Selections recorded in April and May 1991.

Two discs from the Palladian Ensemble: Bach Trio Sonatas & Bach Sonatas and Chorales

SIBELIUS: COMPLETE WORKS FOR V

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Although Philip Glass came late to the string quartet, his contribution to the genre has since become a significant one. This disc features the first four of his five quartets, ranging from the uncharacteristic yet fascinating sound-world of the First, through the compact dimensions of the subsequent two (themselves derived from theatre and film scores). The more expansive manner of his Fourth Quartet makes allusions to the formidable string quartet heritage, in particular those of Schubert and Dvořák.

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This album was awarded the 2008 Grammy Award for "Best Chamber Music Performance."
All tracks have been digitally mastered using 24-bit technology.

BACHIANAS BRASILEIRAS NO. 4: P

From Greensleeves to Jerusalem this selection of music in celebration of England's green and pleasant land will evoke fond memories of summer holidays, end-of-term assemblies and listening to the wireless alongside a nostalgic pride in our country and it's unique heritage.

The Heroick Mr. Handel

HANDEL: WATER MUSIC DIETER KO

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Joining the celebrations of the 250th anniversary of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791), BIS is reissuing a landmark in the past ten years of Mozart recordings. Originally released as single discs are gathered, for the first time, all ten CDs of Ronald Brautigam's complete cycle of Mozart's music for solo piano, performed on the fortepiano. Six discs of the 18 sonatas are accompanied by four discs with the composer's many sets of variations as well as occasional pieces. Together they form a panorama, seen through his own preferred instrument, of the great master's progress: from the 8 Variations (KV 24), written around Mozart's 10th birthday, to his last piano work, the Variations in F major (KV 613), composed some months before his death. At the time of their original release, these discs were greeted with the highest acclaim: 'I have no hesitation in recommending this extremely musical and imaginative series of performances' (Gramophone, August 1997) and 'Brautigam explores these 15 sets [of variations] with jubilation and a sense of wonder in each single instant' (Diapason; December 2001) are only two examples of the opinions voiced. Highly advantageous terms - 10 CDs for the price of 4 - makes this an opportunity not to be missed!

The nuptials of eros and thanatos unveil their irresistible attraction in Alban Berg’s unfinished ‘Lulu’, based on the work of German playwright Frank Wedekind, considered one of the major works of the 20th c. in general, and of opera in particular. + Krzysztof Warlikowski delves the innermost depths of the human psyche and chooses to tackle "Lulu" as a deeply moving requiem ‘to the memory of an angel’. + Featured in the title role is Canadian soprano Barbara Hannigan. + Paul Daniel conducts the Orchestre symphonique de la Monnaie. + “…a genuinely fresh take on Alban Berg’s work.” (Financial Times)

GERSHWIN FÜR ZWEI KLAVIERE

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Soo-Jin Hong, violin, Soo-Kyung Hong, cello, Jens Elvekjaer, piano.

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SHOSTAKOVICH String Quartets Nos. 13, 14, 15. SCHNITTKE String Quartet No. 3 • Pacifica Qrt • CEDILLE 145 (2 CDs: 104:28)

With this fourth volume, the Pacifica Quartet brings its survey of Shostakovich’s 15 string quartets to a close. As with the each of the earlier two-disc sets, a bonus is offered in the form of a string quartet by one of Shostakovich’s contemporaries, this time the String Quartet No. 3 by Alfred Schnittke. Previous discmates were Myaskovsky, Prokofiev, and Weinberg.

Between two hospitalizations in 1970, Shostakovich managed to complete his 13th Quartet in August of that year. Alone among the composer’s 15 quartets, this Bb-Minor work is in a single movement and exhibits a palindromic form—ABCBA. Like the 12th Quartet before it, this one, too, is based on a tone row encompassing all 12 semitones of the chromatic scale. Shostakovich’s endgame, however, is to confirm tonality rather than to deny it.

Much of the composer’s music seems to dwell in dark, brooding, baleful places—that’s nothing new—but this 13th Quartet arguably surpasses in mood and atmosphere even the spectral chill and ghoulish humor of his earlier works. It unmasks the face of death, and it’s a visage so hideous to behold that gazing upon it will freeze your eyeballs in their sockets. I can only describe the Pacifica Quartet’s reading of the score by saying it achieves a sub-zero degree of cold that can penetrate and shatter your bones. Never have I heard such a graphic representation in music of the daemon Thanatos, not by the Fitzwilliam, Emerson, St. Petersburg, Brodsky, or Alexander String Quartets. This is scary stuff.

