28.0415

Zygmunt Noskowski, the influential Polish conductor and composer, is perhaps better remembered for his role as a teacher and mentor to later luminaries such as Karol Szymanowski and Mieczyslaw Karlowicz - and for his connection to Stanislaw Moniuszko - than for his own compositions. Yet for much of the 19th century, he was Poland's leading exponent of modern music and his works are central to the Polish tradition. After the Capriccio recordings of his Symphonies (CD C5509 and C5547) this album presents some of his string quartets and shows us again a veritable picture book of Polish romanticism.

The Welshman John Thomas (1826-1913), harpist to Queen Victoria, wrote prolifically for his own instrument, both for solo harp and for duos of two harps or harp and piano - a combination where the different sounds of the two instruments enhance the clarity of the texture. Thomas' original works use the elegant Romantic style of his own day, but he often drew on Welsh folksong for his inspiration and left a generous legacy of transcriptions, especially of operatic favourites. Although some of his music was intended for the Victorian drawing room, other pieces require a virtuoso technique - and all of it has a thoroughly engaging melodic appeal. [Volumes 1-5: TOCC 0561, 0566, 0578, 0582, 0711]

In their second Boccherini release, the Karski Quartet and cellist Raphaël Feye again present four string quintets, including two world premiere recordings. Composed for the unusual combination of two cellos, these pieces showcase Boccherini's versatility, moving from Mediterranean warmth to the elegance of Viennese classicism. The album successfully combines historical awareness with contemporary depth, providing a refined and compelling portrayal of the composer.

To the singer of the valley is etched on a memorial stone for the composer Johann Gottlieb Naumann. It would be hard to pay him a more fitting tribute. Three dozen operas; nearly two dozen masses; Italian oratorios; a wealth of German sacred music; as well as a fair amount of chamber music - the man from Blasewitz near Dresden, who enjoyed success at the Royal Swedish Opera before settling permanently in his hometown, knew more than just how to sing on stage and in church. His collections of songs for voice and piano are full of little gems that any of the muses would have fought over. Marie Luise Werneburg and her accompanist Sebastian Knebel have compiled just such a programme here: tastefully interwoven with three small-scale quartets, the songs transport the listener to intimate salons where domestic music-making grew into an increasingly powerful medium.

Great vocal masterpieces are given a new voice in a bold and poetic programme by Spanish saxophonist Carlos Giménez, who showcases the instrument's profoundly lyrical side, capable of breathing, sighing and singing with startling emotional immediacy. Together with pianist José Alberto del Cerro, the songful qualities, richness of colours and genuine human expressivity of works by Mompou, Rachmaninoff, Montsalvatge, Wagner and Obradors are transformed into luminous "songs without words," revealing the saxophone's hidden vocal soul.

Peter Heise (1830-1879) is Denmark's peerless master of song, yet his string quartets lived for decades in the shadows. This complete 3-CD set brings together the Nordic String Quartet's entire survey, including world-premiere recordings of Nos. 1-6. Alongside the previously released first volume, these works reveal Heise's musical imagination in all it's brilliance, performed with a spacious, lyrical sensibility attuned to the composer's distinctive poetic touch.

The music of Artur Lemba has been strangely neglected, even in his native Estonia - although during his lifetime (1885-1963) he was held in high regard as pianist and teacher. That oversight is all the more surprising in view of the expansive, passionate lyricism of his writing - listeners who enjoy the music of Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov are likely to warm to Lemba's full-blooded Romantic style. This second release in a pioneering series discovering his chamber music reveals three expansive, big-hearted works full of personality.

Frank Martin's chamber music oeuvre may not take up much space on the shelf, yet it spans an entire artistic life. Together with pianist Ilona Timchenko; the Utrecht String Quartet dedicate themselves to three key works that impressively bring together tradition and modernity in the 20th century. His early piano quartet from 1919 clearly echoes influences from Bach to Franck, as well as folk melodies he had heard whilst stationed in the Savoy countryside during the First World War, though it is repeatedly enriched by dissonances that hint at more advanced harmonic ambitions. Martin quickly reached the limits of the traditional major-minor system, although he felt that music without tonality would be like architecture ignoring gravity. He combined Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique with a fine sense of sound and harmonic sophistication, particularly evident in the two outer movements. It was not until the age of 75 that Martin turned to the supreme genre of chamber music: the string quartet. Combining his inspirations from a long artistic career, his unique voice can be recognised in the chord progressions, musical flow and vivid rhythms, which the Utrecht String Quartet bring to life with natural ease.

