Style, sympathy, and technical aplomb... it's doubtful that the Cavatina's sophisticated and artistic playing could be surpassed...There’s more potential in the union of flute and guitar than is commonly realized, and this CD provides an incentive to investigate additional repertoire. Cavatina has inspired and commissioned new music of this type and I, for one, look forward to hearing it as soon as possible. Warmly recommended. - Fanfare

"The Bridge disc features the expert New York chamber group Speculum Musicae, and has an attractive rarity as opener, the Three Poems of Robert Frost, composed in 1942 when Carter was still an obedient, highly effective adherent of the 'open-air' Coplandesque style, but orchestrated with exuberant resourcefulness as recently as 1980...The account of Syringa (1978), the most complex and hermetic of the vocal works, with its superimposition of the soprano's Robert Ashbery poem on a collection of ancient Greek texts sung by the bass, may strike listeners (and especially attentive score-readers) as more careful than inspired. But as it proceeds it conveys the spirit of the work's intricate yet impassioned enquiry into the sources and spaces of creativity very well. Momentum is maintained, and the instrumental detail is clear and precise.

A Mirror on which to Dwell (1976) is less ambitious, though these settings of six poems by Elizabeth Bishop are marvellously refined in sonority the vocal line ranging from lingering lyricism to subtly-patterned declamation. Christine Schadeberg characterizes the texts alertly, especially the tricky syntax of ''O Breath''...

It is indeed gratifying to find record companies so prompt in acknowledging the importance of the Carter phenomenon, and with performances that, if not always ideal in every respect, are for the most part worthy of this extraordinary music."

-- Arnold Whittall, Gramophone [2/1990]

Elliott Carter’s two major string/piano duos – the Cello Sonata of 1948 and the 1974 Duo for violin and piano – here balance six of the short works for one, two or three players, tributes and playful arabesques, which have so unexpectedly thronged his latest decade of creativity. The result is an invaluable, kaleidoscopic introduction to one of the liveliest instrumental minds of our time. Fred Sherry and Charles Wuorinen fluently dispatch the four-movement Cello Sonata, the earliest and apparently most ‘traditional’ work in the collection. Yet this is where Carter first refined his ideas of metrical modulation, conflict and cross-purpose between players: mainstream Americana turning Cubist and many-dimensional. It’s also eloquent, even gabby, and volatile in the sense of forever aspiring to flight. In the single-movement, mosaic-like Duo the torrential discourse continues without any reference to traditional tonality or structure, but Rolf Schulte and Martin Goldray here turn in a far more amiable and beguiling version of this ragged, mercurial work than did Robert Mann and Christopher Oldfather two years ago on Sony. The short pieces, from the guitar study Changes (1983) to last year’s Gra for clarinet in homage to Lutoslawski, aren’t exactly miniatures, but relaxed fantasies of tone colour and technique: ‘tennis matches for the imagination’ is the striking image in David Schiff’s liner notes. Amiably and insistently they test the virtuosity of the individual instrumentalists, and the members of the Group for Contemporary Music rise joyfully to their challenges in nicely realistic, not over-bright sound.

-- Calum MacDonald, BBC Music Magazine

The second disc contains a recording of Cage reading his lecture "Composition in Retrospect."

CAFÉ MUSIC • Tr Solisti • BRIDGE 9296 (64:42)


PIAZZOLLA Las estaciones porteñas (arr. Bragato/Bachmann). Le grand tango (arr. Kutnowski). SCHOENFIELD Café Music. TURINA Piano Trio No. 2. GERSHWIN (arr. Bachmann) Porgy and Bess: It Ain’t Necessarily So


This is a party disc, and it ain’t necessarily a tea party—not the way these musicians launch themselves into the sultry Latin world of Piazzolla, or recreate the bustling ragtime band of Schoenfield. The trio is made up of violinist Maria Bachmann, cellist Alexis Pia Gerlach, and pianist Jon Klibonoff. Anyone who knows their other recordings (Bachmann and Klibonoff’s Ravel Sonata for starters, or Moravec’s Tempest Fantasy , written for the trio plus clarinet) will know how completely these players go for it. This release of high-class light music is no exception to their rule. (Incidentally, Robert Maxham contributed a fascinating interview with Bachmann in Fanfare 30:6.)


The two works by Piazzolla are quite well known by now, admittedly in various differing arrangements. Both were originally scored for the composer’s mixed ensemble. While the absence of the bandoneón (Piazzolla’s instrument) is to be regretted, the combination of piano, violin, and cello suits his music in terms of punchy rhythmic attack and (in this case) an expressive use of portamento . Special effects are also employed: in The Seasons , some of the original percussion part is rapped out on the cello, and at the opening of the “Fall” movement Bachmann provides an eerie wind-like sound—or rather her violin does—produced by playing on the wrong side of the bridge with hard pressure.


