Classical Music

SORABJI 100 Transcendental Studies: Nos. 1?25 ? Fredrik Ullén (pn) ? BIS CD-1373 (71:11)


?Our highest insights must?and should?sound like follies and sometimes like crimes when they are heard without permission by those who are not predisposed and predestined for them? Nietzsche notes in Beyond Good and Evil , 30. Yes?and like drunkenness, mania, delirium, ferocity, black magic, malice?seduction, if one is a composer of startling originality. Fredrik Ullén herewith joins the small band of ?predisposed and predestined? pianistic supermen who have opened the adytum on Sorabji?s hermetic soundscapes?Marc-André Hamelin, John Ogdon, Geoffrey Douglas Madge, Michael Habermann, Kevin Bowyer, Jonathan Powell?casting up fragments of his stupendous, visionary ?uvre compellingly before us. For Hamelin, that?s true in a practical sense as well?Ullén thanks him, with Simon Abrahams and Alexander Abercrobie, for editing the Studies because ?Sorabji?s manuscripts, while calligraphically beautiful, are in general not readable enough to be useful for the performer.?


This first installment of the 100 Transcendental Studies , composed over 1940?44, suggests a more or less systematically pithy inventory of oddments comprising the Sorabji manner and its technical means, most playing a minute or two, the longest just under six. If music is, in an essential sense, for musicians, and the pleasure non-musicians derive from it a happy consequence, this relation of music to a putative audience is raised to a power in Sorabji: Busoni remarked to Bernard van Dieren?composers Sorabji admired intensely and lovingly eulogized??We must make the texture of our music such that no amateur can touch it.? The ?texture? of Sorabji?s music is such that even the well-trained professional may suffocate in it. The point is not that Sorabji is difficult to play and we?re obliged to applaud those who can bring his pieces off, but that his fantastication is such that few listeners possess the apperceptive mass?the background of associations and perceptions with which his music is in dialogue?to grasp it. For instance, the way Sorabji simply sidestepped the ?Tonal oder Atonal? obsession of his time with the sovereign caress of 10 fingers on a keyboard demonstrates that there is a richly substantial world elsewhere. Sorabji?s music does, indeed, possess sensuous appeal?cheek-by-jowl with intentionally rebarbative imprecations. Ullén?s indispensable annotations prompt the ear:


4. (Scriabinesco) Soave e con tenerezza nostalgica is an arabesque and a loving meditation on Scriabin?s B major étude, Op. 8, No. 4. There are some interesting polymetric experiments in the later section.


6. (untitled) The 100 Transcendental Studies contain études in parallel lines for each possible interval. This is the first one in seconds with rich use of 3:4 polyrhythms. A scintillating will-o?-the-wisp étude in the romantic tradition.


9. Staccato e leggiero . A remarkably modern piece for its time. Both hands play staccato chords, first in perfect asynchrony, later on with irregular alternations between the hands. Frequently Sorabji has one hand play only on white keys and the other only on black keys, a device used much later by, for example, György Ligeti.


20. Con fantasia . One of Sorabji?s refined, mysterious nocturnes . . .


22. Leggiero volante e presto assai . The piece explores an interesting new device for pianistic fireworks: glissandi on chords. A quick hazardous piece that passes by leaving you wondering what really happened.


For those of a logical or mathematical bent, the philosopher Kenneth Derus glosses Sorabji with an exploration of the metaphysics of memory reminiscent of Alfred North Whitehead at his most punctilious. And that?s to say that if you?ve read this far, you are either a Sorabji insider?to whom this will be sine qua non ?or a candidate for initiation. Sound is closely detailed and immediate?uncramped?with neither ambience nor reverberance.


