Stellar piano duo Quattro Mani's latest recording features John Adams's ebullient "Hallelujah Junction", and premiere recordings by Paul Moravec and Danish composer Bent Sørensen. Bonus tracks include rarities by Paul Creston and Paul Bowles. Fanfare’s Robert Carl writes that “Quattro Mani is one of the most enduring and leading keyboard duos anywhere.”

REVIEW:

John Adams’s Hallelujah Junction (1996) has had at least half a dozen recordings since the first, by Nicolas Hodges and Rolf Hind for Nonesuch. Pianists Steven Beck and Susan Grace of Quattro Mani take a very different tack from that recording, yet one that is equally compelling.

The miniatures that make up the remainder of the program by Creston, Bowles, Moravec, and Sørensen, are also effectively varied.

All in all, this is an enjoyable, wide-ranging program – I only wish there was more of it.

— Gramophone

Praised for her poetic and dramatic interpretation, New York-based Korean pianist Yoojung Kim is a versatile pianist, improviser, arranger, musical curator, educator, chamber musician and collaborator. Ms. Kim has appeared in recital and as soloist with orchestras throughout Europe, the United States, and Asia. Yoojung Kim is currently a member of the Artist Faculty in Piano Studies at NYU Steinhardt.

REVIEWS:

A lovely release of fine performances of this often intense but deeply satisfying music which deserves to be so much better known. Much of the music is on the grand scale but there are also more intimate movements including the first of the Deux poems, Op 32. Alongside further Poemes and Morceaus are Sonatas 2, 3 & 4. The CD is bookended by the adventurous Fantaisie in B minor and Vers la flamme.

-- Lark Reviews

Pianist Yoojung Kim gets highest marks for poetry and interpretive insights, qualities that are particularly critical when the subject is Russian pianist, composer, and musical symbolist Alexander Scriabin (1872–1915). She understands Scriabin to a degree that I am pleased to find remarkable among current pianists, and her feeling for color and expressiveness brings out the very best in an often-illusive composer.

-- Audio Video Club of Atlanta (Phil Muse)

À la manière presents virtuoso trombonist Mark Davidson in a program ranging from Ferdinand David's popular Trombone Concertino and Hindemith's dynamic trombone sonata to recent works by French composer Jean-Michel Defaye and American Luke Dahn. Davidson, the principal trombonist of the Utah Symphony orchestra, is joined by pianist Viktor Valkov, winner of the New Orleans International Piano Competition.

Bridge Records is pleased to issue the second volume of American pianist Kevin Gorman's survey of William Bland's 24 Piano Sonatas. Volume One of this series received high praise for both the originality of Bland's music, and Gorman's stunning performances. Volume 2 presents the premiere recordings of Sonata No. 9 in F Major "Spring", and Sonata No. 10 in e minor. Also included is William Bland's most frequently recorded composition, "Nouveau Rag". "The range of expressive tools is vast. It's grand music, with grand playing too from Gorman. It is fervently to be hoped that this series continues." -Colin Clarke, Fanfare

This new release presents two major works by the American composer, David Post, his Concertino á Cinque for clarinet and string quartet, and his Piano Quintet for piano and string quartet, both works heard in virtuosic performances by the Martinu Quartet, with clarinetist Ludmila Peterková and pianist Jan Dušek. Music Web International described Post's music as "immediately and obviously excellent”, and called him “a remarkable composer — not only inventive and technically capable but also a superb communicator.”

David Starobin's recordings of 19th century music on Viennese guitars have been hailed as path-breaking, including his recent Matiegka sonatas disc, (BRIDGE 9567). Donald Rosenberg, in Gramophone wrote: "These works unfold with a spectrum of creative possibility, especially in Starobin's eloquent hands. The guitarist brings refinement to every turn of phrase, whether the music is marching, dancing or crying. This recording is a swansong to savor." In honor of the 200th birth year of Giulio Regondi, Victorian composer, guitarist, and concertinist, Starobin's new Regondi release combines previously unissued recordings, alongside re-mastered performances from Starobin's back catalog. In addition to Regondi's most well known works (Nocturne Reverie, op. 19 and Introduction et Caprice, op. 23), Starobin includes four transcriptions from Regondi's concertina etudes, guitar etudes nos. 2 and 10, and Regondi's Fetes Villageoise, op. 20 and Air Varie, No. 1, op. 21.

