Berio: Intégrale des quatuors à cordes

UN is the result of many hours of practice, concerts and a lot of work done, but above all it is the result of five people who, although time has passed and making five very different lives coincide with each other has become difficult, can't wait to meet up to play together, giving life to a project that connects the contemporary Italian repertoire to the American Jazz and Blues ones. Luciano Berio, through the blasts of Call, captures the attention and prepares the listener for the inexorability of the four movements of For Brass by Giuseppe Garbarino; an electric History of Mok by Alessio Manega involves and charges the audience with energy which Corrado Saglietti, with his Blues and Encore from the Any Time Brass Quintet collection, welcomes and transforms into dance, transporting the listener overseas. Who better than Duke Ellington and George Gershwin to squeeze the juice of so much passion? Summertime is just one of the themes that greet listeners with the same warmth felt by the musicians when recording them. Erika is still trying to understand if she is reading an 8 or a B on the score; Michele consolidates his career as Major with the patience that distinguishes him; Marina, extricating herself from the numerous instruments that she inexplicably plays at a level beyond human comprehension, is determined to divide Nicolò and Federico, engaged in their usual umpteenth and eternal squabble: immersed in their very well known calm and relaxed mood, the five members of the Canaja Brass Quintet have never been so proud to wish you happy listening.

Passion, solitude, nostalgia, the pain of the world, flight, death - these are the typical themes of Romanticism. Konstantin Krimmel had already explored the extreme emotions that characterise this era of extreme emotion in Saga, his first recital album (Alpha549); he now plunges even deeper into this cosmos with collaborative pianist Ammiel Bushakevitz. "I simply love telling stories. Even as a child, I loved listening to old legends and tales", says Krimmel, who is indeed a fabulous storyteller-singer. The two artists have chosen here to compare songs by Franz Schubert and Carl Loewe that embody these great themes. The two composers, both masters of the Lied, had very different destinies: Loewe lived to be 72 years old, more than twice as old as Schubert, who had died aged 31.

Collegium Vocale Gent and it's founder Philippe Herreweghe continue their recordings of the works of Carlo Gesualdo with 'Silenzio Mio', which contains the Fourth Book of Madrigals, published in 1596. Regarded as one of the most eccentric composers of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, but also one of the most creative, he experiments here with new melodic and harmonic effects that enthralled listeners of the time. These innovations are applied to poems by Alessandro Guarini and several anonymous writers, all of which focus on the expression of personal feelings, particularly a 'pathos' new on the literary scene. A veritable historical testimony to the artistic turning point that occurred at the court of Ferrara in the early seventeenth century, this fourth book takes it's place in the long-term recording project of Collegium Vocale, hailed by critics for it's 'homogeneity, contrapuntal transparency and luminosity, strikingly evident even in the most tormented pieces' (Diapason).

Enchanting tales and timeless legends are the common threads running through this album conceived by Duo Jatekok: Naïri Badal and Adelaïde Panaget are transformed into sorceresses on four hands and two pianos - enchanting guides who lead us through a programme featuring a Faustian pact, magic, and the world of childhood. At it's heart is Liszt's Piano Sonata, brilliantly transcribed for two keyboards by Saint-Saens: 'It illustrates the eternal struggle between the hubris of excess and the tragic fall, between light and darkness', say the duo of this 'Faustian' masterpiece by Liszt, a great admirer of Goethe. In a more carefree but equally fantastical vein is the famous Sorcerer's Apprentice, which Paul Dukas himself transcribed in 1898. The trance-like atmosphere and frenzied dancing continues with Manuel de Falla's El amor brujo (Love the magician). Finally, Mussorgsky's Night on the Bare Mountain, a 'danse macabre between the world of the living and that of the spirits', rounds off this supernatural odyssey.

Quatuor Diotima presents Lachenmann: String Quartets, a powerful testament to their 25-year collaboration with visionary composer Helmut Lachenmann. Known for pioneering "instrumental musique concrete," Lachenmann redefined the sonic possibilities of the string quartet. Their first meeting in 1998, originally just a one-week workshop, sparked a deep artistic bond and a shared fascination with his radical approach to sound and listening. This album is the result of hundreds of hours spent in rehearsal, performance, and conversation - a tribute to a composer who has become a central figure in contemporary music. Lachenmann: String Quartets captures not only the evolution of a musical language, but also the story of a transformative and enduring partnership. The quartet returns to PENTATONE following their acclaimed releases Metamorphosis Ligeti (2023), Bruckner & Klose: String Quartets (2024), and Boulez: Livre pour Quatuor (2025).

