While Johann Georg Pisendel is primarily remembered today as the 18th century virtuoso that inspired Bach to compose his renowned Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin, this extraordinary program "Per Monsieur Pisendel" reveals the violinist/composer's influence to be much more widespread and diverse. Each of the six violin sonatas offered was either dedicated to or composed by Pisendel himself, amply attesting to his apparent charisma and exemplary skill. La Serenissima's members--violinist Adrian Chandler, cellist Gareth Deats, and harpsichordist Robert Howarth--rise to the occasion, delivering stirring, alert, and focused performances that ably serve Pisendel and his contemporaries Vivaldi and Albinoni.


Vivaldi's famous RV 6 opens the program, and like Romanesca (Harmonia Mundi) and the Biondi/Alessandrini/Naddeo/Pandolfo/Lislevand ensemble (Arcana), Chandler and colleagues brazenly draw out every dramatic nuance and diabolical twist implicit in the score. Especially enjoyable is their deft treatment of the third movement (Grave), heightened by numerous decorative flourishes throughout. The program in fact features a refreshingly wide variety and inventive use of ornamentation that, unlike so many other recitals of similar repertoire, perpetually keeps things interesting. Chandler's spellbinding rendering of Pisendel's Allegro from his Sonata in D is absolutely spectacular! Likewise, Chandler's performance of the second-movement Allegro of Vivaldi's Suonata a Solo facto per Monsieur Pisendel del Vivaldi in C, RV 2 equally impresses in its cocksure bite and vigor.


Complementing La Serenissima's excellent performances is Avie's clear and immediate sound. Chandler's excellent notes are informative and entertaining. This debut recording couldn't be more auspicious. Highly recommended.
--John Greene, ClassicsToday.com

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

The Dutch composer Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck was number one in influence on the Northern European organ style of the seventeenth century, and his own special sound world can now once again be experienced. A four-hundred-year-old swallow's nest organ from the Renaissance era has survived in St. Mary's Church in Lemgo, and its few missing pipes have been precisely reconstructed on the basis of historical models. Harald Vogel presents this unique instrument of European rank in a rich and varied program of works by Sweelinck, some of them celebrating their recording premieres.

Classical Music

Classical Music

The Spektral Quartet, since their inception, has strived to bridge the gap between the great historical works and compositions from today. Regarded for their their progressive undertakings, the group delivers interactive concerts with an intimate, up-close atmosphere, and intrepid programming.The Spektral Quartet, consisting of Clara Lyon, Austin Wulliman, Doyle Armbrust, and Russell Rolan, serves as ensemble-in-residence at the University of Chicago’s Department of Music.The inspiration behind Serious Business is what makes something humorous, and how can we view humor through the lens of classical music.

Classical Music

COR DE GROOT: EARLY RECORDINGS

TELEMANN Trietti metodichi: 42:d1; TWV 42: G2; 42:D2. Scherzi: 42:D3; 42:A1; 42:E1. Quartet in a for 2 Violins and 2 Bassoons, TWV 43:a1. Quartet in d for Flute, Violin, Bassoon, and Continuo, TWV 43:d3 • Parnassi musici (period instruments) • cpo 777 301 (63:21)


The title of Telemann’s 1731 publication of six trio sonatas, III Trietti metodichi e III Scherzi , is unusual. No one had ever published trietti (“little trios”), nor was the term “scherzo” used for a composition in several movements. The “method” in the Trietti metodichi consists of illustration in the art of instrumentation. The slow movements of the three Trietti were published with plain and ornamented parts to illustrate ornamentation method. These six melodic works for two violins and continuo were written for amateurs looking for works that were neither too long nor too difficult. All are in three movements, fast-slow-fast, and full of attractive melodies.


The Quartet in a is the fifth of a set of six “Quartets or Trios for two flutes or two violins, and two cellos or two bassoons” published in 1733. It consists of four movements, an Andante followed by three fast Divertimenti. The Quartet in d has been attributed to Handel as well as Telemann. The theme of the first movement appears to be a variation on Handel’s Oboe Concerto No. 3 in g, HWV 287. For the rest, the music does not sound much like Handel’s chamber music, so it would appear that the association with Telemann is correct. It is in four movements, slow-fast-slow-fast, which, while appealing, are not as attractive as its discmates.


