On Remembering, the Danish cellist Jakob Kullberg continues his collaborations with two of the foremost Nordic composers: Per Nørgård and Kaija Saariaho. Praised internationally for his performances of the modern cello concerto, Kullberg regards the concerto form as the encounter of an individual soloist with the sound world of a composer. With living composers this approach often results in an unusual degree of collaboration, as the works gathered here bear witness to. Since 1999, Kullberg has enjoyed a close and unique partnership with Nørgård which has resulted in a large number of works. Between, the opening work on the album, hails from a time before this, but Nørgård’s viola concerto Remembering Child in its version for the cello is very much an example of Kullberg’s process. He has not only transferred the concerto to his own instruments, but has also – in consultation with the composer – written his own cadenza as well as added details to the score. Likewise, at a climactic point exactly halfway through Saariaho’s concerto Notes on Light, Kullberg creates an expressive space of his own, with a two-minute cadenza he has composed himself. In this work, as well as in Nørgård’s Between, Kullberg is supported by the BBC Philharmonic, with Sinfonia Varsovia appearing in the closing concerto.

Ronald Center (1913–73) is sometimes described as ‘the Scottish Bartók’, and his music does indeed capture some of the stark, wild energy of the Scottish landscape in a style of Bartókian asperity. These three string quartets show him, in his northeast corner of Scotland, to have been fully conversant with the quartets being written around the same time by Barber, Britten and Shostakovich, but their direct manner, terse expression, wiry humor and roots in Scottish folk-music ensure that Center is his own man.

This is already our third encounter with the great Polish composer Fryderyk Chopin – an encounter, in fact, that is as unusual as his music, which has delighted people around the world for over one hundred and fifty years. In Fryderyk’s day, not everybody was able to listen to his works. To hear one of his concerts they would have had to travel to where he lived – in his early years that meant going to Warsaw, and later even further, i.e. to Paris. Today, all we have to do is listen to one of his albums and imagine that the genius composer is playing especially for us.

During the 2010s, Sebastian Fagerlund focused on a series of orchestral compositions and concertos, making one single excursion into vocal music: the opera Höstsonaten (Autumn Sonata, 2017). One of his most important works, the opera has influenced his subsequent music, with an increase of long melodic lines alongside his signature rhythmic drive and energy. Dedicated to Nicolas Altstaedt, Fagerlund’s cello concerto Nomade consists of six movements played without a break – a journey by the cellist-wanderer through various landscapes, moods and events depicted by the orchestra. Fagerlund has enjoyed a close relationship with the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra and conductor Hannu Lintu, who has premiered several of his works, including Nomade. Among the fruits of this collaboration is Water Atlas, the third part of a trilogy for orchestra, also comprising Stonework and Drifts, which the same team recorded for BIS in 2017. As a whole, the trilogy deals with basic elements, albeit in an abstract manner: stone, wind (or currents) and water. In Water Atlas Fagerlund was interested in the ever-continuous water cycle: the evaporation of water into the atmosphere and its return to the earth as rain – a cycle that is currently under threat from pollution and climate change.

The beautiful, lyrical music of prolific 19th-century Swiss composer Joachim Raff was widely performed during his lifetime but is relatively under-represented today. Who better than Christoph Croisé, Raff’s modern day compatriot, to breathe new life into the composer’s complete works for cello and piano. Raff’s chamber music, and especially his works for cello, were among his most notable achievements. Having established a career in Germany in the mid-1850’s, Raff encountered the eminent cellist Bernhard Cossman whose mastery of the instrument inspired the composer’s rich Romantic oeuvre. Christoph, who has “got it all – technical chops, impeccable musicianship” (Gramophone), puts a fresh, 21st-century spin on Raff’s memorable music resulting in this benchmark recording.