With "Beethoven for Flute and Piano - Part II", audite continues it's CD series exploring the composer's contributions to this instrumentation. While the first release, "But in my style!", focused on the late works, this new double album turns to the composer's early Viennese period. Here, the flute does not appear merely as an ad libitum instrument, but takes centre stage as the tonal focus of both original compositions and arrangements. The spectrum ranges from a version revised and authorised by Beethoven himself to adaptations by Friedrich Hermann. In this way, the selection also offers a glimpse into the historical reception of his music. Together with the first volume, it presents a richly varied panorama of Beethoven's oeuvre for flute and piano.

With the three quartets of Op. 55, the Leipzig String Quartet brings Haydn's mature genius vividly to life. These works capture the composer at the peak of the Classical era, blending elegance, wit, and profound musical insight. In the Quartet's hands, every nuance and flourish shines, offering listeners an unforgettable journey through Haydn's timeless artistry.

Violin Sonatas

Johann Sebastian Bach: Goldberg Variations

For her first solo album with BIS Records, Alina Ibragimova, together with Cedric Tiberghien, embarks on recording of Beethoven's entire violin sonatas. As one might expect, the first violinist of the Chiaroscuro Quartet presents these chamber music masterpieces on period instruments. While she plays a gut-stringed instrument, Tiberghien plays a fortepiano, a copy of a Viennese instrument from 1794. This new interpretation of Beethoven's violin sonatas brings us as close as possible to the soundscape that listeners present at the première of these works would have heard at the turn of the 19th century. This first volume contains the three violin sonatas Opus 12, the first that Beethoven published in Vienna, where he had already established himself as Mozart's successor. As was customary at the time, they are written 'for harpsichord or fortepiano, with the accompaniment of a violin', but following Mozart's example, they are truly for both instruments in equal measure. The disc concludes with the 'Spring' Sonata, the most popular and probably the most poetic of the violin sonatas. We look forward to continuing this undoubtedly landmark recording series, with a second and third instalment soon to come.

Performed by Tanya Houghton, Jennifer Sturgeon, Jenny Bourke and Lynda Barrett, Sweet Chance is a lyrical journey for harp, flute and voice, inspired by artistic relationships forged through travel and chance encounters. From Parisian inspiration to a Belfast home, this recital programme ranges from Britten's Interlude to songs newly arranged with harp accompaniment, and Alwyn's virtuosic flute and harp duet, Naiades.

The Chiaroscuro Quartet is now offering us the fourth instalment of their ongoing complete recording of Beethoven's string quartets. This latest release spotlights the first two of the three Opus 59 quartets, known as the 'Razumovsky,' named for their patron, the Russian ambassador in Vienna, Count Andreas Razumovsky, who maintained a house quartet in his palace. Beethoven was particularly proud of these new quartets, despite the initial bewilderment they provoked among audiences, critics, and even performers. Famously, when a violinist complained of their difficulty, Beethoven retorted: "Oh, they are not for you, but for a later age." The first, in F major, was almost certainly the longest string quartet composed up to that point, and it's unprecedented weight and density of argument earn it the moniker the Eroica among Beethoven's quartets. The second, in E minor, is often described as a "close cousin" of the Appassionata Sonata, in that both works-composed at around the same time-are permeated by a profound darkness from start to finish. The Chiaroscuro Quartet's previous instalments in this cycle have already garnered superlative praise from the musical press, hailed as "breathtaking," "bristling with excitement and youthful vitality," and "a very special experience." There is no doubt this latest release is poised to achieve similar critical acclaim

There's very little competition for this music, which is a shame because these are excellent quartets. It's really very remarkable how Korngold uses timbre to keep the busy textures clear and prevent his often chromatic harmony from turning into sludge. The main competition comes from the Flesch Quartet on ASV, so-so performances spread over two discs because they include the string Sextet as well. In general, the Doric Quartet offers livelier, more colorful, more accurate performances. To give just one example: the score of the Second quartet lists the work's duration at an optimistically fast 18 minutes. Flesch takes 25, while the Doric clocks in at an ideal 21 minutes.

