Adrian Chandler, who founded the period-instrument ensemble La Serenissima 21 years ago, has produced a dozen enlightening, acclaimed, and award-winning albums for AVIE. After many years of anticipation, Ade turns his attention to the touchstone of Vivaldi’s concerto output, The Four Seasons. As one has come to expect, he brings something unique to an interpretation brimming with vitality and originality. Putting this most popular of classical works into context, Ade rounds out the recording with Vivaldi concertos for bassoon, including the famous La Notte, and world premiere recordings of two concertos for the violin in tromba marina, a hitherto obsolete instrument that was used during Vivaldi’s lifetime.

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.

In life and music, Grammy Award-winning tenor Karim Sulayman is a master storyteller. Where Only Stars Can Hear Us is a journey through the songs of Franz Schubert, a composer who was able to capture joy and sorrow in a single moment like no other. Karim’s voyage traverses themes of darkness and yearning, guided throughout by moonbeams and shining stars. His partner is historical keyboardist Yi-heng Yang who plays on a fortepiano built by Joseph Simon in Vienna in 1830, adding an air of authenticity from Schubert’s time. “lucid, velvety tenor and pop-star charisma” (BBC Music Magazine) “a pianist of “astonishing skill and vividness” (The New York Times)



REVIEWS:

Sulayman is always engaging, with an appealing honesty to his approach and a vividness to his storytelling. His light, silvery tenor is in many ways suited to much of the programme’s theme, but the flipside is a paleness and shortness of sap and sweetness; nor does the tenor’s German always feel entirely natural. Adjust to the tone, though, and there’s still a great deal to enjoy in these performances.

– Gramophone

This Schubert has its priorities straight. Text comes first in Sulayman's interpretations. The small inflections in his timbre convey textual themes equally well to audiences of all German-speaking levels. From the seemingly bratty child in Erlkönig (RIP), to the poignantly longing fisherman of Des fischers Liebesglück, he is an actor first.

His voice is clear and transparent. He barely covers his sound, allowing every ounce of that underlying emotion to shine through.

Both performers treat these lieder as chamber music. It's unclear who leads the stretches that come so often throughout the album, but whenever one part pushes, the other follows. Yang's slightly delayed cadences gain weight with a quick breath from Sulayman. Sulayman stretches a phrase climax, Yang rolls a chord to help accent. The two work symbiotically, melding the intense drama from each of their parts into a composite, deeply affecting pathos.

– Classical Music Geek

In the spring of 2019, Christoph Croisé scored a breakthrough with his critically acclaimed recording of Haydn’s Cello Concertos. With The Russian Album, he turns his attention to two towering 20th century masterpieces, Sergei Rachmaninov’s early, eloquent and emotional Sonata for Cello and Piano, Op. 19, and Dmitri Shostakovich’s D minor Sonata for Cello and Piano Op. 40. The latter work’s finale featured what would become the composer’s signature style of caricature and irony that proved too provocative to the Stalinist regime. Croise also offers two “encores”- his own transcriptions of the March from Sergei Prokofiev’s propulsive opera The Love for Three Oranges, and Rodion Shchedrin’s flamboyant In the Style of Albeniz- and a bonus track by his compatriot, the Swiss cellist and composer Thomas Demenga, New York Honk, a humorous homage to the Big Apple’s cacophonous traffic noises. “a recording teeming with sparkle and relentless in fizz.” (Gramophone)

REVIEW:

They perform the two sonatas with great expression and high, energetic commitment, without any exaggeration. Croisé proves a sensitive musician who casually abandons technique to boast the musical expression. The small compositions, Shchedrin's In the style of Albeniz and the March of Love for the Three Oranges by Prokofiev are given the same careful interpretation as the two main works on this recording.

– Pizzicato

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.

A New York Times 25 Best Classical Track Selection for 2019

Susan Narucki has worked closely with Kurtág on the interpretation of these songs, and her readings may be regarded as definitive.

American soprano and Latin Grammy-nominee Susan Narucki, one of today’s most committed advocates of the music of our time, has a deep and lasting working relationship with Hungarian composer Gyorgy Kurtag which dates back to 1986. Susan’s luminous tone and distinctive artistry and Kurtag’s idiosyncratic fusion of poetry and music come together in this quintessential recorded collection of some of the composer’s most iconoclastic vocal works. In Susan’s words, “I have spent much of my life immersed in this repertoire, and it has become essential to the way I understand music; it is the heart of my practice as a musician.” Equally appreciative, Kurtag acknowledges Susan, “who sang so warmly, purely, so ‘integer’ these songs- with thanks and love.”