American pianist Steven Beck’s new recording combines seven intriguing compositions by Charles Wuorinen with two acknowledged masterpieces by J.S. Bach: the Goldberg Variations, BWV 988; and Prelude and Fugue in A major, BWV 864, from the Well-Tempered Clavier, Book One. The unusual pairing of the two composers was chosen by Beck in recollection of a performance of the Goldbergs he gave at the home of Charles Wuorinen. Beck's choice of the Bach prelude and fugue also honors the last Bach piece Wuorinen practiced, during his final months. Steven Beck's virtuosity has been heard on numerous Bridge recordings, most recently, George Walker's Five Piano Sonatas (BRIDGE 9554).

REVIEWS:

Steven Beck, an excellent pianist and champion of contemporary music, was the committed soloist, deftly revealing the elegiac and frenetic moods of this rhythmically and harmonically complex work.

-- New York Times, on Beck's world premiere performance of The Haroun Piano Book

 

Tuba virtuoso Justin Benavidez is heard in three new tuba concertos, two recent solos, and stunning transcriptions of works by Gustav Mahler and Claude Debussy. Benavidez is currently Professor of Tuba and Euphonium at Florida State University and performs as principal tuba of the Tallahassee Symphony Orchestra. In the summer he is on the faculty at the Round Top Music Festival in Texas. With his playing noted for its "tremendous virtuosity and stylistic versatility," Benavidez has performed in venues throughout North America, Europe, and Asia. He has been featured numerous times on APM's Performance Today radio program. His debut solo album, Emblems, won Silver Medals in the Classical Album and Instrumental Solo Album categories of the Global Music Awards. The International Tuba Euphonium Association Journal described it as "an impressive and highly entertaining record" on which Benavidez "shreds with enthusiasm, exuberance, and precision."

George Frederick Bristow and William Henry Fry constituted the first generation of major, native-born composers of instrumental music in the United States. Both were fierce proponents for American music as composers, writers, and performers. Of particular note: Bristow's Symphony No. 4 the "Arcadian" is recorded here in its entirety for the first time. The 1967 recording made by Karl Krueger with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra made large cuts in the first and last movements, reducing the length of the piece by at least ten minutes.

REVIEW:

Muscular recordings of rare symphonic products of 19th century American orchestral romanticism. These are no dutifully played museum exhibits. The whole orchestra plays with golden age verve and astonishing elation.

— MusicWeb International

These historic performances, recorded by the New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation, are being released for the first time through an agreement between the NZBC and Bridge Records. Recorded during Sir William Waltonís seven concert New Zealand tour in 1964, this two disc set is being sold for the discounted price of one CD. The first CD opens with Sir William leading a magisterial God Save the Queen and segues into an impassioned reading of his masterful and romantic ìViolin Concerto.î Walton was reportedly ëoverjoyedí to be working again with the American violinist Berl Senofsky, who had previously performed the concerto under his baton with the New York Philharmonic and Chicago Symphony Orchestras. Waltonís sparkling Partita is given an exhilarating reading to bring the first CD to a rousing conclusion. Disc B begins with a major composition ñ Waltonís Symphony No. 1. As encores, Disc B concludes with two short string orchestra pieces from Waltonís historic Henry V film collaboration with Laurence Olivier.

VIVALDI Concertos, Op. 10/1-6 (RV 433-37). Suonata à 4 al Santo Sepolcro in E?. Concerto in g, RV 157 • Matthias Maute (rcr, fl); Jörg-Michael Schwarz (vn, ldr); Rebel • BRIDGE 9377 (56:40)


Here is an exciting and well-played disc of Vivaldi concertos (and a Sonata for strings and basso continuo) played not by a full orchestra but by the eight-piece Dutch group Rebel (pronounced “ruh-BELL,” after the French Baroque composer Jean-Féry Rebel). Although it is only an octet, Rebel performs these works in the “La Scintilla” brisk-orchestral style pioneered by that Italian orchestra. In Vivaldi this works very well, and since this is the music of that composer, this group’s style could also be called “modified Red Priest” as a model on the British ensemble of that name. I was utterly delighted by Matthias Maute’s recorder playing in the concerto, op. 10/3, nicknamed “The Goldfinch.” His technique is so good that he is able to create swirling lines that almost sound as if they are easy to play, which they most certainly are not. Moreover, Rebel’s strings—including the oft-tricky basso continuo—are not only consistently in tune but have a good tone. In this album, they play so much as an ensemble that one comes to hear them as a sort of chamber orchestra. I wondered how they might actually sound in music where they are called upon to perform in opposing motion, i.e., in works calling for an interplay of the instruments.


