violin Concerto, and underscores a line in Tolstoy’s own Beethoven-inspired The Kreutzer Sonata: “It seemed to me that he was weary of his solitude.” 

The dramatic potential that can get lost with the wrong pianist (or even simply the wrong listening session) is fully unpacked here, laid out like a sprawling dinner service for 20; crystal stemware gleaming, flatware catching the glint of tapered candles.

The Knights’s “Kreutzer Project” is built on the foundation of Beethoven, bookended by Janáček’s String Quartet No. 1 “Kreutzer Sonata.” This work owes more to Tolstoy’s story, which focuses on a man who kills his unfaithful wife in a Beethoven-fuelled frenzy.

The Knights are no strangers to making orchestrated chamber works come to life in glittering multidimensionality...[but] it could have been overselling to call two works a “project.” Which is why they’ve recorded four, with Colin Jacobsen’s “Kreutzings” and Anna Clyne’s “Shorthand.” Clyne [introduces] the weedy world of Janáček while also riffing on the second movement of Beethoven’s sonata. Her natural predilection for thorny timbres and phantasmal texture work well with the Czech composer’s overgrown paths and houses of the dead, and soloist Karen Ouzounian plays with a voracious, burnished tone, as though the 11-minute work were a full concerto. Perhaps it should be.

--Van Magazine (Olivia Giovetti)

A New Yorker Notable Recording of 2022!

Twice Grammy-nominated tenor Nicholas Phan is “one of the world’s most remarkable singers” (Boston Globe). Nico Muhly is one of today’s most sought-after composers. Nick and Nico’s collaboration began with a commission when Nick curated a series for the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society in 2020. The resulting song cycle, Stranger, finds common ground in the musicians’ reflections on identity and immigration, themes that resonate as much today as they have through the centuries. This world-premiere recording of Stranger compliments Nico’s Lorne Ys My Liking, a setting of the 19th Chester Mystery Play, and Impossible Things, a triptych of poems by the Greek poet C.P. Cavafy. Nick has recorded with a roll call of collaborators: the adventurous string quartet Brooklyn Rider, shimmering countertenor Reginald Mobley, bold pianist Lisa Kaplan, and transformative Brooklyn-based collective The Knights led by brothers Colin and Eric Jacobsen.

REVIEWS

The heart immediately opens at the sound of Phan’s voice … Stranger is a must. I, for one, will be listening to it over and over.

--San Francisco Classical Voice

...an album that guarantees a gripping listening experience and, first and foremost, once again shows Nicholas Phan to be an outstanding singer with clear diction and impeccable vocal delivery who excels in the song repertoire. ★★★★★

--Pizzicato

Composer Nico Muhly has been on concert bills all over the U.S. and beyond in the early 2020s, and one reason is that he has a knack for creating music for the right performer at the right time. Tenor Nicholas Phan is a rising star who here contributes an essay about his difficulties, when performing at the Singer of the World competition in Wales, in coming up with a song that reflected his "American" identity, inasmuch as he is Chinese Indonesian on one side, and Greek American on the other. He would have found the perfect solution in Muhly's seven-section Stranger, for voice and string quartet. Muhly, himself the product of a highly multi-ethnic background, sets writing about the experience of immigration from various sources, including an interview with a Sicilian woman who arrived at Ellis Island in 1911 and a letter from a Chinese American about discrimination. All are in different registers, and Muhly's sensitive handling of text adds variety even as his musical language remains consistent. Phan's commitment to these pieces is palpable, but he shifts gears effectively in the other works on the program, Lorne Ys My Likinge, a setting of the Chester Mystery Play inspired by Britten's Abraham and Isaac, and Impossible Things, which sets translated texts by poet C.P. Cavafy. Phan's duet work with countertenor Reginald Mobley in Lorne Ys My Likinge is absolutely delicious, and the accompaniment by the string quartet Brooklyn Rider and the New York chamber orchestra The Knights, is intimate and close. This marks a major step forward for Phan, and anyone who hasn't been following Muhly's music, which combines rigor with tremendous audience appeal (sample the ravishing "My Love" from Stranger), might do well to start here.

--AllMusic (James Manheim)

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

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.

