Starring The Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, Solveig Kringelborn, Swedish Radio Choir.

Making their first appearance on BIS, Margaret Batjer and the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra (LACO) cross great distances in both time and space in this programme of concertante violin works. The disc opens with a Violin Concerto by the American composer Pierre Jalbert (b. 1967), whose music has been described as ‘rich in instrumental color and harmonically engaging’. Composed in 2017, the 26-minute concerto was a commission from the orchestra and here makes its first recorded appearance. The next work takes us to 18th-century Germany, where Johann Sebastian Bach had been busy studying the concertos of his Italian colleagues, and especially Vivaldi. His Concerto in A minor is thought to have been composed around 1730, at a time when Bach had freed himself from his models, producing works richer in both texture and sentiment. For the second half of the programme we return to our own time, travelling northwards to the Baltic countries, as Bach is followed by one of his great admirers in modern music, the Estonian composer Arvo Part (b. 1935). Margaret Batjer and the orchestra offer us their performance of what is probably Part’s most famous piece, Fratres from 1977. Originally written for chamber ensemble ‘without fixed instrumentation’, it soon became a modern classic and exists in numerous versions. The one heard here, for violin, string orchestra and percussion, was made by the composer in 1992. The closing Lonely Angel is by Part’s slightly younger colleague Peteris Vasks (b. 1946) from Latvia. Reworked from a movement for string quartet, the piece was inspired by a particular image: ‘I saw an angel, flying over the world; the angel looks at the world’s condition with grieving eyes, but an almost imperceptible, loving touch of the angel’s wings brings comfort…’

Classical Music

Formed in 2020, Wigmore Soloists is a chamber ensemble made up of a roster of outstanding musicians, led by Isabelle van Keulen and Michael Collins. An associate ensemble of the iconic London concert venue Wigmore Hall, it is the first one to be given the honor of using the name. The core line-up of string quintet, wind quintet and piano makes it possible to perform a wide and varied repertoire, and for its first recording the ensemble has chosen one of the larger works in the chamber music literature, in terms of duration as well as the forces involved. Franz Schubert modelled his Octet in F major on Beethoven’s Septet, a work which during the 24 years since its composition had proven extremely popular in Vienna. Schubert therefore copied Beethoven’s instrumentation (with the addition of a second violin) as well as his general plan of six movements. The Octet is however almost half as long again as the Septet, perhaps a consequence of Schubert wanting to ‘pave the way towards a grand symphony’ by writing it. Like Beethoven – and Mozart in his serenades – Schubert strikes a perfect balance between entertainment and sophistication, while also including plenty of opportunities for the players – especially the first violinist and clarinetist – to show off their virtuosity.

It was when Delphine Constantin-Reznik took up the post as harpist in the Norrköping Symphony Orchestra that she first came across the name Anton Pratté, well-known in his lifetime as a harpist and composer. Her research into the music and activities of this forgotten master has now resulted in the very first recording of any of his numerous compositions for the harp. Anton Edvard Pratté was born in Bohemia into a family that ran a touring puppet theatre. He came to Sweden as an adolescent, and soon made a name for himself, performing music of his own as well as by others.

Pratté gave concerts across Sweden, as well as in Norway and Finland, and in the 1840s even went on an extensive tour of Europe, performing in Berlin (where members of the Prussian royal family were in the audience), Vienna and Prague. But much of his life was spent in the area around Norrköping where he taught the daughters of wealthy landowners and for a while conducted the local orchestra society – the forerunner of the Norrköping Symphony Orchestra heard in the Grand Concert which opens the present disc. This is followed by two works for solo harp, both making use of traditional tunes from Sweden and Norway respectively.