Only in the transverse flute concerto (op. 10/4) did I feel that Rebel’s strings had a bit too edgy a tone quality, incurred by their insistence on only using straight tone (an approach not supported by historical scholarship), and a very thin straight tone at that. The richness of the double bass and cello underneath the higher strings created a nice balance of sound, especially in the concerto for alto recorder (op. 10/5). Here the lower pitch brings the strings down by about a third from the other concertos, and the generally pastoral quality of this music is welcome relief from the composer’s generally upbeat style.


This disc, though having a long list of competitors in this material, is a worthy follow-up to this group’s previous disc, Shades of Red (Bridge 9173). Recorded in St. John’s Lutheran Church in Stamford, Connecticut, the sonics have just enough ambience around the instruments to give a nice sheen to them without overdoing it.


FANFARE: Lynn René Bayley

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...a tremendous new recording of Vivaldi's Opus 10 Flute Concertos played by brilliant young Belgian virtuoso Matthias Maute and one of the Big Apple's top original instrument crews, Rebel (accent on the second syllable). It's an extraordinary display of panache and virtuosity...and Rebel backs him with ferocious energy and risk-taking authenticity... The playing is out of the box with its ornaments, plastic phrasings and simulated spontaneity so that each new section, each new tune, each new dashing series of runs and trills, brings with it unexpected surprises and just enough time to catch your breath between movements.

-- Laurence Vittes, Huffington Post

DANIELPOUR A Child’s Reliquary 1. LUDWIG Concerto for Violin and Cello 1. HAGEN Masquerade 2 • 1 Sarah Hicks, 2 Troy Peters, cond; Jamie Laredo (vn); Sharon Robinson (vc); Vermont SO • BRIDGE 9354 (78:19)


Double concertos for violin and cello are not plentiful. There were examples before Brahms, but none on his level of achievement—from Vivaldi (three of them!), Johann Christian Bach, Leopold Hofmann, Josef Reicha, Carl Stamitz, Antonín Vranicky, and Donizetti. Following Brahms’s example, the next major figure to write such a concerto was Delius (1916). Other significant works for these soloists are Miklos Rózsa’s Sinfonia Concertante (1966) composed for Heifetz and Piatigorsky, and Robert Starer’s concerto of 1968. For some reason, there seems to have been a flurry of double concertos for violin and cello, or compositions featuring them as soloists, written in recent years: by Anatol Vieru (1980), Arvo Pärt (1981), Lou Harrison (1981, with the accompaniment of a Javanese gamelan ensemble), Ezra Laderman (1986), Carl Roskott (1989), Ellen Taffee Zwilich (1991), Stephen Paulus (1994), Ivan Tcherepnin (1995), Ned Rorem (1998), Lalo Schifrin (1999), Richard Danielpour (2006), Gordon Chin (2006), Daron Aric Hagen (2007), and David Ludwig (2008).


It would be hard to find a disc with a more integrated theme than this one. Beyond the obvious scoring of the three works for solo violin and cello with orchestra ( Triple Doubles is the title of the disc), they were all written for the soloists who play them here (a married couple at that), all were composed within the past few years, all are about the same length (just shy of half an hour), and all have programmatic implications relating to love, loss, and lament. Most importantly, I am pleased to say, they are all winners.


Richard Danielpour’s concerto, titled A Child’s Reliquary , is undoubtedly one of his finest works, comparable in its sustained interest and passionate intensity to his Cello Concerto and Anima Mundi . It is one of the most gorgeously orchestrated works I have encountered in the past quarter century. The music features long-arching melodic lines of poignant beauty and a harmonic language that is Danielpour’s own, yet born of deeply ingrained romantic impulses. Originally written for piano trio in 1999 and orchestrated in 2006, A Child’s Reliquary was inspired by the death of conductor Carl St. Clair’s son. Danielpour calls it “not unlike a musical shrine, with the outer first and third movements evoking public and private aspects of mourning, while the middle movement represents a flashback or snapshot of somewhat happier times.” That second-movement flashback is as joyful, snappy, and rollicking as anything Bernstein gave us.


