DEBUSSY Estampes. Pour le piano. Suite bergamasques: Clair de lune. Préludes: Feux d’artifice. Des pas sur la neige; La puerta del vino; Ce qu’a vu le vent d’ouest. Etudes: pour les sonorities opposes. Berceuse héroique. Morceau de concours. Ballade. Pièce sans titre. Elégie • Roberta Rust (pn) • CENTAUR 2867 (71:18)


This is my first encounter with the playing of Roberta Rust, a pianist who has studied with John Perry and Ivan Davis, among others. She now has an active international career and her previous recordings include piano works by Haydn, Villa-Lobos, and Prokofiev. On this disc she proves herself a first-rate Debussy player, someone who listens acutely to each sound she makes, who characterizes the music in a personal way while at the same time honoring Debussy’s very detailed notation, and who has an arsenal of touches—and a beautifully recorded piano—at her disposal. The disc provides a fine cross section of Debussy piano output, from the early, ubiquitous “Clair de lune” (1890) to his great triptych Estampes (1903) and his final piano pieces, including the sad little Elegie (1915). For me, Estampes is the highlight, with the numerous fade-ins and fade-outs of ideas under superb control in all three movements: “Pagodes” and “Soirée dans Grenade” come across as wonderfully evocative improvisations—and not even a Richter has always been so successful at this; and “Jardins sous la pluie” is truly a tempest in a théière. In Pour le piano, the Prelude and Toccata are never dry—and the latter concludes with tremendous reserves of speed and color. Imagination and virtuosity are equally in the service of “Feux d’artifice” and “Ce qu’a vu le vent d’ouest” (technically the two hardest of Debussy’s 24 Préludes ), and the hypnotic mood of “Des pas sur la neige” (the slowest and easiest of them) is captured perfectly. This is quite simply one of the finest Debussy discs I have heard in recent memory, and I hope that it won’t be long before Rust gives a complete set of the Préludes or the two sets of Images. Very highly recommended.


FANFARE: Charles Timbrell

Catherine Kautsky is professor of music and chair of keyboard studies at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin, and boasts an enviable multi-faceted resume of performing and writing credits. Nearly everything about her recording of Debussy’s 24 Preludes is just right, from the relaxed animation and subtle gradations of tone throughout Danseuses de Delphes to Feux d’artifice’s combination of neo-Lisztian bravura and dry wit. The flickering quality of Voiles’ double notes somehow lightens the static whole-note-scale harmony.

Kautsky ‘s intimately scaled reading of Les sons et les parfums tournent dans l’air du soir brings out the music’s implicit minuet feeling that we don’t hear in heavier interpretations. In Des pas sur la neige, Kautsky not only makes the soft left-hand triplets and expressive right-hand melody timbrally distinct, but her faster than usual tempo also conveys a lighter, more floating ambience than today’s solemn, bleaker norm. Kautsky also communicates the ragged dance qualities of La serenade interrompue, La danse de Puck, Minstrels, and General Lavine–eccentric to perfection, although La puerta del vino moves too fast and impatiently for its habañera rhythms to seduce.

While many pianists make mush out of Brouillards’ middle-register chords, Kautsky clarifies their inner rhythms, although her very capable handling of Book 2 No. 10’s alternating thirds yields to Steven Osborne’s brisker, more shimmering rendition. Her lovely account of La cathedral engloutie observes the unmarked yet implied tempo changes Debussy made in his 1913 Welte-Mignon piano roll recording (as do Osborne and Paul Jacobs, but not, interestingly enough, Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli). If the tumultuous Ce qu’a vu le vent d’ouest lacks Osborne’s super-precise dynamic calibration and surface sheen, the sensitively nuanced Ondine and La terrasse des audiences du clair de lune compensate. The engineering’s warm piano sonority and discreet resonance befits Kautsky’s intelligent and insightful Debussy artistry.

