This much awaited recording offers keenly idiomatic performances of the most famous works by Grieg, played by the composer’s own orchestra, the Bergen Philharmonic, and its Chief Conductor, Edward Gardner. The drama and passion of such favourite pieces as the incidental music to Peer Gynt and the Piano Concerto are superbly captured in surround-sound with exemplary Chandos sound quality. Unlike most existing recordings, offering only the orchestral suites, this disc presents numerous extra excerpts from Peer Gynt, which follow the sequence of Henrik Ibsen‘s dramatic poem, including sections for the unique Norwegian 'Hardanger Fiddle’. Having collaborated with the orchestra on several occasions, Jean-Efflam Bavouzet is the soloist in the Piano Concerto, a piece that stands out as a shining example of a single great thought captured and expressed in music. The power of this conception is evident throughout the concerto in the pianist’s faithful, yet highly romantic interpretation.

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REVIEW:

In the Piano Concerto, Gardner brings to the table flair, drive, and an almost Tchaikovskian lushness to the string sound, which matches well Bavouzet's commanding manner in the piano's opening flourish. Bavouzet bewitches in the slow movement, not just in the clarity of his lines but also in the sense of ebb and flow. He fully claims his status as a supreme virtuoso in the work's finale.

– Gramophone

Montreal-based since 1998, Airat Ichmouratov (b. 1973) traces his musical roots back to the dominant culture in his native Tatarstan in Soviet times: ‘It was definitely the Russian school of composers’, he says, without rancour. ‘I’m influenced to this day by Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Mussorgsky, Rachmaninoff, and Tchaikovsky. My own musical style has evolved out of this rich heritage.’ There’s more. The Volga Tatar-born Russian-Canadian composer learned to play klezmer music while busking, together with his viola-playing wife, as new immigrants on the streets and Métro of Montreal. ‘I’ve been touring the world for twenty years as a clarinettist with the Montreal band Kleztory and find myself, a Muslim-born musician, playing klezmer. This, too, is now a distinctive part of my musical language.’

The recent partnership of John Wilson and BBC SSO on record reaches this second volume in their invigorating exploration of fascinating orchestral works by Sir Richard Rodney Bennett. Less well known than his widely famous film music (Murder on the Orient Express, Four Weddings and a Funeral, etc.), the orchestral works featured here display the versatility with which Bennett contradicted the dogma of musical modernism at the time of their creation (60s-70s), as well as an evolution of his compositional style towards a musical language that spoke to audiences everywhere in the world. From the glittering Symphony No. 2 – generating subtle yet engaging musical contrasts on a large scale – to the jazzy Concerto for Stan Getz – featuring the saxophonist Howard McGill who has established himself as one of the greats of London’s jazz scene – this album features works that break down the false walls between two musical worlds and will appeal to anyone willing to explore, discover, or simply enjoy great music.

The first female Professor at the Paris Conservatoire, the first female player in the Queen's Hall Orchestra and the first female American Symphonist to be published. The Neave Trio celebrate these three outstanding pioneers on this captivating album. Since forming in 2010, Neave Trio - violinist Anna Williams, cellist Mikhail Veselov, and pianist Eri Nakamura - has earned enormous praise for it's engaging, cutting-edge performances. WQXR explains, "'Neave' is actually a Gaelic name meaning 'bright' and 'radiant', both of which certainly apply to this trio's music making." The Boston Musical Intelligencer included Neave in it's "Best of 2014" and "Best of 2016" roundups, writing, "it is inconceivable that they will not soon be among the busiest chamber ensembles going," and "their unanimity, communication, variety of touch, and expressive sensibility rate first tier."

This recording brings together some of Chandos’ greatest artists in a spellbinding programme. It follows performances that The Guardian described as ‘a thrilling show of ferocity and feistiness,’ given by the same forces in January at the Barbican. After widely acclaimed recordings of Walton’s and Lutoslawski’s violin concertos, Tasmin Little again joins the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Edward Gardner, in intensely expressive interpretations of the concertos by the Polish composers Karlowicz and Szymanowski. All were written within the space of a generation, and yet they belong to quite different worlds. One was composed at a time of national occupation, another in the throes of wartime, and yet another at a time of national renewal. The first inhabits the lyrical tradition developed by Mendelssohn and Tchaikovsky, the second escapes towards Debussy and the exoticism of Mediterranean influences, while the third is imbued with the folk culture of the Tatra Mountains.