Soprano Isabel Bayrakdarian has travelled far and wide, as an international opera star and an Armenian who was born in Lebanon, immigrated to Canada, and is now settled in southern California. Her life is a journey that informs her new recording, La Zingarella: Through Romany Songland. “The music transcends geography,” she says. “It taps into human nature and unites us all. It’s about freedom of the spirit, about living life without knowing what tomorrow holds. It’s about enjoying every single minute.” Isabel embarked on an album of art songs that draw on Romani melodies – Brahms’ Zigeunerlieder, Dvorák’s Cigánské Melodie, Bizet’s Habanera – and while those appear here, her journey also led to a wealth of recherché gems.

The title track by French composer Maurice Yvain commingles with fellow-operetta composers Franz Lehár (‘Lied und Csárdás’ from Zigeunerliebe), Emmerich Kálmán (‘Heia, heia, in den Bergen’ from The Csárdás Princess) and Victor Herbert ("Gypsy Love Song" from The Fortune Teller). Two South American Gypsy Songs by American folk song collector Henry F.B. Gilbert set words by ethnomusicologist Laura Alexandrine Smith, whose book lends the album its subtitle. The ever-adventurous Isabel commissioned new arrangements for the songs on this album, with violin, viola, cello, and piano lending a laser beam lucidity to the music that “has a lot of fire in it,” she says with a glint in her eye.

REVIEWS:

Bayrakdarian reigns supreme here. She is nominally a soprano, but her range extends well below the treble staff. She takes on Liszt’s opening `3 Gypsies’ and the succeeding Brahms and Dvorak sets with assurance, and when she moves on to Sebastian Iradier she cleverly follows his `Habanera’ with Bizet’s, so obviously based on it and so obviously a natural improvement in carrying the opening scale further down. The latter half of the disc is excerpts from operettas: Maurice Yvain’s Chanson Gitane, Franz Lehar’s Zigeunerliebe, Emmerich Kalman’s Czardasfurstin, and Victor Herbert’s Fortune Teller. The distance from Romany originals is greatest here, and yet I hear, not cultural appropriation, but cultural appreciation.

-- American Record Guide

Bayrakdarian is in fine voice and exuberant high spirits for these mostly high-spirited selections, yet poignant or sensuous when appropriate. This exhilarating cross-cultural excursion is enthusiastically recommended.

-- The Whole Note (Canada)

The star of tenor John Matthew Myers is rapidly in the ascendent. His debut album, Desiderium, coincides with his Metropolitan Opera debut in Brett Dean’s Hamlet. Desiderium – “an ardent desire or longing, a feeling of loss or grief for something lost” – beautifully showcases Myers’ mellifluous voice.

His thoughtful program of works by American and American émigré composers opens with Samuel Barber’s yearning Knoxville: Summer of 1915 – rarely heard sung by a tenor – and transitions to Charles Griffes’ similarly searching settings of 3 Poems of Fiona Macleod, and Andre Previn’s 4 Songs for Tenor and Piano. What follows is A Letter from Sullivan Ballou, set to the words of a poignant letter by an American Civil War officer, by John Kander (of Kander and Ebb musical theatre fame). Rounding out the recital are 4 Walt Whitman Songs by German-born composer Kurt Weill, including the classic O Captain! My Captain! John Matthew Myers says, “Call me a big-hearted Romantic. Each song on this album conveys yearning, separation, loneliness or distance but also a sense of intimacy and longing for connection.” It certainly does. Desiderium is an auspicious debut album, and one especially attuned to our times.

REVIEW:

For his debut recital disc John Matthew Myers has chosen songs and groups of songs by five American composers, active during the 20th century. The common denominator is a feeling of loneliness, and it all stemmed from Barber’s Knoxville Summer of 1915, which is the only really well-known work in this album.

It goes without saying that the overriding mood is that of melancholy and gloom, but the texts and the musical expressions differ greatly, which vouches for a varied program. Barber’s Knoxville was composed in 1947 for a high voice and orchestra, and has almost exclusively been soprano territory. Since James Agee’s dream-like prose poem from 1938 is written in the persona of a 5-year-old male child, it’s logical to have it performed by a tenor. John Matthew Myers sings the many lyrical sections with soft beautiful tone, but he is also apt at expressing the desperation and sorrow in the work's crucial lines. It is a deeply felt reading.

Composed in 1918 The three Griffes songs, to poems by Fiona Macleod (William Field), were orchestrated in 1919. Like Barber’s Knoxville the orchestration has an attractive colouring that the piano cannot measure up to, but still it has its own attraction, and since it is the original it’s valid and gives the music a more intimate image, more chamber music like. I am happy to have both versions in so convincing readings.

