Medtner's legacy for solo piano is now widely esteemed alongside Rachmaninoff and other giants of the Russian 'silver age': melodists to their core, romantics at heart, yet rigorous craftsmen to their fingertips, who took their muse seriously and refined their inspiration to distil a peculiarly Russian spirit of melancholy in sound. However, around a third of Medtner's output, measured by opus numbers, was dedicated to voices, and this section of his music has received much less attention. Ekaterina Levental has dedicated herself to correcting this imbalance. The Uzbek-born, Dutch-resident mezzo-soprano has given all of Medtner's songs in concert with the pianist Frank Peters; together, they now embark on a recorded cycle. Medtner lacked nothing for self-sacrificing dedication to his art, and he chose to set the finest poets of his Russian homeland: Pushkin, Fet, Lermontov and others, and then Goethe and Eichendorff in German. Unlike Rachmaninoff he continued to write songs even after emigrating and settling in London. 'Medtner's musical vocabulary is very rich and expressive,' Levental and Peters explain in their own booklet note, which is printed together with English translations of the lyrics. 'Some songs immediately captivate you, others require a certain effort from the listener. Anyone who takes up the challenge, makes a discovery. Every song is a treasure and an intimate, spiritual confession from the composer to his listener.' In the category of 'immediate appeal' surely fall the two songs of Op.13: the ardent vocal response to Pushkin's Winter Evening perfectly underscored by the stormy piano part. No less unmistakably Russian in expression is the complementary Epitaph, triumphant even in it's mournfulness and like many other of the songs here not as stern as much of Medtner's piano music. Any listener looking for the composer's personal voice, behind the virtuoso keyboard fireworks, should start here.

The technical challenging of balancing a choir singing at full volume and a guitar, renowned for its gentle sound, has tended to discourage composers from pairing these resources. Handled sensitively, however, the combination yields a seductive sound-world, full of mystery and imagination, tending in this trio of works to evoke a reassuring feeling of familiarity: there is balance, a sense of form, awareness, and respect for a past that is renewed while it nourishes the present. At the peak of his maturity in 1959 and in a burst of creativity, Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco set to music seven poems by Federico García Lorca as a cycle, Romancero Gitano Op.152. The vocal writing is limpid, capturing the colours and contrasts of Lorca’s text, whether it is representing the placid flow of three rivers (Baladilla de los Tres Rios) with an incessant stream of semiquavers, or depicting Carmen’s dance through the streets of Seville with an elegant and slightly grotesque “Tempo di Seguidilla” (Baile). Everywhere, what shines through, to quote the composer, is a sense ‘of the Spanish lands: the parched Castile, the pale olive groves, the scent of the orange orchards in Andalusia and, along the coast, the sea which breaks at the shore with vibrations, almost, of a guitar.’ Receiving their first recordings here are Nulla Sors Longa Est by Nicola Jappelli (b.1975) and Materna by Nicola Campogrande (b.1969). Jappelli’s chosen text was written by the Roman philosopher Seneca, and addresses the concept of happiness, ending with a bitter reflection on human frailty. Campogrande’s piece has a more positive outlook, celebrating motherhood in a commission from the guitarist on this recording, Nicolò Spera, to mark the birth of his daughter. Campogrande has set four texts – also in Latin – by the contemporary poet Marco Vacchetti, who was in turn inspired by Renaissance-era nativities painted by Piero della Francesca, Caravaggio, Luini and Solari.

 

REVIEW:

 

Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s soulful settings of the poetry of Federico Garcia Lorca are the most affecting songs of the lot. Nicola Spera, Professor of classical guitar at the University of Colorado, is a fabulous guitarist, so with his flamenco-inspired playing, the orange trees and olive groves of Andalucia sound fragrant indeed.

