Classical Music

Flex Ensemble writes: "Our second album highlights three different genres of French music: A youthful work by Faure, written in the late romantic piano quartet tradition, character pieces by Ravel in a new arrangement for piano quartet and an eclectic mix of contemporary interpretations of French Chansons from Claude Le Jeune up to Georges Brassens. It all began with Faure... his C minor Piano Quartet is one of the earliest works that we learned as an ensemble. We immediately formed a personal connection to the quartet, perhaps one of Faure's most popular chamber music works. With it's emotional core, instrumental color, flowing but clear form, and the fascinating story behind it's creation, we embraced the challenge of exploring our sound and furthering our comprehension of French musical literature. Some years later we received an unexpected gift: The first movement of Ravel's Ma Mere l'Oye arranged for piano quartet by our friend Shintaro Sakabe. 'Try it,' he said, 'I think it might work'..."

Playing string quartet is a matter of the heart for all four members of the Noga Quartet. Avishai Chameides dreamed of playing viola in a string quartet ever since he was a child, but only after his musical career had taken him from conservatory in Bivatayim and Tel Aviv to Milan and Berlin did he finally meet the three French musicians Simon Roturier, Lauriane Vernhes, and Joan Bachs, with whom he founded the ensemble ten years ago. The Noga Quartet has won an impressive number of prizes: Premio Borciani in 2014, the Banff International String Quartet Competition in 2010 and 2013, the Osaka International Chamber Music Competition in 2011, and First Prize at the renowned Melbourne International Chamber Music Competition in 2015. Those successes are now the Noga Quartet's worldwide calling card. This is the debut album of the Noga Quartet, who follows the great tradition of chamber music that enthralls in performances of some of the greatest compositions in the repertoire.

Many Russian instrumental works of the 19th century were based on a programme, and the same holds true of Alexander Borodin's Second String Quartet. Here the underlying subject was the great love he felt for his wife Ekaterina. In 1877, the composer (who was also a doctor and a chemist) travelled to Heidelberg, where he had met her 16 years earlier. In letters he described to her how he was returning to the spots they had visited together, and added: "I would give anything to have you here at my side." Borodin finished writing the D Major Quartet on a date that was likewise symbolic: on August 10, 1881, their twentieth anniversary. Tchaikovsky managed to make ends meet by teaching, until his concert overture The Tempest (1873) drew widespread attention to his talent as a composer. In high spirits after that resounding success, Tchaikovsky euphorically wrote his Second String Quartet in the course of one night in January 1874. This work is even more elaborate and mature than the more well-known First String Quartet, with which he had attempted to supplement his meager professor's salary in 1871. He certainly had less trouble composing the Second Quartet: "I regard it as my best work; no other piece has poured forth from me so simply and easily. I wrote it almost in one sitting."

No one knows who first gave Beethoven's Trio Op. 11 the nickname Gassenhauer ("street song"). Neither do we know if the name was kindly intended or derogatory, chosen to boost sales or perhaps meant ironically (Heinrich Heine, for instance, would later satirize the omnipresence of a tune, sung everywhere, from Weber's opera chorus "Wir winden dir den Jungfernkranz").The catchy tune in Beethoven's final movement with variations was the vocal trio "Pria ch'io l'impegno" ("Before I go to work") from the comic operaL'Amor marinaro (The Sailor's Love), composed in 1797 by Joseph Weigl, who was a godchild of Haydn and had been pupil of Antonio Salieri. The aria enjoyed widespread, long-term popularity: more than 30 years after the opera's premi�re, Paganini still delighted Vienna audiences with variations on the same tune. Beethoven wrote his instrumental trio only half a year after the premi�re, probably fulfilling a commission by clarinetist Joseph B�hr, who is said to have asked for variations on that theme. When clarinetist Kilian Herold asked composer Johannes Sch�llhorn to arrange a Beethoven work for trio, Sch�llhorn thought of the Bagatelles Op.119. The idea was to add a final level to a three-level concept, Composing Beethoven, consisting in an original work by Beethoven, then one of Beethoven's arrangements of his own works, and, finally, a work by Beethoven arranged by a 21st-century composer. Sch�llhorn, already well-experienced in creative approaches to music of the past, deconstructs the original piano texture here in such a way that the resulting sound is not too lean, but opens up new areas of freedom for the pianist's new partners. He has conceived a light, airy trio texture brimming with discreet punch lines, interruptions, disruptions, unexpected connections, and cello sonorities ranging from sul tasto to col legno battuto, resulting in a fond, respectful homage to Beethoven.

Pianist Alexander Schimpf writes: “Mozart’s music poses special challenges to performers, and they have often been pointed out. As it would seem, certain fundamental tensions or contradictions inherent in music making are taken to extremes: many works by Mozart require that the instrumental process and conditions responsible for producing the sound should retreat into the background in favor of the musical result as we hear it. No expenditure of energy should be noted or heard. Fine, precise timing adjustments should never sound organized or deliberate. This music should ideally be presented as something that emerges entirely naturally, of its own accord. All the mental and technical effort in the background should be eliminated from the forefront of perception. Otherwise, the typically ‘floating’ Mozartian natural effect, that magical inner balance, cannot emerge… On this recording we make use of the version specifically authorized by Mozart: eschewing additional wind parts. Although the wind parts composed by Mozart for these concertos can indeed provide some color, they do not have anything essential or indispensable to add in terms of musical substance.”