These quartets are quite difficult to play, the first especially, which features frequent changes of tempo, often within a few bars. The Doric players handle all of these with astonishing ease and naturalness. There are a couple of points, as at figure 3 in the Second quartet's first movement, where the group slows down a bit in anticipation of Korngold's marking (his "Un poco più tranquillo" doesn't arrive until seven bars later), but if this is a fault, it's a vanishingly minor one.

Otherwise, you can only applaud the group's tonal richness, immaculate intonation, and a stylishness that never turns tacky (excellent application of portamento). First violinist Alex Redington deserves particular mention for handling his vibrato-less "ohne Ausdruck" moments (figure 7 in the First quartet's first movement, for example) with the right expressive point while never letting his tone turn just plain ugly ("period" performers take note). Violist Simon Tandree also features a particularly attractive timbre in his many solo licks. Korngold asks for many "special effects", including harmonics, col legno, open strings, muting, and lots of pizzicato; all of these are rendered with consistent musicality and are beautifully integrated into the ensemble texture.

Excellent sonics complement this obvious first choice for this music. If you don't know these pieces, you should. There's much more to Korngold than you might think--check out the wonderfully spiky scherzo in the Third quartet for a particularly bracing "fact check" on his theoretically unabashedly late-Romantic style. One final note for score collectors: all three works are available from Schott, the first two quartets in convenient study format, the Third only as a score and parts. An important release for chamber music devotees, and a terrific example of first-rate quartet playing.

--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

Arrau at 80 – as vital and virile as ever

Recorded at the Salzburg Festival in 1982 when he was already 80, this epic recital (Beethoven’s Op 81a Sonata is omitted for reasons of length) comes as a reminder of Claudio Arrau’s unique stature. His grandeur is overwhelming, his rich saturated tone unmistakable. True, expressive points may be stretched to their limit, yet even if you feel that the intensity with which he endows even the simplest phrase is over-bearing, his daunting mastery is never in doubt. Here, surely, is the final fruit of years of blazing commitment to his art and to two composers central to his vast and encompassing repertoire.

Fortunately the time is long past when Beethoven and Liszt might have been considered strange bed-fellows (the one profound, the other flashy and meretricious). And in Arrau’s magisterial hands you are made more than aware of the influence of Beethoven on Liszt (‘His work is like the pillar of cloud and fire which guided the Israelites through the desert’), an inspiration which led to the symphonic weight, breadth and quasi-orchestral sonorities of the the B minor and Dante Sonatas. Certainly when Arrau opens Beethoven’s Appassionata Sonata – muffled, distant and alive with menace – you may well look ahead to the sotto voce start to the Liszt Sonata. Again, every part is strenuously rather than elegantly argued (surface elegance played no part in Arrau’s musical make-up) and time and again there is an almost palpable sense of the pianist’s strength and vision, his thunderous and rhetorical close one of many examples of recreation on the grandest, loftiest scale.

Turning to Liszt, Arrau is grandioso indeed at 2'00" in the B minor Sonata and overall his generosity of spirit is such that it makes many recent performances seem sadly constricted in scope by comparison. Similarly in the Dante Sonata, Arrau’s response to a term such as disparato, is of an emotionalism that few would risk today and which he might have regretfully qualified in the recording studio. Seemingly hewn out of rock, these performances form a deeply personal, mesmeric and exhausting experience and are entirely what Peter Cosse, in his heartfelt review for the Salzburger Nachrichten, called ‘The Sum of a Pianist’s Life’.

Bryce Morrison, The GRAMOPHONE

The debut album of violinist Hannah Cho, born in South Korea and member of the Vienna Philharmonic, is shaped by the idea of paying tribute to her adopted home of Vienna through sonatas by Mozart, Schubert, and Brahms-composers who are closely associated with this city. Although their lifespans (born in 1756 in Salzburg, in 1797 in Vienna-Himmelpfortgrund, and in 1833 in Hamburg, respectively) by a thin margin don't overlap, they can be described as bearers of a relay baton, their connection found in the tradition of Viennese Classicism. Together with pianist Srebra Gelleva, Hannah Cho presents Sonata No. 21 in E minor, K. 304/300c by W. A. Mozart, Sonata in A major, Op. Posth. 162, D 574 by Franz Schubert, and Sonata No. 3 in D minor, Op. 108 by Johannes Brahms. This selection offers a cross-section of the historical development of the violin sonata genre, which experiences an early flourishing with Mozart, was almost naturally incorporated into Schubert's oeuvre, and finds a peak of maturity in the Romantic era with Brahms.