Starting from our common passion for Italian instrumental music of the early twentieth century declare Chiara Burattini and Umberto Jacopo Laureti we have composed a picture (as varied as possible) around the two key figures of the world of piano (Busoni) and cello (Mainardi) of the time. From the Kultaselle variations (a youthful page, dense and full of passion) and from Busoni's seraphic Albumblatt, we passed through the Art Nouveau drawings of the WolfFerrari Sonata and the Two Album Pages of Alaleona, ending with the Malipiero Sonatines and by Mainardi (the latter, together with the songs by Alaleona, in the very first recording).

In the dark years of the Nazi-Fascist period, when the light of the end was still far off, Malipiero completed a long-awaited undertaking: an edition of the complete works of Claudio Monteverdi. Its last volume, the sixteenth, came out in 1942 at the height of the war. The edition contained the sacred production that the publisher Vincenti had assembled in the collection Messa a 4 voci et salmi (1650).

Quartetto Sincronie’s choice to include an arrangement of Monteverdi’s Mass, alternating the parts with Malipiero’s work, is yet another example of reinvention-creation that Malipiero would likely have appreciated. In the composers’ poetics, instruments are asked to sing as voices, and so the opposite—voices translated to instruments—is fitting. Philological rigor was, after all, foreign to Malipiero’s worldview. Instead, the composer spoke of his relationship with Monteverdi as a kind of psychic channeling: finding synchronicity within the synchrony of listening, which dissolves the distance of centuries. The Mass for Four Voices is thus split into parts throughout the record, but it remains possible to orient oneself. The cohesion is melodic: there’s a descending tetrachord G-F-E-D at the beginning of the Kyrie that returns in various guises (inverted, diminished, augmented), articulating the contrapuntal fabric of the different movements. The listener can thus follow this pathway, from the Gloria to the Agnus Dei, in a zigzag that turns Monteverdi the sacred “refrain” to Malipiero’s profane cycle of quartets.

No one has surpassed Marais: only one has equalled him, and that is the famous Forqueray: with these words, in 1752, a contemporary praised one of the last great virtuosos of the viola da gamba. Known for his formidably difficult and technical musical style, Forqueray's world is nonetheless immensely rich: through the works of the father Antoine, his son Jean-Baptiste and his nephew Nicolas-Gilles, an august lineage emerges whose grace and genius never ceased to inspire. At times proud, even bellicose, at other times deeply tender, the viol pieces by this Forqueray family plunge us into a flight of expressions of passions whose vivacity is equalled only by their intensity. Myriam Rignol, as a distant granddaughter, accompanied by her exquisite Timbres, delivers in this complete work a powerful homage to these 18th-century chamber music icons who, in their image, could never be anything other than virtuoso.

The Orchestre symphonique de Montreal and it's Music Director Rafael Payare celebrate Arnold Schoenberg's 150th birthday with a recording of two of his late-Romantic masterworks: Verklarte Nacht and Pelleas und Melisande. Both pieces are based on stories evolving around love, jealousy, acceptance and forgiveness, and showcase Schoenberg's expressive harmonic language and scintillating, multifarious orchestration. The album booklet features unique photography and paintings by Arnold Schoenberg, sketching a vivid picture of this extraordinarily versatile artist. After their acclaimed PENTATONE recordings of Mahler's Fifth Symphony (2023), as well as his Ruckert-Lieder and Strauss's Ein Heldenleben (2024), Payare and the orchestra further explore this late-Romantic repertoire that fits them like a glove.