REVIEW:

The beautiful, lyrical music of prolific 19th-century Swiss composer Joachim Raff was widely performed during his lifetime but is relatively under-represented today. Who better than Christoph Croisé, Raff’s modern day compatriot, to breathe new life into the composer’s complete works for cello and piano. Raff’s chamber music, and especially his works for cello, were among his most notable achievements. Having established a career in Germany in the mid-1850’s, Raff encountered the eminent cellist Bernhard Cossman, whose mastery of the instrument inspired the composer. Croisé, joined by pianist Oxana Shevchenko, puts a fresh, 21st-century spin on Raff’s memorable music resulting in this benchmark recording.

-- WMFT, 98.7 FM (Chicago, IL)

The singing quality of string instruments ties together "SONGS FOR A NEW CENTURY," a program featuring both world premiere recordings of new music commissioned for the artists and world premiere recordings of masterpieces by Mendelssohn.

The program opens with a set of Mendelssohn’s Songs Without Words, beginning with the Opus 109 written by the composer for cello and piano. It continues with a set of arrangements for cello and piano, some recorded for the first time, by the 19th-century cellist Alfredo Piatti, a personal friend of Mendelssohn’s upon whose cello Jonathan Miller plays. Gabriela Lena Frank’s Operetta for violin and cello, the composer writes, expands upon Mendelssohn’s concept of the “song without words,” creating opera without words that evokes scenes and characters through singing music for the duo of violin (Lucia Lin) and cello. Scott Wheeler’s second cello sonata, Songs Without Words, was inspired by Miller’s singing cello tone. Finally, Judith Weir’s Three Chorales for cello and piano meditate on religious poetry, departing from hymn texts –– and in the third Chorale, a melody from Hildegard of Bingen –– in a triptych that evokes the human condition.

"Operetta," "Three Chorales," and "Cello Sonata #2: Songs Without Words" were commissioned by Jonathan Miller and Diane Fassino for the Boston Artists Ensemble.

Hans Werner Henze was initially an avant-garde composer but Nachtstücke und Arien symbolised his departure from dodecaphonic writing, to the annoyance of his contemporaries Boulez, Nono and Stockhausen at Darmstadt. With this new direction Henze’s music became highly rhapsodic, as heard in the challenging but lyrical solo cello that suggests the intimate texts of the Englische Liebeslieder. Referring to Goya, Los Caprichos captures the strangeness of this artist’s visions with long-breathed melodic lines and fleeting changes of texture, from military-sounding bustle to moments of profound stillness. Marin Alsop is chief conductor of the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, which she leads at Vienna’s Konzerthaus and Musikverein, and on recordings, broadcasts and tours. Her discography includes acclaimed Naxos recordings of symphonies by Brahms with the London Philharmonic, Dvořák with the Baltimore Symphony, and Prokofiev with the São Paulo Symphony. The first and only conductor to receive a MacArthur Fellowship, Alsop received the World Economic Forum’s Crystal Award and was the first woman to conduct the BBC’s Last Night of the Proms. She is director of graduate conducting at the Peabody Institute and holds honorary doctorates from Yale University and The Juilliard School.

REVIEW:

Hans Werner Henze's rigorously constructed and orchestrated works require careful and well-prepared performances, and that’s just what they get here from conductor Marin Alsop and the Vienna Radio Symphony. This might, in fact, make a good initial Henze album, for it leads the listener into his music in a logical way. All three pieces respond to extramusical models in different ways. He is not everybody’s cup of tea, but this release realizes his ideas exceptionally well.

-- AllMusic.com (James Manheim)

This album marks the culmination of two special Hallé collaborations and includes four major pieces from one of the most distinctive of current British compositional voices. Delyana Lazarova (Hallé Assistant Conductor 2020-23) and composer Dobrinka Tabakova (Hallé Artist in Residence 2022-23) were both born in the historic city of Plovdiv, Bulgaria. Working together for the first time during their time with the orchestra they formed a strong musical connection in which the Hallé musicians displayed a close understanding of the intricacies and dialect of Tabakova’s musical language. This album contains two of Tabakova’s major orchestral works. The three-part Earth Suite, which the composer says was inspired by ‘the overwhelming force of Nature’, recently drew ‘exquisite playing’ from the Hallé (Bachtrack, April 2023).

