Signum Records prsents a new recording by Charivari Agréable. This CD explores instrumental music for the cornett from 16th century Italy. The cornett's appeal, according to Girolamo Dall Casa (1584), lies in its tonal similarity to the human voice. As such it was an instrument particuarly suited to supporting a choir, or to double a voice. Charivari Agréable explore the pairing of the cornett (a wind instrument) and strings, in various configurations through the imaginative performance practice first suggested by Bernandino Borlasca in 1616, Venice. By the end of the 16th century, the solistic use of the cornett was approaching its demise, however, Charivari's response has been to expand its repertory by discovering rarely heard works for the cornett which have surfaced from libraries baring a later date. Another response has been to revel in the creative historical performance practice of pastiche - by adapting and arranging the music of Siecento, Italy, with adventure and innovation. This creative process has benefited from an intimate knowledge of the compositional practice of the period, while allowing the group to share the essence of their ensemble philosophy.

This could have been just another viol consort disc, but instead it manages to offer some unique and worthwhile perspectives on works by the Couperins--Louis, François, and Armand-Louis--and throws in some very attractive pieces by Jacques Duphly, Marin Marais, Louis-Antoine Dornel, Pierre Dumage, and Michel Corrette. Don't worry if most of these names aren't familiar: the music, some presented in its original form, the rest in artful arrangements by members of the early music ensemble Charivari Agréable ("pleasant tumult"), is eminently listenable and musically satisfying. The Couperins composed mostly for organ and harpsichord, and several of the works here are arranged or adapted from keyboard pieces, most notably François' "Les barricades mistérieuses", whose sensuous, flowing, suspension-laden lines prove well-suited to a solo theorbo. The bass viol also figures prominently--and unusually--in Corrette's Le Phénix, a concerto for four bass viols, and in François Couperin's La Sultane (for two bass viols), the composer's "attempt" to write a piece in the style of Corelli. Perhaps the most striking of all the works on this program are two by Duphly, "La Madin" and "La Casaubon". Originally for keyboard, the composer also included violin accompaniments; but in this version, harpsichordist Kah-Ming Ng has created settings for two solo treble viols and keyboard that are so thoroughly engaging that you'll likely want an immediate repeat performance.

The seven performers from the UK-based Charivari Agréable are experienced early music practitioners who have made their mark particularly in performances and recordings of French baroque music. They certainly have a knack for finding appropriate repertoire and, where useful or necessary, adapting it for their own style and instrumentation--a practice fully consistent with that of 17th and 18th century musicians. The sound is bright and resonant, wanting only a bit more warmth. This is an intelligently created and expertly played program that shouldn't be overlooked by fans of Baroque instrumental chamber music.

--David Vernier, ClassicsToday.com

Classical Music

After the success of the first fourteen reissues, which restored to the limelight some of the gems of the early music repertory in the catalogues of our labels, here are fourteen new titles to allow listeners to renew acquaintance with further treasures of the Renaissance and Baroque (and even a journey through time thanks to Raphaël Imbert’s album Bach Coltrane), performed by some of the leading interpreters of the genre; most of these discs won one or more awards on their first release. As with the first series, the artists have been asked to contribute to the booklets, in which, with a few years’ hindsight, they talk about their conception of the works and how they went about recording them. The photographers of the Magnum agency illustrate the covers of the series with their work; this time the common design element is the colour yellow.In addition to the 13 titles shown below, the album FIRENZE 161 by LE POEME HARMONIQUE, VINCENT DUMESTRE, will also be reissued.

Classical Music

Casella was, if it isn’t a contradiction in terms, a kind of neoclassical Romantic; of sufficient pianistic skill that he was admitted to the Paris Conservatoire at the age of 13 and thus perhaps escaped from the pressure to plough the furrow of operatic verismo already so well tilled by his countrymen. Instead he made his mark as a composer of abstract, instrumental music such as these two cello sonatas.

