From the diversity of Bulgarian musical culture Pancho Vladigerov stands out as undoubtedly the most important composer for the musical self-conception of modern Bulgaria. In the 1920s he worked as a conductor, pianist and composer in close association with Max Reinhardt at the Deutsches Theater Berlin. He also associated with many German-speaking writers, such as Stefan Zweig, Gerhart Hauptmann, Arthur Schnitzler and Hugo von Hofmannsthal as well as with many fellow composers of the time (including Bartók, Kodály, Strauss, Ravel, Glasunov, Hindemith, Schoenberg, Rachmaninov and Szymanowski). In this light, it is difficult to understand why the imaginative and colorful music by the sound wizard does not possess any appropriate status in European concert halls today. However, in his homeland he held a pre-eminent position up to the end of his life. Irrespective of the prevailing political conditions, he was shown the greatest respect by all sides and granted both personal and state recognition. With these recordings, produced in the 1070s in Bulgaria, Capriccio releases an 18-album Vladigerov-Edition to preserve this colorful music also for the next generations.

Rimsky-Korsakov' orchestral genius shines through in his colourful operatic suites, and that from his final opera Le Coq d'or is richly dramatic and expressive.

The Avalon String Quartet, “a remarkably fine ensemble” (The Strad), makes its Cedille Records debut with an irresistible and richly varied program of captivating works by Claude Debussy, Benjamin Britten, Osvaldo Golijov, and rising American composer Stacy Garrop. The ensemble presents the world-premiere recording of Garrop’s String Quartet No. 4: Illuminations, a tantalizing, Pictures at an Exhibition-style tour of spectacular illustrations from an ornate medieval manuscript. Debussy’s lush, exotic String Quartet in G minor unfolds through iridescent quasi-orchestral textures. Golijov’s lyrical, deeply moving Tenebrae (Latin for “shadows”), written for the Kronos Quartet, pays tender tribute to the earth, depicted in its remote celestial beauty, haunted by undertones of human discord. Britten’s youthful, energetic Three Divertimenti and Alla Marcia are alluring, rarely recorded studies in inventiveness and perpetual motion.

The Avalon is quartet-in-residence at the Northern Illinois University School of Music. “…an ensemble that invites you — ears, mind, and spirit — into its music.” (Chicago Tribune)

REVIEW:

The folks at Cedille seem to have mastered the art of putting together classical music collections that make good musical sense. Debussy’s String Quartet is, of course, standard fare, and it usually appears in tandem with the Ravel and something else French. Not here. Instead, we have two Britten rarities, the entertaining Three Divertimenti and the lone Alla Marcia (the first of the Divertimenti is also a march, so you can see the logic), a self-described “Pictures at an Exhibition” type piece by Stacy Garrop, and a moving conclusion in the form of Osvaldo Golijov’s single-movement Tenebrae. The entire program provides consistently interesting and entertaining continuous listening, and the sonics are drop-dead gorgeous.

So, for that matter, is the playing of the Avalon String Quartet. The group’s corporate sonority is warm and mellow, but with just a touch of “rosin” in the tone. They attack rhythmic moments such as the scherzo of the Debussy, the Burlesque and the marches in the Britten pieces, and Garrop’s musically impossibly named “Mouth of Hell” with plenty of guts and precision, but no unpleasant hardness in the tone. The slow music is simply luminous. I am not generally a fan of pseudo-religious programmatic stuff such as Garrop offers here, but it’s awfully well done, and the booklet provides well-produced, full-color reproductions of the illustrations from the late medieval Book of Hours that Garrop took as her inspiration. They are exquisite, as is much of Garrop’s writing more generally.

Here, in short, is another excellent program that chamber music fans looking to venture off the beaten path will surely relish.

- ClassicsToday.com (10/10)

Gorgeous and poignant music, performed with wholehearted fervor by an excellent choir.

This will turn out to be, I am sure, one of my favorite recordings of 2012. I first came upon Jonathan Dove’s music on a Hyperion recording of his sacred music, featuring the Wells Cathedral Choir, conducted by Matthew Owens (2010). Over the last year I have occasionally returned to that CD, each time coming away more impressed by Dove’s writing. This new CD has only confirmed and strengthened that impression.

