Though Couperin was a contemporary of J.S. Bach his fashionable life at Versailles could serve to make that great German seem quite stodgy. Always at the forefront of taste Couperin's trendsetting is nowhere more evident than in his Les Nations an overtly French set of trio pieces played stylishly here by Musica ad Rhenum with Jed Wentz.

The intelligence, sensitivity, and innate musicality distinguishing violinist James Ehnes' terrific unaccompanied Bach carries over to his first volume of the composer's sonatas with harpsichord. What immediately strikes you is the ideal balance between Ehnes and harpsichordist Luc Beauséjour--not just sonically speaking, but in how they effortlessly proportion their phrases and perfectly synchronize trills, turns, and other ornaments. Beauséjour's discreet and effective registrations complement the subtle variations in Ehnes' tone, especially in slower, sustained writing (the quicker-than-usual A major sonata's Andante is a good example). Also notice how Ehnes manages to project a full, rounded, and beautiful tone even when he employs vibrato sparingly. In other words, Ehnes achieves an organic synthesis of period-instrument practice with the virtues of modern violin technique, all to the music's expressive, dance-oriented good. Among numerous world-class Bach violin sonata recordings of disparate stylistic stripes, Ehnes and Beauséjour deserve room at the top. May their second volume prove equally nourishing. [2/14/2005] --Jed Distler, ClassicsToday.com

This is a hybrid Super Audio CD playable on both regular and Super Audio CD players.

"We have here more of the early 1970s quadraphonic recordings made by Philips but which had remained in their tape boxes untouched for 30 years or more because of the realization that none of the quad LP formats of the time was really a viable means of releasing these excellent surround sound recordings to the general public. Since they started in l970 by this time the Philips engineers had perfected their micing to achieve the utmost realism and naturalness in discrete four-channel recording."

--John Sunier, Audiophile Audition

Classical Music

HANDEL : Harpsichord Suites Nos. 1 - 8

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Sviatoslav Richter is considered one of the greatest pianists of all time. This 23rd volume of the Richter Archives series on DOREMI presents a recital held in Warsaw in 1982 to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Karol Szymanowski's birth.

The role of Fides calls for a Brünnhilde range with an Amneris-type voice, requiring extraordinary vocal flexibility and dramatic punch -- Marilyn Horne has them all, and she brings out the pathos of the part without sentimentalizing it.

...Whenever Marilyn Horne's Fides holds the stage, it matches the energy of the piece itself. The role calls for a Brünnhilde range with an Amneris-type voice: the vocal flexibility and dramatic punch needed are extraordinary. Miss Horne, as she has shown in her Decca discs of the character's most famous passages (SXL6149, 5/65 and SET309-10, 5/66), has them all, and she brings out the pathos of the part without sentimentalizing it. She opts for all the more difficult alternatives and executes them with a supreme confidence. In brief, I found hers a thrilling performance.

-- Gramophone [5/1977]

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...Of great voices the present recording can offer at least one. Marilyn Horne, even at this date (1976), was no longer singing with the firmness of earlier years, as is clear if this performance of "Ah, mon fils" and the Prison scene is compared with that included in her magnificent first LP recitals. Even so, much of the richness remains and the majestic virtuosity is unimpaired... The Royal Philharmonic under Henry Lewis play well, colourful orchestration being among the score's most attractive features...

-- Gramophone [10/1989]

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Martha Argerich is universally recognized as one of the preeminent pianists of all time. This disc includes broadcasts from 1957 and 1960, before she won the Chopin International Competition, and most are being released on CD for the first time.

Quartet No. 7 was written in 2000 and first performed within weeks after the World Trade Center attacks. It is subtitled Angels, and includes the organ along with the quartet, the only work I know of for that combination. The Quartet No. 2 (1972), the briefest, least ambitious work here, opens as a canon, each instrument eventually entering with the same material. The theme, though, is so remarkably heterogeneous in it's glissandi, trills, tonal and atonal phrases that the canonic effect is not immediately apparent. The Quartet No. 8 (2001-2002) was written as a memorial to the victims of 11th September, and moves through three movements from complete instability to a kind of hypnotic serenity. The opening movement, On wings of sound, is entirely in glissandi, with no fixed reference point anywhere; it is a palindrome canon, a fact that can hardly influence one's perception of it's eerie writhing. A field of uninterrupted glissandos also marks the opening of the Quartet No.4, from 1976-77. Here, though, an accelerative process is in motion, the lines moving faster and faster up to an unexpectedly serene close. The Quartet No.3 from 1975 is similar to the Fourth in it's use of ostinato, but comes closer than any of Coates' other quartets to the idea of theatrically contrasting the personalities of the different instruments, as in Charles Ives's Second Quartet or those of Elliott Carter. The final movement is a Prayer couched in stately chords of parallel fifths - you might notice it's repeated eight-note tune coming back in retrograde. The entire quartet takes a sense of unease from the viola and cello being tuned a quarter-tone off from the violins.