The First Sonata, like his other youthful compositions, reveals various stylistic influences: there are hints of Debussy, Mahler and Strauss, as well as traces of what Casella had learnt from Fauré. Even in these early works, however, the composer’s own personality comes across clearly in the search for what was new and hitherto unexplored ground. The Second Sonata reveals a change in compositional approach. In fact, it bears witness to his interest in a style that he defined as ‘baroque in its monumentality’. With its four movements it is more extensive, with dynamics based on deep contrasts between passages that are passionate and vigorous, and others in which the atmosphere is quietly intimate. The same rhythmic energy returns in the Tarantella, composed in 1929 along with the Notturno for violin and piano, transcribed by Luigi Silva in 1931, and ultimately reworked by Casella for cello and orchestra in 1934.

Andrea Favalessa and Maria Semeraro are young Italian musicians who regularly play together in a fruitful artistic partnership that has won them international recognition and numerous awards.

Other information:
- Recorded in 2013.
- The music of Alfredo Casella is experiencing a true revival: labels like Chandos and Naxos issue his large scale orchestral works to great critical and public acclaim, and this new recording presents his wonderful works for cello and piano.
- Casella’s musical language is often called “Neoclassical”: clear structures, open and strong melodic lines, vibrant and sharply edged rhythms, music of great vitality and power.
- The cello sonatas receive a passionate and convincing performance by two young Italians, Andrea Favalessa and Maria Semeraro, a duo already for many years, having won several international prizes at chamber music competitions.
- Booklet includes notes on the music by Maria Semeraro.

Includes trio(s) for strings by Franz Joseph Haydn. Ensemble: Rincontro. Soloists: Pablo Valetti, Petr Skalka, Patricia Gagnon.

BEETHOVEN Triple Concerto . Piano Trio in B?, op. 97, “Archduke” • Storioni Tr; Jan Willem de Vriend, cond; Netherlands SO • CHALLENGE 72579 (SACD: 71:15)


It’s a good thing I fell in love with this CD before I read about it. I deliberately left the notes for later, like a self-sequestered judge. This has been my year for the Triple Concerto , and I have reviewed CDs of it from The Knights and the Claremont Trio, not to mention rehearing a legendary one from Karajan and company. But nothing has gotten under my skin so much as this vital, beautifully balanced and executed performance. It represents one gloriously weighted, pulse-racing leap through the loudspeakers and has a remarkable ability to keep your attention. The recorded sound is natural and spacious, in the nice unforced way one so often encounters now with SACD.


Still, I burst out laughing, when I first read about the musicians. What a can of worms Roger Norrington and his movement have surely opened! Here we find a Barenreiter-influenced interpretation, but from an absolutely enormous orchestra. The instruments are modern, with steel strings, except for the brasses, which are early instruments. The Storioni Trio play on gut strings, but use considerable vibrato, and to confuse things further, feature the fortepiano.


In other words, this should be some sort of ghastly artistic hodgepodge. Somehow it isn’t. The fortepiano, once you get used to its damped sonority, works well. Still, at times it sounds like a harp made of tin cans. And when the finale’s cadenza hits a powerful series of low-octave trills, you might be convinced there were three harpsichords gone mad in a coat closet. But the gut strings, I find, sound a touch sweeter than steel ones. It would have been nice to hear the whole orchestra strung with them. And both performances are actually lovely, once you get past the “what the hell is that!?” of hearing the fortepiano. The notes, once I read them, were informative and fortunately not pretentious. Nothing is more annoying in music than a theory in love with itself!


FANFARE: Steven Kruger

Classical Music

The style of the Czech composer Bohuslav Martin? was enriched by numerous influences which are reflected in The Greek Passion; magnificent choirs contrast vividly with intimate chamber music, and folkloristic elements are placed next to complex, classically worked-out orchestral movements. A highly emotional mixture of oratorio and dramatic opera takes the listener into a world in which catastrophes abound. Lorenzo Fioroni, who has directed operas in Nuremberg, Augsburg and Heidelberg, has produced this dramatic contest against fear in Graz.