 

– American Record Guide

All three composers gathered together on this unique compilation were active in Vienna in the last half of the 18th century, and all had mastered the craft of writing music for pleasure - as much in the playing as the listening - rather than devotion or edification. They were also expert string players - Dittersdorf and Vanhal formed the other two members of a famous 'composers' quartet' that included Joseph Haydn (younger brother to Michael) and Mozart - and so wrote these divertimentos from the inside, as it were. The Divertimenti included in the album were composed in the 1760s. They are all fairly brief, multi-movement pieces, easy on the ear and of fairly simple construction, with the first violin taking the lion's share of the melody. However, a little closer listening will reveal many small refinements in the secondary parts (viola e violone), which not only support the main part, but interact with it in lively musical conversation: an inter-instrumental dialogue which is particularly emphasized in this recording. Michael Haydn's C major Divertimento P.110 has the most conventional, four-movement structure, whereas Vanhal's symmetrical design encloses a lovely Adagio within a pair of minuets, a free-flowing first movement and a syncopated finale bristling with energy and high spirits. The six trios by Dittersdorf are all two-movement pieces, pairing a quick introduction with a gentler minuet. The common but unusual element to the scoring of all the music on this album is the absence of cello in the basso continuo role, which is written down the octave to be played by a violone or double bass. This often creates a gruff or humorous character - especially in Michael Haydn's Divertimento - but Vanhal in particular requires a musician of agility to zip up and down the instrument and writes for it as a deeper cello.

This double album is the third and last volume of Easy Studies for Guitar. The aim of the series has been to collect original works for the guitar by 20th- and 21st-century composers that fulfill didactic functions as well as being entertaining to play and listen to. Many of the studies here are receiving their first recordings, and the pieces by Biberian, Cavallone and Franco are so far unpublished. Music by the Belgian organist and composer Jean Absil (1893–1974) shows the influence of Wagner in the same way as his better-known compatriot Franck, and he absorbed the music of Milhaud and Schoenberg during his time in Paris. However, the Pièces Caractéristiques of 1964 capture a piece of sunshine no less than the folk- inspired Sei Canzoni Ebraiche by Cavallone or the Sette Aphorismi of Franco, even while certain movements exploit the more mysterious, nocturnal character of the guitar. The idea for Brèves de Pupitre sprang from Olivier Chassain’s work as a teacher, arising from his students’ basic technical needs or flaws – as well as his own. Cristiano Porqueddu is a distinguished editor and composer as well as performer, and he has selected an especially attractive set of Ten Studies for Guitar from among the many unpublished works by Gilbert Biberian, a British composer/guitarist born in 1944. Perhaps the set’s most intriguing rarity comes from the gifted Viennese composer Ferdinand Rebay, active in the early decades of the last century, and featured on a couple of previous Brilliant Classics albums; though himself a pianist rather a guitarist, he was encouraged to turn to the guitar by a fellow-professor and also by his guitar-playing niece; he eventually composed around 600 pieces for the instrument, including these Ten Little Songs without Words.

The Milanese composer Riccardo Malipiero was born in Milan in 1914 and took lessons with his uncle, Gian Francesco Malipiero in the late 30s. Malipiero disowned all that he wrote up until 1938 and saved only a small amount of that written before 1945: the surviving early pieces show the influence of his uncle’s teaching and the neo-classicism of Casella and Stravinsky. However, influenced by Luigi Dallapiccola, he came to embrace a personal, lyrical language of 12-tone composition which ultimately traces its roots back to the music of Berg. The four-movement Violin Sonata from 1956 makes an ideal introduction to Riccardo Malipiero’s music, with a nervous, waltz-like Scherzo and a frozen slow movement leading into the finale’s extensive violin cadenza, beautifully written for the instrument and played here by Rebecca Raimondi with burning conviction as well as ferocious accuracy (she included the sonata within her Master’s recital at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, from which she graduated in 2017). At her graduation recital she was accompanied by Alessandro Viale, and together with the other members of the Rest Ensemble they have given concerts of Malipiero’s music in both the UK and Italy, lending to these studio recordings the ring of intimacy and impassioned authenticity that is rare in recordings of unfamiliar modernist music. The Piano Trio of 1969 sets a tougher challenge to both performers and listeners, more angular and explosive, yet still imbued with a strain of wit and grace that runs through his output.

Played by specialized Early Music Groups, including L’Arte Dell’arco, Musica Amphion, Violini Capricciosi, Musica ad Rhenum, and many others.