The recording opens with The Passing of the Year, a song-cycle written for double chorus and piano, dedicated in memory of Dove’s mother. The work, which is made up of seven movements divided into three main sections, takes the listener literally and metaphorically through changing seasons. Thankfully, Naxos does not follow its increasingly common practice of making the listener go to its website to search out the texts though they can be found here. Listening with the poetry at hand only increased my admiration for Dove’s sensitive text setting.

The work opens with Invocation, the voices repeatedly singing “O Earth, return!” with an ever increasing intensity. This leads into an extended setting of William Blake’s The narrow bud opens her beauties to the sun, that features contrasting textures of soloist versus choir and high versus low voice to convey the idea of “Summer breaking forth.” The third movement sets Emily Dickinson’s Answer July as a call and response between female and male voices that perfectly captures the playfulness of the text. Movement 4 begins the second section begins with Hot Sun, cool fire, a setting of words by George Peele that uses slowly shifting dissonant chords to evoke how difficult it can be to breathe, let alone move, on a brutally hot summer day. The cycle’s emotional climax is found in Movement 6, a setting of Thomas Nashe’s Adieu! Farewell earth’s bliss. Over an ostinato that bares a passing resemblance to the final minutes of Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms, one of the choirs intones “Lord, have mercy on us,” as the other choir sings, in achingly beautiful harmonies, about the inevitability of death.

Three times these competing choral textures break off so that all voices can join together in singing “I am sick, I must die”. Even after listening several times, Dove’s setting leaves me shaken. The sadness of that movement is effectively dispelled by the final Ring out, wild bells, a passage from Alfred Lord Tennyson’s In Memoriam that speaks of the promises found in the beginning of a New Year.

The rest of the program is just as impressive as the Song Cycle, and displays a greater variety of musical styles, including a solo for mezzo-soprano (My love is mine), three songs for upper voice/women’s choir (It sounded as if the streets were running). The CD is rounded out with Advent and Christmas music, including The Three Kings, written for Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols at King’s College, Cambridge.

Dove’s music is impressive, with attractive melodies and tonal harmonic writing. Nevertheless, he is not afraid to use dissonance when it more strongly projects and expresses the text, and his writing displays a particularly strong skill in creating onomatopoeic effects. When I began my listening, I thought it would be helpful to note where Dove’s writing seemed reminiscent of other composers’ work. Sometimes the piano writing, which often uses ostinato figures, reminds me of the minimalists Steven Reich and John Adams. A few of Dove’s melodies soar in a way that recalls Samuel Barber. Answer July brings thoughts of Benjamin Britten’s “Ballad of the Green Broom” from Five Flower Songs. I share these comments not to suggest that Dove is in any way a derivative composer, but rather to express how highly I rate his work. Dove is very much his own man, with masterly word setting that reminds me most strongly of Benjamin Britten and, on this side of the Atlantic, Libby Larsen.

Dove receives the strongest advocacy from his performers. The Convivium Singers, under the assured direction of Neil Ferris, display admirable control of the long line and excellent intonation. I find the balance to be a bit dominated by the women’s voices, and would not have minded a few more men in each section. But the balance never detracted from my immense enjoyment of this recording. Accompanist Christopher Cromar’s playing is splendid, self-effacing virtuosity that serves the choir and the music.

I urge you to purchase this CD as quickly as possible. It is gorgeous and poignant music, performed with wholehearted fervor by an excellent choir, all at budget price.

– David A. McConnell, MusicWeb International

R. STRAUSS Violin Sonata, Op. 18. RESPIGHI Violin Sonata in b. Six Pieces: Melodia; Valse caressante; Serenata • Tasmin Little (vn); Piers Lane (pn) • CHANDOS 10749 (65:50)

Violinist Tasmin Little has amassed a very respectable discography on a number of different labels, though of late, she seems to have settled in as one of Chandos’s house artists. Her recent recording of Delius’s Violin Concerto received an urgent recommendation from me in 35:4, so I really looked forward to receiving her latest release of these two late romantic sonatas.


On the surface, Richard Strauss and Respighi may not seem to have a lot in common, but their respective violin sonatas have been paired on disc before, notably by Kyung-Wha Chung and Krystian Zimerman for Deutsche Grammophon and by Frank Almond and William Wolfram for Avie. Strauss composed his sonata in 1887 at the age of 23. It’s an inspired outpouring of youth hardly recognizable as music by the composer that Strauss would become. Respighi’s B-Minor Sonata—an earlier sonata in D Minor dates from the composer’s teens—was written in 1917, exactly 30 years later than Strauss’s sonata, by a more mature composer of 38.