Sparrows was written in 1979 for the Twentieth Century Consort. The text consists of fifteen haiku by the eighteenth-century Japanese poet Kobayashi Issa. Instead of reproducing the aesthetic of the haiku, with it's sharply outlined images, Schwantner's music absorbs the meaning and character of these naturalistic and universalist images and expresses them in a comprehensively lyrical musical form. He thus creates a series of what might be called dream-stages. These stages reach from exuberant harmonies, harsh dissonance, effusiveness finally to gentle hope. Schwantner draws freely from fully varied stylistic precursors to represent the poetic imagery. Reminiscences of Renaissance dances and baroque polyphony can be heard. By the process of reconciling contrasting musical styles with the continuity of the work, Schwantner successfully makes these styles his own. The wide range of atmospheres and colors is created by a setting whose acoustical possibilities are used in a most profound and creative way. The voice is supported by three instrumental groups, woodwind, strings (tuned a semitone lower, to add a particular fullness to the whole ensemble), and a combination of piano, harp and percussion. The sound of the percussion is strengthened by the strings, which strike the crotales or antique cymbals with their bows, evoking an otherworldly sound to accompany The River of Heaven. The instrumentalists must also sing at various key points in the whole work. This chorus element accompanies the references to sparrows at the beginning and end of the text. On the first occasion this exotic effect produces a mysterious atmosphere of threatening danger, while at the end this effect is particularly intimate, touching and even soothing. Soaring was written in 1986 and is a short, highly virtuosic high-wire act for flute and piano. In accordance with the title, Schwantner follows his favourite practice, fanning out chords that give this and many other pieces their sweeping character. The piano begins with an intense introductory gesture that articulates the harmonic element engaged throughout the work. Following the piano's opening, the flute enters with a series of declamatory phrases that interact continually with the piano in a dialogue. The two instruments form a continuous musical thread, with the flute forcefully projecting it's voice, while the piano provides a supportive backdrop. The materials here later formed the basis of a larger more extended work, A Play of Shadows (1990), a fantasy for flute and chamber orchestra. Distant Runes and Incantations was written in 1984 as a kind of piano concerto with full orchestra. In 1987 Schwantner arranged it for chamber ensemble. This version is scored for solo piano, flute (also piccolo and alto flute), clarinet (doubling bass clarinet), percussion and string quartet. The title of the work is taken from a verse of an independent poem that provides a poetic support for the music. Schwantner explains that this is a procedure that he has used in various pieces, as, for example, in the orchestral Aftertones of Infinity (1978) and Music of Amber (1981). Although the work is not particularly programmatic in conception, the poem provided a source of extra-musical imagery continued throughout the development of the work, fitting with and forming the composer's musical ideas. The music consists of a single extended movement in which the piano weaves continual threads through the texture. The piano has the principal responsibility for the presentation of simple musical elements, sharing, mixing and uniting these elements with other instruments. Two Poems of Aguedo Pizarro were written in July and August 1980, the third of five works composed for the American soprano Lucy Shelton. The work was first performed by her and pianist Margot Garrett on 25 November 1980 in Alice Tully Hall at the Lincoln Center in New York City. The texts are taken from a bilingual collection of poems under the title Sombraventa-dora / Shadowinnower by the American poet Aguedo Pizarro. While the original poems were written in Spanish, the work uses an English translation by a friend of the poet, Barbara Stoller Miller. The surrealist images and magical poetic landscapes that the poems evoke reflect, the composer tells us, the vocal quality that he found most bewitching in Lucy Shelton's singing, and the result was an attempt to bring together these two irresistible worlds. The two songs are very different. Shadowinnower is a rather aggressive, harmonically tense song, consisting of various small sections. Here there are minor-third sounds that also play a large part in Music of Amber, both works often using the same musical material. The special feature of the first song is (apart from the pipe, performed by the singer and pianist in two places) is the very effective introduction of four crotales, played by the singer as she sings, a very unusual demand. Black Anemones, the second song, offers a great contrast with the dramatic and complex first song. On the one hand is the vocal line melodious, singable and catchy, while the work is harmonically based on fifth overtones, as in two lyrical passages in Sparrows. The result is a work of a tender, very romantic, nostalgic, even ecstatic character. Music of Amber, written for the New York Music Ensemble in February 1981, is scored for flute, clarinet (doubling bass clarinet), violin, cello, piano and percussion. The first performance was on 10 April 1981 at the Civic Center in Chicago. In the same year the work won first prize in the chamber music category at the Kennedy Center Friedheim Award. The first movement, with the subtitle Wind Willow Whisper, was originally commissioned by the Fromm Music Foundation to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the Da Capo Chamber Players and was performed by them in March 1980 at the Alice Tully Hall. Because of the relatively short duration of the movement a second movement was written and the first movement was enlarged by the extension of the percussion part. The second movement, with the subtitle Sanctuary, provides a formal counterbalance, and at the same time reveals and develops further musical material from the first movement. The work is dedicated to the American patron Paul Fromm. There is a short poem before each of the two movements.