It is primarily for his large-scale orchestral works that Sebastian Fagerlund (b.?1972) has attracted attention, but throughout his career he has also composed chamber music. In his production, orchestral and chamber music have a fruitful relationship in which a chamber work may contain the germ of ideas that then appear in a new form in an orchestral score. One example of this is Fuel – a set of six miniatures from 2010 – which grows out of the same basic material as Ignite, a work for large orchestra completed in the same year, although they differ greatly in scale and in character. Common to the two genres is also Fagerlund’s firm grasp of the capabilities of the instruments he is writing for. Some of Finland’s leading instrumentalists join forces on the present album, with French horn player Hervé Joulain making an appearance in Transient Light, which is dedicated to him. The six works were composed between 2007 and 2013 and are all for different constellations and of varying dimensions – from a brief duo in one movement (Scherzic) to a quartet in six (Verso l’interno). But there are also common features that recur throughout the program; for example machine-like textures against which material with longer lines is reflected, and influences from other genres such as traditional music from the Middle East or rock. These do not appear as direct stylistic loans, however, but rather as elements embedded in Fagerlund’s own music.

Throughout his career, Ilya Gringolts has devoted himself to performing contemporary music as well as the great concert repertoire, while also developing a keen interest in historical performance practice. The focus of his latest recital disc is therefore quite logical: music of our own time and its inspiration: Johann Sebastian Bach. The album title is Ciaccona and besides Bach’s iconic composition, Gringolts plays a further two chaconnes – or three if one counts the Ciacconina which opens Heinz Holliger’s brief cycle, composed for Isabelle Faust in 2014. The Spanish composer Roberto Gerhard wrote his Chaconne using his own take on twelve-tone technique. In his introduction to the album, Gringolts describes its twelve movements as including ‘everything from chorale to ländler … probably the most Viennese music ever written by a Catalan.’ The album closes with Kontrapartita by the French composer Brice Pauset, ‘a kind of through-the-looking-glass Bach partita’ to quote Gringolts once again. Pauset composed his work in 2008 – seven movements, each written with a particular movement from Bach’s partitas for solo violin in mind. For this work (and the interwoven movements by Bach) Gringolts has chosen to use a violin with a baroque setup, finding that the instrument seemed to respond to the ‘historically informed avant-garde’ of the writing.

REVIEW:

The disc ends fittingly, I think, with the great Chaconne from the second Partita, preceded by the movement it inspired. There are eighty-five minutes of music on this disc. Gringolts is an exciting violinist, his technique flawless, his sound sumptuous and this is a CD that I think every serious violinist and lover of the instrument will want to own.

– Classical Music Daily

This disc offers the world première recording of Viatore ('The Wanderer', 2001), which may be described as a representation in sound of 'becoming' or 'passing' - a spiritual journey in familiar Vasks territory. All the works were recorded in the presence of the composer by the Swedish Chamber Orchestra - an ensemble whose previous BIS recordings have all been highly acclaimed. The orchestra's performances on one of their latest offerings - H.K. Gruber's Manhattan Broadcasts BIS-CD-1341) - were termed "masterful" (Gramophone), "a triumph" (BBC Music Magazine), and "superb" (The Times). Under the direction of the orchestra's leader Katarina Andreasson, who also performs the solo part of the violin concerto, the playing on the present disc is no less committed.

The extant concertos by Johann Sebastian Bach for one harpsichord and strings were all composed before 1738, which makes them some of the first, if not the first keyboard concertos – a genre destined to become one of the most popular within classical music. In all likelihood Bach wrote them for his own use (or that of his talented sons) – probably to be performed with Leipzig’s Collegium Musicum of which he had taken over as director in 1729. The fresh and exuberant character one finds in the concertos seems to reflect how much Bach enjoyed the opportunity to engage with his fellow musicians. But much of the music itself was in fact not new – despite how idiomatic they may sound, many of Bach’s harpsichord concertos are almost certainly transcriptions of earlier works written for other instruments. Some of these original works are no longer extant, but it is nevertheless possible to trace the ancestry of BWV 1052 and the outer movements of BWV 1056 to lost violin concertos, while BWV 1053 is a reworking of three cantata movements which in turn probably hailed from a lost organ concerto.

A similar case is BWV 1059, which is known to us in a nine-bar fragment in Bach’s original score. But an earlier version of the piece – a concerto for organ – has survived in the form of three movements of Cantata No. 35, Geist und Seele wird verwirret, and these have served as basis for Masato Suzuki's reconstruction of the work included on the present album. It is also Masato Suzuki who performs the solo parts, while directing his colleagues in Bach Collegium Japan.