A gentler approach is needed for Turina, chief among a number of composers who brought music of the Basque region of Spain into the salon. Turina’s chamber works with piano are possibly the most congenial part of his output. In three brief movements, his Second Piano Trio of 1926 combines the spirit of Spanish dance with the textures of Debussy and Ravel. Again, Trio Solisti faces the music with a sure sense of the style required.


The three-movement suite, Café Music, by Detroit-born Paul Schoenfield, has been recorded at least twice before. In my experience, Schoenfield’s jazzy and occasionally sentimental klezmer-inflected music divides listeners. Personally, I succumb to it completely. Café Music offers a soulful bluesy lament flanked by boisterous ragtime that brings to mind the soundtracks of animated “jazz” cartoons of the 1930s. A virtuosic performance by James Ehnes, Edward Arron, and pianist Andrew Russo exists on an all-Schoenfield CD (reviewed in 31:5), but this new one is its equal. Bachmann evinces an even more personal identification with the material than does the sweet-sounding Ehnes, and Klibonoff is only a little less dazzling than Russo.


In the final track, Bachmann offers her own version of the Heifetz arrangement of “It Ain’t Necessarily So,” newly rearranging the piece to include cello. At times here, I thought the bluesy slides from both stringed instruments crossed the fine line from idiomatic into queasy. Despite that, the disc is smartly integrated as a program, and easily greater than the sum of its parts. Sound is close and detailed. In short: a good time that should be had by all.


FANFARE: Phillip Scott

Classical Music

The New Orford Quartet approach these chamber monuments with justifiable reverance while providing ample space for them to sing, brood, and dance. Led with penetrating vibrancy by violinist Jonathan Crow, the performance of Op. 51/1 combines tonal beauty with seamless interaction. In the Op. 51/2, they are keenly alert to the contrapuntal conversations as they are to the matters of timbral warmth and focus.

– Gramophone

This disc includes a brief interview (3'51") with George Szell, placed between the two chamber works.

The music of Biber is widely assumed to have gone out of vogue with violinists before the middle of the eighteenth century. Biber's reputation, however, lived. In 1789 Charles Burney wrote in his "General History of Music", "of all the violin players of the last century, Biber seems to have been the best, and his solos are the most difficult and most fanciful of any music I have seen of the same period." Biber's Harmonia artificioso-ariosa (1696) is a collection in seven parts (partias), each employing a different tuning. Of the six partias heard on this recording (Nos. 1-6), five are for two violins and bass; and one is for violin, viola and bass. The “artifice” Biber refers to is a procedure now known as scordatura (mistuning). Each of the pieces uses a different tuning in the upper parts. Only the Partia VI is written for violins in normal tuning. The performances on this disc are by the superb baroque ensemble, REBEL. Hailed by the New York Times as "sophisticated and beguiling" and praised by the Los Angeles Times for their " astonishingly vital music-making", the virtuosic New York based ensemble (pronounced re-BEL) has earned an impressive international reputation through their tours and recordings. Rebel can also be heard performing recorder concertos and sonatas of Vivaldi on their highly praised CD, "Shades of Red".

In celebration of Leonard Bernstein’s centenary (1918-2018), this recording features the composer’s complete solo piano works, plus, as special bonus, the witty and charming “Bridal Suite” for piano four-hands, heard here in its first complete recording. In addition to the better known “Anniversaries”, “Sonata for the Piano”, and “Touches”, Andrew Cooperstock has included Leonard Bernstein’s very first published work, the highly effective transcription of Aaron Copland’s orchestral tone poem “El Salón México”, together with the “Four Sabras”, “Non troppo presto”, and “Music for the Dance, No. II”. The recording encompasses music from the composer's teenage years through his last piano composition, “Touches”, and includes music Bernstein dedicated to friends and colleagues including Lukas Foss, Sergei Koussevitzky, William Schuman, William Kapell, and Stephen Sondheim. The distinguished pianist Andrew Cooperstock is Professor of Piano at the University of Colorado Boulder.

-----

REVIEWS:

Superbly played by Andrew Cooperstock and with Bridge’s usual fine production standards this is a very fine collection of rarely heard works by one of the 20th century’s key musical figures.

– MusicWeb International

Bridal Suite (1960) was written to mark the marriage of the lyricist Adolph Green, one of his collaborators on On the Town and Wonderful Town, and the actress Phyllis Newman. The opening Prelude is a hoot, blending Ave Maria with ‘Just in time’ and Bach’s Prelude in C major. The collection is scored for piano four hands, which Cooperstock, brilliant and sensitive throughout the set, manages deftly.