The notes to this recording tell us that “it was sheer joy in the vibrancy and virtuosity of baroque music that brought together the musicians of Parnassi musici,” and these qualities inform their work here. Their playing has been praised often in the pages of Fanfare . The continuo is varied by alternate use of archlute or guitar and organ or harpsichord in addition to bassoon and cello. I doubt that I have ever heard a more-appealing recording of Baroque chamber music.


FANFARE: Ron Salemi

Classical Music

What Artemisia Heard: Music and Art from the Time of Caravaggio and Gentileschi is the culmination of a unique project envisioned by El Mundo artistic director Richard Savino. Enraptured over the work of female Baroque painter Artemisia Gentileschi, Savino began to question why the music of Artemisia’s time is not as widely appreciated as the visual arts of the era. Recognizing a ubiquitous connection in popular music between the aural and visual, Savino had the ingenious idea to integrate the sublime painting of Artemisia and her contemporaries directly with the equally sublime music these painters would have heard at the time.

Featured alongside paintings by Artemisia and her contemporaries is music by composers Uccellini, Kapsberger, Frescobaldi, Caccini, Piccinini, Monteverdi, Falconieri and Rossi, among others, as performed by El Mundo and distinguished soloists. El Mundo is dedicated to the performance of 16th – 19th c. Latin American, Spanish and Italian chamber music. Under the direction of guitarist/lutenist Richard Savino, El Mundo was formed in 1999 and is made up of some of today’s finest period instrument performers.

FANFARES AND OVERTURES • William Berz, cond; Nicholas Farco (nar); Rutgers Wind Ens • NAXOS 8.572230 (65:46)


REED Overture-1940 (arr. Berz). Fanfare for Remembrance. Renascence. HUSA Smetana Fanfare. Music for Prague 1968. NELHÝBEL Libuše: Fanfares. SCHUMAN George Washington Bridge


The Rutgers Wind Ensemble has released a number of distinguished recordings on the educational Mark label. To my knowledge, this Naxos disc is their first commercial release and a fine one it is.


Wind music enthusiasts will likely know H. Owen Reed for his magnificent programmatic symphony for band, La fiesta mexicana . He is represented here by three smaller scaled works. Overture-1940 , arranged by conductor William Berz, is a driving, energetic work featuring angular melodies, mildly dissonant harmonies, and busy counterpoint in its development. Though a bit reminiscent of Howard Hanson, Samuel Barber, and other prominent composers of the pre-World War II era, it is nonetheless an engaging work in its own right. Similarly, Reed’s Renascence is a pleasant concert overture that calls to mind the band works of Vincent Persichetti. Fanfare for Remembrance is scored for narrator, trumpet ensemble, and percussion. Inspired by the poem “For Remembrance” by Edythe Hope Genée, the work consists of two rather mundane settings of The Battle Hymn of the Republic followed by an unimaginative recitation of the poetry over a repetitious collage of melodic fragments. A concluding gimmick—that of having the last line of the poem repeatedly intoned over whispered “echoes” from the trumpeters—does little to redeem the work’s negligible effect.


Czech-born composers Václav Nelhýbel and Karel Husa are “household names” in the band world, each having penned a number of colorful, dynamic scores that have become standard repertoire for the medium. Both of their fanfares are based on music of their countryman Bedrich Smetana. Though Nelhýbel receives credit as the composer of Fanfares from Libuše , the piece is actually an arrangement of excerpts from the Overture to Smetana’s opera. Unfortunately, the work as presented here does not make much of an impression. Not so of Husa’s splendid Smetana Fanfare , a thrilling concert opener—oddly placed second on this disc—based on material from the elder composer’s Wallenstein’s Camp.


When Husa’s Music for Prague 1968 burst onto the band scene in 1969, it created a sensation and was lauded as the work that would finally break through the barriers of the band subculture and stand the test of time as a true masterpiece of modern music. Forty years later, such an assessment might raise a few eyebrows, but the work is still a very powerful and moving memorial to the crushing of the Prague Spring reform movement by the Soviet Union in the summer of 1968. The work has received thousands of performances, both in the original version for wind ensemble and in the composer’s own orchestral transcription. Conductor Donald Hunsberger and his Eastman Wind Ensemble set the standard with their breathtaking performance on Sony 44916. This new recording, though very good, is blemished by occasional slack rhythms and intermittent intonation problems in the upper woodwinds.