I must say that André Previn’s 4 Songs for Tenor and Piano is a harder nut to crack. Composed in 2004 they are dressed in a rather knotty harmonic language. The mood is gloomy, also in the up-tempo last song, The Revelation. I believe that repeated listening might open them up, but at present I must content myself with admitting that the singing and playing are of the highest order. As far as I have been able to find out, this is a first recording, even though the liner notes don’t specifically say so.

The setting for John Kander’s A Letter from Sullivan Ballou, a major in the Civil War, is wonderful and gripping. John Kander is known, at least to Broadway musical enthusiasts, for his collaboration with Fred Ebb in Cabaret, Chicago, and other Broadway successes. Here, in a quite different vein, he catches all the shifts and nuances of the letter so sensitively. There are certainly echoes from his musical background, which in no way is a drawback. John Matthew Myers reading is appropriately sensitive.

The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 triggered Kurt Weill to set three of the Walt Whitman poems recorded here. He “structured the original three as a gradual decrescendo of militarism from the bullish opening to the wistful intensity of the final dirge”, as Julian Haylock says in his notes. Five years later he added Come Up from the Fields, Father, which here is placed third in the suite. Weill was a great admirer of Whitman, and said as early as 1926 that he was “the first truly original poetic talent to grow out of American soil.” The music is warlike and sturdy in the first song, reminding me of his style in the 1920s, the second song is a funeral march, and the whole suite – I wouldn’t call it a cycle – is deeply engaging.

John Matthew Myers can feel satisfied with his debut album, and he is excellently supported by Myra Huang’s accompaniment.

-- MusicWeb International (Göran Forsling)

Anne Akiko Meyers has amassed a multitude of fans and admirers for her exquisitely curated recordings, often exploring her passion for new music, and old music in new guises. Her quest for creative collaborations has inspired countless commissions and world-premieres, with the results infusing Shining Night, an album that embraces themes of love, poetry, and nature.

Anne’s fruitful association with composer Morten Lauridsen led to the arrangement of his popular choral work Sure on this Shining Night, for violin and piano, lending its name to the album’s title. From there springs forth an album imbued with music of light and hope, spanning the history of music through Baroque, Romantic, Popular, and current genres. J.S.Bach’s beautiful Air in G and Corelli’s colorful La Folia – arranged for violin and guitar – rub shoulders with Latin-tinged Estrellita (Little Star) by Manuel Ponce, the Aria from Villa-Lobos’ Bachianas Brasileiras No. 5, and Piazzolla’s Histoire du Tango. Two of the 20th century’s most iconic songs appear in intimate and tender new arrangements: Duke Ellington’s (In My) Solitude, and Can’t Help Falling in Love, famously crooned by The King of Rock and Roll, Elvis Presley. Anne’s collaborators are eminent Italian pianist Fabio Bidini and Grammy Award-winning guitarist Jason Vieaux.

REVIEW:

Few violinists would have had the idea to ask the quintessential choral composer Morton Lauridsen, as Meyers did, to arrange two of his choral works for duo with violin. Fewer would have juxtaposed Lauridsen with Elvis Presley, and fewer still would have been able to make this marvelously varied program hang together. Meyers transforms the basic violin encore type of program into something new and fresh. She has made a specialty of bold, original, and immediate programming, but has outdone herself this time.

-- AllMusicGuide.com (James Manheim)

A 2023 GRAMMY nominee of historic stature, profiled in the New York Times!

In the midst of the COVID pandemic, the remarkably resourceful personnel and musicians of the New York Youth Symphony (NYYS), with Music Director Michael Repper, found a way to come together during a time of separation to make their debut recording. Featuring four works by three African American women composers – Florence Price, Valerie Coleman and Jessie Montgomery – the orchestra’s first studio recording includes several premieres. The release coincides with the 115th anniversary of Price’s birth. Two recordings of works by Florence Price are firsts. Ethiopia's Shadow in America is the first recording of the work by an American orchestra. Her Piano Concerto in One Movement, with soloist Michelle Cann, is the premiere recording of the composer’s newly-discovered original orchestration.

Price’s compositional voice blends the African American folk songs and dances of her heritage with the central European Romantic tradition in which she was trained. Her tone poem Ethiopia’s Shadow in America evokes the injustices experienced by people of African descent. Her Piano Concerto in One Movement features the exuberant soloist Michelle Cann, a champion of the composer’s music, who gave the New York and Philadelphia premieres of the work.

