Classical Music

The Schemellis songbook is an all-too-rarely recorded collection of works from the Baroque's greatest composer. Most of the pieces, made by a melody and a figured bass, have been traditionally ascribed to Bach. On this disc - part of Ton Koopman's series - the star is 15-year-old boy soprano Constantine Emanuel.

The artists write: "We were just 18 and 19 years old when we first ventured to play Mozart's Sonata for two pianos. We'd only been playing together for a year at the time. Schubert's Fantasy in F followed shortly afterwards. Now, 17 years on, we're finally brave enough to record these two iconic works. Over recent years, these two works have taken on the role of critical teachers, sources of inspiration and motivation for us to keep on developing, as a duo certainly, but also and mainly as individual musicians. We've been challenged by legendary recordings made by the likes of Radu Lupu & Murray Perahia, Josef & Rosina Lhevinne, and father and son Neuhaus to discover our own sound, both in this music and elsewhere. From the beginning seventeen years ago, we have been forced to face up to the fact that a good duo doesn't just happen when you put two good pianists together, and certainly not in Mozart or Schubert. Every note that's slightly misplaced, every chord that's not properly balanced can tarnish the performance. And every phrase when you don't breathe together. We gradually became more and more convinced that piano duo players have to be soloists, chamber musicians and an orchestra at the same time. As a duo, our aim is to have the freedom and virtuosity of a soloist, the ear and connectivity of a chamber musician and the tonal palette and nuanced subtlety of a symphony orchestra."

Classical Music

Philippe Elan writes: "Following my symphonic chanson album with Het Residentie Orkest, this new recording "Quelques mots d'amour" takes me back to the roots of my singing, accompanied by Reyer Zwart with whom i have been collaborating for the last 19 years. After our initial collaboration in 2002, I started to ask him, not to say, push him, to accompany me in a tour de chant where he would play guitar and piano, according to the nature of each song and to what we thought was the best color of accompaniment for it. This collaboration grew further through the years to reach a level which fulfills me as a vocalist, as a chansonnier, in a way that when I sing accompanied by Reyer, i feel as free as a bird to express myself musically and to phrase my text without any constraint. The last year and a half has been difficult for most singers and musicians... Yet, amidst this painful time period, Reyer and I were able to give a few concerts, some of them being fortunately recorded. We added a couple of studio recordings to our selection of concert performances and I am very pleased that Challenge Records International is releasing this collection of songs. "Quelques mots d'amour," the title track of the album, written by Michel Berger, is my sincere message to all of you dear listeners... I just want to sing for you these few words of love, today and tomorrow, in between all the vicissitudes of our lives."

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Although the standard classical string octet repertoire includes giants such as Mendelssohn and Shostakovich - both of whom were advocates of the rich sound of this combination of instruments - forgotten compositions for string octet are still waiting to be rediscovered in the music archives. One such work is the rarely performed and, until now, previously unrecorded double quartet Novoselye (House-warming) by the Russian violinist and composer Nikolay Afanasyev (1821-1898). While hardly anyone knows his name today, that in no way detracts from the quality of his music. The double quartet Novoselye was premiered in St Petersburg in 1886. It is clearly a work by a talented composer with a vast knowledge of string instruments, one who is not averse to a polyphonic style. The composition is especially rich in musical innovation with an abundance of tuneful, folk-like melodies and a hint of melancholy, which lends an unmistakable Russianness to the slow movement. Add to this the vibrant Scherzo, and you have a composition that is festive, high-spirited and virtuosic, as well as melancholic and musically challenging. The octet was intended as a birthday present for the violinist and conductor Eduard Rietz (1802-1832), who certainly must have prized the virtuoso first violin part. All eight instruments are on an equal footing and work together in perfect harmony. Indeed, were a listener not to know that the work was scored for string octet, he or she might well think of a symphony orchestra. Mendelssohn himself called attention to this sound effect upon publishing this early work in 1832, remarking that all instruments were to play 'in the style of a symphony', taking into account all dynamic contrasts. The composer's nuanced, delicate compositional style and his Romantic, lyrical and tuneful melodies make the octet one of the most frequently performed works of it's kind.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Arnold Schoenberg's rarely recorded orchestration of the Piano Quartet in G minor (1861) demonstrates that Johannes Brahms was in no way the traditionalist that his adherents made him out to be. Brahms increasingly became a model for Schoenberg during his later years. In 1931, in a letter to the American music critic Alfred Frankenstein, Schoenberg wrote that he had learned a lot from Brahms: "plasticity of design," "systematics of compositional structure," and "economy and yet: richness". In his essay "Brahms the Progressive" (1933/47), Schoenberg termed his model the protagonist of a forward-looking aesthetic, which despite it's orientation by Classical and Romantic principles paved the way for the "developing variation" of New Music. Schoenberg wrote: "It is the purpose of this essay to prove that Brahms, the classicist, the academician, was a great innovator in the realm of musical language, that, in fact, he was a great progressive." At the time this was a thoroughly provocative thesis since until then Brahms had been regarded as a classicist and a "conservative" upholder of the tradition. Schoenberg substantiated his view of Brahms with his orchestration of the Piano Quartet in G minor Op. 25 in 1937. Schoenberg's arrangement for full orchestra is both late romantic and modern. "The one weeps; the other laughs", this is how Brahms characterized his two overtures composed in the spa town of Bad Ischl in 1880. The first referred to the Tragic Overture; the second was the Academic Festival Overture heard on this CD. The composer wrote it for the bestowal of his honorary doctorate at the University of Breslau, where he conducted the premiere of the work on 4 January 1881. A potpourri in classical formal guise, the music brings together student songs that were familiar at the time.

Classical Music