– Gramophone

Pianists: Cynthia Raim, Lydia Artymiw, Lee Luvisi. Clarinet: Harold Wright.

Classical Music

BEETHOVEN Piano Sonatas: No. 11 in B?, op. 22; No. 13 in E?, op. 27/1; No. 31 in A?, op. 110 • Garrick Ohlsson (pn) • BRIDGE 9266

(62:21)


BEETHOVEN Piano Sonatas: No. 29 in B?, op. 106, “Hammerklavier”; No. 16 in G, op. 31/1 • Garrick Ohlsson (pn) • BRIDGE 9262 (69:15)


A recital of Beethoven piano sonatas that includes early and late music, as is the case with both of these new releases from Garrick Ohlsson’s series of the complete sonatas, should make the listener aware of the degree to which Beethoven evolved as an artist, but also those elements that marked him as a singular genius throughout his career. Some pianists do this by underlining elements in the earlier pieces that point to the unique, even eccentric nature of the composer; highlighting an odd harmony or an exuberant melodic structure, as examples.


Ohlsson takes a different tack. Although Beethoven was well into his so-called first period by the time of the Sonatas Nos. 11, 13, and 16, they are still classically conceived constructions, more so in mold of his teacher Haydn than Mozart, especially in his frequent use of humor. Ohlsson does not downplay the brilliance of this music, or even its boldness, but hears it as a continuation of a tradition rather than anything radical. Beethoven’s music, from the outset of his career, is filled with surprises and wonderful dramatic twists, but in this playing, they are always neatly within the context of the overall logic of the music. It is an equally good prescription for playing Mozart and Haydn.


The Piano Sonata No. 31 is full of extraordinary imagination, but is familiar enough to our ears to be considered the most accessible of the late sonatas, especially because of its magnificent neobaroque counterpoint writing. And the “Hammerklavier” is simply sui generis as a work of art. So somehow tying this music to earlier Beethoven isn’t really necessary, and Ohlsson plays them for their own sake. As has been noted in previous reviews, his tempos are on the broad side, which, in the case of both these late sonatas accentuates the grandiloquence of the music. This approach makes for an especially rewarding rendition of No. 31, which can sound rushed in less-mature hands.


The tempo question gets a bit sticky in the case of the “Hammerklavier.” Ohlsson makes no attempt whatever to play the first movement at the composer’s supposed metronome marking, but few do. Many have questioned the veracity of the marking, which seems ridiculously fast. A few pianists, notably Peter Serkin, can bring it off, with exhilarating results, but it is hard to deny that the more measured tempo of Ohlsson ultimately gives us a more musical and sensible interpretation. But for the full measure of what Ohlsson contributes to an immense and storied recorded legacy, one needs only to turn to his superb rendition of the hulking slow movement to this work. It is one challenge to gather up the furious notes of the outer movements of this behemoth, but in some ways even more daunting to hold together the oceanic center, which Ohlsson does with supreme grace and intelligence. It reflects everything else he plays. I can only echo previous Fanfare commentary from Boyd Pomeroy and Jerry Dubins to say that despite the multitude of excellent choices already available in this music, great artistry like this is always welcome.


FANFARE: Peter Burwasser

BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE: 'BBC Music Choice' (September 2008) for Garrick Ohlsson: Beethoven Sonatas, Vol. 5 (BRIDGE 9250). This disc includes three of Beethoven's most popular sonatas- 'Pathetique, Op. 13; 'Moonlight', Op. 27, No. 2; and 'Waldstein', Op. 53

2008 Grammy Winner! - "Best Instrumental Soloist Performance"

The god of inspiration sprints hand in hand with Garrick Ohlsson as the pianist nears completion of his Beethoven sonata cycle. The present disc opens with one of Op. 2 No. 3's finest recorded performances. Ohlsson's lean, propulsive first movement incorporates distinctly contrasted themes and subtle tempo modifications. Everything hangs together so well that when Ohlsson leans on the accelerator for the movement's final octave outburst the effect is conclusive rather than vulgar.

Ohlsson also plays Op. 14 No. 1 beautifully, bringing a refreshingly terse quality to the Allegretto by underlining its sudden dynamic shifts. The pianist's genial, expansive account of Op. 14 No. 2's opening movement evokes memories of Claudio Arrau's likeminded mid-1960s recording, yet Ohlsson stresses different details, such as the left hand's chromatic broken octaves. Ohlsson's crisp yet full-bodied shaping of the second movement's detached chords brings out the music's Haydn-like wit, to say nothing of the finale's aptly timed, elegant fingerwork.

Excellent sound and notes.

-- Jed Distler, ClassicsToday.com

Just Released -
Beethoven: Piano Sonatas Vol 5 / Garrick Ohlsson
The newest volume in Garrick Ohlsson's impressive and illuminating cycle.