Quatuor Diotima celebrates the bicentennial anniversary of Anton Bruckner with a recording of his String Quartet in C Minor, Rondo in C Minor and Theme with Variations in E-Flat Major, alongside the String Quartet in E-Flat Major from his pupil Friedrich Klose. Bruckner wrote these pieces as composition exercises, yet they adumbrate the originality and power of his later works, as well as pay tribute to the glorious Viennese quartet tradition. Like Bruckner, Klose strongly sympathized with Wagner and the proponents of programme music, and chamber music had not appealed to him very much up until the moment he embarked on his only string quartet composition. Sarcastically, he subtitled it a "tribute paid in four instalments to my stern German schoolmasters", yet he demonstrates a full mastery of the conventions of musical form, paired with an almost unprecedented wealth of musical ideas. This album, recorded at and in close cooperation with the Brucknerhaus Linz, shall be one of the most original contributions to the Bruckner year 2024, highlighting his achievements in the field of chamber music as well as his compositional legacy. Quatuor Diotima is one of the most in-demand chamber ensembles in the world today, and has worked in close collaboration with several of the greatest composers of the late twentieth century. Reflected in the mirror of today's music, the quartet projects a new light onto the masterpieces of the 19th and 20th centuries. The quartet returns to PENTATONE after their acclaimed Metamorphosis Ligeti, released in 2023.

American Record Guide: The music is melodious and the playing and sound exemplary.

Renato Wiedemann is a violin player with Brazilian origin. He has recorded an original programme with works by composers from Brazil and Switzerland.

The superb flute, harp, viola trio, Hat Trick, returns to Bridge with a fascinating program of recent works coupled with a classic. The trio, April Clayton, flute; Kristi Shade, harp; and David Wallace, viola, perform new music by Thea Musgrave, Daniel Dorff, Jessica Meyer, David Bruce, and Angelica Negron alongside Sir Arnold Bax's 1916 "Elegiac Trio".

No fewer than four major composers - Faure, Debussy, Schoenberg and Sibelius - were inspired by Maurice Maeterlink's play Pelleas et Melisande (1892). Given that we celebrate anniversaries of Faure and Schoenberg in 2024, Paavo Jarvi here offers his reading of their settings of Pelleas et Melisande with the Frankfurt Radio Symphony, whose Music Director he was for almost ten years. Debussy was so much involved with his own operatic setting of Pelleas et Melisande that the famous English actress Mrs. Patrick Campbell turned to Gabriel Faure to write incidental music for the play; this music then became an orchestral suite in four movements that is considered to be Faure's symphonic masterpiece. Schoenberg followed advice given by his much-admired role model Richard Strauss in 1902 and composed his own symphonic poem based on Pelleas et Melisande. It's complex combinations of musical motifs and the rich fabric of the large-scale orchestra not only captivate us but also reveal his own vision of this archaic and yet universal story.

Bridge Records announces the release of Volume 21 the Complete Crumb Edition, a monumental recording project begun in 1982, and completed 42 years later with this final installment. The Grammy award-winning Crumb series documents the late American composer's complete catalog of works, spanning Crumb's seventy-five year compositional career. Project producer David Starobin writes that “the series benefited tremendously from George's participation in the recording and post-production of these documents.” This last volume includes compositions from the beginning, middle, and end of Crumb’s career and features the world premiere recording of the composer's penultimate composition, the percussion quintet Kronos-Kryptos (2020), performed by Ensemble 20/21 of the Curtis Institute of Music. The record also includes Crumb's second acknowledged composition, the Sonata for Solo Violoncello (1955), performed by cellist Timothy Eddy, as well as two performances of Crumb's piano solo, Processional (1983), played by pianists Gilbert Kalish (keyboard version) and Marcantonio Barone (alternate version with extended piano effects).

The CD entitled Contrappassi sees the two protagonists, Leonardo Zunica on piano and Leandro Lo Bianco on electric guitar, engaged in compositions by contemporary authors, with pieces that find poetic-musical inspiration in the fascinating and complex world of Dante. A program with broad musical visions that transport you to an unexpected soundscape, with the two performers who give life to moments and atmospheres of surprising suggestion. The CD's lineup opens with the Sonata n. 1 "DANTE SONATA" for piano by the Danish composer Poul Ruders (born in 1949), a work divided into two distinct movements with contrasting characteristics. The roots of the Dante Sonata are not only linked to Dante's canticles but also to the author's admiration for Liszt's Sonata in B minor. Dante, therefore, seen through the eyes of Liszt. The piece by Ruders is followed by MALEBOLGE for electric guitar and piano TRE CANZONI DI FRANCESCO LANDINI for piano with electric guitar ad libitum by the Italian composer Gabrio Taglietti, a journey that leads to the VIII circle of Hell. Taglietti wanted to alternate his three pits with transcriptions for piano, and in the last case for piano and electric guitar, of as many ballads by Francesco Landini, a composer of the fourteenth century, the genre in which Landini excelled. This singular listening journey ends with a piece by Leandro Lo Bianco, here in the role of composer as well as performer: THREE IMPROVISATIONS ON R. RAUSCHENBERG "DANTE'S INFERNO" for solo electric guitar and electronic devices.