Orpheus Comet features fast rhythmic material combined with atmospheric transparent orchestrations and a glorious climax featuring quotations from Monteverdi. The two significant concertos for strings and soloists included on this album solidified Tabakova’s reputation as an outstanding contemporary voice and display the composer’s close affinity with string instruments. Ukrainian-British Maxim Rysanov, is one of Tabakova’s longest collaborators who premiered the Concerto for Viola and Strings in 2004, a piece described as being ’saturated with an inner, captivating and natural energy’ (Culture Magazine, Nov 2004). The Concerto for Cello and Strings (whose score was described as ‘gorgeous’ by the Daily Telegraph, Australia) is here performed by Guy Johnson, one of the most exciting British cellists of his generation.

The program of this album offers a varied selection of chamber music with piano written by Hans Gál between 1922 and 1940. Among these, the main work on the album is undoubtedly the Piano Quartet written for the one-armed pianist Paul Wittgenstein. The work consists of four substantial movements, and each of the movements is uniquely melodic; moreover, there are strong contrasts between the two light and airy movements II and IV on the one hand, and the dignified opening movement and delicate Adagio on the other. Richness and variety characterize this most productive period of composer Hans Gál. The rest of the program is of a decidedly lighter character than the Piano Quartet and shows Gál at his most fluid and melodic.

A MusicWeb International Recording of the Month for July 2022!

All in all Maria Bach left more than 400 works to posterity. Most (about 80%) are Lieder and choral works, followed by smaller-scale piano works; not unlike Edvard Grieg or Hugo Wolff, she was an expert in that field, though she did also compose three ballets, made up of small, orchestral piano pieces. Her most ambitious works then, are the few excursions she made into the realms of chamber music (solo cello sonata, cello sonata, piano quartet and quintet, string quintet and two string quartets), in which she ventured a confrontation with the traditions of the grand, established genres. On the present release, Oliver Triendl, Marina Grauman, Nina Karmon, Öykü Canpolat, and Alexander Hülshoff showcase Maria Bach’s chamber works, including the Piano Quintet “Wolga-Quintet”, the Cello Sonata, and the Suite for Cello Solo.

Review

[Maria Bach's] music is infused with French and Russian elements and one can quite hear why it was so appealing to Roger-Ducasse who ensured that her 31-minute Piano Quintet was performed at the Paris Conservatoire when she visited Paris in 1930-31. Like all good music it’s clearly susceptible to strongly divergent interpretive stances. The Hänssler team is anchored by Oliver Treindl, who in my experience is probably one of the most hard-working and often recorded of players. He’s also an athletic figure who ensures forward-moving tempi.

The eminent cellist Paul Grümmer was a family friend and Bach was fortunate he liked her music and played the Cello Sonata frequently. It’s modestly structured – three movements and 19 minutes in this reading by Alexander Hülshoff and Treindl – and has a ripe Brahmsian rhapsodic feel, with a warmly curvaceous lyricism in the Romanze second movement. As with the Piano Quintet the finale is full of dextrous animation.

The final work in the disc is the Suite for cello, a crisp four-movement affair that looks back to Popper, as the notes indicate, rather than [J.S.] Bach. After a sonorous, chordal Praeludium come the registral leaps of an etude-like Scherzo, an expressive Air and then another of her favoured variations for a finale – including a Tango-like one – which call for supple bowing. It’s a deft work, all the more so in not honouring [J.S.] Bach’s legacy in any obvious fashion.

In terms of amplitude and density of sound this disc is an impressive one. The players sound firmly engaged in what must have been unfamiliar repertoire. They’ve been backed up by some classy notes. For overt expression, choose this[.]

