Classical Music

This is a hybrid Super Audio CD playable on both regular and Super Audio CD players.

That Johann Sebastian Bach as Cantor at St Thomas Church in Leipzig was expected to provide the churchgoers with suitably impressive musical performances each Sunday and Feast day is quite widely known. Fewer will be aware of the fact that the post as director of the city's Collegium Musicum, which he held from 1729, in some ways was just as demanding and time-consuming. Weekly concerts all year round – and twice-weekly during the three busy fair periods (New Year, Easter and Michaelmas) – meant that Bach during his ten years as director spent far more time performing secular instrumental music in Zimmermann's coffee house – the usual concert venue – than cantatas in church. As with his church duties, Bach will also have been expected to provide repertoire for the ensemble, composing as well as arranging music by others and himself for it. Among such works will have been his various harpsichord concertos: with Bach's great reputation as a keyboard virtuoso, it is not difficult to imagine the demand by the Leipzig audiences to see their local hero shine on the stage. Three double concertos for harpsichord by Bach survive, all dating from around 1736, and all arrangements of earlier compositions. BWV 1060 is thought to have originated as a now lost double concerto for oboe and violin, while BWV 1062 is a reworking of the well-loved concerto for two violins. Unlike these two works, BWV 1061 was composed for two harpsichords from the outset, but probably started out as a concerto without orchestral accompaniment – this will have been added later. Performing these works, with a quintet of string players from the Bach Collegium Japan, Masaaki Suzuki is joined by his son Masato. For the present disc Masato Suzuki has also taken a page from Bach’s own book, in arranging the composer’s Orchestral Suite No.1 for two unaccompanied harpsichords.

Classical Music

This is a hybrid Super Audio CD playable on both regular and Super Audio CD players.

Hybrid SuperAudio CD plus Bonus DVD: “Vem fan ar Allan Pettersson?” (“Who the hell is Allan Pettersson?”), a 52 minute interview filmed in 1974 for Sveriges Television, with English subtitles.

Compared to most other composers, Allan Pettersson was an out-and-out symphonist. Following his first attempt in the genre (Symphony No.1, left unfinished by the composer in 1951 and later completed by Christian Lindberg who has also recorded it on BIS-1860), Pettersson composed another 15 symphonies, leaving behind a fragment of one more at his death in 1980. During that time he only composed six other works and, in fact, it seems that he always had a symphony ‘on the go’. The exception was the years leading up to Symphony No.4, recorded on the present disc. The reason would appear to be the negative reception of its predecessor, Symphony No.3, at its première in 1956. Possibly this also motivated some of Pettersson’s choices once he did start on the fourth symphony – the third had had the traditional division into four movements, but he now reverted to the one-movement scheme that he had used in his second symphony and would continue to favour in future works. He also made a more extensive use of long, chorale-like passages that co-exist with more modernist ones. After the completion of the work, and following the death of his mother, Pettersson wrote in his journal: ‘Symphony No.4. To my mother, who has gone home to the life in which goodness is personified in God.’ It is tempting to perceive the chorale-like passages in the Fourth as directly inspired by the songs sung by his deeply religious mother in his childhood. Two decades later a similar stylistic duality pervades Symphony No.16, written in response to a request for a composition by the saxophonist Frederick L. Hemke. Possibly it was Pettersson’s decision to incorporate a soloistic part for alto saxophone in the work which led to the occasionally ‘jazz-scented’ style of the slow, calm section which follows upon the wild opening (marked ‘frenetico’). The work is characterized by tension – a tension that is resolved in the simple, tonal and peaceful ending. Having received overwhelming critical acclaim for their previous recordings of Allan Pettersson’s symphonies, the Norrköping Symphony Orchestra and Christian Lindberg are joined by saxophonist Jörgen Pettersson, performing the demanding solo part.

-

Emilia Amper, one of Sweden’s most exciting young folk musicians, is also one of the finest nyckelharpa players in the world today. (In fact, she can even boast of being a World Champion on the instrument, a title she won in 2010.) For Trollfågeln, her first solo disc, she has devised a programme which demonstrates the numerous facets of her own musical personality, and of her instrument. With its roots stretching back to medieval Europe, the nyckelharpa (‘keyed fiddle’) almost died out in the middle of the twentieth century, but has made a remarkable comeback and is attracting an increasing number of performers in Sweden and around the world. Firmly grounded in Swedish traditional music, Emilia Amper has also worked with musicians from many other backgrounds, and regards folk music as a common international language, and a way of combining tradition with spontaneous improvisation in a playful reflection of our own times. Consequently, on Trollfågeln (‘The Magic Bird’) a traditional dance tune such as Bredals Näckapolska stands next to Emilia’s own take on rock music, Kapad (‘Hijacked’). Similarly, Ut i mörka natten (‘Into the Dark Night’), a song about budding love that she’s written and composed herself, is contrasted with Herr Lager och skön fager, her setting of a poem from the late 1800s describing the sad outcome of a love affair. Solos are mixed with settings in which Emilia is joined by a string ensemble from the famous Norwegian chamber orchestra the Trondheim Soloists, or by another well-known virtuoso on the nyckelharpa, Johan Hedin, as well as by some of her regular collaborators: Anders Löfberg, Dan Svensson and Olle Linder. In turns hypnotic, melancholy and meditative, groovy and jubilant, Trollfågeln is a breathtaking roller-coaster of a disc.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

This is a hybrid Super Audio CD playable on both regular and Super Audio CD players.