Umoja – meaning “unity” in Swahili – by Grammy-nominated flutist, entrepreneur, and composer Valerie Coleman originated as a simple song for women’s choir. Its transformation as a work for orchestra – given its first recording here – maintains its feel of a drum circle and sharing of history through a traditional “call and response” form. In her rich and colorful single-movement symphonic work Soul Force, NYYS alum Jessie Montgomery drew on Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech in which he states, “We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again, we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force."

REVIEWS:

This has to be one of the most assured and exciting recording-debuts from a youth orchestra since the West-Eastern Divan and the Simon Bolivars hit the ground running: there's a wonderful sheen and polish to the sound, ensemble is nigh-on immaculate, and the young New Yorkers revel in Price's juba rhythms and inventive scoring in both the Piano Concerto (given for the first time in her original orchestration here) and Ethiopia's Shadow in America.

-- Presto Music

This particular album is yet another example of a project in a sense fortified by the Covid pandemic, and the fact that it features a youth orchestra – New York Youth Symphony – is a heartening indication of innocent ears opening to both the undiscovered and the entirely new. They give it their all. Price’s Ethiopia’s Shadow in America (recorded for the first time by an American ensemble) is a fitting foundation for the programme, its focus not so much on the indefensible reality and inhumanity of slavery as the enduring spirit to rise above it. For sure, its first pages are marked with a cry of anguish across the entire orchestra – but a nobility of utterance shines through them and it isn’t long before the emergence of a simple Spiritual (in the second section of the piece) finds solace in a solo cello and aspiration in its journey from solo oboe to balmy (and majestic) horns. And don’t for a moment think that a cakewalk is a somehow inappropriate conclusion to what has gone before, because this is the music that Price knew and found joy in. It was something to be celebrated.

-- Gramophone

Composer Elena Ruehr adds to her extensive discography with Icarus, an album of chamber music infused with hints of history, legendary literature and close collaborations with a multitude of musical colleagues. The repertoire revolves around the string quartet, a genre that generated great acclaim for Elena’s Six String Quartets (AV2379). Elena’s String Quartet No. 7, “A Thousand Cranes”, evokes experiences and resilience of children in wartime, including the internment of Japanese in American camps, and her own father’s escape from Nazi Germany. Her playful String Quartet No. 8, “Insect Dances” – “written for listeners of all ages” – finds a diverse family of bugs engaged in an impish dinner party. Inspired by T. S. Eliot, The Worlds Revolve, for piano and string quartet, conjures elements both ancient and prescient. The title track, for clarinet and string quartet, centres on the Greek mythological character’s excitement as he builds his wings of wax and dares to fly, rather than his dark demise as he flies too close to the sun.

In Voyages, prolific American composer James Lee III takes the listener on a colorful journey through his endlessly creative orchestral music; painting biblical imagery in Beyond Rivers of Vision and celebrating the joyous Feast of Tabernacles in Sukkot Through Orion's Nebula, using well-known spirituals to celebrate the life of abolitionist Harriet Tubman (Chuphshah! Harriet's Drive to Canaan) and reflecting on the ongoing fight for freedom through his grandfather’s personal experiences in WWII (A Different Soldier’s Tale). His music is played here by the renowned ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Marin Alsop.

REVIEW:

Although there may be some in the audience who may be skeptical of music by composers who are pretty much unknown to them, especially contemporary composers, they are in for a treat, for Chuphshah! is an entertaining, very listenable piece, as are all the compositions on this remarkable AVIE recording. From the opening measures of Sukkot Through Orion’s Nebula, with their snare, bass drum, brass, and percussion excitement, you know right away that this is going to be a fun recording for both musical and audio reasons. In his liner note essay, Lee describes Sukkot as “a festive work for orchestra,” and it is certainly that. Next up is the longest composition on the program, the four-movement A Different Soldier’s Tale, based on stories that Lee’s grandfather told him about his experiences in World War II. As you might expect from such a description, it contains some passages of drama and turmoil, as well as passages of pathos and reflection. Beyond Rivers of Vision is in three movements, of which Lee observes “for the most part the form in these pieces is fantasia-like or rhapsodic.” The music has an otherworldly characteristic to it at times that stands in contrast to the drama of the Soldier’s Tale. The CD closes with the afore-mentioned Chuphshah! Harriet's Drive to Canaan, which is based on aspects of the life of Harriet Tubman. His liner note essay is insightful and helpful in understanding what he is attempting to do in all four compositions, but especially so for this one.