I had never heard of composer David Ludwig before, but on the basis of his Double Concerto, I am going to be on the lookout for more of his music. Ludwig orchestrates with the skill and sophistication of a Ravel, and generates the power and thrills of a John Williams adventure film score. At times the barbaric splendor of Bloch’s Schelomo or Walton’s Belshazzar’s Feast comes to mind. The opening grabs you immediately—dark, ominous chords for the low brass set against throbbing drums. The soloists enter to manic figuration. Offsetting all this drama is a second subject of haunting beauty—yearning, infinitely lyrical, gently rocking. The central Adagio is deeply soulful, while the third movement is a madcap dance set to irregular rhythms. The music is thoroughly engaging on its own but takes on deeper layers of meaning when heard in tandem with the program notes. Each movement is about a different kind of love. Want a teaser? The first depicts “one of the most intense evenings in all mythology,” writes Ludwig, “the night before Odysseus leaves the goddess Calypso.” Ludwig depicts the scene in music supercharged with electrical energy and raw emotion.


Daron Aric Hagen’s Masquerade takes as its point of departure the commedia dell’arte . In the upbeat, jaunty opening movement, the soloists “take on the roles of musical lovers [whose] courtship is told by two harmonically and melodically elusive contrasting themes,” according to the composer’s notes. Bright sonorities and crystal-clear textures of neoclassical Stravinsky meet Korngoldian romanticism. The second movement is a “lament for lost love,” its sense of benumbed grief not unlike that of “The Entombment” from Hindemith’s Mathis der Maler symphony. The third movement brings achingly beautiful romanticism and lush orchestration to the fore as the former lovers “are reunited at the bedside of a mutual friend [and] they reconnect, no longer as lovers but as old friends and soul mates.” The finale brings a satisfying sense of cyclic closure as the two “relive the open-hearted joy in singing of their childhoods before parting forever.”


I listened to Masquerade before reading Hagen’s notes, and what I imagined previously was not far off from what the composer intended, so vividly drawn and cogently developed are his musical arguments. The soloists are almost always integrated into the orchestral fabric, which is kaleidoscopic in its variety and colors. This, like the other two works, is as much about the orchestra as it is about the soloists.


How long the Vermont Symphony Orchestra, now in its 77th year, has been fully professional I cannot say, but it has certainly reached that level on the basis of this, its first commercial recording. The orchestra has a full-bodied, unforced sound, captured in a vivid, embracing acoustic that perfectly balances brilliance and warmth. Percussion is prominent in all three scores, and they impress with the weight and depth of sound, not just the volume. Guest artists these days include a gallery of stars like Leon Fleisher, Lang Lang, André Watts, Midori, Tony Bennett, and Arlo Guthrie. Its home is in Burlington’s Flynn Center, but it plays all over the state (80 percent of its concerts are given elsewhere). For its 50th anniversary season in 1985–86, it performed in every one of the state’s 281 cities and towns.


Soloists Jamie Laredo and Sharon Robinson are obviously deeply committed to these works. They toss off the wildly virtuosic passages with raw energy and draw richly sustained tones from their instruments in the lyrical, elegiac passages. Robinson is at her absolute expressive peak in the slow movement of the Ludwig concerto, with sumptuous tone to boot. Violin-and-cello duos need look no further for another solo work besides the Brahms concerto to make their mark. The only real difficulty is in deciding which of these three magnificent works to choose. This release is definitely headed for my year-end Want List.


FANFARE: Robert Markow

Classical Music

Includes work(s) by Donald Francis Tovey. Soloists: Lydia Artymiw, Marcy Rosen.