Shostakovich’s next quartet, No. 14 in F# Minor, reverts back to a key more convenient for string players, three sharps, allowing for the use of some open strings, and being a lot easier to finger than the five flats of the previous quartet. The composer began work on the piece in 1972, but took time off for a trip to Ireland and England, where he visited his friend, Benjamin Britten, in Aldeburgh. That delayed completion of the Quartet until the following spring, after Shostakovich had returned to Moscow.

The score is dedicated to Sergei Shirinsky, the original cellist of the Beethoven Quartet, and contains a cryptogram in the third movement on “Seryozha,” a familiar or affectionate form of address for Sergei. However, the pitches—D#-E-D-E-G-A—make no sense unless transliterated into their Cyrillic equivalents. The “E,” for example, represents the Cyrillic letter “ë,” which I’m given to understand is pronounced “yo,” thereby denoting the second syllable in “Seryozha.”

Compared to the 13th Quartet, No. 14 is positively playful. Still, being by Shostakovich, the music does have its bleak and menacing moments, but also one passage in particular in the third movement, beginning at 4:49 in this performance that’s of utterly aching beauty. Unfortunately, I don’t have access to the score, but if my ears don’t deceive me, it sounds like the viola playing in double stops for a number of bars, accompanied by gentle pizzicatos in the violins. If I’m right, and it is the viola, then Masumi Per Rostad’s playing at this point is simply breathtaking; which is not to take anything away from Simin Ganatra, Sibbi Bernhardsson, and Brandon Vamos, whose playing throughout this entire series has been nothing but phenomenal.

Shostakovich’s last quartet, No. 15, is clearly a valedictory work in much the same way that Beethoven’s final quartets are. Completed in May 1974, a year and three months before his death, Shostakovich chose for this score what Stephen Harris calls “the mysterious but traditionally morbid key of Eb Minor.” “Morbid” may be one word for it, but with a key signature of six flats most string players would call it by a word or words not to be spoken in polite company. Had Shostakovich lived to write a 16th quartet, one can only wonder if he’d have upped the ante to seven flats with a score in Ab Minor or Cb Major.

In six movements, the 15th Quartet is the composer’s longest, playing for some 36 minutes in the Pacifica’s performance. Moreover, each of the six movements is in the same Eb-Minor key and in one degree or another of Adagio . As quoted by Elizabeth Wilson in Shostakovich: A Life Remembered , the composer himself gave this performance instruction: “Play the first movement so that flies drop dead in mid-air and the audience leaves the hall out of sheer boredom.”

The music obviously speaks of facing death, but it’s not macabre and malignant like the 13th Quartet; rather, it’s mostly melancholy, sorrowful, and resigned, with the occasional defiant outburst. If I singled out violist Rostad for his playing in the 14th Quartet, I have to note first violinist Simin Ganatra’s superb execution of the third-movement cadenza in the 15th Quartet.

Shostakovich’s string quartets have been extremely fortunate from the very beginning to have received quite a few outstanding recordings. A number of them are cited above, but there are earlier ones by the Beethoven and Borodin Quartets that have historical significance, as well as more recent ones by the Sorrel and Mandelring Quartets (the last two of which I’ve not heard). But of those I have heard—and that would include all the others named in this review—I believe I’m prepared to say that this cycle by the Pacifica Quartet is the top contender. Whether you already have one or more Shostakovich quartet cycles in your collection, or you have none, the Pacifica’s is a must-have for anyone of the conviction that these are the most profound musical utterances in the realm of the string quartet since Beethoven.

Disc two closes with a performance of Alfred Schnittke’s String Quartet No. 3, composed in 1983. Seth Brodsky, assistant professor of music and the humanities at the University of Chicago (no connection to the Brodsky Quartet), notes Schnittke’s “anti-classical” or “polystylistic” approach, which “depends on shattering classical norms of balance, purity, and wholeness for a multiplicity of styles.” “Schnittke’s Third Quartet,” Brodsky continues, “shatters all three within its first minute. We hear only broken pieces from other times and other works—first from Orlando de Lassus’s Stabat Mater (later 1500s), then from Beethoven‘s Grosse Fuge (1825), and finally from Shostakovich‘s famous ‘musical signature,’ ‘D-S-C-H,’ first used in his Fifth String Quartet of 1952. Schnittke takes these three musical modules, from disparate traditions traversing half a millennium, and puts them directly after one another, only to have the whole thread snap and fall to the ground.”

As works by Schnittke go—at least among those I can claim to have heard—this Third Quartet is fairly accessible, an impression borne out by its relative popularity. Not counting the present version by the Pacifica Quartet, the work has received six recordings, one of which, with the Borodin Quartet on a Virgin Classics CD, to my surprise, I found on the shelf and dusted off for comparison. Once again, for playing of arresting graphic detail, the Pacifica wins hands-down.