Strauss’s sonata will no doubt be permanently associated with Heifetz, not because he championed it and twice recorded it, but because of his callous and stubborn determination to perform the piece in 1953 before an Israeli audience that still considered Strauss a Nazi collaborator and whose emotions were still raw from the Holocaust. That little stunt nearly cost Heifetz his career when an assailant attacked him outside his hotel, striking his right arm with an iron bar. While I don’t condone the death threats and violence against him, I understand the intensity of feelings that were aroused. Heifetz had no one to blame but himself for his own arrogance and intractable insensitivity. He canceled his last concert and departed Israel post haste, not to return there again until 1970.


The shame of it all is that Strauss’s sonata was written half a century before Hitler rose to power, and the piece is a passionate and deeply touching reflection of the late 19th-century German musical culture in which Strauss came of age. Unsurprisingly, Liszt and Wagner, both recently dead, appear as frequent ghosts throughout the sonata’s pages, but another guest one meets, less frequently perhaps but still very much alive when Strauss wrote the piece, is Brahms.


Respighi is not an easy composer to categorize. Some see him, as they see Strauss, Puccini, Rachmaninoff, and Sibelius as manifestations of a resistant strain of late romanticism that persisted well into the 20th century, while others have referred to Respighi as an Impressionist. I think one could support either view. There’s no question but that Respighi’s sonata is the more modern of the two works on the disc, at least in terms of its approach to harmony and tonality, but it remains an essentially romantic work in its gestural language—i.e., in its sweeping vistas and appeal to the emotions, both public and private.


The last time I reviewed a recording of Strauss’s violin sonata was in 32:3. That Atma CD also contained violin and piano works by Elgar and Ravel in performances by Jonathan Crow and Paul Stewart which I called “a desideratum of indescribably beautiful music matched by indescribably beautiful playing.” Pardon the pun, but Tasmin Little brings more than a little of Crow’s eloquent and elegant playing to the Strauss, but I would also have to say that in some of the sonata’s more technically taxing passages, she can sound ever so slightly flustered; and while the notes never actually get away from her, one senses she’s making an effort to stay on top of them. Next to Crow’s Strauss, another performance I’ve long liked is that by Dmitri Sitkovetsky on Virgin Classics. He has the technical chops to pull it off smoothly, but I don’t find him quite as emotionally engaged as either Crow or Little. Whatever the reason, Respighi’s sonata seems to suit Little a little better, both technically and temperamentally. Her performance of the piece is lithe and fully responsive to the score’s rapidly shifting moods and colors. In my opinion, it easily outclasses Tanja Becker-Bender on Hyperion, whose reading I find somewhat flighty and rudderless.


Overall, this has to be rated a very fine effort, and not just by Little, but also by Piers Lane who partners her most excellently on the piano, and by Chandos, which provides its usual deep and vivid sound. This may not be the absolute best Strauss out there, but it’s definitely among the very best of the Respighis, and the extra three encores from Respighi’s Six Pieces for Violin and Piano make for a most enriching program. Easily recommended.

FANFARE: Jerry Dubins

-----------

Chandos have prided themselves on having a deep and long-term available back catalogue. Though distantly separated in time the present CD can be seen as an adjunct to two of the grand Chandos series of the 1980s and 1990s. The first was the Respighi orchestral music edition built around the Edward Downes BBCPO symphonies and concertos but supplemented by earlier discs conducted by Geoffrey Simon - still truly splendid - and later ones from Hickox and Noseda. The Downes and Simon discs would shine anew if issued in a box or boxes. The second comprised the half dozen discs they issued in the 1980s golden days of Järvi conducting the then SNO in the major orchestral works of Richard Strauss.

These two violin and piano works have previously appeared - although separately - on Chandos. There were in fact two CDs of the Strauss Sonata – one from Lydia Mordkovitch and the other from Sasha Rozhdestvensky. It comes as no surprise that the Respighi was also recorded by Mordkovitch. She contributed so much to the label that I have every reason to expect that, one of these days, there will be a complete Mordkovitch Chandos Edition. It’s certainly deserved – at least as much as a Takako Nishizaki edition for Naxos.