Classical Music

Olena Kushpler writes: "Ever since my youth I have been fascinated by the music of Leo� Jan�cek: initially by his vocal works, particularly Jenufa, an opera with an unadulterated 'peasant' tone of such radical authenticity that it transforms itself into avant-garde music. I only discovered Jan�cek's piano repertoire at a later date, and immediately grasped his basic aesthetic principle: he wanted to write a music of truth. Virtuosity for virtuosity's sake had no place in his approach. I understood that the Bohemian master staked out a clear position in the great musical debate of the 1800s. It raged, on the one hand, between formal aesthetics, which viewed music as "sonically moving forms" (in the words of Vienna critic doyen Eduard Hanslick), and, on the other hand, the musical content aesthetics of Berlioz, Schumann, Wagner, and Bruckner, who devoted their efforts to transforming poetry and even philosophy into music. In Jan�cek, I also feel that he strives to imbue each phrase with profound expression, thereby creating music that reflects his feelings, hopes, and disappointments. Jan�cek's music draws it's energy from contrasts, which can be violent at times: each piece contains moments of brilliant luminosity as well as dramatic conflict. I view his piano cycle On An Overgrown Path as a clearly autobiographical work that reflects the experiences and moods he encountered in real life. The death of his daughter Olga led to profound despair, and the titles of individual pieces reflect how a father's thoughts revolved around the memories of his lost child. Our Evenings, A Blown-Away Leaf, and Words Fail are all individual pieces that foreshadow the tragedy to come. The cycle culminates in The Barn Owl Has Not Flown Away!, and we can note that folk belief viewed the barn owl as an ominous messenger of death."

Classical Music

Classical Music

The woodwind quintet is probably the only instrumental combination in chamber music that can claim to have been invented twice. The colorful combination of flute, oboe, clarinet, horn, and bassoon was quite popular in 18th-century noble courts, probably due to its refreshing sonority reminiscent of serenade music: composers felt inspired to write a great number of works. After the French Revolution and the corresponding decline of nobility, the wind quintet genre was only seldom featured in chamber music concerts held by the upper middle classes, and slowly sank into oblivion. The present release focuses on forgotten quintets by composers Richard Dubugnon, Gustav Holst, Paul Taffanel, and Jean Francaix. This is the Monet Quintett’s debut recording.

Named after the German poet Christian Morgenstern, the Franco-German "Morgenstern Trio" has selected a "triad" of Franco-Belgian composers for their new CD, centered around Ravel's Piano Trio in A Minor (1914). Violinist, pianist and teacher Kolja Lessing, a friend of the trio, drew their attention to the two relatively unknown works by Germaine Tailleferre (1892-1983) and Jacqueline Fontyn (born in 1930). For the three trio members, the main point of interest lay not so much in certain traits of style or character these three Franco-Belgian works might eventually share, nor in the fact that two of the composers are women. Instead, their goal was to explore aspects of historical context and mutual influence among composers. "Ravel wrote his trio in 1914, and Tailleferre the first version of her trio two years later. We thought it would be particularly worthwhile to find out how two French-speaking composers, both known to be admirers of Ravel, wrote in this genre.

For this release, pianist Dina Ugorskaja has recorded Book I and II of Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier in Cooperation with Bayerische Rundfunk in Munich. On interpreting these works, Dina writes: "One essential aspect in this project was the experience of returning to my early encounters with Bach's music: to try to remember what it had been like when I heard it for the first time. I tried to free myself from certain clich�s that had 'gotten stuck' in a series of interpretations. This was particularly difficult in Volume I, since I had often heard those pieces in the hands of outstanding performers." Dina Ugorskaja gave her debut performance when she was only seven years old in the Philharmonic Hall at Saint Petersburg. Not only is she an outstanding pianist, she is also a vocalist specializing in early music, and has written a number of chamber works. In September 2019 Dina Ugorskaja passed away in the age of 46, and left her recordings as a testament.

Severin von Eckardstein writes: "Prokofiev's music has always been close to my heart. In his childhood, the Russian composer loved to improvise on the piano, just as I did. His piano style was not as sprawling as, say, that of Rachmaninov, his contemporary. Yet it was all the more flexible, capable of instantly morphing to reflect current events - a style at times fresh and charged with energy, at others suddenly brooding. Prokofiev's music was stylistically multilayered from the onset, here and there juxtaposing melodies of a Classical bent with irony, self-deprecation, and driving rhythmic impulse. His skillful formal mastery and his unquenchable thirst for drama derived from opera, and always served him as a striking, never-ending source of inspiration. In it's impressive cohesion and vitality, Prokofiev's piano output elaborately intermingles a variety of surprising moments where a touch of human feeling sneaks up on the listener, thereby revealing striking sincerity and profound inner feeling. Far from consisting in episodes of post-Romantic bathos, these are moments of bleak, violent despair. Take, for example, the emotional outbreaks and the instances of sudden, hushed introversion in Prokofiev's Second Piano Concerto, written prior to the Russian Revolution."

Benjamin Moser, a rising star of the German scene, presents an unusual coupling of the last Sonatas of Beethoven and Schubert, both composed at a similar time, between 1822 and 1826.