-----

REVIEW:

A burning issue still today, this opera about migrants arriving in a Greek community just preparing a passion play was written by Bohuslav Martinu in the 1950s. The music is colorful and ardent, and the recorded production from the Graz Opera deserves lots of praise.

– Pizzicato (Luxembourg)

Classical Music

MOZART: London Sketchbook

This recording of Ted Moore’s Gilgamesh & Enkidu is beautifully performed by the Enkidu String Quartet. Gilgamesh & Enkidu was funded by a grant awarded by Cedar Cultural Center and the Jerome Foundation in 2013. Ted Moore is an outstanding young composer, educator, and sound engineer, living and working in Minneapolis.

There is little doubt that Vienna at the turn of the 19th century was the musical capital of the world; a nexus for the string quartet composer, who could alternate composing for the leading virtuosos of the day with creating works that satisfied the then-increasing predilection for domestic music-making. Against this background, striving to find his own voice and using the medium as a path towards his early symphonies, was the young, prodigiously talented Franz Schubert. Similar to Beethoven, Schubert stood out in his refusal to target the general public with his writing, though there is much evidence to suggest that the majority of his early string quartets were written for and first performed by his family's own ensemble.

This recording brings together three such works written during Schubert's teenage years, beginning with the Overture in B B470 -- seemingly the only one of its kind for string quartet by the composer, and in which traits such as unison playing and fanfares reveal the focus of his orchestral experimentations at that time. Recorded for the first time using a playable version that was made from the original orchestral score, the work is followed by D112, also a work of different origin (originally a string trio). Schubert is still searching for the right response to the quartets of the Viennese masters here, though the finale's lower-voice writing and virtuosic interjections of the first violin do reveal an increasingly original conception of the quartet sound. More compact and less experimental is D353 -- something that is perhaps due to Schubert's contemporaneous studies with the Italian composer Antonio Salieri.

Continuing their complete survey of Schubert's string quartet output with this recording is the Diogenes Quartet, whose first offering (94315) was released to critical acclaim. The Munich-based group is considered one of the most successful string quartets of the younger generation; "Glorious string tone and impeccable ensemble are trademarks of this first-rate quartet" (MusicWeb International, June 2012). 

Other information:

- Recorded on 3--5 December 2012, Himmelfahrtskirche, München-Sendling.
- The second instalment of the recording of Schubert's complete string quartets by the German Diogenes Quartet presents two early, but by no means immature quartets: the B flat D112 and the E major D353, 'Hausmusik' for domestic use, written by a composer whose genius lent a ray of eternity to every note he wrote.
- A world premiere for the Overture D470, and orchestral piece in Italian style, arranged for string quartet by Schubert himself, and completed for this recording by musicologist Christian Starke.
- Contains notes on the music and a biography of the quartets.

VIVALDI: Flute Concertos (Famous)

Spanning 6 CDs and featuring many a consummate performance, this release celebrates the genius of Schubert through detailing all of his late chamber music. The compilation begins with the two piano trios, works of immense virtuosity whose fluent melodies betray the composer's affinity for song. Moving on to the quartets, we encounter expressive depth, melancholy and drama; while the Quartettsatz movement in C minor displays all the hallmarks of Schubert's late style - including dark lyricism and shifting chromaticism - D810 'Der Tod und das Mädchen' takes the idea of tragedy to a whole new level, it's second movement's melody lifted directly from the identically titled song. The String Quintet follows, a work written just two months before Schubert's death and which replaces the conventional second viola part with that of a cello. Last, but by no means least, the Octet; composed in 1826, this piece was conceived in a response to a commission by the renowned clarinetist Ferdinand Troyer. Recorded 1995-2009. In his last years (though he was only in his late twenties...) Schubert achieved a unique musical form in which structure and content fuse into an inseparable unity. His later works present a soul in anguish, darkness and light alternate, terror and happiness go hand in hand. The three late string quartets (counting among the best and most famous quartets ever written), the two piano trios, the string quintet of heavenly proportions and the octet all reveal grand musical structures, laden with a depth of feeling which belies the comparative youth of the composer. Excellent performances from the Klaviertrio Amsterdam (Spanish classical magazine Scherzo: "The best recording available"), the German Brandis Quartet and the famous Berlin Philharmonic Octet.