Little and Lane’s Strauss Sonata is flooded with melodic light and surges and muses with all the eruptive and serenading romance of the same composer’s Don Juan. Both Tasmin Little and Piers Lane are obviously up for it and flatter the 1887 Strauss with a most inward reading which makes it appear a greater work than perhaps it is. The stormy romance of the outer movements of the 1917 Respighi Sonata is emphasised by the utterly peaceful and romantically centred Sargasso calm of the Andante second movement. It stands head and shoulders above the other sonata movements on this disc, masterfully treading that febrile line between poetry and self-conscious sentimentality. Both Little and Lane have every right to be proud of their achievement here. Speaking of that mood we have three movements from the salon-destined and designed Sei Pezzi. I lament that the other three Kreislerian movements were not included – there was space. A puzzling and regretted omission.

With thanks to Chandos for commissioning a liner-note from the inspired Jessica Duchen. Such a fine writer and one whose Korngold book (Phaidon Press) has been unjustly eclipsed by the ‘major definitive biography’. The Duchen is much more than a valid alternative. Indeed, Korngold is a far from irrelevant comparison in the company of the two composers so nobly represented on this disc.

– Rob Barnett, MusicWeb International

Herbert Howells' style, immediately recognizable for it's long melodic lines, rhapsodic nature and rich harmonies, defined the sound of English cathedral music in the 20th century. His studies in London imbued his works with sophistication and a French influence, which were intertwined with a nostalgic 'heartache' for the 'real Gloucestershire,' as can be heard in String Quartet No. 3. The charming little character stories in 'Lady Audrey's Suite' tell of countryside and church, while the Piano Quartet in A minor is dedicated "To the Hill at Chosen and Ivor Gurney who knows it," portraying a favorite local vantage point at different seasons as well as poignantly remembering a lost friendship.

A highly decorated composer in Soviet Russia, Reinhold Gli�re maintained a low political profile and a conservative but astonishingly inventive melodic style. His interest in national harmonies and folk-music emerges in the Twelve Album Leaves, and his remarkably important contribution to cello repertoire is demonstrated both in his mastery of small forms in the Duets Op 39, and a unique ability to create orchestral sonorities in the Duets Op 53, a rare example of an original cycle for the delightful combination of two cellos.

Classical Music

The two cello sonatas by Johannes Brahms are in very stark contrast to each other. This is not solely due to the more than twenty years separating the works. Brahms had a preference for pairs of works with the same instrumentation, which he frequently composed according to the principle of contrast. In the case of the cello concertos, it is above all the character and mood of the respective pieces that describe the contrasts. In the version for cello, the Violin Sonata op. 78, one of Brahms’ finest chamber works, supplements the two original cello sonatas in a charming way. Daniel Müller-Schott and Francesco Piemontesi team up once more for this all Brahms program after the great success of their release of cello sonatas of the 20th century (C872151).

REVIEW:

Poetry, power, and passion are all here, to an unquestionable degree. There were more times when I was struck by the piano’s beautiful tone than the cello’s, but at 44 Müller-Schott has grown into the kind of maturity that still expresses the joy of music in the face of temptations to become a much-in-demand professional repeating the same handful of popular pieces. I haven’t previously associated him with passionate playing, but he’s struck a bond with Piemontesi, whose Liszt can be quite ardent. Every desirable quality is present here.

– Fanfare

•Malcolm Williamson (1931–2003), Master of the Queen’s Music from 1975-2003, was the first non-Britain to hold the post since its creation in the 17th century. A gifted pianist, organist and prolific composer, his music naturally includes a substantial number of organ works. His writing for organ is strikingly powerful in its originality and its eclectic mix of styles, ranging from lyrical introspection to fiery virtuosity. Two of the works on this CD are receiving their first recordings.

Legendary tango performer and composer Astor Piazzolla gained experience of jazz in New York and classical form and technique through studies with Alberto Ginastera. His work lends itself perfectly to arrangement for all kinds of ensemble, and this is the first recording with solo trombone. These popular pieces showcase the stunning playing of multi-award winning soloist Achilles Liarmakopoulos in a variety of moods, including the famous Oblivion, and Le Grand Tango, a virtuoso show-stopper originally written for cellist Mstislav Rostropovich.