As I indicated at the outset, this release is a treat both musically and sonically. The music is energetic and assertive, with plenty of orchestral effects that will show off a good audio system. The engineering team has done a good job, Alsop and the orchestra sound as though they are having a good time playing this mostly extroverted music, and the end result is a highly recommendable release from an exciting young composer.

-- Classical Candor (Karl W. Nehring)

American-Australian harpist Emily Granger makes her solo debut recording, In Transit, with a collection of contemporary works that reveal the breadth and beauty of harp music from her two countries.

Memories and moods infuse Tristan Coehlo’s evocative title track as well as the composer’s The Old School, recalling an artists’ residence in Australia’s Blue Mountains where he first met Emily. Laura Zaerr’s rhythmical River Right Rhumba is inspired by West African drumming, whilst Sally Greenaway’s Liena, named after Melbourne-born harpist Liena Lacey, draws upon jazz and Latin dance music. Ross Edwards evokes a fantasia in his hypnotic The Harp and the Moon, whilst Libby Larsen’s bold Theme and Deviations is a tease on the traditional musical form. Sally Whitwell’s Undiminished is just that both harmonically and in spirit. Emily’s virtuosity is on full display in Kate Moore soaring Spin Bird, inspired by Jonathan Livingston Seagull, and in Nancy Gustavson’s Great Day, steeped in colorful glissandi showing off the harp in all its glory. Turning her hand to arranging, Emily has adapted Elena Kats-Chernin’s Blue Silence, originally for cello and piano, underscoring the works calming, healing and meditative properties; and Augusta Read Thomas’ Eurythmy Etude “Still Life”, originally for solo piano, stemming from the Greek meaning for beautiful and harmonious rhythm. Emily closes the album with Deborah Henson-Conant’s The Nightingale, one of her earliest musical memories as a young harpist.

The beautiful, lyrical music of prolific 19th-century Swiss composer Joachim Raff was widely performed during his lifetime but is relatively under-represented today. Who better than Christoph Croisé, Raff’s modern day compatriot, to breathe new life into the composer’s complete works for cello and piano. Raff’s chamber music, and especially his works for cello, were among his most notable achievements. Having established a career in Germany in the mid-1850’s, Raff encountered the eminent cellist Bernhard Cossman whose mastery of the instrument inspired the composer’s rich Romantic oeuvre. Christoph, who has “got it all – technical chops, impeccable musicianship” (Gramophone), puts a fresh, 21st-century spin on Raff’s memorable music resulting in this benchmark recording.

REVIEW:

The beautiful, lyrical music of prolific 19th-century Swiss composer Joachim Raff was widely performed during his lifetime but is relatively under-represented today. Who better than Christoph Croisé, Raff’s modern day compatriot, to breathe new life into the composer’s complete works for cello and piano. Raff’s chamber music, and especially his works for cello, were among his most notable achievements. Having established a career in Germany in the mid-1850’s, Raff encountered the eminent cellist Bernhard Cossman, whose mastery of the instrument inspired the composer. Croisé, joined by pianist Oxana Shevchenko, puts a fresh, 21st-century spin on Raff’s memorable music resulting in this benchmark recording.

-- WMFT, 98.7 FM (Chicago, IL)

Jennifer Kloetzel’s lifelong journey with Beethoven began early: she was eight years old when her teacher placed the composer’s second cello sonata on her music stand, opening the door to an odyssey of intrigue and, ultimately, obsession with the composer’s music. Since then, rarely has a day passed without Beethoven being a part of Jennifer’s life. She has studied and performed all of the composer’s duos and trios. As founding cellist of the Cypress String Quartet, she spent 20 years rehearsing, performing and recording the string quartets. Jennifer now arrives at a career milestone with this recording of Beethoven’s Complete Works for Cello and Piano. Views vary as to what comprises Beethoven’s “complete” works for cello and piano. Jennifer’s discerning choice includes the five Sonatas for Cello and Piano, three sets of variations – based on arias from Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte and Handel’s Judas Maccabaeus – and the Horn sonata for which the composer also wrote a cello part. Jennifer spares no attention to detail across the entire spectrum of this significant recording project. Her performing partner Robert Koenig plays on a 19th century Blüthner concert grand piano. The illuminating liner notes are penned by Beethoven scholar William Meredith who boldly states, “if there were only the five cello sonatas of Beethoven left of all his music, these alone would have cemented his place in history.” The recording was made in the stellar acoustic of Skywalker Sound. The 3-album set is lavishly packaged in a deluxe digipack. The title track, “The Conquering Hero” – from the opening set of variations from Handel’s Judas Maccabaeus – evokes everything for Jennifer about Beethoven’s music, coming from a place of triumph and joy.