Classical Music

La Petite Bande recorded its set during the late 1970s and these are performances which do considerable justice to the music. Brisker tempos, lighter bass string playing and an altogether more imaginative approach to continuo realization bring these concertos alive to an extent hardly realised by I Musici. Sigiswald Kuijken, the leader and director of La Petite Bande, includes a theorbo in his continuo group and this is invariably an effective addition... [I]n matters of baroque style, as in its more highly developed spirit of fantasy, La Petite Bande offers satisfying performances.

-- Nicholas Anderson, Gramophone [9/1990]

Celebrated international pianist Peter Donohoe continues his series of Shostakovich releases on Signum Classics, following his recent release of the 24 Preludes and Fugues, Op. 87 (SIGCD396). For this new recording he is accompanied for the concertos by the Orchestra of the Swan under their artistic director David Curtis. In the years since his unprecedented success as Silver Medal winner of the 1982 7th International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow, Peter Donohoe has built an extraordinary world-wide career, encompassing a huge repertoire and over forty years’ experience as a pianist, as well as continually exploring many other avenues in music-making. He is acclaimed as one of the foremost pianists of our time, for his musicianship, stylistic versatility and commanding technique.

The tradition of adapting other composers’ works was a common convention in the early 18th century; adopting a piece by another composer was regarded as a sign of the highest esteem for fellow composers. As he grew older, Bach practiced this frequently for his own works. He arranged concertos written in Köthen for other ensembles in Leipzig, adapted Weimar cantatas to suit Leipzig conditions, and transformed chamber music into orchestral music (and vice versa). This CD by the Elbipolis Baroque Orchestra of Hamburg features five works by Johann Sebastian Bach, recorded in orchestral arrangements specially created by Jörg Jacobi, as well as the presumed original version of the Overture in B minor (BWV 1067) in a reconstruction by Werner Breig.

Includes work(s) by various composers. Soloist: Ruggiero Ricci.

The music on this disc offers a superb program sampling the recorded baroque and classical repertoire of Les Violons du Roy, ranging from well-loved gems by Vivaldi to a rarity by J.C.E. Bach to unique transcriptions of some of Bach's greatest music. Every selection is a brilliant musical jewel, played with panache and joy. A highlight of the collection is a brilliant, previously unreleased performance of Handel's Concerto Grosso, Op. 6, No. 5 in D Major. The Artists " . . . they play with all the transparency, flexibility and sheer stylistic awareness of a period orchestra, with a stunning level of technical precision that should be a lesson both to those who listen to this repertoire and to those who play it." - Gramophone " . . . Splendid . . . These musicians have absorbed the lessons of the early music movement in terms of historically informed performance practices. Yet they play on modern instruments (though the string players do use period

This album was nominated for the 2002 Grammy Award for Best Instrumental
Soloist(s) Performance with Orchestra.

In their latest release with Sono Luminus, the celebrated artists of Cuarteto Latinoamericano have brought together a stunning collection of selections from Brazil entitled Brasileiro: Works of Francisco Mignone. They are also joined on the Seresta No. 2 by the talented La Catrina Quartet.