This is a Shostakovich cycle for the ages.

FANFARE: Jerry Dubins

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Here is yet another intelligent project from Cedille, and a real bonanza for chamber music lovers. Turina’s chamber works are gorgeous. True, the early Piano Quintet in G minor is a touch heavy and faux-Franck, but after that it’s basically smooth sailing. This two disc set contains, first of all, the complete music for piano trio, expertly played with passion and precision by the Lincoln Trio. Most collections of this music contain only the two numbered trios plus the dawn-to-dusk tone poem for piano trio known as Circulo. Here we also get the large early trio in F major, a lovely work that brings the total playing time of the disc to over 73 minutes.

The second disc offers the late Piano Quartet in A minor, the above-mentioned piano quintet, and the sunny, lyrical sextet in two movements subtitled Escena Adaluza. Turina’s mature works exude Spanish color in the cast of their melodies, but his music is also formally elegant and beautifully shaped. Several of these pieces, such as the Quintet and the Trio No. 1, contain spontaneous but intellectually sophisticated fugues, and there isn’t a routine note anywhere. The Lincoln Trio’s colleagues, especially violist Ayane Kozasa, who has a major part in the Sextet, blend seamlessly with the basic ensemble, and they are flawlessly recorded.

I never cease to be amazed at how, with a little thought and intelligence, it’s still possible to put together worthwhile programs of serious classical music that are wholly winning and simply delightful. This release would grace any collection; it’s a treat.

-- David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

The electrifying Pacifica Trio is back with the highly anticipated third installment of their acclaimed Soviet Experience series. This release focuses on Shostakovich’s string quartets of the 196s, Nos. 9-12. Ranging from a balanced neoclassical form to an unpredictable riot of tonal and atonal themes, these quartet s rank among the finest of Shostakovich’s later works. The adventurous String Quartet No. 6 of Mieczyslaw Weinberg, Shostakovich’s friend and colleague, provides another vantage point to view this period in Soviet history. (“The playing is nothing short of phenomenal, bringing new dimensions of interpretative depth and a subtle fusion of intensity and clarity. . . . When the series is complete, it looks set to be the one to own.” The Telegraph, London)

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Not surprisingly this new release from Rachel Barton Pine, this time with her friends and Cedille label-mates John Mark Rozendaal and David Schrader--appearing together as Trio Settecento--offers a well-thought-out program. As demonstrated on her previous recordings, Pine is interested not just in filling a CD with good music but in providing listeners with a broader, more meaningful experience. In this case the trio's aim is to show the ways different Italian or Italian-influenced composers realized the possibilities of the newly emerging voice of the solo violin beginning in the late 17th century. And "voice" is the key word here, as throughout these eight very distinctive pieces we hear all manner of expressive effects as well as the pure, artful exploitation of the violin's capacity for lyrical, singing melody.

Both of these features are amply--and memorably--displayed in the first movement of Locatelli's Sonata da camera Op. 6 No. 2 in F major, where the elegant, flowing course of the melody is frequently enlivened with little quick flourishes and runs, where bow and fingers literally skim across the strings. These connective devices are not mere ornaments but importantly allow the performer to give character to the instrument, which in the hands of a first-rate soloist--as we have here--can almost sound like it's speaking. Another highlight is Tartini's Sonata Pastorale in A major, whose opening movement is rich with pleasing melodies and well-integrated instrumental textures, its second movement a spirited Allegro--but its final movement a tour de force that recalls shepherds' bagpipes interspersed with sudden outbursts of raucous dancing.

There's so much more here to enjoy, including the more stylistically formalized Corelli and Handel sonatas--and the dazzling final Ciaccona of Veracini's Sonata in D minor Op. 2 No. 12 that closes the disc. But as well crafted as these sonatas are, it's Pine and her outstanding colleagues that make the impression, and it's obvious that these players--all respected soloists--have been together in this repertoire for a long time. In fact, they've been performing as an ensemble for more than 10 years, successfully applying their exceptionally high level of modern technique and artistry to a sincere concern for period-performance authenticity. I especially enjoyed the sound of Pine's original, unaltered 1770 Gagliano violin, which in her hands sings with an impressively assertive tone--bold and gritty, with a lovely, silvery upper register. This is a disc that demands, encourages, and truly rewards many hearings, made even more enjoyable by the vibrant, natural, ideally balanced sound. Highly recommended!

--David Vernier, ClassicsToday.com