Robert Schumann's three Sonatas for violin and piano were all composed between 1851 and 1853. They - especially No.3 - have to some extent suffered from the same neglect and incomprehension that has been the fate of other works from this period in the composer's life, only a few years before he died in a mental institution. During the same years a number of other works for the violin saw the light, including the Violin Concerto and the Fantasy for violin and orchestra. The concertante works were written for the violinist Joseph Joachim, but it may have been a letter from Ferdinand David, concert master of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, that provided the initial impulse to compose chamber works for the violin: 'I am uncommonly fond of your Fantasiestücke for piano and clarinet; why don't you write something for violin and piano? ... How splendid it would be if you could write something of that kind, that your wife and I could play for you.' Here the performers are Ulf Wallin and Roland Pöntinen, a team who recorded their first disc for BIS in 1991, and whose partnership has been described as 'masterfully cultivated ensemble playing' on website ClassicsToday.com. Wallin's credentials in Schumann must also be regarded as firmly established, after his recently released recording of the violin concerto, the Fantasy and the arrangement for violin of the cello concerto. The reviewer in Daily Telegraph found it 'hard to imagine more sympathetic and insightful performances of these wonderful pieces', and his colleague on the German website Klassik-Heute agreed, describing Wallin as 'violinistically brilliant and musically perceptive'

Charles-Valentin Alkan made his name as pianist in nineteenth-century Paris and seemed poised for a glittering career. But following a series of setbacks he withdrew into a life of relative seclusion, and as he receded from the public eye, so too did his music. It was never entirely forgotten, but it was not until the 1960s and 1970s that Alkan’s works began to emerge from obscurity. To quote the liner notes by Paul Wee, ‘Alkan’s music exhibits a formidable grasp of form and structure, a strong command of melody, a high sense of drama and an unprecedented exploitation of the capabilities of the piano.’ Combined here on one disc – possibly for the first time – are the Symphony and the Concerto for Solo Piano, two pinnacles of Alkan’s legacy. Unusually, the four movements of the Symphony and the three movements of the Concerto are included as seven etudes within Alkan’s Douze etudes dans tous les tons mineurs (Twelve studies in all the minor keys), in 1857 as his Op.?39. As to why Alkan composed these epic works and then hid them away in a set of etudes, Wee suggests that they are to be seen as ‘a celebration of the piano and its capabilities.’ Paul Wee is a barrister specialising in commercial law and appears regularly before courts and tribunals on behalf of clients including governments, corporations, financial institutions and individuals. Born in Australia, he began his piano studies at the age of four, continuing them in New York City at the Manhattan School of Music. Going on to study law at the University of Oxford, he attempts to balance his love for the piano alongside the demands of a busy international career in law.

-----

REVIEWS:

The fourth through the seventh of Alkan’s Twelve Etudes in the Minor Keys Op. 39 comprise his Symphony for Solo Piano, while Etudes 8 through 10 represent the more daunting Concerto for Solo Piano. They require a pianist who possesses transcendental technical prowess, the stamina of a marathon runner, a sure command of large-scale structure, rhythmic élan, and a large portfolio of nuance and color. Paul Wee is precisely this pianist and more.

He creates the impression of tonal mass, yet his shaping of individual lines within thick textures imparts a welcome horizontal vantage point to the piano writing. In the Symphony’s second movement, for example, listen to Wee’s thoughtfully contoured interaction between the legato cantabile detached chords. His Presto finale zooms from the gate like a bat out of hell, yet the pianist’s staggeringly accurate fingers never even hint at potential derailment.

Likewise, Wee brings a playful audacity and airborne lilt to the Concerto’s aggressive quasi-bolero third movement that contrasts to the relatively suaver reserve of Marc-André Hamelin’s equally astonishing pianism. And Wee’s timbral contrasts in the long first movement bring out the music’s solo/tutti perspectives in true orchestral fashion with no more than ten fingers, although one could swear that an extra pair of hands sneaks in to help out every now and then.

Wee’s achievement is all the more unbelievable when you consider that he is not a professional pianist, but a highly successful international commercial London-based lawyer! One should mention, too, Wee’s superb booklet notes and BIS’ world-class production values. To call this disc an auspicious solo recording debut is an understatement. Better to describe it with a single word: WOW!

– ClassicsToday (Jed Distler)

What is almost incredible is that the soloist Paul Wee is not a professional pianist but a highly successful international commercial London lawyer. The precision of his attack, the clarity of the part-playing, the linear focus and structural grasp of each movement of the Symphony are quite thrilling to experience...The spontaneity and drive of his playing smash the sterile confines of the studio.