Francisco Mignone (1897 - 1986) was one of the most accomplished musicians Brazil has ever had. In addition to being a masterful composer, he was also a great teacher, a successful conductor, an exceptional pianist, a great orchestrator, and in addition, a man of extensive culture. Because he settled in Rio de Janeiro in 1933, many people forget that Mignone was born in Sao Paulo, in 1897. A son of Italian immigrants, he began studying music with his father, who was an excellent flutist. In 1920 Mignone travels to Italy, where he studies with Vincenzo Ferroni (1858-1934), who had taught other Brazilian composers. It was there that he composed his first opera, “O Contratador de Diamantes” (“The Diamond Contractor”). He returned to Brazil in 1929, and in 1933 Mignone moves permanently to Rio de Janeiro and begins to occupy important chairs in the musical life of what was then the federal capital, including Music Director of the National Institute of Music’s Orchestra.

R E V I E W :



MIGNONE String Quartets: No. 1; No. 2. 3 Spanish Songs. 2 Essays. Barcarola. Minuet • Latinoamericano Qrt • SONO LUMINUS DSL 92147 (60:27)


Francisco Mignone (1897–1986), a Brazilian of Italian background, was a much-loved figure in the musical circles of Rio de Janeiro. BIS produced a disc of his orchestral music in 2005 (see Fanfare 28:6), and here we have a disc of his string-quartet music from the distinguished Latinoamericano Quartet. Mignone was a secondary composer, exhibiting all the good points of that species, such as highly refined craftsmanship, a working knowledge of instruments, and a solid sense of form. His music for string quartet is by no means groundbreaking, either technically (Bartók) or expressively (Shostakovich—or, nearer to home, Revueltas), yet while it may lack individuality, the composer’s incorporation of Latin American rhythms and bluesy harmonies into his work does give it a distinctively nationalistic voice. A breeziness to his music invokes an idealized Brazilian countryside; moreover, unlike the music of Villa-Lobos, there is never any suggestion of note-spinning or filler passages. Mignone is succinct.


The masterpiece is the Second Quartet, which opens the disc. Its first movement contains flowing melodic writing, with a cheeky use of portamento , while the concluding third movement has a bracing rhythmic zest. The slow movement, however, is the real gem; beginning with a soulful Villa-Lobos type theme from the cello, it progresses to an agitated middle section (featuring slithery chromatic harmony) to close on a beguiling jazz-flavored cadence.


The First Quartet follows the same structural pattern of fast/slow/fast. Its first movement is more fragmentary; the second movement is notable for a hint of the tango within its intricate and evocative textures. The finale is a relatively amiable, full-toned rondo. Both quartets were composed simultaneously in 1957, Mignone’s annus mirabilis for string-quartet writing.


The remainder of the program consists of small works where the composer’s creative impulse might be termed more easygoing. Most of them date from earlier in his career. My favorites are the Three Spanish Songs, transcriptions Mignone made of songs he wrote while visiting Spain in 1932. Despite their provenance, they are pervaded by a lyricism that could only be called Italianate. The first song, a subdued lullaby titled Nana , is particularly lovely. Similarly, the Andante cantabile (the first of the Two Essays ) is unashamedly romantic.


The Latinoamericano plays this program to perfection. We owe the group so much for its tireless investigation of Latin repertoire, of which this disc is yet another shining example. I would recommend it for those times when Bartók feels too aggressive or Shostakovich too melancholy. In fact, in terms of melodic flow and expressivity, the quartet composer who comes to mind as a yardstick is Borodin.


Sound quality is excellent.


FANFARE: Phillip Scott

Claude Monet (1840-1926) was at the forefront of the Impressionist revolution in painting. Together with a small group of like-minded friends, he scandalized the critics by devising a new way of representing the world in all it's bewildering variety of light and shadow. Here, the world of Monet is given a musical perspective with a carefully chosen selection of pieces by the finest composers of his time. We may enjoy here some of the greatest moments in musical and artistic development in the late nineteenth century, as Impressionism was emerging triumphant. On this CD, Monet's incredible foresight and breathtaking depictions of natural beauty are musically complemented by such landmarks as Debussy's graceful Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune and Bizet's daring masterpiece Carmen. 1 CD with full-color, illustrated, explanatory booklet.