REVIEWS:

The idea of a dynasty is present in the history of the Bach family, so it is not inappropriate to mention the same idea in connection with the father-and-son combination of Masato and Masaaki Suzuki in terms of that remarkable enterprise, Bach Collegium Japan. Masato features here as keyboard virtuoso, directing the performances from the harpsichord. His remarkable virtuosity is beautifully projected by BIS’s excellent SACD recording. Every note is clear in a wonderfully ambient acoustic.

This generously compiled combination of masterworks, with its added bonus of a new rarity, will bring great enjoyment to the listener, in terms of both the excellent sound and the sparkling performances.

-- MusicWeb International

The Greek soprano Fanie Antonelou and German pianist Kerstin Mörk here join forces in an exciting project, entitled ‘Affinities’. In a carefully constructed sequence of 23 songs, they explore the kinship between Greek and German art songs – a varied one, filtered through friendships, family connections and teacher-pupil relationships. All the composers represented on the album studied and/or worked in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in the three great German-speaking musical centres – Vienna, Munich and Berlin – and include figures both well known (Schoenberg, Weill, Skalkottas and Mitropoulos) and less familiar (Emilios Riadis, Dimitrios Lialios, Ludwig Thuille). With twelve composers and even more poets involved, the subject matter of the individual songs is diverse indeed – from a café scene in Berlin (Der Abschiedsbrief by Kurt Weill in cabaret mode) to a hymn to Aphrodite, set by Dimitri Mitropoulos in a highly expressionistic free atonal idiom inspired by Schoenberg.

Classical Music

Ottorino Respighi was a highly prolific twentieth century Italian composer. Despite composing during the same time as his more dissonant contemporaries, Respighi had a deep interest in music of the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries, which led his compositions to be based on the tonalities of these time periods. Respighi is most remembered for his Roman trilogy (Fountains of Rome, Pines of Rome, and Roman Festivals) which was composed between 1916 and 1928. All of his orchestral works, however, display the same level of masterful composition which made him famous. This album focuses on his work Sinfonia drammatica. The epic score takes around an hour to perform, and is scored for a large-scale orchestra. Both of these are reasons that the work has been performed and recorded much less than Respighi’s other works. In addition to the Sinfonia drammatica, this release includes the more widely known Belfagor Overture. This work, composed in 1924, reutilizes material from an opera of the same name which had been poorly received in 1923.

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.

Import Hybrid-SACD pressing.

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

By Bach's time, the Reformation had fundamentally altered the traditional forms of church service, and in German churches Latin had yielded to the country's own language. To a limited extent, however, the Latin mass text did remain in use in the Protestant church – in particular the Kyrie and Gloria sections, which were often set to music as an entity in their own right. Albeit incomplete, this form of mass setting was termed ‘Missa’, a name it retained even in Bach’s day. Nowadays, to differentiate them from complete settings, these pieces are often referred to as 'Lutheran Masses'. Bach's famous Mass in B minor, later expanded into a complete mass, began its existence as a work of this type, and four other examples from Bach's pen have survived. They all make extensive use of earlier compositions, and the two masses on the present disc consist entirely of so-called parodies: reworkings of arias and choruses from cantatas, in which Bach demonstrates his skill in adapting existing music for new uses. Performed by Bach Collegium Japan – who under the direction of Masaaki Suzuki have already recorded the original settings as part of their acclaimed cantata series – the Missae BWV 235 and 236 are here combined with four separate settings of the Sanctus, another section of the traditional mass that in Bach's time could be heard in the churches of Leipzig during important feast days. Two of these are original compositions, whereas BWV 241, and possibly also 240, is an arrangement of a setting by another composer. The 'Kyrie – Christe' BWV Anh. 26 is also an example of how Bach in his task of providing the music for church services used music by other composers. In this case he turned to a movement from a mass by his contemporary Francesco Durante from Naples, but adapted it for his own purposes by composing a new setting – a duet for soprano and alto – of the Christe eleison section, labelling it 'Christe di Bach' in his autograph.