– Gramophone

Die Kölner akademie and Michael Willens have previous recorded Mozart's complete piano concertos with Ronald Brautigam, earning praise for their fresh and colorful contributions to the series. The team now releases the first of four projected albums with further Mozart scores, beginning with two of the composer's best-loved serenades. Serenades were a characteristic feature of Salzburg musical life: opening with a march and continuing with as many as eight or nine separate movements on an orchestral scale, such works will have been ringing in Mozart's ears from childhood. Thirteen serenades of varying scope and scorings are included in Mozart's catalogue of works, and of these the well-known "Posthorn Serenade" is the ninth. It is also the last serenade that Mozart composed before leaving Salzburg for Vienna. The nickname stems from Mozart's inclusion of a solo for post horn in one of the movements, but the wind instruments play an important role throughout the serenade, with extended solos for flute and oboe. In comparison, Eine kleine Nachtmusik - the last serenade Mozart wrote - is for strings only. It is also shorter than many of the other serenades, and was probably intended for a more intimate occasion. Mozart's own thematic catalogue lists it as having five movements, but as the first minuet and trio have been lost, only four are typically performed today. In this recording a minuet from Mozart's very first string quartet in G major, K. 80, is incorporated by way of completion of the five-movement arch.

On a previous album, the Chiaroscuro Quartet has recorded the first half of Joseph Haydn’s Op. 76, including No. 3, the celebrated ‘Emperor’ quartet. The release has won great acclaim, with the critic in Gramophone writing: ‘The Chiaroscuros' account of the remaining three Op 76 quartets can't come soon enough.’ Well, here it is – a album which like its predecessor spans a wealth of moods and atmospheres: from the magical sunrise of the opening of 76/4 to the manic minuet and boisterous finale of 76/6, a movement without a tune worth the name but utterly engrossing even so. The Chiaroscuro Quartet was formed in 2005 by the violinists Alina Ibragimova (Russia) and Pablo Hernan Benedi (Spain), the Swedish violist Emilie Hornlund and cellist Claire Thirion from France. Performing music of the Classical period on gut strings this highly international ensemble has a unique sound – described in The Observer as ‘a shock to the ears of the best kind’.

REVIEW:

The Chiaroscuros return, armed with a perfect sound balance and rich, vibrant textures from each player.

– BBC Music Magazine

JEAN SIBELIUS Folke Grasbeck, piano (5 CDs for the price of 3) JEAN SIBELIUS - THE SIBELIUS EDITION, VOLUME 10 - PIANO MUSIC 2

You can have too much of a good thing, but Mendelssohn wrote a lot of music that deserves to be better known, and if you’re a hard core Mendelssohnian or are just curious to learn what you’ve been missing, this attractively priced 11-disc set deserves your consideration. The performances of the five standard symphonies with Litton and the Bergen Philharmonic are uniformly fine: very well played, and intelligently paced. Once example that all fans of the composer will appreciate is the ideal tempo that Litton chooses for the coda of the Scottish Symphony (sound clip)–grand but fluid, so that the music never sounds as though it should have stopped a few minutes before it actually does.

The twelve string symphonies, early though they are, contain a great deal of masterful music, and the later ones are in fact quite substantial. This set is both the most complete, as well as on balance the most desirable yet recorded. You get both versions of No. 8 (with and without winds), plus the single movement No. 13, and also the scherzo from the Octet in its string orchestra arrangement (later on in the box). Lev Markiz leads the Amsterdam Sinfonietta in performances that respect the music’s classical roots without sacrificing warmth or beauty of tone. Rhythms are sharp, tempos lively, and the string ensemble consistently well balanced.

There are four discs of concertos here, including Isabelle van Keulen’s excellent original version of the famous E minor Violin Concerto (second sample). Everyone will have favorite performances of this music, or at least the more famous works, but with Markiz once again in charge of the accompaniments, these versions with chamber orchestra are all of a piece. There’s a welcome intimacy between solo(s) and orchestra that makes these recordings quite distinctive and appealing. The solo piano concertos have plenty of sparkle in Brautigam’s hands, while Roland Pöntinen and Love Derwinger play the two double piano concertos with unaffected brilliance.

Some of this music (the lesser known concertos) is not always easy to find in top-knotch performances, so even if you wind up duplicating the standard pieces, this may well be worth considering. With fabulous sonics, you really can’t go wrong at mid to budget price.