'I haven't sat right through a CD of tangos until this one. Greek trombonist Achilles Liarmakopoulos, who plays with Canadian Brass, is an astonishing player, a musician of extraordinary subtlety and understatement. With the sweetest, most seductive tone imaginable, he glides through the Piazzolla classics, including the full Histoire du Tango, all three movements of the beautiful Serie del Angel, Michelangelo, Oblivion and a heart-wrenching, soulful rendition of Soledad. His group, including the great bandoneon player Hector del Curto, is superlative. An outstanding disc.' (Herald Scotland)

Here’s a welcome reissue from Marco Polo, now on the less expensive Naxos line. László Lajtha (1892-1963) was the major 20th century Hungarian symphonist. He had the good fortune to be picked up by an important publisher early on (Leduc), but suffered from being largely out of favor with the Communist regime for most of his career. He wrote major works in all the traditional forms, in a style recognizably personal and immediately appealing, but without pandering. Aesthetically (as Leduc recognized) his voice was audibly French in orientation, and if I had to categorize him I might say that he was a sort of Hungarian Martinu. The melos of Hungarian folk music underlies much of his thematic substance, but the translucent textures and colorful orchestration have an impressionistic tinge.

All of this is quite evident in the First Symphony, a pithy work in three movements that consistently captivates the ear. In memoriam is a big, powerful funeral march that takes a few minutes to get going, but once it does, proceeds memorably. Its central climaxes are aptly harrowing. The early Suite for Orchestra has four movements, including a parodistic Marche burlesque and an equally ironic Can-Can conclusion. Its Valse lente third movement is lovely, as are these performances. The Pécs Symphony Orchestral plays well for conductor Nicolás Parquet, and they are also naturally recorded in a warm, open acoustic. If you missed this series the first time around, grab these reissues as they come.

– ClassicsToday (David Hurwitz)

Vaughan Williams withdrew or destroyed many works from his earliest period, but with its haunting opening and luminous polyphonic textures he considered The Solent as amongst his ‘most important works’. The Fantasia is his earliest known piece for solo instrument with orchestra and contains some of his most bravura writing, contrasting with the graceful geniality of the Suite. Depicting a sublimely pastoral scene and now one of the best loved pieces ever written, Vaughan Williams called The Lark Ascending a ‘romance’, a term reserved for his most profoundly lyrical utterances.

Includes work(s) by various composers. Ensembles: Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, Bournemouth Symphony Chorus. Conductor: Peter Breiner.

Soler was music master to the princes of Bourbon in El Escorial, the palace of the King of Spain. It’s probable that most of his keyboard sonatas were written for Prince Gabriel and these essentially private works—around 150 have survived—bear comparison with the works of Domenico Scarlatti and C.P.E. Bach. Soler was fond of dance rhythms and guitar imitations, as well as infectious and delightful modulations. These fifteen sonatas are heard here in the order proposed by Rubio’s catalogue. Pianist Martina Filjak—“brilliance, sensitivity and imagination” (New York Times)—is a much admired international artist.

The art of Shakespeare was a recurring fascination for Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco. In addition to two operas and numerous settings of songs and sonnets, he wrote 11 Shakespeare Overtures which here receive their first ever complete recording. Deploying all the resources of the symphony orchestra, these are some of the twentieth century’s most dramatic and tuneful orchestral works, spectacular evocations of Shakespeare’s greatest plays.

Although his superb piano-writing combines contrapuntal dexterity and a rich vein of lyricism, much of Sergei Lyapunov’s output for piano has been neglected. This chronological survey, covering three decades of Lyapunov’s composing life, contains a number of first recordings.

REVIEW:

This is a highly successful recital which makes one hope for further volumes. The Op 1 pieces, the Scherzo, and the Sonatina are receiving their first recordings. The engineering is unfussy. Given the nature of the music there is no need for the widest or most dramatic of sound-stages. That being said the engineers have captured Glebov’s Steinway D piano with excellent natural presence. As mentioned, excellent liner-notes give real insight into both the life and music of this still too-little known composer. A wholly enjoyable disc.