-----

REVIEWS:

Susan Narucki has worked closely with Kurtág, in Hungary, on the interpretation of these songs, and her readings may be regarded as definitive. She puts across how Kurtág's songs, more than embodying a relationship between text and music, constitute a heroic attempt to weld the two, through the use of extremely detailed instructions in the score, into a single unit. Small though they are, they may be regarded as virtuoso works. Recommended, although not to everyone's taste.

– All Music Guide (James Mannheim)

These seven songs, a highlight in this album of Kurtag’s vocal works, pass in just over nine minutes: dark little pools of fervor, articulated by Ms. Narucki with precision and tenderness and accompanied by just the percussive cimbalom, played here with richly pianistic resonance by Nicholas Tolle.

– New York Times (Zachary Woolfe)

Tilting at windmills. The long-suffering Sancho Panza. Sighs of love for Dulcinea. The familiar and fanciful themes of the Don Quixote legend are brought to life by Apollo’s Fire in Telemann’s imaginative portrayal. The Don Quixote Suite sits alongside other suites and concertos by the composer that reveal his cosmopolitan air and whimsical nature.



REVIEW:

Avie deserves credit for spotting this 2002 Koch International label disc and putting it back into circulation once again, as it remains a sterling release. The Cleveland-based Baroque orchestra Apollo's Fire and conductor Jeannette Sorrell pick a program that shows exactly why Telemann was so popular in his own day. They apply just the right level of broad gesture to the two representational suites, which reflect their subjects but are in no way overdone. A wonderful release that holds up to repeated hearings.

– All Music Guide

Much lauded for her interpretations of Hans Gál’s concerto and chamber music works, Sarah Beth Briggs presents the composer’s beguiling Three Preludes alongside well-loved works by three of his greatest Austrian forebears – Franz Joseph Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Franz Schubert. Following meticulous examination of the original scores, Briggs sensitively translates the authentic character of each work to the resources of a modern piano with revelatory results. Pianist Sarah Beth Briggs – an artist of extraordinary magnetism (Daily Telegraph) – is a leading recitalist, concerto soloist, and chamber musician. A long-standing pupil of the late Denis Matthews, she gained a Hindemith Scholarship to study chamber music in Switzerland with celebrated violist Bruno Giuranna, and continued her studies there with renowned Arrau pupil, Chilean pianist Edith Fischer.

Christoph Eschenbach reunites with Paris-based Thymos Quartetin Schubert’s triumphant chamber work, the “Trout” Quintet, a recording that celebrates the 80th birthday of the great pianist / conductor. From babbling brook and leaping fish, this present-day Schubertiade relocates to a 19thcentury Viennese salon, with a selection of the composer’s waltzes in unique chamber music arrangements and concludes with selected Ländler, performed by pianist Jean-Frédéric Neuburger, ranging in mood from iridescent to intimate. “vivid and high-powered ... an ensemble of exceptional musical imagination and skill” (Washington Post) “a magnificent album ... a rare example of expressiveness and distinction” (Le Monde, on Dvo?ák’sLove Songs, Cypresses, Piano Quintet in A major, AV2234)

-----

REVIEWS:

In this delightful recording, the limelight is shared between Christoph Eschenbach’s crystalline piano playing and the creamy string sound, underpinned by the rumbling, bouncing bass. The tempo is elastic, yielding. And there’s no rigid ensemble, either; the mood is convivial, like conversing friends who occasionally interrupt each other. Eschenbach’s solo moments have memorable rhetorical swagger.

– BBC Music Magazine

Eschenbach and the Thymos Quartet had me smiling from the very first bars of Schubert’s Trout Quintet. It’s a performance teeming with delightful incident right the way through, in fact, yet such consistent attention to detail never precludes expansive phrasing or inhibits burbling rhythmic vivacity.

– Gramophone

An award-winning program created by Apollo’s Fire’s director Jeannette Sorrell, Sugarloaf Mountain follows the joys and sorrows of Celtic immigrants who settled in Appalachia. Sparkling fiddle tunes and haunting ballads of the British Isles crossed the Atlantic during the 17th, 18th and early 19th centuries and took root in the hills of Virginia. They mingled with American shape-note hymns and African spirituals, creating the soulful music known as Appalachian. Passing through love and loss, dancing and prayer, the music overflows in celebration as the people of the mountains raise their communal voices.