-- David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

cpe bach spanyi, miklos; Cto. Armonico, Marta Abraham complete keyboard ctos vol.18

After a move to the U.S.A., Bohuslav Martinů was to compose four works which all belong to the central 20th century repertoire for the viola. Maxim Rysanov, one of today's leading viola players, has gathered these works on this disc, opening with the Rhapsody-Concerto from 1952. In this lyrical two-movement work, characterized by sustained legato writing, sudden changes of mood and texture and a vivid style of orchestration, Rysanov is supported by the BBC Symphony Orchestra, conducted by the eminent Martin? expert Jirí Belohlávek. The two Duos for violin and viola which follow are slightly earlier (from 1947 and 1950, respectively) and were written with the husband-and-wife team Joseph and Lillian Fuchs in mind. Here the young Russian violinist Alexander Sitkovetsky joins Rysanov, in two scores where exacting technical demands bring the reward of an astonishing richness in sounds and variety from such a sparse instrumentation. Maxim Rysanov closes the disc in the company of the pianist Katya Apekisheva, performing the Viola Sonata of 1955 – like the Rhapsody-Concerto in two movements, with a tough, passionate mood that often recalls the composer's better-known cello sonatas.

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

Throughout his 82-year life, Max Bruch remained true to the musical ideals of his youth, formed by Schubert, Mendelssohn, Schumann and German folk songs. As a result, the same composer who in the 1880’s was regarded as Brahms’ equal, by the time of his death in 1920 was considered an anachronistic irrelevance. Nowadays, however, few would deny that his production includes numerous works of exquisite sonority, beautiful melodiousness and admirable formal cohesion: a glorious irrelevance indeed. His Violin Concerto No. 1 was a spectacular success from its first performance in 1868, and soon won over audiences both in Germany and abroad. In fact, it became so popular that Bruch in later years became increasingly worried about being considered a ‘one-hit wonder’. It is thus a staple of all violin soloists that Vadim Gluzman here takes on, after his recordings of the concertos by Tchaikovsky (‘without doubt one of the work's finest recordings in recent years’, BBC Music Magazine), Barber (‘one of the most beautiful and characterful recordings of this work’, klassik-heute.de) and Korngold (‘Gluzman’s playing lends the work a new vitality and cohesion’, Classica). Supported by the eminent Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra and its music director Andrew Litton, Gluzman couples the work with a rarity, a violin version of the Romance in F major, Op.85, composed by Bruch for viola and orchestra almost 35 years after the violin concerto. The composer also made an arrangement for violin and piano, and it is this violin part which Gluzman performs to the original orchestral score. Closing the programme is the String Quintet in A minor in which Gluzman is joined by four eminent string players: Sandis Šteinbergs, Maxim Rysanov, Ilze Klava and Reinis Birznieks. Composed in 1918, the Quintet certainly offers no indication of being the exact contemporary of modernist works such as Stravinsky’s Histoire d’un soldat; on the other hand its almost youthful energy, dramatic instinct and playful exuberance equally belies the fact that it was composed by a man in his eightieth year.

Classical Music

Includes work(s) by Jean Sibelius.

Frank Peter Zimmermann, one of today’s most highly regarded violinists, takes our breath away with this recording together with the Bamberger Symphoniker and their chief conductor Jakub Hruša – one of the leading Martinu conductors of today. They start off by exploring the lyrical side of Bohuslav Martinu, offered in the Second Violin Concerto (1943), to dive into the neo-classical idiom championed by Stravinsky that informs the composer’s Violin Concerto No. 1. Béla Bartók’s Sonata for Solo Violin closes the album. Composed in 1944, only a year before Bartók’s death, it is a deeply personal statement which fuses the overall layout of Bach’s solo violin sonatas with Hungarian folk tradition with results that are as fascinating to the listener as they are challenging to the performer.

 

REVIEW:

 

Hrůša is as fine a Martinů interpreter as anyone on the podium currently. What impresses most here, however, is the clarity and naturalness of Zimmermann’s performances, remarkable in combining an intimate knowledge of the music (the result of long study) with a freshness of approach. This is, for me, the top recommendation for these two works and, frankly, is how Martinů should always be played.

 

– Gramophone (Editor's Choice, January 2021)

