FLUTES EN VACANCES SUITE POUR

Classical Music

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V2: DIALOGE FUR ZWEI VIOLINEN

Carolyn Sampson has enjoyed notable worldwide successes in repertoire ranging from early baroque to present day, in opera, in concert and on disc. Nevertheless, the present recording is, as she writes in her introduction in the CD booklet, something of a début – her first recital disc of songs with piano. When choosing repertoire, she collaborated closely with her pianist, Joseph Middleton and together they chose settings of poems on a floral theme in Russian, English, French and German. The selected songs represent a great diversity, through their different musical styles and affects.

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Tamsin Waley-Cohen, a violinist of 'fearless intensity' (The Guardian), explores post-1944 solo repertoire, pushing the instrument to it's limits on Soli, her new release on Signum Classics. Bart�k's Solo Sonata, an 'Everest' of the violin repertoire, sits at the heart of this recording which also includes Krzysztof Penderecki's Cadenza, and miniatures by Elliott Carter, Gy�rgy Kurt�g and George Benjamin. Ms. Waley-Cohen's adventurous and varied career includes performances with the RPO, LPO and BBC orchestras, conductors Andrew Litton and Tamas Vasary, and an "Artist in Residence" association with Orchestra of the Swan. Performances have taken her across the UK, Europe, to the USA and the Antipodes. An in-demand recitalist, Tamsin enjoys a successful performing and recording duo partnership with pianist and composer Huw Watkins. Her interest in contemporary music has led to strong relationships with contemporary composers, including Mr. Watkins', Richard Causton, Joseph Phibbs, and Torsten Rasch.

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This third volume in the series from the electrifying combination of Jean-Efflam Bavouzet and Manchester Camerata under Gabor Takacs-Nagy explores the final two of the six piano concertos of the year 1784, on which Mozart staked his reputation as both a performer and composer. Alongside these works features the pioneering Quintet for Piano and Winds, also from 1784, the first written for this combination of instruments and a work which Mozart regarded as his finest to date. The consecutive Kochel numbers of the three piano works hint at a remarkable story: not only were they all written in the same extraordinarily productive year, but all were completed in the same month, March, when Mozart was just twenty-eight years old. The two concertos form a pair, and in letters to his father Mozart makes it clear that he wrote them for his own performance: “Nobody but I owns these new concertos in B flat and D,” adding in another letter, two weeks later, “I consider them both to be concertos which make one sweat.” Heard in this context, Bavouzet’s playing is all the more astonishing.

REVIEWS:

Jean-Efflam Bavouzet has joined forces with Gábor Takács-Nagy and the Manchester Camerata to record the complete Mozart piano concertos. This is the third volume in the series. Bavouzet has won awards for his recordings of Haydn, Debussy, Prokofiev and Grieg. This recording shows that he is also a born Mozartian.

The three works on this recording all date from 1784 when Mozart was newly married and beginning to forge a freelance career for himself. The Piano Concerto in D Major K451 uses trumpets with timpani and has a distinctive military character. Takács-Nagy’s tempo is spot on in the opening movement marked Allegro assai. He and the Manchester Camerata open the movement with vibrancy and dynamism, and bring an infectious enthusiasm to Mozart’s springy dotted rhythms. Bavouzet’s phrasing and passagework are a model of classical decorum, and he uses subtle rubato to superb effect. There is excellent interplay between piano and orchestra, with phrases passing seamlessly between the players. The music is beautifully characterised. The militaristic opening theme gives way to the camp, whimsical second subject. The Manchester Camerata’s woodwind section are enchanting at the start of the slow movement. Bavouzet brings charm and restraint to the movement before giving us a moment of heart-stopping poetry in the interlude before the return of the opening them. The finale has enormous fizz and sparkle. There is tight, spirited interplay between soloist and orchestra. Bavouzet brings enormous energy to the increasingly elaborate passagework. It is impossible not to be swept along with the joys of music-making.

This is an outstanding recording and is worthy to sit alongside the great Mozart concerto recordings such as those by Perahia and Uchida.

-- MusicWeb International

This cleverly thought-out album is a tribute to Bach and his kindred spirits. Who is akin to whom? Are they spiritual or elective kinships? In the first instance, all the pieces recorded here are akin to each other in that they are especially suitable or that most sensitive of all keyboard instruments, the clavichord. Beauty is another common feature, which they display in their own way. And in the circle of fifths these pieces are very close to one another. Personal and familial kinships become apparent with the name of Bach. It is also known that JS Bach chose JA Reincken, around forty years his senior, as his teacher: Reincken can certainly be described as a musical father, a true kindred spirit, to JS Bach. Johann Gottfried Muthel slots into the ensemble as a logical consequence. He was JS Bach’s last pupil who had participated in transcribing The Art of Fugue and who composed in a consistently new and noncontrapuntal style. In this respect, he is musically much closer to Bach’s sons Carl Philipp Emanuel and Wilhelm Friedemann, almost a brother to them.

The acclaimed violinist Jennifer Pike returns to Chandos to explore her heritage through the repertoire of a group of composers fundamental to the history of Polish music for the violin. From Janiewicz in the late eighteenth century right through to Bacewicz in the middle of the twentieth, Poland produced a number of composer-violinists well known across Europe. All of them were talented musicians as well as composers, their compositions technically demanding. Jennifer Pike here plays music by Karlowicz, Szymanowski, Wieniawski, and Moszkowski with complete control and deep feeling, sympathetically accompanied by Petr Limonov, winner of the Nikolai Rubinstein International Piano Competition.

This is the first volume in a complete survey of Bach’s harpsichord concertos, recorded by La Risonanza in one-to-a-part practice performance. With his Fifth Brandenburg Concerto, Bach had created the first ever harpsichord concerto. In Leipzig, the opportunity arose to continue this experiment: each week at Café Zimmermann he conducted his Collegium musicum in orchestral concerts that lasted around two hours. In the summer of 1733, he took delivery of “a new harpsichord, the like of which has not been heard before around here.” This magnificent instrument, which featured in the Zimmermann concerts, urgently called for concertos to be played by Bach himself as soloist, and even more so his sons and students. Not only in Saxony but also well beyond, Bach was considered to be the absolute authority on all things harpsichord and organ; he thus had to make his own contribution to the emerging genre of the ‘clavier concerto.’ The manuscript of his six harpsichord concertos should therefore be understood as a repertoire collection for his Collegium musicum, and as a personal manifesto.

Classical Music