-- MusicWeb International

Così fan tutte is Mozart's third opera to a Da Ponte libretto. It is in opera buffa style and has only six characters, two couples and an elderly philosopher and a trusted maid. In this recording Lesley Garrett sings the part of the maid, Despina, and the celebrated veteran Sir Thomas Allen the philosopher, Don Alfonso. Despite the somewhat cynical storyline this opera contains some of Mozart's most memorable and sublime music. The conductor, Sir Charles Mackerras, has spent many years researching performance practice of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and is a noted authority on Mozart's operas. He writes of this recording, 'it is indeed a pleasure having the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment lending its expertise in tonal colour, phrasing and rhythmic impulse to Mozart's wonderful score...I have chosen to record this English version of Così fan tutte with the traditional cuts, thus making it closer to a staged performance'. The English translation, by the Rev. Browne, was first used in London at a performance conducted by Sir Charles Villiers Stanford in 1890.

Bach compiled his set of six trio sonatas for organ during the late 1720s. They are thought to have been put together as training material for Bach’s son Wilhelm Friedemann and can be grouped among other pedagogical keyboard collections such as the Inventions and the Well-Tempered Clavier. They are unique, however, in transferring the typical trio sonata texture, a popular style normally played by ensemble, to a single instrument. In Bach’s originals the right and left hands take the top two parts while the pedals perform the bass line. The first movement of Sonata No. 4 was originally composed for ensemble and the unique formal and stylistic characteristics of the collection suggest that other movements, too, started life away from the organ.

Taking this on board, Tempesta di Mare Chamber Players have re-imagined these works in arrangements for ensemble, using scorings typically adopted in the performance of trio sonatas in Bach’s time. Bach was himself a serial adapter and re-arranger of his own works and this recording takes on his understanding of the musical work as a fluid entity, able to assume as many forms as there are purposes for them.

The Philadelphia-based early music ensemble Tempesta di Mare is renowned for its unique programming and championing of rarely performed works, not least through its fruitful relationship with Chandos Records. - Chandos Records

Arranged for chamber ensemble by Richard Stone.

Tempesta di Mare Chamber Players:
Gwyn Roberts recorder - flauto traverso
Emlyn Ngai violin
Karina Schmitz violin - viola
Lisa Terry cello - viola da gamba
Richard Stone lute
Adam Pearl harpsichord
Recorded in: Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA

Tchaikovsky wrote over 100 lyric art songs or Romances, a sequence of diaries of the soul that embrace moods from euphoria to despair. They were unusually important to him, and he, or his editors, commissioned piano transcriptions by eminent musicians such as Laub and others, all of which were revised by Tchaikovsky. These poetic and melodically beautiful songs, many of which are here recorded for the first time, include the ravishing None but the Lonely Heart and reveal a ‘new’ body of Tchaikovsky’s piano repertoire. The album concludes with an opera fantasy on themes from Eugene Onegin by the Austrian composer and pianist Carl Fruhling. Julia Severus graduated from the Berlin University of Arts and from the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory, where she studied piano with Mikhail Voskresensky and Lev Naumov. Wishing to explore piano ensemble repertoire, she founded the Aurora Duo and Quartet, performing numerous premieres and world premieres, among them Rodion Shchedrin’s Hommage a Chopin in the presence of the composer.

 

REVIEW:

 

The range of songs is wide. The most famous of the set, generally known in English as None but the lonely heart, is arranged by Severus. She has replaced the syncopations of the original accompaniment with triplets that meander around the vocal line. In general, I find that the extra little touches of fantasy in Severus’s transcriptions make for more effective piano solos than the others on the disc. That said, Tchaikovsky’s gift for melody and drama make all these pieces worth hearing.

 

Severus finds the mood and style effectively, and generally plays very well. Overall, this is a very enjoyable and well-balanced recital.

 

– MusicWeb International

This release is the first of three discs devoted to the piano music of George Enescu. The works chosen for this first album are three significant pieces - Nocturne in D-Flat Major "Hommage a la Princesse Marie Cantacuzene", Pieces impromptues, and Piano Sonata No. 1 in F-Sharp Minor. Enescu’s Romanian influences show in these works, which feel strongly of Romanian folk music. Pianist Josu de Solaun performs these works.

-----

REVIEW:

His technique is excellent here. The concluding Sonata 1 is shot through with harmonic twists and driving rhythms, handled expertly.

– American Record Guide

Tigran Chukhajian is highly significant in the history of Armenian music: he was the first composer to combine Western and Eastern cultures, and was referred to as the ‘Armenian Verdi’ amongst his contemporaries. Persecution under the repressive Ottoman Turkish regime led to his music being suppressed, but these piano works are a sophisticated testament to Chukhajian’s Romantic inclinations, absorbing the influences of Chopin and Liszt, and enriching them with Orientalist nuances and descriptive themes. Mikael Ayrapetyan is a pianist, composer and producer. He is also the founder and artistic director of the music project Secrets of Armenia, which aims to increase international awareness of Armenian classical music, and actively organizes concerts featuring Armenian music in venues around the world, for which he is producer, artistic director and pianist.