The 32 Piano Sonatas by Ludwig van Beethoven are often referred to as the ‘New Testament’ of the keyboard literature, following on the ‘Old Testament’ of J.S. Bach's 48 preludes and fugues in the Well-Tempered Clavier. Composed over a period of almost three decades, from 1795 to 1822, the sonatas constitute a fascinating panorama of an artistic career which underwent numerous changes – not to say upheavals – but nevertheless remained remarkably consistent. Ever since the first recording of the entire cycle, by Artur Schnabel in the 1930s, a number of the world's leading pianists have given us their performances of this monumental collection on disc. One of the latest cycles is that of Ronald Brautigam, released on single discs between 2004 and 2010. Performed on the fortepiano, as part of a series of Beethoven's complete solo keyboard works, Brautigam's recordings have been described as ‘riveting’, ‘compelling’ and ‘revolutionary’. The eight discs with the 32 sonatas are now being released as a boxed set, along with a ninth disc containing the early, unnumbered sonatas. Contributing factors to the ‘refreshing directness’ that reviewers have experienced in these performances are the widely praised recorded sound and the carefully selected instruments, built by Paul McNulty after originals from 1788-1819 by the foremost Viennese makers of fortepianos. For this boxed set, the original SACD format has been retained – along with the possibility of listening to the performances in surround – thus offering the opportunity of sharing the experience of one reviewer: ‘One has almost the impression of being a contemporary of Beethoven’s: one of the first, infinitely startled – not to say shocked – witnesses to this music’ (Süddeutsche Zeitung).

-----

REVIEW:

Much of the playing here is sensational. Notice the pronounced rhetorical emphasis yet intensely focused dotted rhythms in the Pathétique’s introduction, or the revelatory continuity from one variation to the next in Op 14 No 2’s uncommonly quick central movement. Those who think that even Brautigam’s sturdy fortepiano cannot approximate an orchestra should check out Op 22’s first movement, where the full-bodied octaves and brilliantly judged ‘Rossini’ crescendo just before the recapitulation make a pulverising impact.

And what about the Moonlight finale’s controlled fury and slashing momentum that remain musical to the core, or how those Op 10 No 1 and 2 finales rock and roll while retaining maximum linear clarity? Few others rightly feel Op 10 No 3’s Minuet as one beat to a bar and effectively spin out the left-hand counterlines. Among the heroic middle-period works, perhaps Brautigam’s Waldstein and Appassionata make a cogent case for period instruments in regard to textural differentiation between registers, shorter pedal resonances, and being able to truly perceive rather than merely infer each pitch within low-lying chords and runs, abetted by Brautigam’s subtle yet expressively powerful tempo modifications and telling accents.

Brautigam’s late sonatas are never less than masterful.

– Gramophone

Classical Music

During long periods the flute has been almost synonymous with France, the country from which the music, the great players and the finest instruments all came. The French flute - whether dreamy as in Debussy's Syrinx or sprightly as in Poulenc's Sonata - is simply unmistakeably French, in all its delights. On her new release, renowned flutist Sharon Bezaly - who herself studied in Paris - celebrates this tradition, with a programme consisting of works composed between 1889 and 1946. French Delights is something of a companion piece to a previous Bezaly disc: Café au Lait, a predominantly French flute recital accompanied by Roland Pöntinen. Upon its release that disc, and the artistry of Sharon Bezaly, were highly acclaimed, for instance in French magazine Diapason: 'The flute turns into the voice of enchantment, a lullaby of the senses or an invitation to dreamfulness, into planing light or the glitter of light on water - an instrument almost too beautiful.' Here again, with the support of eminent pianist Love Derwinger, Sharon Bezaly displays her prodigious talent.

It is often said that Beethoven's three String Trios Op.9, together with Mozart's Divertimento, form the pinnacle of their genre - one which by the beginning of the 19th century would be almost supplanted by the string quartet. Be that as it may; it would be hugely misleading to dismiss the composer's first attempts, the Trio Op.3 and the Serenade Op.8, as mere preparations. Both works are in fact exceptionally fertile examples of the suite form, in Mozart's and Beethoven's day surviving in the guise of divertimentos and serenades. While the Op. 9 trios are all cast in the four-movement mould that we are used to from the symphonies, sonatas and string quartets of the classical period, these works consist of sequences of six and eight movements respectively, with minuets, marches and instructions such as 'alla polacca' reminding us of courtly light music from an earlier period. In spite of such touches, however, they are far from 'old-fashioned': the adventurous spirit of the young Beethoven is plain to hear, in the exceptional creative imagination in terms of textures, thematic development and formal innovation, and in the masterful writing, which gives each instrument an equal importance and a highly individual treatment. This is music which needs a first-class chamber ensemble made up of three soloists in order to be fully realized, and with the Trio Zimmermann that is exactly what is on offer here.

Classical Music