Classical Music

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

In this the 29th volume of Bach Cantatas, Masaaki Suzuki and his musicians are still exploring Bach's great project, the Chorale Cantata Year, which was initiated in 1724 in order to celebrate the bicentenary of the first Lutheran hymn books. Each cantata belonging to the project is very closely connected to one particular hymn from this collection, especially in terms of the texts used. For all of them can be said that the first and the last movement are settings of the first and last strophes of the hymn, with Bach using the original hymn melody as the guiding light in highly imaginative scores. The remaining strophes were used as an inspiration by an unknown librettist, providing texts suitable for arias, recitatives and ensembles, while remaining true to the idea of the original hymn. All of the works on the present disc use the addition of cornetto and/or trombones, resulting – in particular in BWV2 and BWV38 – in a sonic world both dramatic and archaic, even for Bach's own time. On this recording it is Concerto Palatino, the world's leading ensemble of their kind, which provides the inimitable timbres of cornettos and baroque trombones. Among the soloists, Gerd Türk and Peter Kooij will be familiar to followers of this series and Pascal Bertin has also appeared before, while the young German soprano Dorothee Mields makes her first appearance on BIS.

My attention was won by the cover. There’s Jakob Lindberg holding the most enormous stringed instrument I’ve ever seen. The long neck of the instrument extends off into the distance and Lindberg himself looks completely unintimidated. There’s no way to resist that. Then I put on the first track, Giovanni Girolamo Kapsperger’s “Arpeggiata,” and was enthralled. It’s an extraordinary little piece, building with the minimalistic drama of a Philip Glass piece across chords and seemingly across the centuries. 

There are more gems to be had here. Kapsperger’s “Passacaglia” is a masterwork, the compact frame and starkly simple bass line concealing a work of enormous emotional fervor. I was going to call it “haunting” until I saw that the booklet - written by the artist - already does, and yet there really is not a better word. As always in the baroque byways, there are composers exploring harmony in interesting ways; most intriguingly, Alessandro Piccinini contributes a “Toccata cromatica” and Bellerofonte Castaldi a “Cromatica corrente”. Castaldi’s “Cecchina corrente” is more of a scene-stealer, bounding in with a burly, jovial dance but then, halfway through, breaking down into a more intricate rhythmic pattern. That said, it’s really Kapsperger who dominates this recital, since there is next to no music here better than the arpeggiata, passacaglia, or rowdily witty “Colascione”.
 
The main competition is from Paul O’Dette on HM Gold, a mid-price recital of nothing but Kapsperger. O’Dette uses a chitarrone for some works and a lute for most. He somehow misses out on the passacaglia, but his Kapsperger is well worth having too. In fact I purchased it after hearing the CD being reviewed here. A disc on Hänssler I haven’t heard, featuring Joachim Held on a lute, combines these three composers with the amusingly named Michelangelo Galilei. Castaldi’s songs with voice can be heard on Toccata Classics, and on a CD which was one of MusicWeb’s 2012 Recordings of the Year. For the neophyte this excellent BIS CD is a good sampler; depending on what you like you can move on to the composer-specific albums elsewhere, although I warn that you really will want to collect Kapsperger if you don’t already. If you do, I hear nothing which will let you down here.
 
A minor irritation: if you’re intending to add this to your computerized collection, you have your work cut out. The Gracenote (iTunes) database doesn’t have information on this CD, which means you’ll be typing in all 27 track names yourself.
 
-- Brian Reinhart, MusicWeb International

Classical Music

Classical Music

SILVIUS LEOPOLD WEISS Jakob Lindberg, 13-course baroque lute. SILVIUS LEOPOLD WEISS - LUTE MUSIC II: Sonata No. 39 in C major;Tombeau sur la Mort de M. Comte de Logy; Sonata No. 50 in B flatmajor.

Classical Music

2 discs for the price of 1: included on a separate DVD is an hour-long film by David Lindberg about Allan Pettersson’s First Symphony and the preparation of the score.