Review:

Suzuki's solo 'A team' are out in force and generally deliver excellent and communicative quasi-arias...The choruses are perhaps a touch less well-heeled and defined than usual, in both consistency and balance, but Collegium Musicum Japan compellingly advocate both Masses as well as the festive Kyrie and Sanctus settings.

– Gramophone

n Christian symbolism, the rose is closely associated with the Mystery of the Nativity, and therefore with both Jesus Christ and Mary. The idea of the perfect flower, springing forth from a thorny stem, has - like the Nativity itself - captured the imagination of poets and musicians throughout the ages and from all stations of life. With this original and wide-ranging Christmas collection, Grete Pedersen - the artistic director of the Norwegian Soloists' Choir - has created what might be compared to a rosary, combining 12th-century hymns by Hildegard of Bingen with a carol by the Danish 20th-century composer Per Nørgård, as well as traditional Christmas psalms, in many cases sung to Norwegian folk tunes following age-old usages. Grete Pedersen and the choir have reached a wide international audience through four previous discs on BIS, ranging from collections of Grieg, or of Brahms and Schubert, to the folk-inspired White Night and, most recently, Refractions: the unexpected combination of three 20th-century giants - Berg, Webern and Messiaen - with their Norwegian contemporary Fartein Valen. On the present disc, the team is once again joined by the singer Berit Opheim and the violinist Gjermund Larsen - both with a background in folk music - as well as by Rolf Lislevand, internationally acclaimed lutenist, and the highly respected jazz bassist Bjørn Kjellemyr.

Classical Music

Classical Music

In just two years, between 1784 and 1786, Mozart composed no less than twelve piano concertos – a staggering number. Often described as one of the most light-hearted and buoyant among these is the Concerto in F major K 459, sometimes called ‘the second Coronation Concerto’. The nickname comes from the fact that Mozart would later choose to perform it, along with the ‘Coronation Concerto’ in D major, during the festivities surrounding the coronation of Emperor Leopold II in Frankfurt-am-Main in 1790. Its companion work on this fourth disc in Ronald Brautigam’s survey hails from the same period: begun in 1784, the Concerto in A major K 488 was completed in March 1786, at the same time as Mozart was putting the finishing touches to his opera Le nozze di Figaro. It is one of only three piano concertos in which Mozart uses clarinets in the orchestra, resulting in a very particular sound world, especially in the magical slow movement. Mozart clearly held the work in high regard, and described it as one of his most select compositions ‘which I keep just for myself and an élite circle of music lovers’, and later audiences have agreed with him. Ronald Brautigam has been described as ‘an absolutely instinctive Mozartian… with melodic playing of consummate beauty’ (International Record Review), and he is once again supported by the period orchestra Die Kölner Akademie conducted by Michael Alexander Willens in a partnership which more than one reviewer has termed ‘ideal’.

You might subtitle this disc “The Dark Dvorák” since it consists of three of his most turbulent (but also greatest) works. First there’s Othello: guy kills girl. Next, The Wood Dove: girl kills guy, then offs herself. Finally, there’s the tragic Seventh Symphony: everyone kills everyone, but metaphorically, of course. I actually love the concept. Usually, Dvorák gets treated as a sort of “Brahms lite”, a cute Bohemian purveyor of alluring, pastoral tunes full of charm and ethnic high spirits. Even the frequent use of minor keys can be explained by his frequent recourse to Czech folksongs, dances, and other equally adorable (and non-threatening) accoutrements of his native land.

Claus Peter Flor is obviously having none of it. Not only has he chosen three of Dvorák’s most impassioned works, he plays them so as to make damn sure that we feel the same way about them that he does. First the really good news: both Othello and The Wood Dove are stunning. Indeed, this is hands down the most exciting performance of the former yet committed to disc, bar none. Hearing this performance, you will be stunned that this thrilling, dramatic work remains one of the most neglected of all Dvorák’s late masterpieces. The Wood Dove is every bit as brilliant: gaunt and grim in the funeral march that brackets the lilting wedding scene, and crushing in the subsequent suicide music. One curiosity: Flor prefers the kazoo-like sound of muted trumpets to Dvorák’s requested instruments offstage just before the party sequence—an odd choice.