Jonathan Woolf 

This album of two piano quartets by Johannes Brahms (1833–1897) captures pianist Lars Vogt’s last recordings. Before his premature death and between treatments, Lars Vogt was able to record a multi-award-winning album of piano chamber music works by Schubert together with Christian Tetzlaff and Tanja Tetzlaff, as well as albums of Mozart’s and Mendelssohn’s piano concertos. However, a project to record Brahms’ complete piano quartets was left unfinished after the studio recording of Piano Quartet No. 2 was completed. With the help of recording producer Christoph Franke, we are now able to offer this recording together with Piano Quartet No. 3 from a live concert performance in connection with the studio recording. Combined, these make up Lars Vogt’s last recordings. Violinist Christian Tetzlaff, violist Barbara Buntrock and cellist Tanja Tetzlaff offer stellar performances in these landmark recordings and fulfill Lars Vogt’s late wish to have these performances released.

REVIEW:

The final recordings of pianist Lars Vogt have offered many riches, but this one is arguably the most profound of all. This may be the most intense recording of the C minor quartet on recordings. In both works, the coordination among the players evinces a joy that characterizes the highest ideals of chamber music.

— AllMusic.com (James Manheim)

A Gramophone Magazine Editor's Choice - January 2023

"A perfect control of rhythm allows for beautifully expressive playing"

Cellist Johannes Moser and pianist Andrei Korobeinikov present Bohuslav Martinů’s complete cello sonatas. These works belong to the most significant twentieth-century repertoire for cello and piano. Reflecting Martinů’s troubled existence, defined by wartime, emigration, longing for the homeland, yet also full of hope and life-affirming energy, the music seems entirely topical in our own troubled times.

After their award-winning recording of works by Prokofiev and Rachmaninoff from 2016, Moser and Korobeinikov demonstrate their congeniality once more, fully realizing the extreme interdependence of cello and piano in these works. Johannes Moser has a vast Pentatone discography, consisting of releases with cello concertos of Dvorak and Lalo (2015), Elgar and Tchaikovsky (2017), Lutoslawski and Dutilleux (2018), works for cello and piano by Felix and Fanny Mendelssohn (2019) and Francesco Velázquez’s cello concerto (2022). His recording of works for cello and piano by Rachmaninoff and Prokofiev (2016), performed together with Andrei Korobeinikov, was awarded with a diapason d’or and ECHO Klassik 2017.

REVIEW:

Johannes Moser and Andrei Korobeinikov capture the rapidly shifting emotions in all three works while maintaining an unflappable rhythmic poise – no mean feat in such complexly syncopated music. The result are performances in which clarity and precision seem to take on an expressive power of their own.

Pentatone’s engineers do both players proud – balance between the two instruments is close to perfect – and the recording is significantly enhanced by the perceptive booklet note. Simply put, this is the most satisfying account of Martinů’s cello sonatas on record.

-- Gramophone

The centenary of the birth of Viktor Kalabis (1923–2006), a major 20th-century Czech composer, is worthy of attention. The previous Supraphon album, Symphonies & Concertos (SU 4109-2), mapping his mature and late works, met with critical acclaim (Gramophone Choice / Reissue of the Month, Choc de Classica). Much of Kalabis’s early output, however, is yet to be discovered. The present recording, containing three pieces dating from between 1948 and 1951, attests to the young composer’s remarkable maturity. In the Concerto for Chamber Orchestra, Op. 3 (1948), Kalabis paid tribute to Igor Stravinsky, a great idol of his, with the concerto grosso form and instrumentation referring to Dumbarton Oaks. The impressive brief overture Youth, Op. 7 (1950), demonstrates the composer’s brilliant mastery of large symphony orchestra. The surprising dark colours in the work may reflect the difficult period of the Communist dictatorship’s ascent. The neo-folk Concerto for Cello and Orchestra, Op. 8 (1951), reveals Kalabis’s Dvorák, Bartók, Hindemith and late symphonic Martinu inspirations. Youthful dynamic energy and intimations of future weighty profundity characterise Kalabis’s early music. Three decades later, the composer recorded his early pieces, conducting the Janácek Philharmonic Ostrava. The present album thus affords the opportunity to listen to their authentic performance.