Born on 19th September 1911, Allan Pettersson was a singular voice in Swedish, and indeed European, 20th-century music. Raised in a poor neighbourhood in Stockholm, his first instrument was a fiddle made by one of his brothers from a tin box and some strings, and Pettersson immediately realized that music was his calling. In 1939 he won a place as viola player in what is today the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, but at this time he also began to compose – at first his Barfotasånger (Barefoot Songs) and chamber works. It was towards the very end of the 1940s, while he was working up the courage to leave his steady position, that he began to compose his Symphony No.1. In a letter he recounted how the symphony was growing and growing, and even threatened to swallow him up whole. Perhaps as a result of a study visit to Paris, where he had lessons with René Leibowitz and Arthur Honegger, Pettersson laid the work aside, but during the following years – and possibly as late as in the 1970s – he kept returning to the sketches. He certainly never abandoned the symphony, and in 1953 when he completed a second symphony, he insisted on calling that work his 'No.2'. On two previous discs, Christian Lindberg has conducted Pettersson's Three Concertos for String Orchestra as well as the orchestral versions of the Barefoot Songs. These were released to great acclaim, for instance in Fono Forum, whose reviewer dubbed Lindberg and the Nordic Chamber Orchestra 'more than ideal interpreters of Pettersson's music, which is as stark as it is fascinating'. Entrusted with the manuscript material – some 240 pages – of Symphony No.1, Lindberg was able to prepare a performable version and gave the work its world première in May 2010, conducting the Norrköping Symphony Orchestra. His recording of the work – and of Symphony No.2 – is accompanied by a DVD with an hour-long film by David Lindberg about Allan Pettersson's First Symphony documenting its genesis, the preparation of the performance edition and the path to the work's first performance and subsequent recording.

All of this music has been recorded before, but not so frequently as to make new versions redundant. BIS has released the Flute Concerto separately in a disc sensibly devoted to modern flute concertos. It's a very major work, more immediately appealing and just as emotionally gripping as the grittier Second Symphony. Christopher Rouse, for all of his roots in, and occasional glances toward, American pop music, is a very serious, sometimes genuinely anguished composer, even in a supposedly more "relaxed" piece such as Rapture. His direct emotionalism and intensity seldom let up, a fact that really good performances such as these never allow us to forget. As in the first volume in this series, Alan Gilbert and his Stockholm Orchestra sound quite comfortable in what must have been very unfamiliar musical territory, and Sharon Bezaly in the concerto is unbeatable. With excellent sonics, this second volume in BIS's very worthy ongoing series is just as recommendable as the first.

--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

The musical world of Arvo Pärt has fascinated listeners and performers for several decades. The astonishing, breathtaking musical landscape he presents brings us to another dimension in which time seems to cease to exist. And his music reaches an audience which is wider than that of any other contemporary composer of art music today, teaching us that newly composed music can serve to fulfil spiritual needs. As BIS' contribution to the celebration of Pärt's 70th anniversary this year, we have looked back through our mirror and brought together a number of works spanning more than three decades of his career: from 1964 to 1998.

Classical Music

The majority of Haydn's concertos for keyboard and orchestra are thought to have been composed for the organ. The three that were not have been included on this disc, together with the 'Concerto in D major, Hob.XVIII/2' which was most probably intended for the organ, but is often performed on other keyboard instruments since the solo part makes no use of the pedals. They are all composed before 1l784, around the time that Mozart wrote his first masterpieces in the genre, and it is tempting to think that, having heard Mozart's concertos, Haydn decided that he could not possibly compete in this area. After all, as one of the great pianists of the era, Mozart's concertos became the occasion for a breathtaking display of invention and virtuosity. Haydn on the other hand did not as a rule perform his concertos, leaving room in the limelight to other musicians. The concertos on the present disc thus , in a manner of speaking, show us an alternative route for the piano concerto as a genre. Here they are interpreted by Ronald Brautigam, who with his 11-volume series of Haydn's complete works for solo keyboard has proven himself one of todays most gengenial interpreters of the composer's music. He is ably backed by one of the most interesting period-instrument bands at the moment, Concerto Copenhagen, directed by Lars Ulrik Mortensen.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music