The 17th and 18th centuries marked the era of Enlightenment, overseas exploration, unprecedented European economic expansion and a flourishing of art and culture, not to mention the birth of the greatest composers in history. From concertos to fantasias, suites to sonatas, Brilliant Classics presents a comprehensive and concise overview of this innovative and groundbreaking period in musical history, the Baroque era. The set opens with Venetian composer Tomaso Albinoni and his famous Concerti a5, in which he was the first Italian composer to use the oboe as the solo instrument in a concerto. He influenced J.S. Bach, who is fittingly the next composer to feature. Bach pioneered the Concerto Grosso form, with several soloists plus accompaniment, as opposed to just one. There is no better example of this than the famous Brandenburg Concertos, where solos are shared between a group of instruments and the various timbres of the different instruments make for varied and interesting pieces. In the first concerto, Bach employs horns, then mainly used as open-air hunting instruments, a twist on the refined concert piece performed in an elegant chamber setting. Bach also admired the work of Alessandro Marcello. Although Marcello’s work is lesser known, his music is notable for its forward-looking nature. Far from copying the styles and structures of his contemporaries, Marcello’s music is unique in its emotional impact; it’s dark and tempestuous, inflicted with a romantic streak. Passing via selected works by Purcell, Corelli and Telemann, Alessandro Stradella’s string sinfonias are found towards the end of the set. Stradella lived only to the age of 38 and yet he wrote over 300 works. He also found time to conduct a string of love affairs leading to his untimely demise at the hands of an assassin hired by a rival.

The Manzanares flows from the Sierra de Guadarrama and passes through Madrid, on its way to join the Jarama river, which in turn becomes swallowed by the mighty Tagus. On the banks of the Manzanares – ‘‘Los Ecos de Manzanaras’ – the young Madrileños of the 1700s would sunbathe and drive horses into the water. The river was as characteristic of the city’s life as the theatre, the nightlife, the guitar and the folía (Spanish dance). Under the leadership of Philip IV, Spain was a place of dreams and ambitions, with the New World just over the horizon. The king himself was a great lover of music and dance, and he cultivated a court of singers who could accompany themselves on the guitar. They were led for a period by Alvaro de los Rios (1580-1623) who attracted musicians from across the Iberian Peninsula and farther afield to enhance the cosmopolitan vibrancy of Philip’s court. The music included on this recording is representative of the transition from Renaissance polyphony to the new Baroque style: on one hand, there are madrigal-like pieces, with elaborate contrapuntal and melodic imitation, and on the other, completely homophonic compositions based on lively rhythms, dance patterns and poems of a popular nature, such as the seguidillas. The secular songs have been taken from a little-known collection, the Cancionero de la Sablonara composed for the Royal Court of Madrid during the first two decades of the 17th century. The collection features many names little known to us now, making the album full of exciting discoveries for lovers of the early Baroque. The songs are interspersed with contemporary instrumental pieces, played here by guitar, chittarone and Spanish double harp.

The Italian frottola is an important predecessor to the madrigal and is a secular piece made up of three to four voices with instrumental accompaniment. Translating as ‘a lie’ or ‘a childish deceit’, frottolas are often simple, with repetitive melodies and homophonic textures. The frottola was immensely popular among the upper classes, in stark contrast to the other highly ornate and complex music of the Renaissance. This set sheds light on the fascinating genre. Although little is known about the composers, their music survives thanks to Ottaviano Petrucci, a prominent Venetian publisher who printed 11 anthologies of frottolas during his lifetime. The frottola emerged at the same time as Renaissance humanism, and the diversity of the genre explores the human experience, with encounters between the sublime and homespun realities and the mingling of classes and cultures. In the musical texts we find a curious melting pot of themes, ranging from popular chansons of love and nature, to proverbs and classical antiquity. Tromboncino is probably the most famous composer of frottolas, and he wrote 176 in total. He led a life fraught with criminal activity and most infamously murdered his wife, Antonia, after accusing her of adultery. He was never convicted, however, because the acting regent of Mantua, Isabella d’Este (to whom his frottolas are dedicated), was his patron and very fond of him. As for his music, Su, su leva, alza leciglia has an upbeat nature and features a clear harmonic progression in the accompaniment, foreshadowing what would later develop into Baroque era functional harmony. Meanwhile Zephyro spira e il bel tempo rimena, based on Petrarca’s poem about the Greek god of the west wind, is programmatic in its yearning melody and the ceaseless drive in its contrapuntal instrumental interludes.