Legends of the period-performance community Sarah Cunningham and Richard Egarr need little introduction, with their contributions to recorded music garnering critical acclaim from early music afficionados across the decades. They join forces for their AVIE Records debut recording of J.S. Bach’s celebrated Sonatas for Viola da Gamba and Harpsichord, together with Cunningham’s dazzling arrangements of the composer's Organ Trio Sonata and Flute Partita to conclude the programme. The Gamba Sonatas have long since established themselves as a staple in the cello and gamba repertoires, notably extending their fame into popular culture through film and television features.

Grammy Award-winning baroque orchestra Apollo’s Fire and its founder-director Jeannette Sorrell have blazed trails in the world of historically informed performance with pioneering programming, presentational flair and an entrepreneurial spirit, qualities that have earned them eight Billboard chart-topping albums and more than 7 million views on YouTube. Their latest release, which launches the ensemble’s 30th anniversary season, is destined to soar to similar heights: the ensemble’s first recording of the perennial audience favourite, Antonio Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons, featuring the phenomenal Spanish-born fiddler Francisco Fullana. Frequently performed at Apollo’s Fire home base in Cleveland, Ohio and on their international tours, “Sorrell’s vivid approach to the pictorial elements make these familiar works seem freshly minted, full of astonishing incident”, according to Seen & Heard International. Fullana, winner of the 2018 Avery Fisher Career Grant, has been dubbed a “rising star” by BBC Music Magazine, and an “amazing talent” by conductor Gustavo Dudamel. The Four Seasons is the first of five releases spread throughout the season celebrating Apollo’s Fire’s milestone 30th anniversary.

With his critically acclaimed AVIE Records recordings of music by Johann Sebastian Bach, Johannes Brahms, Gabriel Faure´ and Sergei Rachmaninov to his credit, the celebrated British pianist Charles Owen scales the heights of Franz Liszt’s anthology Annees de pelerinage, Premiere annee: Suisse (“Years of Travel, First Year: Switzerland”), which evokes the great 19th-century pianist-composer’s Swiss sojourns with aural impressions of the Alpine landscape, its peaks and valleys, mountains and streams, and the country’s distinctive folk music. Literary references abound as they do in the album’s concluding piece, the emotional Benediction de Dieu dans la solitude (“The Blessing of God in Solitude”) which was inspired by a poem penned by Liszt’s friend Alphonse de Lamartine. Emotions ran equally high for Charles Owen who turned to Liszt during lockdown. The uncertainty of being homebound throughout the pandemic was eased by the extra meaning and solace of the composer’s evocations of journeying, experiencing the natural world and its sense of beauty and liberation.

Modernism. Multiculturism. Multi-tuning. Lockdown. These are among the elements that bind the works on The Solo Album by award winning cellist Christoph Croisé, who took the opportunity of 2020’s coronavirus isolation to work intensively on a variety of solo works and also turn his hand to composition. At the heart of the album is Hungarian composer Zoltán Kodály’s epic Sonata, the first major work for solo cello after the suites by Johann Sebastian Bach which were written two centuries earlier. The virtuosity demands of the soloist re-tuning two of the cello’s strings, double-stop trills and simultaneous bowed and plucked passages, all of which Christoph dispatches with aplomb. Framing Kodály’s Sonata are works by two compatriots, György Ligeti’s two-movement Sonata which draws inspiration from Béla Bartók, and the more recent Stonehenge by cellist, composer and pop-music producer Péter Pejtsik which includes intimations of electric guitar. A “sandwich filler” is Christophe’s first composition for solo cello, Spring Promenade, which is infused with boogie-woogie, reggae, swing and techno. He took inspiration from Sicilian composer-cello virtuoso Giovanni Sollima whose Concerto Rotondo incorporates electronics and extended techniques. Closing out the album, Sollima’s short work Alone gives way to the album’s “encore”, the exuberant Some like to show it off by Croatian cellist-composer Thomas Buritch.