The piano works on this CD date from different periods in Gian Francesco Malipiero’s creative life. From his unpublished juvenilia to the late Ricercar toccando, from the evocative Poemi asolani of 1916 to the disillusionment of the pieces written in the years following the First World War: a range of works that bear witness to the development of the composer’s conception of the piano miniature as a kind of intimate diary, between nostalgic impressions and aphoristic humour.

In the early 1960s Goffredo Petrassi's idiom was almost indistinguishable from that of the Italian avantgarde. Completed in 1964, the Seventh Concerto evolves with mounting tension and a sense of underlying menace. The Eighth Concerto from 1972 was commissioned and premiered by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. It is a substantial piece of outright virtuosity, with dissonance, trenchant dialogues and a fraught atmosphere. The much earlier Sonata da camera for harpsichord and ten instruments finds Petrassi poised between neo-Classicism and a more modernist direction. This is the third and final volume of Petrassi's complete Concertos for Orchestra on Naxos (Nos. 1-3 are on 8.573702; Nos. 4-6 are on 8.573703).

Goffredo Petrassi was 28 when his Partita (recorded on Naxos 8.572411) propelled him to European fame. He fused neo-Classicism with more contemporary traits reinforced by his mastery of polyphony, qualities that can be found in his eight Concertos for Orchestra (Nos. 1-3 are available on 8.573702). Concertos Nos. 4-6 were written in the mid-1950s and are striking examples of emotional turbulence and structural compression, fastidiously scored and imaginative in their formal conception. The soloistic writing of Invenzione concertata (Concerto No. 6) adds another layer of sonic complexity to these gripping concertos.

Goffredo Petrassi's reputation was established in 1932 when his Partita (available on Naxos 8.572411) won critical acclaim. Petrassi then composed his Concerto for Orchestra, the first of eight, which, upon it's 1935 premiere, secured his reputation outside of Italy. The Second Concerto from 1951 reveals more avante-garde tendencies, while the Third Concerto from 1952-53 is animated and playful.

Compositional shadow play, philosophical unfolding: the piano etudes by Pascal Dusapin are far more than technical studies for aspiring pianists. Pianist Wataru Hisasue now releases a GENUIN album with works by Dusapin. Hisasue was not only successful at the 2025 Queen Elisabeth Competition in Brussels but also received a special award at the ARD Music Competition for his interpretation of Dusapin's "Did it again", which he now presents here as a world premiere recording. The young pianist devotes himself to the oscillating, almost magical sonic ramifications of the French composer at the highest technical and tonal level. A must-hear!

"Waves and Particles" is Pulitzer- and Grammy-winning composer John Luther Adams’s beautifully shimmery, virtuosic string quartet, performed by the incredible, illustrious JACK Quartet. Adams’s music has been performed by such prominent ensembles as the New York Philharmonic, the Chicago Symphony, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Seattle Symphony, and the International Contemporary Ensemble. JACK Quartet has been deemed “superheroes of the new music world” (Boston Globe) and “the go-to quartet for contemporary music, tying impeccable musicianship to intellectual ferocity” (The Washington Post).

Carmina Burana, the staged cantata by Carl Orff, is a work unique in musical history, claims conductor Paavo Jarvi: 'The convergence of medieval texts with such daringly original orchestral colours creates a soundworld that is both archaic and yet beyond time, in which chorus, orchestra and soloists vie in splendour.' The work also has an unusual history: composed shortly after the Nazi takeover of Germany, it was at first rejected because of it's Latin texts and the erotic character of some of it's songs; yet Orff and his work subsequently became highly prized by the Reich. The composer (who was secretly 'a quarter Jewish') did not support the regime, but made the best of his success... Orff was 42 by the time he experienced this breakthrough with his Carmina, which he designated as his Op. 1, disowning all his previous compositions. Departing from the Romantic style, he now wanted to create music linked to rhythm, simple repeated melodies, and non-complex forms. This work's popular success confirmed that decision.