Any new album by Vladimir Ashkenazy is cause for celebration and attracts worldwide attention. First as a pianist and latterly as a conductor in a performing career of over six decades, Ashkenazy was recognized early on as having all the virtues of a great performer: musicianship, intellectual perception, technical perfection and musical instincts that never failed to make his fingers say something. He has an individual but expressive conducting technique, but he made the transition to the podium with complete success during the late 70s and early 80s, and his orchestral recordings are now as numerous as his piano albums, and the best of them as masterly. Although the repertoire for which he is best known focuses on Beethoven and the Romantic era, Ashkenazy has often performed music of our own time, especially by young composers. This project brings together Mauro Cardi (b.1955), Francesco Antonioni (b.1971) and Cristiano Serino (b.1971) with concertante works for viola and ensemble, which explore between them the centrality of the viola within a string section, and within the pitch range of an orchestra, and how the viola can both journey from that centre and rediscover it's natural home there. Serini's Per Tutta la Durata di un Arco is based on the duration and extension of a bow-stroke; in Northern Lights, after the Thaw, Antonioni paints a soundscape of light and ice and flowing water in which a clarinet duets with the viola; it is the viola's antique cousin, the viola d'amore, that takes the starring role in Cardi's La Follia, based on the chord progression which inspired countless 17th- and 18th-century composers such as Corelli, Tartini and Vivaldi.

An exact contemporary of Olivier Messiaen (1908-92), Franco Margola was a Brescian musician born and bred, growing up within the culture of the city’s historic industry of string-instrument making. He composed in all the major classical genres but his music has been little heard outside Italy: a situation which this engaging new collection of his chamber music should remedy. Though he composed operas and symphonies, Margola was most at home in the world of miniatures such as we find on this album. He had a ready fund of quirky, memorable melodies which spring from the neoclassical Italian idiom honed by composers of the 1920s and 30s such as Respighi and Casella. While still a student, he met Alfredo Casella, and showed him a recently composed song. Casella was impressed and asked for more, so Margola an instrumental trio which Casella proceeded to perform with his own ensemble throughout Italy and farther. These precociously mature student years are represented on this album by the Piccola Sonata for violin and piano, composed in 1929. There are three sections within its concise five-minute span, largely elegiac in character and flavored not only with late-Romantic harmonies but the unmistakable influence of Maurice Ravel. At the other end of his life, Margola began to write for mandolin as a professor at the conservatoire in Parma. He treats the instrument like a lute, as if transcribing Renaissance dances in the style of Respighi, but the harmonies remain richly Romantic. One particular highlight is the Romanza senza parole, a song without words with an airy theme that alternates between the piano and the mandolin in a lyrical mood that naturally brings Mendelssohn and the world of Lieder to mind. Made in the composer’s home city of Brescia, these recordings are led by the mandolin player Raffaelle lo Ragione, an experienced soloist in music of the Baroque and Romantic eras, with a previous Brilliant Classics album of neglected Neapolitan music to his credit, ‘Serenata Napoletana’.

 

REVIEW:

 

There is some wonderful music on this disc, especially the lovely Picccola Suonata, a work clearly wedded to the Romantic Era. Occasionally one can hear a harmonic reference that is a bit adventurous, but those moments are fleeting. This is music of great charm and eloquence, coupled with wonderful melodic invention. It is simple, without being simplistic. All of the performers on the disc serve the music well. Their performances are sympathetic and sincere in their expression. The recorded sound is very good.