At first glance, the musical worlds of Frédéric Chopin and William Bolcom would seem strange bedfellows. But on his solo debut recording, Israeli American pianist Ran Dank makes a convincing case for pairing the two composers. The former, Poland’s national composer, is synonymous with pianistic panache. The latter, a leading American, possesses one of contemporary music’s most bold and inventive voices. Juxtaposing the works of these two pianist-composers reveals their common affinity for the keyboard and ear for sound and sense of structure. William Bolcom’s Twelve New Etudes won the Pulitzer Prize in 1988. Wonderfully eclectic, they move effortlessly between one musical idiom to another with endless ingenuity, exhibiting all the traits of Bolcom’s compositional craft. Chopin equally excelled with his Etudes, but Dank turns to his plentiful Polonaises, Mazurkas and Waltzes which range in style from heroic, to dark and brooding, haunting and beautiful. Ran Dank, a Van Cliburn International Competition finalist and winner of the New York-based Young Concert Artists auditions, has been significantly influenced by these two composers who have shaped his trajectory as a pianist and musician. As a child to two parents from Poland, Chopin played a meaningful part in his upbringing, and he became mesmerized by the composer’s music at an early age. Bolcom’s music was a much later discovery, but one that has become equally valuable and fitting, following Dank’s move to America.

Lebanese-born, Canadian-Armenian-American soprano Isabel Bayrakdarian is as celebrated for her beauty, dynamic presence, and style as for her strikingly multidimensional voice. With this deeply personal project, she gathers a selection of haunting and poignant lullabies that draw on the memories and experiences of the Armenian people. 29 tracks trace an arc from the Ottoman Empire through the Genocide and beyond, with songs and transcriptions by the country’s beloved folk composer Gomidas Vartabed, Parsegh Ganatchian who joined the diaspora in Lebanon, and Ganatchian’s contemporary Mihran Toumajan. For Isabel, these evocative songs span two centuries and five generations. Sung by her great-grandmother, grandmother and mother, and now to her own children, Isabel’s Armenian Songs have an appeal to children of all ages.

REVIEW:

The arrangements are enlivened by their variety, featuring not only flute and harp but the less familiar and quite haunting duduk. All this said, there are a lot of lullabies on the program, in similar tempos, and one wonders whether an "Armenian Songs for Children and Others" program, with other examples of the abundant folk-influenced material in the Armenian tradition, might have been a bit livelier. Certainly, though, listeners with children are invited to try the album out.

– AllMusicGuide.com (James Manheim)

Swiss violinist Sebastian Bohren, who’s star is rapidly in the ascendant, makes his AVIE label debut with two concertos from Mozart’s “year of the violin” – Nos. 3 and 5 – paired with the composer’s youthful Symphony No. 29. Sebastian’s interpretations bring out the sparkling energy of the concertos, written when Mozart was just 19 years old, yet at the same time a brandish a smoothly burnished sense of style. His partners on the album, famed Hungarian violinist-turned conductor Gábor Takács-Nagy and Sebastian’s compatriots the CHAARTS Chamber Artists – comprised of leading European soloists and chamber musicians – perfectly embody these contrasting characteristics, both in their accompaniments and their reading of the Symphony which was written within a year of the concerti. Sebastian is equally at home as a soloist and chamber musician. He has performed with the Lucerne Symphony, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic and Basel Symphony Orchestras, among others, under such conductors as James Gaffigan, Andrew Litton and Ivor Bolton. His chamber music collaborators have included Dmitry Sitkovetsky, Thomas Demenga and Konstantin Lifschitz. He plays the “Ex-Wanamaker-Hart” violin made by Guadagnini in Parma in 1761.

REVIEW:

The concerto performances reveal classically balanced interpretations, with Sebastian Bohren's slender, delicate violin playing sounding entirely committed to heavenly, springy elegant tone.

– Online Merker (Ingobert Waltenberger)

Award-winning Lithuanian, London-based pianist Indre Petrauskaite makes her AVIE label debut with a selection of Mozart’s piano works with a twist: she uniquely brings together the composer’s solo keyboard works written in minor keys. The nine works offered here represent a fraction of the composer’s overall oeuvre, yet they span a gamut of genres – including improvisatory and emotional fantasies, enigmatic miniatures and complex sonatas. Indre showcases these pieces – much loved staples of stage and studio alike – in a novel and stunning album. “Strong and well-played performances.” (MusicWeb International)

REVIEW:

Petrauskaite has an original voice in Mozart, not something that's so easy to accomplish. She is what's called a strong pianist, generally avoiding the delicately lyrical style in Mozart except in small details. Although this certainly isn't a historically oriented performance, Petrauskaite avoids Romantic gestures and extensive use of the pedal except in the fantasies; her playing is clean, tough, and insightful. The album, as a whole, offers an emotional journey that's rare in Mozart recordings, yet in Petrauskaite's hands, it seems to make sense. A superior Mozart recording.