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If there is one Swedish composer in the early 20th century who in some way can compare with Sibelius and Nielsen, it is Wilhelm Stenhammar - incidentally a personal friend of both these towering figures in Nordic music. And in Stenhammar's production - which includes songs, piano music and large-scale orchestral works - his string quartets form a special chapter. The seven quartets (of which one, in F minor, was withdrawn by the composer soon after its first performance) were written over the space of 22 years, and mirror Stenhammar's development, from full-blown Romanticism to a more sparse and formally concentrated idiom. As a pianist, Stenhammar worked closely for many years with the Aulin Quartet, the finest Swedish string quartet of its time. (It was the Aulin Quartet that gave the first performances of all Stenhammar's quartets up to and including No.4 in A minor, Op.25.) His familiarity with the medium is evident in these works which have been described as 'the most important written between those of Brahms and Bartók', but which still remain less well-known internationally than they deserve. In a bid to change this, the Stenhammar Quartet here present the first disc in a trilogy which will include the six quartets published during the composer's lifetime, as well as the F minor quartet - for the first time on disc - and other music for string quartet. Making its first appearance on BIS, the Stenhammar Quartet was formed in 2002 and has made a name for itself in Sweden and internationally as interpreters of Stenhammar's music, as well as of core repertoire and contemporary works.

Charles Tomlinson Griffes only lived 35 years; his death in 1920 cut short one of the most promising careers in American music. During his short life span he created a collection of short, rhapsodic works that are full of color and romantic adventure. The Pleasure-Dome of Kubla-Khan is best known in its orchestrated version, expanded and altered somewhat from the original piano composition. It is a lush, lyrical, and dramatic work whose exotic melodies exude Middle-Eastern and Oriental influences. Of the other compositions, the Piece in D minor, from 1915, stands out. Elegant, impassioned impressionism reigns in this engaging work, and it certainly deserves wider recognition. Though the rest of the pieces on the CD are all worth hearing, the early transcription for two pianos of the Hansel and Gretel overture is most impressive. Griffes had gone to Europe to study with Humperdinck, and no doubt intended his masterful arrangement as a tribute. As performed here, it is one of the most charming duo-piano pieces in the repertoire. Michael Lewin plays the rest of the program with passion and precision, though his interpretations lack that last measure of urgency given by James Tocco on Gasparo. The latter, however did not record all of this music, so at the low Naxos price, no one should mind duplicating a few of these works. The recorded sound is exemplary, using 24-bit technology for the highest resolution. --Rad Bennett, ClassicsToday.com

BIS's Skalkottas cycle gets better with every release and it started very well' was the Gramophone opinion of one of our previous discs and this new installment will surely confirm them in this view. Two years ago Nikos Samaltanos put everybody in his debt with a double album of the piano music of Skalkattos - 'A timely release, urgently recommended' in the opinion of the Gramophone. Samaltanos returns here with a fascinating disc of concertos for various instruments - a previously unrecorded concerto for two violins as well as concertos for trumpet, oboe and bassoon or combinations of these - and piano. This music gives full reign to the adventurous and individual sonorities that we have learned to associate with Skalkottas. Another BIS/Skalkottas landmark!

Described by the London music publisher as 'Very Improveing and Delightful to all lovers of that instrument' The first Part of the Division Flute was originally issued for the Baroque treble recorder in 1705. Murphy's love of the recorder inspired her to record some of the best known recorder music, as well as some of the most neglected, from a collection that has never been fully recorded before. A fantastic disc of musicians at the forefront of early music today.

This is good. Very good. Not only does this disc offer an imaginative array of first-class wind music, the performances are well nigh ideal. Dvorák's Serenade has just the right "outdoors" quality, a freshness of rhythm and, in the slow movement, a lyrical serenity that's totally delightful. Better still, the recording captures the work perfectly: not so close that we're serenaded by clicking valves and gasping musicians, not so far that the distinctive wind timbres congeal into a sonic fog. Better still, the horns are ideally balanced and integrated into the ensemble, rather than positioned as a trio of soloists in their own acoustic (as so often happens). Georges Enescu's Dixtuor is an elusive masterwork, and the Oslo players clarify its complex but luminous textures by stressing the music's gentle, bittersweet lyricism. I've never heard it sound so purposeful or so melodically appealing. As for "Youth", Janácek's 70th birthday present to himself--well, it sounds as buoyant and vivacious as its title, the crucial writing for low instruments (bassoon and bass clarinet) being captured with special vividness. This is a disc that you will want to listen to again and again, and I can't recommend it highly enough.--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

This selection is a Hybrid Multichannel Super Audio CD. The Stereo Hybrid SACD program can be played on any standard compact disc player. The DSD Surround and Stereo programs require an SACD player for playback.