 

– Fanfare

Having worked with the Berliner Philharmoniker, the Deutsche Oper and MusicAeterna, Sissi Makropoulou has established a reputation among the most talented harpists of her generation, as well as a composer working under the name Sissi Radu. On this, her debut solo album, she brings both talents together. As she explains in her engaging booklet notes, she has been familiar with The Seasons since childhood. They count among the composer’s most intimate works, as well as his most popular. ‘I hear tenderness, benevolence and loneliness – the core of romantic love – in each and every note.’ It is the harp that lends a unique color to some of Tchaikovsky’s most memorable passages such as the cadenzas in Swan Lake and The Nutcracker. In some cases – January, for example - Sissi Makropoulou has transposed the pieces to sit more easily on the harp and to exploit its sumptuous palette of enharmonics. And while the Shrovetide Fair of February presents considerable challenges to the harpist in terms of quicksilver articulation and lightning-fast chord changes, the results speak for themselves in terms of a happy marriage between music and instrument. March, for example, could have been written with the harp in mind. As an encore, Sissi Makropoulou plays her own arrangement of the second movement from Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony. The gentle mood of this Andantino ‘in the style of a song’ transfers itself sympathetically to the harp in her hands, and is informed by her experience of playing the composer’s music under one of its most inspirational modern conductors, Teodor Currentzis.

A new recording of Erik Bosgraaf, one of the most original, versatile and innovative recorder players of the moment, winner of the Borletti-Buitoni Trust. The dynamic range and emotional impact of his playing is phenomenal. The instrument in his hands is like an extension of the human voice, speaking and articulating the musical language.

Although Bach clearly felt at home composing for the recorder, featuring it in major works including the Brandenburg Concertos and several cantatas, he never composed a concerto for solo recorder – in fact, he only wrote original solo concertos for harpsichord and violin. However, an examination of Bach’s compositional practices reveals that it was customary during his era to adapt or reuse musical material in new compositions. Taking this into consideration, the creators of this recording have drawn on a range of sources to answer the question of how a solo recorder concerto by Bach might have sounded. The disc includes four full recorder concertos, based on material taken from existing harpsichord concertos and cantata movements, which Bach himself often reused or transcribed for different instrumentation. It closes with an organ prelude adapted for recorder and strings.

The recordings are accompanied by extensive booklet notes, which outline the sources used in the construction of this repertoire and reveal an interesting dimension of Bach’s compositional practice – his approach to reusing and adapting musical material. These recordings are brought to life by compelling performances from Erik Bosgraaf and Ensemble Cordevento, performed on a range of recorders and period instruments. Displaying an imaginative yet thorough approach to the repertoire, this disc is a fascinating examination of how Bach might have approached writing large-scale works for the recorder and is recommended to any listeners interested in his concertos.

Unique recorder adaptations of Bach’s concertos and cantata movements, performed on period instruments. Includes in-depth booklet notes.

REVIEWS:

Erik Bosgraaf's recorder-playing is fluent and lively in fast music, and his five colleagues (single strings and harpsichord) provide accompaniments that are lean, stylish and precise...Ensemble Cordevento's playing of fast music is joyful and accomplished.

-- Gramophone

Classical Music

Classical Music

In his booklet essay, Jean-François Dichamp explains that he experienced an epiphany with Goyescas: while Granados himself later reworked his piano cycle into an opera, first premiered to acclaim at the Metropolitan Opera House, just a couple of months before the composer’s untimely death by drowning, the pianist sees the piano cycle as a through-written dramatic work in its own right: an opera for piano. He plays it accordingly, with tremendous fire and awareness of the voices which may be heard in pieces such as ‘The Maiden and the Nightingale’. This is the lyric heart of a cycle which opens with the courtly insinuations of ‘Galant Compliments’ and soon progresses to a more ardent love duet, ‘Conversation at the Window’. Finally, as so often in Spanish music, death has the last word, and the cycle closes with the Serenade to a Ghost: comical yet chilling, unnerving and quintessentially Spanish. Between each section of the Goyescas, like intermezzi at the opera, Dichamp places a Baroque keyboard sonata, by Scarlatti and Soler. This is the music that would have accompanied aristocratic evenings for the nobles who were immortalized – not always in complimentary terms – by Goya. These are the paintings that changed the course of Granados’s career when he first saw them as a young man in the Prado museum in Madrid, and determined that one day he would pay homage to Goya’s muse in music. Jean-François Dichamp graduated from the Paris Conservatoire and became a pupil of Nikita Magaloff. His recordings have long attracted critical praise: ‘A pianist of great delicacy, subtle and elegant’ (Le Monde de la Musique); ‘his Chopin is at once thorough and profound’ (Diapason).