FANFARE: Adrian Corleonis

Supported by the eminent Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin and conductor Okko Kamu, acclaimed veteran BIS-recording violinist Ulf Wallin offers a three-work, three-decade span of a program of Max Bruch music – the Second Violin Concerto (1877), In Memoriam (1893) and the Konzertstück (1910). Bruch (1838-1920) remained deeply rooted in 19th c. Romanticism until the end of his life, influenced by his youthful musical surroundings, including the music of Mendelssohn, Chopin and Beethoven. Mr. Wallin is noted for the intensity of his playing, whether solo, chamber or orchestral works.

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 masterpiece of our time in the trio genre’ is how Robert Schumann described Mendelssohn’s Piano Trio in D minor when he reviewed the work upon its publication in 1840. Comparing it to the trios by Beethoven and Schubert, Schumann continued: ‘a very beautiful composition, which in years to come will continue to delight our grandchildren and great-grandchildren.’ And so it has – the D minor trio remains one of the most popular of Mendelssohn’s chamber works, uniting the composer’s gift for melody with his feeling for textures and formal mastery. Considering how naturally the music flows, it is somewhat surprising to lean that Mendelssohn revised the work extensively at least twice before publication – the last time on the advice of the pianist Ferdinand Hiller, who suggested that some of the piano writing was ‘rather old-fashioned, to put it bluntly.’ Mendelssohn made substantial revisions to the piano part, and later commented that ‘pianists will enjoy playing it because it also gives them an opportunity to show off.’ A few years later the Piano Trio No.2 in C minor flowed more easily from his pen, and was composed between February and April 1845. An intensely emotional first movement is followed by a blissful Andante espressivo and a shimmering, truly Mendelsohnian Scherzo. The Finale returns to the passionate mood of the opening, but in the course of the movement hymn-like allusions appear and lend an air of sacred celebration to the movement. These two highpoints in the Romantic repertoire for piano trio are here performed by the young Sitkovetsky Trio. The ensemble made their début on disc in 2014 with recordings of trios by Dvo?ák and Smetana, to critical acclaim: ‘A grandiose recording by three grandiose young musicians, forming a trio of great integrity’, was the verdict in the German magazine Ensemble, which also chose the disc as its ‘Five Star Recording’.

Import Hybrid-SACD pressing.

Import Hybrid-SACD pressing.

Classical Music

The French organ tradition is one of the strongest and proudest in all of 20th-century music, to the point of forming a genre of its own. Standing on the shoulders of predecessors such as Franck and Widor and composing for instruments built in the glorious tradition of Cavaillé-Coll, a group of organist-composers created a number of works central to the organ literature; works which in spite of their great variety combine to form a highly characteristic repertoire. The young organist Pétur Sakari has gathered five such composers on his first disc for BIS, performing their music on the famous organ of Saint-Étienne-du-Mont in Paris. The five composers are all interconnected - Charles Tournemire and Louis Vierne studied together (under Franck), Maurice Duruflé studied under Tournemire and was Vierne's assistant at Notre Dame, and Marcel Dupré counted Vierne (and Widor) among his teachers and himself taught Olivier Messiaen. And although Pétur Sakari hails from Finland, he is also to an extent part of this great tradition, as the student of Thierry Escaich and Vincent Warnier, successors of Duruflé and his wife Marie-Madeleine as organists of Saint-Étienne-du-Mont. Sakari's selection brings together key works such as the hugely taxing Prelude and Fugue in B major by Dupré, Vierne's fantasy on the Bells of Westminster and Messiaen's meditative and atmospheric Celestial Banquet. The opening work on the disc is Tournemire's powerful improvisation on the Easter plain-chant Victimae paschali laudes, recorded in 1930 and later transcribed by Duruflé, whose own monumental Suite closes the recital. Throughout, Pétur Sakari - at the age of only 21 - gives proof of a mastery of the organ and a musicianship which promise great things to come. *playing the great organ of the Saint-Étienne-du-Mont Church, Paris

Includes work(s) by various composers. Ensemble: Tapiola Sinfonietta. Conductor: Jean-Jacques Kantorow. Soloist: Sharon Bezaly.

Classical Music

Classical Music