Also a band standard, William Schuman’s George Washington Bridge was inspired by the composer’s view of the bridge on his daily treks to and from the Juilliard School, where he served as president. To Schuman, the bridge took on an almost human personality—a personality that seemed to change depending on the time of day, the weather, and his own mood and state of mind. It is a masterful work in five sections, creating an arc structure and characterized by massive polychords, bold gestures, and vivid colors. The Rutgers players deliver a powerhouse performance.


Despite a few minor lapses in ensemble precision and the aforementioned intonation problems, the Rutgers Wind Ensemble and conductor William Berz make a very positive impression. The recorded sound is rich and spacious, sacrificing some degree of detail for a concert hall-like ambience. Recommended, despite the caveats mentioned above.


FANFARE: Merlin Patterson

CORELLI: Violin Sonatas Nos. 1-6, Op. 5

Includes work(s) by Gio Battista Sammartini. Soloists: Gianfranco Iannetta, Roberto Noferini, Andrea Noferini, Bruno Canino.

Mozart: Symphonies, Vol. 3 (1769-1770)

This is a Super Audio CD playable only on Super Audio CD players.

PAGANINI: Music for Violin and Guitar, Vol. 1

The Russian pianist REM Urasin is most closely associated with Chopin, winning numerous prizes and performing every piece the composer wrote over the course of 11 concerts in 2009/2010. Here, though, he turns his attention to his native repertoire, transforming 15 Shostakovich preludes into brilliantly astringent showcases for cello and piano and transcribing 10 Rachmaninov songs in a similar manner. The contrast between the agitated, angular energy of the preludes and the richly melodic warmth of the romances could hardly be more marked. Urasin and cellist Boris Andrianov make a formidable duo, playing with rigorous intensity - particularly in the crazily satiric Prelude No 5 - and a touchingly languid lyricism.

Ernö Dohnányi's music slowly has been getting the discographic attention it deserves, and these exemplary readings of his marvelous Serenade for String Trio and Sextet happily join company with some other fine versions. By and large, these new renditions do not necessarily improve on the other prime modern choices--the Serenade offered by Domus on Virgin and the Sextet with Endymion Ensemble on ASV--but the warmly phrased and crisp playing by the members of Spectrum Concerts Berlin will certainly fuel competition in a decidedly uncrowded field.


Those who have yet to experience these miniature masterpieces are in for a treat. Both works admittedly recall Brahms in sonority and structure, but they stand on their own as wholly original works with myriad and often clever twists of character, from witty to sinister. For instance, note how Dohnányi conveys the entire sentiment of the Serenade in the neatly concise first movement, and how its fragmented march pops up momentarily at the end of the finale. The brilliantly conceived inner movements exhibit dramatic breadth in the tender Romance, the motoric Scherzo, and the beguiling variations of the Andante, whose veiled theme unfolds rather discretely. The musicians here are nothing less than committed, but hearing this made me want to reach for the legendary 1941 Heifetz-Primrose-Feuermann to recapture the idiomatic grace of one of the truly great recordings of its time.


The broad, muscular music of the Sextet also pays a debt to Brahms--it almost sounds like the Horn Trio and Piano Quintet in F minor mixed together and then sprinkled with more humor and a dash of additional verve. The first movement of the Sextet is almost symphonic in length and grandeur, propelled by sweeping themes and finishing with a knockout climax. Dohnányi finally liberates himself from Brahms and moves into 20th-century Vienna in the high-spirited finale, filled with off-kilter rhythmic vitality and irreverent little waltzes. Special mention should go to the excellent horn playing of Ron Schaaper, whose sensitive vibrato and immense glowing sound in the outer movements are glorious to hear.
--Michael Liebowitz, ClassicsToday.com

RACHMANINOFF Moments Musicaux, op. 16. MEDTNER Piano Sonata in g. LYAPUNOV Études d’exécution transcendante: Berceuse; Ronde des sylphs; Tempête & • Chisato Kusunoki (pn) • QUARTZ 2089 (75:13)


& SCRIABIN Fantasy in b


One of my fellow Fanfare critics made reference, a few issues back, to the “pretty young things playing Chopin” being pushed by DG. One might be tempted to say that Chisato Kusunoki is a “pretty young thing playing Rachmaninoff and Scriabin,” but she has the gift of exquisite phrasing and imparting a deep feeling for the music to her listeners. Certainly, if she is capable of such a feat through the cold impartiality of a CD, she can also do it in live performance.