In a century that saw many illustrious French and German composers write for two flutes, the six sonatas of Wilhelm Friedemann Bach stand out as the most significant, complex and technically demanding of this repertoire. Ever since they were rediscovered and published almost a century ago, they have become a stable part of the flute catalogue, appreciated and performed on both historic and modern instruments. Viewing it as the quintessential work of Friedemann's creative output, the specialist Peter Wollny even sees it as a summa of his entire production, full of quotations and reminiscences of his previous works. After the album devoted to the sonatas of C.P.E. Bach (A 537, Diapason d'or), Manuel Granatiero, accompanied by the Italo-Croatian flautist Eleonora Biscevic, now turns his attention to this masterpiece by Johann Sebastian Bach's eldest son. Arriving some thirty-five years after the first, and only, recorded version on period instruments (by Barthold Kuijken and Marc Hantai), this new recording offers a fresh perspective on music of extraordinary brilliance, passion and virtuosity.

When film composers turn to classical music, they shed a straitjacket rather than lose a safety net. In his Metamorfosi di Violetta, Ennio Morricone dissects the unravelling of La Traviata's heroine with filmic acuity. Tigran Mansurian's Agnus Dei oscillates between chant and dissonance to evoke unresolved grief. John Corigliano's Soliloquy turns inward even further, transforming private loss into quiet radiance. Bernard Herrmann never sought classical abstraction, yet Hitchcock's musical alter ego-the composer of the Psycho and Vertigo scores-provides this programme's pièce de résistance: Souvenir du voyage, a nostalgic gem with profound cinematic sensibility.

Richard Lin, the 2018 winner of the International Violin Competition of Indianapolis releases his debut recording. Performed with passion and flare, Lin is joined by renowned pianist Thomas Hoppe in music of Richard Strauss, John Corigliano, Gershwin/Frolov, Vitali, and Debussy.

Bernhard Lang's Monadology XXXVI is a radical "meta-composition". It deconstructs Chopin's Op. 10 Études through granular analysis, loops, and virtual remixing-destroying and reassembling the score into new sonic textures. The cycle consists of 12 Etüden. The last three are dedicated to Daan Vandewalle, the internationally acclaimed pianist renowned for his mastery of 20th- and 21st-century repertoire, who now brings them to this album.

Pianist Nicolas Stavy, who has already made recordings devoted to works by Boris Tishchenko (BIS-2189) and Dmitri Shostakovich (BIS-2550), now presents the first instalment of a complete survey of Alfred Schnittke's compositions for solo piano. This recording presents works from various periods of the Russian-German composer's career - from the 1950s, which the composer described as the 'years of obscurity', to the 1990s, a time shaped both by world fame and serious illness. While Schnittke wrote relatively little music for the piano, each work reflects - or sometimes anticipates - the phases of the composer's creative development. The Five Preludes and Fugue and the Prelude and Fugue belong to Schnittke's first creative phase, when he was still under the influence of Shostakovich. The Little Piano Pieces, composed for the composer's six-year-old son, are an example of his 'polystylism', juxtaposing and combining music of various styles from the past and present. The Sonata No. 2 and the Five Aphorisms, both from 1990, return to a more ascetic and abstract language, with a bleaker tone, no doubt echoing his serious health problems.

When Christian Ferras died at age 49. his friend and colleague Yehudi Menuhin wrote that Ferras was"possessed by music, immensely talented, and of both a generous and intense temperament."

Christian Ferras was one of the greatest violinists of the 20th century. Born in 1933, he was a guest soloist of the Nice Symphony orchestra in1942. In 1948 he won the First Prize at the International Scheveningen (Holland) Violin Competition and in 1949 won the top prize at the International Long-Thibaud Competition. Thereafter, he pursued a successful career as soloist with many of the world’s leading orchestras and in recitals with his long time accompanist, pianist Pierre Barbizet. He recorded for EMI and from 1964 for DG where he recorded the four main repertoire violin concertos, Brahms, Sibelius, Beethoven and Tchaikovsky, with Herbert von Karajan and the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra.
Fortunately, Christian Ferras left behind a rich recorded legacy, that enable us to continue to enjoy his great artistry.