If I were pressed, I would have to say that this series is the most consistent in an advanced-resolution format at providing excellent sound. Listen to the Beethoven piano concertos, for instance. The listener is placed in row ten, center, and the BBC Symphony Orchestra sounds rich, full, and focused. You sense immediately that you truly do have the best seat in the house. The solo piano enters and what a sound. It is like a magnificent, properly tuned piano! The overall sound is just right. And so it goes, with every release in this series. -- Rad Bennett, Radical Sounds

A welcome pairing of the two “second-string” Beethoven piano concertos in superb performances….Brent Town Hall in London was the recording site in 1974, and the phantom center image of the soloist couldn’t be better. -- John Sunier, Audiophile Audition

Mr Kovacevich was a killer interpreter of Beethoven back then, and Davis an ideal accomplice….Played with dispatch and recorded with a full-bodied sound that doesn’t lose its characters in the quietest moments, these are performances that will never grow stale. -- Dr. Phil Muse, Classik Reviews

If you don’t already have this recording in another format, it’s worth acquiring even if you don’t have an SACD player. It’s proof audibly that the best analog (and Philips were very good at it) was better than any digital until the present, and it is ironic that the SACD format shows off how good these masters were in the 70s. -- Andrew Marshall, Audio Ideas Guide

This is a hybrid Super Audio CD playable on both regular and Super Audio CD players.

Named for violinist Wouter Vossen’s 1794 Laorentius Storioni violin and founded in 1995, the Storioni Trio seems to be making its international recorded debut with this outstanding Beethoven coupling. To say that these performances impress more for their refinement than their intensity is not to imply that the playing is in any way underpowered or underinterpreted; the musicians simply aren’t obsessed with the extreme emotional tension that can be found among the likes of the highly admirable Beaux Arts and Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson trios. Consider merely the first movement of the early but by no means daintily Classical second trio. With unfailingly warm tone, the musicians make the contrast between the Adagio introduction and the faster main section matter through characterful playing rather than extreme tempo changes or big rhetorical gestures. There’s a wonderful lightness and cheer in play through much of this disc, and while, for example, the finale of the second trio benefits from the group’s precision and energy, such qualities never seem mechanical or forced.

All this holds true for the more popular “Ghost” Trio. Here, especially, pianist Bart van de Roer calls Joseph Kalichstein to mind insofar as he expertly puts his part across without letting Beethoven goad him into bullying his partners. Later, the musicians bring weight to the slow movement without putting a drag on the performance. This is a most impressive calling card for the Storioni Trio.

PentaTone’s sonics, as usual, are absolutely free of distortion, constriction, or glare in any format, but they are especially true-to-life in the 5.0 SACD layer.

James Reel, FANFARE

The Dutch composer and traveling virtuoso Johannes Scheck was one of the great virtuoso viola da gamba players of 17th c. Europe. This CD contains some of the most exciting and influential sonatas from his second published work: Tyd en Konst-Offningen op. 2, the first of his instrumental da gamba creations, (Amsterdam, 1688). Cuban‐born, Spain-based da gambist Lixsania Fernández plays six of these masterworks together with the ensemble she founded, Recondita Armonia.

Known to his contemporaries as "the Beethoven of the flute", Friedrich Kuhlau took much inspiration from the master of Bonn, who was a major influence on his work. The two even met in Vienna in 1825, an encounter which was a resounding success and during which they improvised canons. Kuhlau's output for the flute comprises over 60 works -- an impressive total for a composer who was not a flautist himself. His friend and colleague Bruun was a great help in this respect, being the essential first pair of eyes on all of Kuhlau's compositions for the instrument.

The unusual scoring of the flute quintets -- using flute, violin, two violas and a cello -- gives a great richness to the sound, due to the presence of the three lower-register instruments. The flute essentially takes the role of first violin rather than soloist, becoming an integral part of the structure and development of each of these elegant works. Flautist Ginevra Petrucci joins the internationally acclaimed Kodály Quartet for the recording.

Other information:
Recorded 27--29 December 2012, The Phoenix Studio, Budapest.
- Three delightful Flute Quintets by Friedrich Kuhlau, the "Beethoven of the flute", as his contemporaries called him.
- In 1828 Kuhlau met the great Beethoven, his lifelong inspiration and example. Though no composer can even think of imitating such a musical giant, Kuhlau's works contain certain Beethovenian features, such as structural strength, motivic development and a true expression of feeling.
- Excellent performances by Italian star flutist Ginevra Petrucci, and the internationally acclaimed Kodály Quartet.
- Contains liner notes on the works and performer biographies.