With Just Wonderful, Duo Giovivo presents it's fourth album on the GENUIN label, showcasing both wit and remarkable versatility. Multi-instrumentalists Fabian Bloch and Muriel Zeiter bring together lively dances, jazz-inspired hits, well-known opera melodies, and freshly reimagined children's classics. Drawing on a total of seven instruments, they create an extraordinary sonic palette: Fabian Bloch effortlessly moves between euphonium, alphorn, bass trumpet, and Wunderhorn, while Muriel Zeiter impresses on piano, violin, and flute. Be it the Swedish "Vallflickans Dans" or the jazzy "What a Wonderful World," each piece is given it's own distinctive, highly personal character. A vividly crafted album that radiates joie de vivre-fresh, passionate, virtuosic, and just wonderful.

Classical Music

Classical Music

The greater part of Chopin's music was written for his own instrument, the piano. At first it seemed that works for piano and orchestra would be a necessary part of his stock-in-trade, but the position he found for himself in Paris enabled him to write principally for the piano alone, in a characteristic idiom that derives some inspiration from contemporary Italian opera, much from the music of Poland, and still more from his own adventurous approach to harmony and his own sheer technical ability as a player. Of the forms that Chopin used, the romantic Impromptu offered a particular freedom, with it's suggestion of music dashed off in some fine, careless rapture. His Fantaisie-Impromptu was written in 1835, but published posthumously. It was followed by three further works under the same generic title. The Mazurka, a Polish dance, provided Chopin with a basic rhythmic pattern, his first attempt made in childhood at the age of ten and his last in the year of his death. The form became one with which he was particularly closely associated, an expression of his patriotism. Writers had started to show an interest in the traditional ballad with the publication by Bishop Percy of his Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, which first appeared in the 1760s. The work of Sir Walter Scott as a collector and as a poet added to the enthusiasm. In Germany further interest was shown, with the publication of translations of ballads and the creation of new ones, first by Bürger and then by Goethe and Schiller. This literary form, reflected in ballad settings by Schubert, Loewe and others, led Chopin to a purely instrumental form, based, it has been suggested, on poems by Mickiewicz, contemporary ballads of Polish patriotic purport. The first of Chopin's four Ballades implies a narrative content, opening with the words of the story-teller and proceeding to events of greater excitement. Chopin completed his collection of Preludes in 1839, when he published a set of 24, using all major and minor keys. A number of the Preludes were written during his winter in Mallorca with George Sand and her two children. They had arrived on the island in November, their appearance arousing some suspicions in the minds of local people. Deterioration in the weather aggravated the weakness of Chopin's health and doctors diagnosed tuberculosis. Forced to leave their lodgings and to pay for their fumigation, the party moved to rooms in the deserted monastery at Valldemosa, where George Sand continued to nurse him, in spite of considerable local hostility towards this woman who smoked cigars, the two long-haired boys and a girl who dressed as a man. It was with some relief that they left Mallorca in February, happy to return to France. It was in these circumstances, graphically described by George Sand in her Hiver à Majorque, that the Preludes were completed and revised, before being dispatched to Camille Pleyel for publication, each one a musical vignette. The second of Chopin's three sonatas includes, as a slow movement, his famous Funeral March, written in 1837, while the second of his four scherzos, the Scherzo in B flat minor, was written in the same key and same year. Originally a musical joke, with Beethoven a relatively jocular symphonic movement that replaced the traditional minuet as a bridge between a slow movement and a final symphonic rondo, the scherzo, for Chopin, became an extended and independent composition, here passionate in it's content. His single Berceuse, completed in 1844, makes much more than might be expected from the lullaby of the title. The Polish dance, the Polonaise, found it's way from village to ball-room and thence abroad. In Paris in 1830 Poland was in the news, with the attempted rising against Russia and it's suppression, and things Polish enjoyed considerable popularity, a fact from which Chopin benefited on his arrival in the city. As with other relatively trivial dance forms, he was able to raise the Polonaise to a new level, imparting a degree of complexity and a degree of feeling that had not always been present in the work of his elders in Warsaw. Chopin's first attempts at the form were at the age of seven and his last in 1846, three years before his death, and there is a clear element of patriotism about the two Polonaises included in the present collection, the Military and the Heroic.

Beethoven: Piano Sonatas, Vol. 5

BAROQUE TRUMPET (THE ART OF THE), Vol. 1