The violin is undeniably the key instrument of the Queen Elisabeth Competition. Since the very first edition of the Ysaye Competition, won by David Oistrakh in 1937, and Leonid Kogan's victory in the first edition of the Queen Elisabeth Competition in 1951, an impressive succession of laureates has helped to shape the musical life of the last 80 years. This 4-album set includes highlights from the performances of the 12 laureates of the 2019 Violin Competition. These young artists are heard in their chamber music programme of the semi-finals, in their performances of the Mozart concerti in the semi-finals with the Orchestre Royal de Chambre de Wallonie conducted by Jean-Jacques Kantorow, as well as in the great repertory concertos in the final with the Belgian National Orchestra conducted by Hugh Wolff.

The violinist Franziska Pietsch and her Trio Lirico present their debut album on audite. In between the poles of preserving tradition and striving towards fin de siècle modernism, Max Reger composed three works between 1904 and 1914/15 featuring a particular sense of clarity which the composer associated with Mozart. Even at their premieres, the two String Trios and the late Piano Quartet each caused a sensation, not least as their compositional complexity, for which Reger was (in)famous, mostly runs underneath the surface, creating an easier listening experience. These tuneful and harmonically rich works which, at times, enter into direct dialogue with works of the past, are rarely heard, even though they represent important cornerstones of their respective genres. The Trio Lirico was founded in 2014 and soon established itself on the concert scene. The ensemble's varied repertoire ranges from classicism through to contemporary music. The three performers are brought together by their passion for chamber music; in addition, all three also enjoy solo careers. It is this soloistic influence within a chamber music formation that constitutes the trademark of the ensemble: the chamber music dialogue is conducted with soloistic passion without neglecting the ensemble's homogeneity. The result is a unique combination of enthusiastic and spirited music-making and attractive suspense. The Munich-based pianist Detlev Eisinger joins the ensemble for the Piano Quartet.

Ferenc Kiss was born in Budapest in 1943. He studied first with his father, a concertmaster of the Hungarian Radio Orchestra, then at the Ferenc Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest before finishing his studies with Sandor Vegh in Dusseldorf. His many appearances in concert venues all over the world as well as the variety of albums he has produced further attest to his successful career as an acclaimed soloist. On this release, he presents violin concertos by Fritz Leitermeyer and Dieter Acker. Fritz Leitermeyer’s Concerto for Violin and 21 Wind Instruments had its first performance in January 1964 with the concertmaster of the Vienna Philharmonic, Walter Weller, performing the solo part. The scoring is unusual, but the result is dazzling. Dieter Acker composed over 100 works during his life, including two solo concertos for violin, the first of which is included here. H. Leuchtmann wrote of Acker: “Never committed to a specific avant-garde style, Acker developed a very unique style of composition, which is conceived for clarity and comprehensibility, without getting into popular idioms… intensity touches and transmits itself directly.”

The Trio Lirico has programmed three composers who lived and worked on the Eastern side of the Iron Curtain until 1989: for Franziska Pietsch and Sophia Reuter this is music which - paraphrasing Goethe - they "search with their souls". "As children, we both lived in East Berlin and were close friends already", Franziska Pietsch explains about her violist colleague. "We therefore share personal history, a similar style of playing and a similar non-verbal way of communicating about this music. We just feel it." This personal form of perception, into which the Bremen cellist Johannes Krebs blends empathetically, is not irrelevant for this music which becomes accessible not just via the text but also to a high degree via the cultural and political environment in which it was written. Of course Krzysztof Penderecki (b.1933), following the political liberalization of Polish music from 1956, had the opportunity to tie in with avant-garde developments in the West and to create his very own and unique modernism. On the other hand, his generational colleague Alfred Schnittke (1934-1998) and the older Mieczyslaw Weinberg (1919-1996) had, until the end of the Soviet Union, to assert their music in the face of massive harassment from the authorities which, in Weinberg's case, went as far as being arrested for anti-Semitic reasons. Born in Warsaw, Weinberg, who fled to the Soviet Union during the Second World War, kept in close contact with his friend and mentor Dmitri Shostakovich. Nonetheless, Weinberg's music is entirely unique, and his string trio of 1950 strikes a balance between popular tunes and references to Yiddish music. Alfred Schnittke, who found it hard gaining acceptance on account of his (Volga) German and Jewish heritage, composed his trio in 1985 for the birthday of his illustrious colleague Alban Berg - and, shortly after completing the work, suffered a life-threatening stroke, retrospectively lending this work a tragic note. The most recent work recorded here is by Poland's most eminent living composer, Krzysztof Penderecki: in 1991 he wrote his string trio as a great improvisation for three performers with a strict and wild fugue.