The performance of the Seventh Symphony will be more controversial. It has magnificent moments—indeed whole movements. The Andante receives as lovingly shaped a reading as any on disc, but there are moments when Flor’s eagerness to underline the music’s darkness leads him dangerously close to mannerism. I’m thinking of the first movement’s opening (and coda), treated more as a slow introduction than as the plunge into the main tempo that Dvorák wrote. As a postlude, the tempo makes more sense. The scherzo, too, is swift and urgent, but somehow just slightly lacking in rhythmic bite, while the finale, played for all that it’s worth, does not benefit from Flor’s decision near the start to hold back the tempo at the ends of phrases to underscore just how grim the music is supposed to be.

Once the movement gets going, though, Flor builds in excitement right through to an incredibly powerful coda. He adds horns to the final chorale, as so many performances do, but Neumann’s trumpets avoid that slightly vulgar portamento that always seems to accompany the horn option, and their brighter tone is arguably more apt. And why, finally, does Flor have the timpani drop out on the final chord? That’s just weird. Is he afraid that a more emphatic ending might persuade us that the work isn’t as despairing as he believes it to be?

It may be that the engineering exacerbates some of these impressions. Don’t get me wrong: the basic sound is very good in and of itself, but in this music, especially, we need to hear more from the woodwinds, and a sharper rhythmic bite from the brass and timpani. These are subtle points, but listeners familiar with this music will notice immediately the difference between these and other, more brightly engineered versions. And make no mistake: a brighter mean sonority can be captured without compromising the music’s expressive intensity, its “dark” energy.

So to summarize: the commitment and vision on evidence here are extremely impressive. Even the symphony, for all my various reservations, receives a performance like no other, magnificent in parts, impressive overall, and one that collectors will surely want to hear. Flor has the orchestra playing extremely well, and unlike so many time-beaters taking up podium space these days he has both good ideas and the talent to execute them. He takes risks. Whether or not they all pay off will be a matter of opinion, but there’s no question that when they do the result is the most gripping Dvorák to come along in many years.

-- David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

Beginning his first (never completed) symphony in 1951 and working on his 17th when he died in 1980, Allan Pettersson during three decades concerned himself almost exclusively with the symphonic genre – and this at a time when many composers considered the symphony (and indeed the symphony orchestra) to be hopelessly old-fashioned. Pettersson, however, was deeply committed to the genre, something which in Sweden during the early 1960s was so unusual that he was called ‘the last symphonist’. He completed his Symphony No.13 in August 1976, as a commission by the Bergen Festival for its 25th anniversary the following year. The complexity and large scale of the work was such that the first performance was postponed for another year, however – and in fact the work had never been performed in Sweden until Christian Lindberg and the Norrköping Symphony Orchestra played it in concert in 2014. As the majority of Pettersson’s symphonies it is in one movement, harbouring the great contrasts between an atonal and a traditional, tonal idiom that characterize the composer’s musical language. A noteworthy feature in the present work is the presence of many brief allusions to other composers – from Beethoven (with the theme to the Fifth Symphony) to D-S-C-H, the musical cryptogram of Shostakovich’s name. Over the course of four previous discs, Christian Lindberg and the Norrköping Symphony Orchestra have demonstrated a true affinity with Pettersson’s music, an affinity that deepens with each new recording.

Review:

The Norrköping Symphony Orchestra articulate the music's 'soaring melodies and grippingly searing polyphony' [convincingly] and Lindberg shapes the structure compellingly. Lindberg seems to feel keenly the work's intense range of mood - the ferocity and depth of its emotion, the consolation that this engenders - and communicates this to his orchestra in masterly fashion.

– Gramophone

MOZART WILLENS (COND.); BRAUTIGAM (FORTEPIANO); DIE KOLNER AKADEMIE PIANO CONCERTOS- PIANO CONCERTO NO. 24 IN C MINOR, K 491; PIANO CONCERTO NO. 25 IN C MAJOR, K 503

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

Classical Music

Classical Music