MAMLOK 5 Capriccios 3,6. Stray Birds. 1,2,11 Fantasy-Variations. 12 Panta Rhei. 7,9,10 5 Bagatelles. 4,8,10 String Quartet No. 2 13. Confluences. 4,7,8,10 Kontraste 3,5 • 1 Phyllis Bryn-Julson (sop); 2 Harvey Sollberger (fl); 3 Heinz Holliger (ob); 4 Helge Harding (cl); 5 Urusla Holliger (hp); 6 Anton Kernjak, 7 Heather O’Donnell (pn); 8 Kirsten Harms, 9 Susanne Zapf (vn); 10 Cosima Gerhardt, 11 Fred Sherry, 12 Jakob Spahn (vc); 13 Sonar Qrt • BRIDGE 9360 (72:45 Text and Translation)


This is the third disc from Bridge devoted to the music of Ursula Mamlok; I reviewed the second in Fanfare 34:6. Like its predecessor, it offers an attractive and varied conspectus of the music of this impressive composer. Again the works cover a wide span of time, here from Stray Birds (1963, written when the composer was 40) to Kontraste (2010). It is gratifying to hear no falling-off of quality; indeed, the consistently high level of inspiration and technique is a hallmark of this disc (if I may be so presumptuous). Also again, we have many multimovement works, here totalling 33 tracks. Most of the movements are short (less than two minutes) and this concision can be hard to take in at first.


It is interesting that seven of the eight works here contain one movement that is far longer than any of the others in the work. In the case of the Five Capriccios for oboe and piano (1968) that open the disc, the final movement, even though it is barely four minutes, is still longer than the other four combined. Curiously, there is no sense in which the structure of any of the works on this disc feels unbalanced, nor does one feel that the shorter movements are breathless, or cut short. Mamlok judges the structures perfectly. In the first of the capriccios, one may think the trick is going to be a limited amount of thematic material in each movement, but the second and fourth capriccios are impassioned and intense with diving and swooping melodic lines. All four create powerful little statements (really, with Mamlok’s music every note has an active, individual purpose) that are then elegantly and coolly meditated upon in the relatively extended finale. In this work each movement is merely given a metronome marking; in later works Mamlok was given to somewhat poetic names for these longer movements. They are typically marked “Still, with utmost simplicity,” “Still, as if suspended,” though there are also a Larghetto , a Molto tranquillo , and so on. It is as if the brisk movements collect the necessary ingredients to enable the slow movement, usually at or toward the end of the work, to happen.


The Five Bagatelles for clarinet, violin, and cello (1988) shows Mamlok’s style becoming somewhat more diatonic. At the same time, every note seems carefully chosen and weighed; the music is written with care and precision, so that even as simple an idea as the insistent oscillating minor third that runs through and characterizes the second movement appears fresh yet inevitable. The odd-numbered pieces are especially good at capturing gaiety and humor while the long penultimate bagatelle, poignant and drawn out, is a satisfying contrast. In the Second String Quartet, from 1998, one can hear Mamlok’s style has subtly shifted again. If in the earlier works discussed the instruments were sharply characterized individuals, always playing against each other—against in the sense of differentiated from, not in an antagonistic way—in the quartet there is, in addition, more concerted music (in the first movement, for example) and even (in the second) momentary deference of an instrument to the others by adopting an accompanying role (I’m thinking of the slow pizzicatos). And, in the third and last movement, real drama and tension, with some sharp shifts of tempo and mood, all in an event-packed four minutes. I think “concision” is probably an unhelpful word for a lot of Mamlok’s music; “compression” would be better. And if I pass over the remaining works on the disc, it is only through lack of space.


The string quartet receives a fine, committed performance from the Sonar Quartet, three of whose members—Kirsten Harms, Susanne Zapf, and Cosima Gerhardt—play in three other works on the discs. Apart from the two Holliger pieces and Stray Birds , the recordings here are a coproduction with German Radio Köln, and they are as fine and meticulous as are the performances and the music itself. The Holliger performances, which open and close the disc, and which are a little cooler in presentation, come from Zürich. Stray Birds is a reissue of a recording previously on CRI. Bridge has done the composer proud. I found it a long disc to review—not, I hasten to add, because I disliked the music, but because it demands and deserves the same attention from the listener that the composer evidently gave it. One didn’t really want to listen to this CD all the way through, preferring to savor a couple of pieces at a time. And, it’s true, I found I needed time to get into the music. But it richly repays the effort and I certainly feel my somewhat neutral response to the earlier disc must be reviewed. This is clearly music that should be heard, which will appeal to the heart as much as the head, and which will enrich as well as entertain.


FANFARE: Jeremy Marchant