Listen, for instance, to the magical way she shapes and colors the third of the six Moments Musicaux, or the smoldering intensity of the fourth ( Presto ). Kusunoki not only knows the notes, as all pianists nowadays do, but she understands what to do between “the piano here and the forte there,” as Toscanini used to say. In short, Kusunoki has a clear view of the music’s structure as well as its color.


Kusunoki’s mastery of Russian music, in fact, is a constant thread throughout this recital. In the Medtner sonata, strong emotion and flurries of counterpoint intermix and complement each other, almost as if the composer were trying to reconcile his twin loves, Bach and Beethoven. Cast in one movement, the music changes mood abruptly and there are several dead stops in it, as if Medtner were trying to decide where to go next, yet the motives are repeated or altered in such a way that a sense of development is created and continuity maintained. At one point, flurries of rapid triplets alternate with slow-moving half notes as if the composer were trying to determine his current mood as much as the listener. At another, he assigns the melody to the left hand while the right plays flurries of 16ths, and occasional tone clusters blur the tonality. Amazingly, Kusunoki is with him every step of the way; listening to her performance, one would almost think that this music reflected her moods and her state of mind.


There is, perhaps, somewhat less drama—or perhaps I should say, fewer contrasting emotions—in her playing of the Scriabin Fantasy. I think, perhaps, that Kusunoki is viewing this music as typical post-Romanticism when, in fact, she should be exploring the mystical quality the music suggests and evokes. In other words, her performance is too outgoing, not personal enough. It is a rare lapse in an otherwise excellent recital, but I hasten to add that it is merely a lapse of musical approach, not a glib or unaffecting performance.


Three of Lyapunov’s 12 etudes close out this recital, and here Kusunoki has judged their musical mood well. Berceuse receives a splendidly warm and intimate performance, both playful in feeling and caressing in spinning out the musical line. Ronde des sylphs could, perhaps, be imparted with a shade lighter touch than Kusunoki gives it, yet her coruscating 16ths have the right angular rhythm and produce their desired effect, and in Tempête she is solidly in her element, caught up as much in the onrush of dazzling figures as the listener.


Despite a bevy of outstanding versions of the Rachmaninoff pieces (including Berman, Ashkenazy, Dejan Lazic, and Ruth Laredo) and competing versions of the Medtner sonata by Gilels and Hamelin, Kusunoki definitely holds her own. In the Lyapunov, I prefer Louis Kentner’s famous and fabulous 1949 recording, currently available on Appian 5620.


A word to the producer of Kusunoki’s records: Please stop using the buzzwords “to great acclaim” when mentioning where she has performed, and if you are going to quote a review from a newspaper or magazine like the London Times, please use the critic’s name. Every young artist nowadays plays “to great acclaim,” even if that great acclaim only comes from a stringer who was assigned the concert because the artist in question was unknown to the principal critic. If you give us the names of the critics who praise pianist X or violinist Y, and we recognize that name as a well-respected critic we can trust, it means much more to us.


Otherwise, this is a superb recital, superbly played and recorded.


FANFARE: Lynn René Bayley

Classical Music

This second installment in Naxos' ongoing series of the complete Martinu quartets confirms the favorable impression made by Volume 1. String Quartet No. 3 is a brief work rich in timbral effects (col legno, trills, pizzicato) that strikingly recalls Schulhoff's First Quartet from the same period (1920s), and it receives an excellent performance featuring remarkably clean rhythms in the tricky outer movements. Quartet No. 6 comes from 1946, and it clearly reveals its affinity to the style of the symphonies that Martinu composed at the same time. Indeed, its opening is almost a transcription of the first pages of the Third Symphony, while the slow movement alternates dreamy moments of pure texture with simple, folk-like themes, a concept Martinu also employs in the celebrated late Nonet.


