Ingmar Bergman (1918- 2007) made fifty films, directed more than 150 theatre productions and wrote several books, but the recurrent thread running through his life was music. He often said that if he hadn't become a director he would have wished to become a conductor, and went so far as to claim that ‘film and music are almost the same thing. They are means of expression and communication that go beyond human wisdom and that touch a person’s emotional centre.’ Bergman’s interest in classical music became evident early on in his career. Music in Darkness (1948) is about a pianist who loses his sight in a shooting accident. To Joy (1950) features a violinist who dreams of a solo career and Summer Interlude (1951) takes place at the Royal Swedish Opera. He admired all who could perform music, reserving his greatest love for pianists, and concert pianists are portrayed in Hour of the Wolf, Face to Face and Autumn Sonata. One of Bergman’s favourite Swedish pianists was Roland Pöntinen, who here performs a number of pieces featured in Bergman’s films, by composers including Mozart, Chopin and Schumann. Pöntinen is joined by the Stenhammar Quartet in the second movement of Schumann’s piano quintet, used by Bergman to great effect in the award-winning Fanny and Alexander. Another of the director’s favourite performers, the cellist Torleif Thedéen, also contributes to the project, with the sarabandes from three of Bach’s suites for solo cello.

Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach published the first collection in his series 'for Connaisseurs and Amateurs' in 1779, at the age of 65, and the sixth and final in 1787, a year before his death. Throughout the series he continues to develop the three genres which are featured in it – sonata, rondo and fantasia. In the sixth collection, the fantasias and rondos continue to resemble each other in structure and in stylistic features: abrupt tempo changes, disruptive rhythms, and constant harmonic non sequiturs. Bach gives them ample dimensions, but as in previous collections he continues to reduce the length of the sonatas, to the point that Sonata No. 1 is the shortest work of the collection, although it is in three distinct movements. On this amply-filled album, Miklós Spányi also includes four other works from Carl Philipp's last decade which in various ways underline the composer's boundless curiosity. The Sonata in G major, Wq 65/48 was composed for an experimental keyboard instrument with a bowing device coupled to it – a 'Bogenclavier' – while Bach in the set of variations Wq 118/9 gives us his own take on La Folia, the harmonic scheme that almost a century earlier had inspired composers such as Corelli, Marin Marais and Vivaldi, as well as his own father, in the famous ‘Peasant Cantata’.

BIS takes over from Avie presenting Andreas Haefliger’s ongoing (albeit slowly unfolding) Perspectives releases, a series that encompasses intelligent and often unexpected juxtapositions of mixed repertoire. As with its predecessors, Volume 7 features one Beethoven sonata. Haefliger’s careful phrasing and attention to voice leading makes a case for his muted and reflective way with Op. 101’s first movement, although he undermines the music’s undercurrents of energy and subito dynamics. At first the gnarly march movement seems dynamically constricted, yet the obsessive dotted rhythms gather momentum through Haefliger’s spot-on balances, pointed articulation of trills, and attention to transitional passages; it’s closer to Wilhelm Kempff’s caustic perception than, say, the nervous tension of Ernst Levy or the best of Vladimir Horowitz’s myriad live versions. And the difficult fourth-movement Fugue’s contrapuntal strands take on a woodwind-like character under Haefliger’s agile fingers.

The pianist has obviously lived with and “lived in” Berg’s Sonata for some time. At least that’s the impression he conveys in the exposition, where the primary lines and imitative rejoinders intertwine in relaxed conversation. The thick-textured development section sacrifices headlong urgency for top-to-bottom clarity. Similarly, Haefliger shapes the ebb of lyrical phrases and fluttering birdsong caressingly yet never indulgently in Liszt’s St. Francis Légende No. 1.

Mussorgsky’s Pictures from an Exhibition abounds with interesting and illuminating interpretive ideas. For example, Haefliger’s rhetorical underlinings in Gnomus reinforce the music’s menacing yet mysterious character. The third Promenade is not loudly declaimed, but deliberate and reticent. Ritards at phrase endings impart an aptly hesitant quality to the Tuileries’ middle section, and there’s a welcome dramatic specificity in the gradual diminuendo at the end of Bydlo. The Unhatched Chicks ballet is lightning-quick and almost deadpan in the way that Haefliger maintains the tempo throughout the central section: most pianists slightly broaden the tempo.