-- Jed Distler, ClassicsToday.com

Joseph-Marie-Clement Dall'Abaco (1710 - 1805) was an Italian/Flemish composer and cellist. Little is known about his life, but we do know that he travelled and performed as a cellist. He also wrote for cello, and these works clearly show his great mastery. Performing these pieces is Charles Rasmussen. Charlie Rasmussen enjoys an active career as both a modern and Baroque cellist and as a teacher at the Wisconsin Conservatory of Music. Mr. Rasmussen was previously on faculty at the Talent Education Suzuki School in Norwalk, CT where he taught private and group cello lessons, musicianship classes, and coached chamber ensembles. Mr. Rasmussen strives to help his students develop a lifelong passion for music and cello playing. Mr. Rasmussen holds a Masters of Music in Cello Performance from the University of North Carolina, Greensboro (UNCG), where he was a graduate assistant and studied with Dr. Alexander Ezerman. He also received a Post-Baccalaureate Certificate in Music Theory from UNCG. Before his studies at UNCG, Mr. Rasmussen graduated magna cum laude with a Bachelor of the Arts degree in music from Luther College where he studied with Dr. Eric Kutz. Mr. Rasmussen studied the Suzuki Method with Carol Tarr at the University of Denver, and he is trained to teach Books 1-10 through the Suzuki Association of the Americas.

Masek; Cortek; et al Marlen Vavrikova, oboe Czech and Moravian Oboe Music

This new release is the first volume in a projected cycle of the complete keyboard works of Francois Couperin, which will eventually comprise approximately twelve releases. For the entirety of this series, special attention is and will be given to the selection of appropriate historical harpsichords. French Baroque composer, organist, and harpsichordist Francois Couperin, he was known to many as Couperin le Grand (“Couperin the Great”) in order to distinguish him from other members of his musically talented family. Heavily influenced by the works of Corelli, he blends together Italian and French styles in much of his music. Harpsichordist Mark Kroll has long been a strong advocate of Couperin’s keyboard literature, and here shows his knowledge and expertise in this music’s interpretation.

This is Volume 4 in Centaur's integral edition of the Complete Pieces de Clavecin of Francois Couperin, performed on harpsichord by Mark Kroll. Mark Kroll has made a specialty of Couperin throughout his long and distinguished career. Mark Kroll has performed on four continents as a harpsichordist and fortepianist, in both solo recital and as a collaborative chamber musician. Highlights include an appearance as the official guest of the city of Barcelona; featured soloist in Germany’s Regensburg Early Music Festival, France’s Festival Ambronay and the Bordeaux Hummel Festival; two concerts for the Czech Republic’s Prague Spring Festival; and recitals at Lisbon’s Gulbenkian Foundation, Rome’s Conservatorio Santa Caecilia and Associazione Musicale Romana, Poland’s Dni Bachowski, and Slovenija’s Radovljica Festival. This recording was made on a 1974 William Dowd harpsichord at Brooks Concert Hall, College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, Massachusetts, and a 1769 Pascal Taskin harpsichord in the private instrument collection of Marlowe A. Sigal, Newton Centre, Massachusetts.

"An immensely gifted musician…who combines the technical mastery of a virtuoso with the musical sensitivity of a poet."

- The New York Times, (Review of David Northington's debut recital at Carnegie Recital Hall.)

Includes work(s) by Dinos Constantinides. Ensemble: Nuremberg Symphony Orchestra. Conductor: Stefanos Tsialis. Soloist: Theodore Kerkezos.

Classical Music

Carol of the Bells; Wexford Carol; A Holly and Ivy Calypso; Today in Bethlehem; Sleep Baby Jesus; The First Nowell; A la Nanita Nana (Lullaby); Riu, Riu, Chiu; Coventry Carol; In the Bleak Midwinter; A la Media Noche/De Tierra Lajana Venimos; The Bells of Christmas: A Medley of Two Modern Carols; Silent Night; Lo, How a Rose e'er Blooming; Christmas Cornucopia; the West Edge String Quartet

Includes nocturne(s) for piano by Frédéric Chopin. Soloist: Jean Alexis Smith.