AllMusic praised The Benvenue Fortepiano Trio’s “intensity, commitment, and unfettered navigation of Schumann’s scores.” This release is the third in the ensemble’s series dedicated to the works of Robert Schumann (1810-1856). This volume features Schumann’s most influential chamber work, the Piano Quintet in E flat Op. 44. The piece, which was premiered in 1843, is remembered for it’s “extroverted, exuberant” character. It is considered one of Schumann’s finest works. The ensemble performs here on period instruments, which enhances the recording by creating the intimate atmosphere for which this chamber music was written. Fanfare Magazine writes that the atmosphere creates “an enlightened view of the music.” The Benvenue Fortepiano Trio is pianist Eric Zivian, performing here on a Franz Rousch 1841 fortepiano, violinist Monica Hugget, performing on a 1770 Dutch, and cellist Tanya Tomkins, playing on an 1811 Joseph Panormo.

Both on the concert platform and in the recording studio, pianist Daniel-Ben Pienaar is a completist. Following complete cycles of piano sonatas by Beethoven and Mozart, he presents 12 Great Piano Sonatas by Franz Schubert – the composer’s 11 finished sonatas and the seminal fragment D840. Pienaar relishes in these revelatory works, their extraordinarily detailed possibilities of characterisation, their call for immense energy and abandon, and navigating the vast dreamscapes that unfold in the course of this six-hour musical journey. “dazzling precision and clarity ... he communicates an individual and convincing vision for each piece, enough for every one of them to give delight. Brilliant.” (Gramophone, Editor’s Choice on The Long 17th Century) “dizzying virtuosity ... fresh, spontaneous, original readings that shed new light on the keyboard player’s Bible” (BBC Music Magazine on J. S. Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier)

 

REVIEW:

 

These readings for me capture the spirit of Schubert’s piano style. It is only when you set Pienaar next to the established greats that he lacks something in presence and imagination, but only by a small degree. His playing is at once natural and sympathetic, and blessedly free of artifice. It is also necessary to qualify my generalization that Pienaar’s approach is lively and alert. He recognizes the greater ambition and amplitude of the opus posthumous sonatas and changes his approach accordingly.

 

– Fanfare

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

2019 Grammy Award Winner - Best Classical Solo Vocal Album

Lebanese-American tenor Karim Sulayman’s neat encapsulation of the Orpheus myth infuses his solo recording debut, ‘Songs of Orpheus.’ Orpheus, the greatest singer of all time, famously followed his deceased beloved Eurydice to the gates of Hades in an attempt to bring her back to life. He was thwarted by the gods who forbade him to gaze at her during their journey back to earth. he could not resist, and the tale has been told in numerous musical interpretations including those of Monteverdi and his 17th-century compatriots who are represented on this imaginative album, performed with leading baroque interpreters Jeannette Sorrell and Apollo’s Fire. Acclaim for Karim Sulayman and Apollo’s Fire has been widespread: “the soloists and instrumentalists are first class” (BBC Music Magazine) “an absorbing collection of early music, beautifully performed by the Cleveland-based instrumental-choral ensemble and vocal soloists” (Chicago Tribune)

-----

REVIEW:

Sulayman’s approach tends more towards the lyrical than the rhetorical – his lucid, velvety tenor and pop-star charisma best suited to melodious arias rather than the text-driven stile recitativo. Under the spirited direction of Jeannette Sorrell, Apollo’s Fire provides slick and stylish continuo realisations.

– BBC Music Magazine

Continuing Avie’s acclaimed and influential series of recordings of the music of Austrian émigré Hans Gal, this latest release brings together two of today’s most eminent Gal interpreters, Sarah Beth Briggs and Kenneth Woods with violin virtuoso David Juritz for a recording of Gal’ breathtakingly lyrical Piano Trio in E major and his witty Variations on a Popular Viennese Tune. Gal’s music and destiny was shaped by war and political upheaval, as was that of Dmitri Shostakovich, whose Piano Trio in E minor, one of the monuments of 20th century chamber music, is a harrowing souvenir of the times in which it was written. “Beautifully poised, enchanting accounts.” (Gramophone) “Briggs is an artist with prowess and personality… [her] infectious pianism is impossible to resist.” (MusicWeb Inernational) “Woods holds his own against such wonders as Sawallisch, Celibidache, Giulini and immediately becomes a favorite for this delectable work.” (Classical Source) “Refreshingly spontaneous.” (BBC Music Magazine)