The Firebird was Igor Stravinsky's first full-length ballet, but not his first collaboration with Diaghilev and his Ballets Russes. In 1909, a year before the triumphant première of The Firebird, the charismatic impresario had commissioned Stravinsky to orchestrate two piano compositions by Chopin for use in another project. Evidently pleased with the result, he invited the young composer to write the music for the next production of his ballet company, to a scenario based on various well-known Russian fairy-tale characters. The score holds several moments that recall Scriabin, Tchaikovsky and Stravinsky's teacher, Rimsky-Korsakov, but the mature Stravinsky is already present in the superb orchestral craft and the vivid rhythmic imagination. Rather than either of the two suites which Stravinsky later prepared, Andrew Litton and the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra have chosen to record the original ballet score, allowing us to relish the enormous range of colours springing from what the composer later described as a 'wastefully large' orchestration. Soon after The Firebird, Stravinsky went on to influence the direction of music with Petrushka and The Rite of Spring - two scores which appear on a recent release with the same performers. That much acclaimed disc was short-listed for a 2011 Gramophone Award, named Editor's Choice in Classic FM Magazine, and selected as Disc of the Month by the websites Classics Today and Classics Today France, and the recording itself was praised on a par with the interpretation and playing, with the reviewer in International Record Review describing 'the efforts of the BIS recording team' as 'truly magnificent'. The present disc includes not only The Firebird, but also the above-mentioned Chopin orchestrations, as well as arrangements of pieces by Tchaikovsky and Sibelius, ending with Stravinsky's tongue-in-cheek 1955 Greeting Prelude for the 80th birthday of Pierre Monteux, the conductor who had given the world premières of both Petrushka and The Rite of Spring some forty years earlier.

Also Available: Masaaki Suzuki plays Bach Organ Works

Before releasing his first disc of Bach’s organ works, Masaaki Suzuki had recorded the composer’s complete sacred cantatas, as well as the large-scale choral works and much of the music for harpsichord. His achievements in these fields obscured the fact that Suzuki originally trained as an organist, and began working as such already at the age of twelve. So when Volume 1 of this series reached reviewers around the world, it was something of a revelation to many: the disc went on to be named Choice of the Month in BBC Music Magazine, Diapason d’Or in Diapason and Recording of the Month in Gramophone, which then went on to include it on its list of the ‘50 Greatest Bach Recordings’.

Volume 1 featured the celebrated Schnitger/Hinz organ of Groningen’s Martinikerk in the Netherlands. For this present instalment, Suzuki returned to more familiar ground – the chapel of the Kobe Shoin Women's University where the great majority of his recordings with Bach Collegium Japan have taken place. The chapel houses a French classical organ built in 1983 by Marc Garnier, and on it Suzuki performs a highly symmetrical programme with the large-scale chorale partita BWV 768 at its centre. The work is known as ‘Sei gegrüßet, Jesu gütig’, although the chorale text that it is structured upon most probably is that of ‘O Jesu, du edle Gabe’. On either side the partita is flanked by an arrangement by Bach of concertos by Vivaldi, and a chorale prelude on ‘Liebster Jesu, wir sind hier’. The disc opens and closes with a Prelude and Fugue, in G major and C major respectively.

-----

REVIEWS:

Suzuki makes extremely savvy use of his resources; the instrument's almost chamber-music-like clarity and intimacy of the results is most enjoyable. The recorded sound is unusually crisp and clear. Strongly and enthusiastically recommended.

– Fanfare

The life, vitality, affection and fun Suzuki brings to them will ensure they have a lasting place in the annals of Bach organ recordings.

– MusicWeb International

The remarkable harpsichordist/organist/conductor Masaaki Suzuki continues his recordings for BIS with this SACD of organ music of Bach played on the Marc Garnier organ of Shoin Chapel in Kobe, Japan. This is not a large cathedral organ. You won’t hear massive pedal notes, but these are excellent performances, beautifully and naturally recorded.

– Classical CD Review

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

Henk de Vlieger's orchestral arrangement of Richard Wagner's Ring Cycle boils down this monumental music drama in four parts to a symphonic poem with a duration of a fifteenth of the original score. Unlike certain other arrangements, de Vlieger's follows the chronology of the operas so that the irrevocable process towards the twilight of the gods is clearly delineated. His method has been to select and link together the most important orchestral passages in the score, already closely interconnected as a result of Wagner’s leitmotif technique The excerpts have in most cases been taken over without alterations; only occasionally has an essential vocal line been replaced by wind instruments. Quite possibly, Wagner himself would have objected to the undertaking, but in fact one of his own strongly held convictions was that the text – or rather its content – should be continuously present, by means of the hidden-away orchestra exploring the dramatic background to the action presented on stage. With this orchestral arangement the turn has thus come for the Royal Swedish Orchestra to take its place on centre stage, in music which has been part of its repertoire for close to 120 years at the Royal Swedish Opera in Stockholm. (Some of that impressive history is reflected in the CD booklet through images from Ring productions past and present.) The conductor Lawrence Renes, recently named music director at the Royal Swedish Opera, has admired de Vlieger's arrangement since it was premièred, in 1991, by his own mentor, the conductor Edo de Waart. The arrangement has been recorded previously, but never before by a bona fide opera orchestra. The result is indeed an adventure, as well as a sonic spectacular, and an excellent calling card for a fine orchestra all too often relegated to the shadows.