– AllMusicGuide.com (James Manheim)

Vast, deep and emotional are apt descriptions of the single-movement, 53-minute-long Symphony No. 2 by Christopher Tyler Nickel. The award-winning Canadian composer elaborates, “One can think of this music as consisting of mirrors between ideas that equally disturb yet entice. Each side of the reflection is in itself conceivably valid, but when facing each other friction and dissonance are created. The exquisitely alluring and the grotesque exist simultaneously. Perhaps another way to understand the symphony is as a meditation on the state of cognitive dissonance.” The entrepreneurial Clyde Mitchell conducts the Seattle-based Northwest Sinfonia on this world-premiere recording.

The provocative and beguiling Left Coast Chamber Ensemble (LCCE) comprises the crème de la crème of the San Francisco Bay Area’s musicians. Their motto: nothing is out of bounds, and anything is possible. Presenters of all types of music including small ensemble, vocal, orchestral, multi-media and operatic, a select group comes together for this recording of Olivier Messiaen’s seminal chamber work, Quartet for the End of Time. Written during the composer’s confinement in World War II, he maintained hope, expressing, “The abyss is Time with its sadness, its weariness. The birds are the opposite … our desire for light, for stars, for rainbows, and for jubilant songs.” LCCE co-founder and prize-winning composer Kurt Rohde echoes this sentiment in his Messiaen-inspired one wing for violin and piano, heard here in its world-premiere recording.

REVIEW:

I’ve gone from having two or three recordings of this eerie but emotionally powerful work, one of them being Tashi’s, to just having one, and that is the EMI recording made under the composer’s own supervision and featuring his wife, Yvonne Loriod, as the pianist. (Interestingly, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau’s son Manuel is the cellist in this performance.) But after listening to the Left Coast Ensemble’s new recording, I’m tempted to add it to my collection.

Their performance is a bit brisker and tauter than either Tashi’s or Messiaen’s but not lacking in emotional intensity. Although I felt that the Left Coast Ensemble’s more linear approach gave a more “streamlined” profile to the music, this is sometimes to its favor as it brings out the structure of the work better. And as I say, the individual members of this quartet clearly get the music’s message. Indeed, I found clarinetist Jerome Simas’ long solo in the third section (“The Abyss of the Birds”) to be as forlorn as that of Wolfgang Meyer on the Messiaen-Loriod recording, and better than that of Stoltzman with Tashi.

– Art Music Lounge

Anna Clyne: Mythologies became an instant media and popular success when it was released in October 2020 - "hands-down one of the half-dozen best classical albums of 2020", according to New York Music Daily. The album is now presented in a magnificent 2-LP set, the splendor of the glossy gatefold and solid 180gsm vinyl an appropriate match for Anna's enormous palette of colors and special effects. Anna's compositions balance striking originality with a comforting familiarity as she draws inspiration from historic styles and transforms them into a new musical dialect. Her background in electro-acoustic music and her fascination for a variety of multi-media - including poetry, visual art and videography - combine to create rich and exhilarating textures of popular appeal. The five works on Anna Clyne: Mythologies were written over a 10-year period between 2005 and 2015. A kaleidoscopic orchestral showcase, the set opens with Masquerade. Commissioned by BBC Radio 3 to open the Last Night of the Proms in 2013 and conducted by Marin Alsop, this curtain-raiser captures the spirit of that quintessentially English tradition, evoking an 18th-century outdoor festivity featuring fireworks, acrobats and street entertainers. This Midnight Hour, conducted by the BBC Symphony Orchestra's Chief Conductor Sakari Oramo, encapsulates the modernity and decadence of two European poets, Nobel Prize-winning Spaniard Juan Ramon Jimenez and Frenchman Charles Baudelaire. Oramo also conducts The Seamstress, a single-movement violin concerto in all but name, featuring soloist Jennifer Koh as well as the whispered voice of Irene Buckley reciting the work's inspiration, a poem by William Butler Yeats. More poetry by a Nobel laureate, the Irishman Seamus Heaney, inspired Night Ferry; conducted by Andrew Litton, the work conjures crashing waves and weathered seafaring. The set concludes with rewind , conducted by Andre de Ridder, a wild romp making reference to another vintage format, the VHS tape.