On the other hand, the pianist softens the intended sting of Samuel Goldenberg and Schmuÿle’s repeated-note sequence. But he resists the temptation to speed through the Limoges marketplace, taking a tempo that allows for the climactic broken chords to clearly register and resonate. However, I miss the final two movements’ potential for dynamism and orchestral impact that thrill me in the recordings by Ashkenazy, Berman, Bronfman, and, of course, the sonically grungy yet interpretively amazing live 1958 Sofia performance by Sviatoslav Richter.

In the end, Haefliger’s mastery, intelligence, and stylistic breadth deserve admiration and respect. I also should mention the concert hall realism of BIS’ engineering , together with this SACD’s unusually generous 86-plus minutes of playing time.

– ClassicsToday (Jed Distler)

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

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

REVIEWS:

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

– Sunday Times (UK)

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

– All Music Guide

The genesis of this release was Dan Laurin’s idea to commission a concerto for recorder and symphony orchestra. He had performed a number of such works already, but felt that the new, more powerful ‘Eagle’ recorder developed by the maker Adriana Breukink could help with avoiding the usual problems with balance between soloist and orchestra. Having interested the Gävle Symphony Orchestra in the project, he then approached the Italian composer Vito Palumbo – and the ball was set in motion! In 2013, after an intense collaboration between composer and soloist, the concerto was finished – a single movement almost thirty minutes long, and according to Laurin ‘by far the most difficult piece I have ever encountered’. The ‘Eagle Concerto’ is here coupled with two earlier concertante works by Palumbo, featuring Dan Laurin’s close chamber music partners, harpsichordist Anna Paradiso and cellist Mats Olofsson. All three works differ greatly in style, forming a complex portrait of the composer. Palumbo himself describes the lightly scored Concerto Barocco as ‘a reappropriation of the baroque style’, while the large-scale Cello Concerto is intended as a tribute to Shostakovich. The Recorder Concerto, finally, is in the words of its creator ‘a large poetic fresco that to my mind is truly operatic’.

Most of Johannes Sebastian Bach’s secular cantatas were written for specific political, academic or private festive occasions. In the case of Geschwinde, ihr wirbelnden Winde, BWV 201, however, it may well be that Bach composed it for his own sake: the message conveyed in the work can be interpreted as a defence of Bach’s own artistry and musical attitudes against the trend of the time towards easier fare.

Subtitling the cantata ‘dramma per musica’, Bach sets an episode from Greek mythology in which Phoebus (Apollo) and Pan enter into a musical contest. Phoebus, the god of the arts, presents a beautifully balanced and technically accomplished aria, while Pan sings a rustic dance tune. The judges offer Phoebus the prize, but the verdict isn’t unanimous – King Midas prefers Pan’s catchy ditty, for which Phoebus punishes him by giving him donkey ears. On this amply-filled disc Bach’s praise of high art is followed by another tribute, now to Augustus III, Elector of Saxony and King of Poland. It is likely that Augustus never knew that the same music had been used 10 years earlier to congratulate a Leipzig academic on his promotion: Auf, schmetternde Töne… BWV 207a is based almost entirely on Vereinigte Zwietracht der wechselnden Saiten, BWV 207. But Bach was something of the recycler’s recycler, and already BWV 207 included music from the First Brandenburg Concerto, with a choir added to the forces, and trumpets and timpani replacing the horns.

REVIEWS:

BWV201 is an enormous piece lasting over three-quarters of an hour...The score is packed with imaginative passages describing the landscape, the characters and the events of the preposterous mythological scenario. It is, needless to say, utterly superb music.

BWV207a...like the companion piece on this disc, is indulgently scored with trumpets and timpani in addition to the usual woodwind and strings. A grand and exciting sound it all makes too. Thirty minutes of the most glorious music.

It is almost superfluous to mention that the performers are excellent, the notes are detailed and scholarly and the recording is spectacular in its clarity and spaciousness but still a realistic sound picture of the recording space.