Born in 1984 in Yerevan, Armenia, he studied at the Moscow Tchaikovsky State Conservatory, and continues to uphold the performing traditions of the Russian piano school, of which Konstantin Igumnov, Samuel Feinberg and Lev Oborin are luminaries. His repertoire ranges from the Baroque to the contemporary and includes rarely performed works by Armenian composers.

REVIEWS:

Ayrapetyan is top notch and is able to communicate both the playful and serious moods in this repertoire. The more serious ‘Caprice’ begins with a melismatic melody, almost improvisational in quality. He plays without too much rhythmic liberty, and is firm but maintains a healthy dose of color and beauty.

-- American Record Guide

Classical Music

Signum proudly presents Lapwood’s debut solo organ recording following her critically-acclaimed debut choral recording, All things are quite silent, with The Choirs of Pembroke College, Cambridge. This luxurious programme, including some of Lapwood’s world-premiere arrangements, showcases the softer, more subtle side of an instrument more generally regarded for its bombastic nature. “One of my favorite things about being an organist is the exquisite feeling of practicing in a church or cathedral late at night. The door is locked, the lights are often out, and time seems to flow differently. It’s at night that one really gains a sense of the history of the building, getting to know the creaking noises and clicks that make it seem as if the space is breathing. Sound seems to travel differently too, piercing the warm cushion of dark silence like a beam of light. On this disc I’ve tried to capture some of that magic, recording in a chilly Ely Cathedral after hours in January 2021.” (Anna Lapwood) Anna Lapwood is an organist, conductor, and broadcaster, and holds the position of Director of Music at Pembroke College, Cambridge. Lapwood recently presented the 2020 BBC Young Musician of the Year competition and is due to perfom at the BBC Proms on 7th September 2021.

The term étude first started to turn up in musical literature in the late 1700s, and came into common usage in the first half of the 19th century. The notion of a piece of music exactingly engineered to promote some specific aspect of technique was nothing new; in her public presentations of “The Étude Project,” pianist Jenny Lin traces the concept back to Johann Sebastian Bach’s Clavier-Übung, four volumes of keyboard exercises published between 1726 and 1741 — the final volume known more widely as the “Goldberg” Variations.

Countless composers have risen to the challenge of the étude. This album, the first documentation of a sweeping project conceived by Lin, includes some of the most famous examples – Debussy, Scriabin, Rachmaninoff, Messiaen, Ligeti, and Glass – alongside equally noteworthy contributions to the format by such mavericks as Ruth Crawford Seeger, Toshio Hosokawa, and Unsuk Chin. Lin further pairs each of her canonical selections with an entirely new work by a member of ICEBERG New Music, a determinedly heterodox collaborative of 10 gifted young composers who represent a broad range of stylistic inclinations, but who are united by their enduring faith in substance and craft.

Bucking a current fad, the new études were not proposed as sequels or responses to existing works. Lin simply asked the ICEBERG composers to challenge her, and then used her own keen ear and sure instincts to find sympathetic pairings. Driving rhythms and rich harmonies link pieces by Alex Burtzos and Chopin. Rangy scatterings of notes present a frolicsome affinity between Victor Baez and Unsuk Chin. Stephanie Ann Boyd and Debussy both deploy dreamy arpeggios in rippling waves; and so on. In each case, hearing the new piece enhances your understanding of the older one—and vice versa. Identifying affinities among old and new music, and among familiar and unknown pieces, is a knack Lin has demonstrated again and again throughout her career—and it’s part of what makes her not only a persuasive interpreter, but also an invaluable guide and companion. Stated simply: you are in extraordinarily sure hands, here.

REVIEW:

Aligning with composers of ICEBERG New Music, pianist Jenny Lin gave its ten members absolute freedom of style and pianistic approach when crafting new etudes for her. In addition to her Herculean playing, the fearless pianist brings curatorial prowess to bear in pairing each new etude with an existing work from the canon. Have a listen to this disc and then have another. The Etudes Project will repay you manifestly.

– The Whole Note (CA)