Here the playing doesn't have quite the polish that the Panocha Quartet brings to the music (on Supraphon), but it's still a very good performance, and the same holds true of the fillers: the charming Duet for Violin and Cello, and the zesty and quite substantial Three Madrigals for Violin and Viola, a masterpiece of its type. The very clear, close sonics capture every nuance but steal a bit of the music's atmosphere. Fortunately the Martinu Quartet's high standards easily withstand the scrutiny. [1/16/2003]
--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

The acclaimed period ensemble L'Acheron conducted by viola de gambist Francois Joubert-Caillet presents a collection of works from Samuel Scheidt's late Renaissance masterpiece 'Ludi Music'. Scheidt, considered one of the most prolific composer of the late Renaissance era lived at a time of transition with the polyphony of the Renaissance era already filled with intimations of the virtuosity and contrapuntal techniques of the looming Baroque era. L'Acheron's performance presents the palpable feeling of standing on thresholds throughout this fine recording.

Classical Music

Classical Music

The 500 years that separate Renaissance master Johannes Ockeghem (c. 1410-97) and Danish composer Bent Sørensen (b. 1958) seem to disappear in this extraordinary Requiem which is a totality integrated both dramatically and musically; a work that unites the stylistic contrasts in a mode of expression that seems at once timeless and entirely present. The project has been initiated by conductor Paul Hillier and interpreted by his GRAMMY-winning ensemble Ars Nova Copenhagen.

R E V I E W:

Shoots straight into the soul and lingers long in the mind.

This is a fascinating and highly successful project. Without going into the kind of detail which the booklet notes give us, this is Johannes Ockeghem´s Missa pro defunctis, integrated with newly composed movements by Bengt Sørensen to create what is, if not an entirely new piece, certainly a very new and fresh way of connecting the new in the old, with the old in the new. This is an extension of Paul Hillier’s more frequent combining of contemporary with early music in his programming, and here he has brought in Bengt Sørensen to complete ‘the bits which are missing’ in Ockeghem’s work.
 
Ockeghem’s Missa is full of moments which can wrong-foot you into thinking that you are hearing something contemporary. Harmonic shifts and quasi-romantic melodic lines abound, and just listen to some of those startling female-only passages in the Kyrie. The Graduale flows from Sørensen’s Lacrimosa as if from the same fearlessly expressive source, and there are moments in the Offertorium which are truly overwhelming.
 
Sørensen’s contributions are idiomatically sensitive and integrate by way of atmosphere, but are by no means a soft-pedalled imitation of ancient style. The opening Responsorium has plenty of reassuring parallel intervals and open harmonies, but immediately alerts the ear to what is to come, with close harmonies and strange dissonances which have inner resolution, but no ultimate cadence. The central Recordare Jesu pie in the Sequentia is one of those impossibly melting creations which make your hairs stand up with some kind of prehensile spiritual angst. Separated by plainchant, the first two minutes of the following Lacrimosa is truly beautiful: a moment of suspended time where the tears fall, but never reach the ground. There are moments of restrained drama here and in the Benedictus, where vibrato is used as a textural effect, making the air itself ring like a Tibetan bowl. The entire Requiem cycle closes with Sørensen’s In Paradisum, is the most extensive and in some ways the most far reaching, as the booklet notes describe, “with cluster-like chordal effects that are thinned out, recondensed and break like waves against each other.”
 
All of the texts are printed in the booklet in Latin, English and Danish, revealing a contribution from Dylan Thomas in the Responsorium: Memento mei Deus: “Hourly I sigh,/for all things are leaf-like/and cloud-like. Flowerly I die/for all things are grief-like/and shroud-like.” There is a diagram at the back of the booklet which shows the position of singers and microphones, with a more conventional choir setting for the Ockeghem, and singers all around the venue for Sørensen’s work. In stereo this effect is not so very noticeable, though there are enough added dimensions and everything remains perfectly balanced. With a surround set-up the effect is quite magical. I searched high and low for the name of the church where this was recorded, but even un-named this is a perfect acoustic for such unaccompanied vocal scoring. This is one of those recordings for which you close your eyes and give yourself entirely over to a very rich musical experience indeed. Paul Hillier’s Ars Nova Copenhagen is a remarkable collection of vocalists for which this work is tailor-made, and the music is brought to life in a way which shoots straight into the soul and lingers long in the mind.
 
-- Dominy Clements, MusicWeb International