-- MusicWeb International

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

The flautist Sharon Bezaly has, over the past 20 years, released some 40 albums on BIS, recordings which have contributed to the international recognition that she enjoys. Both on recordings and in concert she has done much to champion new repertoire – she has had no less than 20 concertos dedicated to her. On her new release, however, she turns to core repertoire, although not necessarily that of her own instrument. The two sonatas by Cesar Franck and Gabriel Faure were composed with the violin in mind, and even though Prokofiev's sonata was originally intended for the flute it is often heard in the composer's own version for violin and piano. But joined by the legendary pianist and conductor Vladimir Askenazy, Sharon Bezaly now claims (and reclaims) the three works for her own instrument, in eloquent performances that make the best possible case for the flute.

As the centenaries of various events of the First World War are being commemorated, we are reminded of the great battles and the large-scale suffering. To imagine what day-to-day life may have been like in the trenches in Flanders is more difficult, however, 100 years later and with no living survivors of the war to bear witness. Poems and paintings can give us some idea – but, as this disc from Steven Isserlis proves, so can music! The main, more conventional section of the programme is a selection of cello works composed around the time of the war, by composers from three of the countries involved in it: France, Britain and Austria. This is followed by something rather more unusual, however, as Isserlis exchanges his ‘Marquis de Corberon’ Stradivarius for an instrument that was once played and heard in the trenches of Ypres. Harold Triggs, the owner of this so-called ‘trench cello’, brought it with him to Flanders from England – other soldiers, on both sides of the conflict, constructed their own violins, cellos or flutes on site, from ammunition boxes, pipes and whatever else they could get hold of. These instruments thus become a highly moving testimony to every man’s need for beauty and solace and joy, even in the middle of a battlefield. With the delicate support of Connie Shih on the piano (and in fact even pianos could be found in the trenches, even if not concert grands!), Isserlis and his trench cello transport us, for a brief moment, to a trench near Ypres during a quiet spell between skirmishes, with soldiers resting, writing home, playing cards – and with the help of the music dreaming of a life elsewhere.

The piano works by Isaac Albeníz range from indisputable masterpieces to highly enjoyable salon music, the composer painting with bright Spanish colours as well as the hues of Classicism or Romanticism. On eight previous volumes, Miguel Baselga has guided listeners through the music of his compatriot, earning acclaim from reviewers worldwide: ‘pianism of the highest order’ (MusicWeb-International); ‘berauschend agil und rhytmisch spannungsgeladen’ (PIANONews); ‘un pianista elegante y refinado’ (CD Compact). With the assistance of Albeníz scholar Jacinto Torres, Baselga has been able to access rare editions and scores, and his exhaustive series includes the Marcha militar by a nine-year-old Albeníz (Vol. 7), as well as the four books that make up the celebrated Iberia (Vols. 1-4) and the composer's only two scores for piano and orchestra (Vol. 6). On the present disc Baselga offers us the chance to hear the last of the three Improvisations, transcribed from a phonograph recording made by Albeníz in 1903. A large part of the programme is from the late 1880s, however, a period during which the composer was a fixture at the fashionable salons of Madrid, and composed works in which the influence of composers such as Mendelssohn, Schumann and Chopin is often evident. Recuerdos de viaje, one of the best-known works from the period, nevertheless displays the Spanish flavours that were to become one of the distinguishing features of the music of Isaac Albeníz.

Besides the fact that they both celebrate Augustus III, Elector of Saxony and King of Poland, there is a close connection between the two works included on the eighth volume of Bach's secular cantatas. On October 2nd, 1734, the King and his family made a surprise visit to Leipzig, and in all haste a festive event was planned for three days later, in celebration of the anniversary of Augustus's ascension to the Polish throne. Bach was asked to provide the musical entertainment, and consequently had to put aside the work he was busy composing...namely BWV 206 ''Schleicht, spielende Wellen'', intended for a celebration of the King's birthday on October 7th! The new cantata, Preise dein Glucke, gesegnetes Sachsen, BWV 215, is a substantial work, and it is not surprising that Bach, with only a few days to produce it, had recourse to earlier compositions: the only parts that were written completely from scratch were the recitatives, the soprano aria and the final chorus.