CELLOBRATION • Amit Peled (vc); Eliza Ching (pn) • CENTAUR 3047 (59:30)


MENDELSSOHN On Wings of Song , op. 34/2. DAVIDOFF At the Fountain, op. 20/2. ECCLES Cello Sonata in g. GRANADOS Spanish Dance, op. 37/No. 5, “Andaluza” (“Playera”). FAURÉ Elégie. LIGETI Sonata for Solo Cello . BACH Pastorella in F. GLAZUNOV Chant du Ménéstrel. F. COUPERIN Pièces en Concert. CASALS Song of the Birds


Here is a collection of works for cello and piano both familiar and unfamiliar. Among the familiar are Fauré’s popular Élégie —albeit better known in its orchestral setting—transcribed for cello and piano, and Mendelssohn’s On Wings of Song , originally an actual song for voice and piano, that has been arranged and transcribed many times (Liszt and Heifetz both had a crack at it). In the unfamiliar category are a cello sonata by the virtually unknown Henry Eccles (1670–1742)—an English Baroque musician who ended up a member of Louis XIV’s King’s Band—and practically everything else on the disc, which though well known to cellists and often recorded, are not your usual fare on recital programs, except perhaps as encore pieces.


The Israeli-born Amit Peled plays a c.1689 cello by Andrea Guarneri, updated and fitted to modern standards. This, as far as I can tell, is only Peled’s second CD; the first, released in 2009 (Centaur 2988) was titled The Jewish Soul , and consisted of Jewish themed works, though not all necessarily by Jewish composers. For example, it included Bruch’s ubiquitous Kol Nidrei.


The “discovery” on this new disc is the Eccles sonata. Very little is known about this obscure violinist/composer, other than that he was born in England, was the elder brother to a more successful sibling John, whose success over his own he resented. Peeved by his perceived neglect, he moved to Paris, where he got himself hired on at the King’s court. What music he did write was either adapted from works by the Italian composer Giuseppe Valentini (1681–1753) or heavily influenced by them. In 1732, Eccles published 12 sonatas for gamba and figured bass; but according to the booklet note, the G-Minor Sonata given on the present CD is a transcription from an earlier set of violin sonatas. It takes the form of a typical sonata da chiesa (slow, fast, slow, fast), and considering its model, the piece, not surprisingly, is in an Italian style similar to what you would expect to hear from Vivaldi. What is perhaps surprising is that for a composer as virtually unknown as Eccles, there are five listed recordings of this sonata, going all the way back to a 1930 violin version played by Jacques Thibaud.


Latvian-born and Russian-trained, Carl (Karl) Davidoff (1838–89) was one of the great cello virtuosos of the 19th century. Tchaikovsky hailed Davidoff as “the tsar of cellists,” and the two men were friends and associates through their mutual connection to the St. Petersburg Conservatory. Davidoff’s At the Fountain is a popular encore piece that has had several recordings, including ones by Pieter Wispelwey, Miklós Perényi, and Jan Vogler. How would I describe the piece? A Flight of the Honeybee for cello: a nice little A-B-A form in which the bee leaves the hive and busily buzzes about to gather nectar and pollinate the petals (A), tarries momentarily to make love to a flower (B), and assisted by a tailwind returns home to the hive faster than it left (A).


From the 12 Spanish Dances by Enrique Granados, Peled plays a cello arrangement of the most popular number in the set, the No. 5. Titled Andaluza in the composer’s original version for piano, the piece has alternately come to be called Playera . It can be heard on some 140 recordings in arrangements for guitar, violin, voice, and in its original piano version, including by the composer himself. Nor does Peled have the field all to himself on cello. The piece has been recorded by Alban Gerhardt and Jamie Walton. One can easily appreciate the great popularity of the piece. Its guitar-like strumming accompaniment provides the underpinning for an alluring melody in the style of a seguidilla, a folksong or dance of Castillian origin. Bizet drew upon the seguidilla for his aria “Près des ramparts de Séville” in Carmen.