In the meantime, BWV 206 - the birthday cantata that Bach had to put on hold - came to good use two years later, when the King's birthday was celebrated with a concert at Zimmermann's coffee house in Leipzig. Both works are richly scored with trumpets and timpani, and here receive suitably festive performances form Bach Collegium Japan and Masaaki Suzuki.

REVIEW:

Schleicht, spielende Wellen (‘Flow, playful waves and murmur’) follows the dramma per musica template of allegory – this time with four competing rivers yearning for the primacy of the monarch’s affections. However ludicrous, Bach constructs a very significant work which Suzuki treats as an undertaking of serious critical engagement. After 22 years of intensive Bach recording, Suzuki and his forces just seem to get better.

– Gramophone

In his later years often described as the grand old man of Finnish modernism, Erik Bergman (1911-2006) was among the first in Finland to use compositional methods such as twelve-tone technique, serial music, choral Sprechgesang and aleatory counterpoint. His specialty was choral music, and a large part of his huge production involves a choir in some form. This recording focuses primarily on his works for mixed choir that have not appeared on disc before, and gives a broad picture of his production for the medium over a period of more than 60 years. Born to a Swedish-speaking family, many of Bergman's settings were of poems in Swedish, but he was a true internationalist and this two-disc set also includes works with texts in Italian, Norwegian, English, German, and naturally, Finnish. These are here performed by the Helsinki Chamber Choir, Finland's only professional chamber choir, under its artistic director Nils Schweckendiek.

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

In June 1995, a virtually unknown group of Japanese musicians embarked on the monumental task of recording the complete sacred cantatas by Johann Sebastian Bach. Almost eighteen years later, on 23rd February 2013, the Bach Collegium Japan and Masaaki Suzuki – by then household names in the international music world – reached their goal when they finished recording the 55th release of a series which, in the meantime, had been met with overwhelming acclaim worldwide. Made in conjunction with the final cantata recording, this film commemorates the occasion. Besides performances of the three last cantatas – Gloria in excelsis Deo, BWV191, Lobe den Herrn, meine Seele, BWV69 and Freue dich, erlöste Schar, BWV30 – the film includes interviews with Masaaki Suzuki and key members of Bach Collegium Japan as well as behind the-scenes footage.

REVIEWS:

This disc is essentially Volume 55 of the Bach Sacred Cantata series with an extra chorus and added video. At least two reviews are elsewhere on the Music Web International site. The addition of 25 minutes or so of interviews with the soloists, chorus members, players, engineers and Suzuki himself make this celebratory issue fascinating to watch and hear. A secondary bonus is the presence of subtitles during the four performances, making it far easier to stay with Bach’s religious message. The air of dedication hanging over all the activity is actually quite inspiring, and rightly so, for this series is a landmark in recording history, up there with the Solti Ring. Not only has a complete set of the sacred cantatas been committed to disc but they are in period style, in SACD surround and they are superbly well documented. Reviewing this has cost me money because I realised that I could no longer resist buying the recently released, complete remastered set on BIS SACD9055, not only for the missing few dozen cantatas I gained, but also for the old CD-only issues being newly minted as SACD surround. And, I might add, for the useful indexes to help navigation around the 55 discs!

The performances of the three cantatas on this Blu-ray are of course superb; from the most prominent soloists to the back desk of the violins, all are now seasoned performers, and it shows. Each cantata appears to be a single performance with only the audio and video team and the microphones as audience. The singers move smoothly out of their place in the chorus to the front to sing their solos and then walk back into place. It is all impressively smooth and unfussy. The addition of the great Dona Nobis Pacem chorus from the B minor Mass acts as a wholly appropriate closing tribute. The surround sound, unusually not in DTS Master Audio but LPCM Surround 5.0, is excellent as always. Even those who have purchased the final volume of the series should obtain this too. You might even be tempted to raise a glass to the series as you watch the performers and engineers do just that on your screen.

-- MusicWeb International

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

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

REVIEW:

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

-- Lark Reviews