György Ligeti’s Sonata for Cello Solo has also received its fair share of recordings, one of which in particular, with Matt Haimovitz on Deutsche Grammophon, is especially noteworthy. Not unlike Paul Kletzki, the Jewish-Hungarian Ligeti (1923–2006) also suffered at the hands of both the Nazis and the Soviet Communists. The sonata heard here did not receive its first performance until 1983, but it’s an early work dating from the composer’s Hungarian period. In only two movements, its first was written in 1948, when Ligeti was 25; its second movement, five years later in 1953. The piece is clearly influenced by Bartók and Kodály. Glissando chords and pizzicato punctuate a melancholy “Dialogo,” marked adagio , followed by a moto perpetuo Capriccio, marked presto con slancio , a real test of the player’s mettle.


Bach’s F-Major Pastorella was originally composed as a four-movement suite for organ. Only its opening movement is heard here, but Bach recycled its concluding Gigue as the closing movement to the Brandenburg Concerto No. 3. According to the booklet note, this arrangement by Pablo Casals, in a handwritten score, was acquired by the Beaux Arts Trio’s cellist, Bernard Greenhouse, and from him passed to Peled.


Glazunov’s Chant du Ménéstrel (Troubadour’s Song) is almost as popular, if you count numbers of recordings, as the Granados Playera . Frankly, it’s little more than a sentimental salon piece that happens to have been made famous by Beatrice Harrison, the British cellist who had the distinction of being Elgar’s handpicked player to make the official HMV recording of the composer’s Cello Concerto under his direction.


When it comes to the Couperin Pièces en Concert , I wish I could cite its provenance definitively, but unfortunately, neither the CD’s track listing nor the booklet note identifies the specific set of suites whence it comes. Even more curiously, other recordings of the work, as well as other references to it, are equally silent on the subject. Finally, by searching for a combination of Couperin and Bazelaire, the work’s arranger, I hit upon a program note from the 2002 Tyalgum (New South Wales) Festival that asserts that Bazelaire’s arrangement is a mixed-movement compilation drawn from Couperin’s Nouveaux Concerts published in 1724.


If you check ArkivMusic’s listing for the Casals piece under its English title, Song of the Birds , you will find only this one recording by Peled. But there are a couple of others listed under its Spanish title, El Cant dels Ocells . I’d have expected more, including one by the renowned cellist himself. The piece is an arrangement of a traditional Catalan folk song, which embodies, in Peled’s words, “a spiritual communication.”


I’ve said nothing about the Mendelssohn or Fauré pieces because they’re so well known there’s nothing to say.


By all evidence, Amit Peled is a superb cellist. His technical prowess in the Davidoff and Ligeti vouchsafe that; and his tone, of pellucid purity, gleams with a glint of gold in the slow, lyrical numbers. As an introduction to the artistry of this fine up-and-coming young artist, this album showcases his versatility in a wide range of repertoire. But now that Peled has produced two CDs of what are essentially arrangements, encore pieces, and lighter fare—except for the Eccles and Ligeti sonatas—I look forward to hearing him in some of the more substantial repertoire for his instrument. Pianist Eliza Ching has a somewhat lesser role to play in some of these numbers, but she carries out her role as accompanist admirably. Recorded sound is excellent. Recommended for an hour’s worth of canapés to whet the appetite; now bring on the main course.


FANFARE: Jerry Dubins

Includes work(s) by Larry Austin. Soloists: F. Gerard Errante, Stephen Duke, Robert Black (doublebass), Michael Lowenstern, Jacqueline Martelle.

In 1915, Pablo Casals performed the exact repertoire on this album at the Peabody Institute of Music in Baltimore. Now, available again except this time, the Israeli cellist Amit Peled performs the works. Peled is a Professor at the University and takes great pride in not only his students but his renditions of Casals' recordings. The famous Casals Gofriller cello has been loaned to Peled for a period of at least several years and it is that cello listeners will hear on this recording

Finnish composer Jaakko Mantyjarvi (b. 1963) has written some of the finest choral music of the past 50 years. To date, this semi-professional musician, whose output consists mostly of choral works, has had over one hundred of them published. Founded in 2009, the chamber choir Cor Cantiamo’s mission objective is to perform and promote contemporary choral music and foster new composers for the art form. Eric A. Johnson D.M.A. is Cor Cantiamo’s Founding Artistic Director.