For this recording, Finnish violinist Elina Vahala and Dutch double bass player Niek de Groot have chosen and performed seven pieces, composed by six Europeans and one Korean. When a violin and a double bass come together, two sound spheres collide: particularly in recent times, many renowned composers have been inspired to create highly original realisations of such encounters. When a violin and a double bass perform chamber music together, it is a case of two instruments encountering each other when normally they are poles apart and play together only alongside additional parts and colours. This is where the composers who have come forward for this adventure of a violin and double bass duo link in: should contrasts be accentuated, or should the two parts be united to form one "super-instrument", as Erkki-Sven Tuur had in mind? Should the two instruments be protagonists in a "narrative", or do they appear as representatives of fundamental principles of human nature - as in the yin and yang, as drawn upon by the Korean composer Isang Yun? Whichever path is chosen, pairing the violin and the double bass is so fascinating that even busy composers such as Krzysztof Penderecki and Wolfgang Rihm have written magnificent and highly individual pieces for this combination. Violinist Elina Va�ha�la� is one of the most sought-after instrumentalists in the international music scene. She made her debut with an orchestra at the age of twelve with Sinfonia Lahti and was later chosen as Sinfonia Lahti's "Young Master Soloist." Dutch double bassist Niek de Groot is one of today's leading soloists. Originally a trumpeter, he started playing the double bass at the age of eighteen. Within an unusually short time he became principal bass with several European ensembles, including a ten-year tenure as first solo bass with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra.

"Bavouzet’s Haydn is unmatched in its zest and its wit. But it is also substantial, informed and deeply rewarding."

--The New York Times on Bavouzet's Haydn Sonatas cycle, 2022

The highly acclaimed series of Haydn’s complete piano sonatas with multi-award winning pianist Jean-Efflam Bavouzet has now reached Volume 6, its halfway point. This set opens with the most imposing of Haydn’s early sonatas, No. 11, and follows it with two lesser-known ones, both from the late 1770s, that were published without the composer’s approval: Nos. 34 and 35. Each of Nos. 36 and 43, the last two featured here, opens a new group of six sonatas, and a new world in Haydn’s compositional style. Future volumes will continue to explore the huge variety of style and expression found in Haydn’s sonatas.

As usual the pianist conveys his personal views in the booklet notes, praising ‘the generally very short phrases typical of Haydn, the abundant touches of humor, the surprises, the embellishments,’ and adding: “The five sonatas in this program are not among the most well known. But what treasures they conceal!...I am delighted to dedicate this disc to Professor Erno Nemecz with whom I have shared a love for Haydn’s music for thirty-five years.”

REVIEW

Six volumes into Jean-Efflam Bavouzet’s tour through the complete Haydn Piano Sonatas, listeners will have a pretty good idea of what to expect...a witty, urbane, slightly French-accented take on repertoire that has long cried out for a contemporary champion. This is Haydn for, and of, a new generation.

Wisely ignoring chronology, each volume is a musical lucky dip, throwing together a diverse grouping of works. Volume Six is built around the spacious Sonata in B Flat Major, No. 11. The more sedate E-flat Major Sonata No. 43 feels, by contrast, rather anonymous, despite Bavouzet’s frisky ornaments. This gives way with calculated shock to the expansive grace of the central Minuet and Trio. Bavouzet makes his slow movements sing in silky tone and legatos, but it’s the livelier, comic movements where he really comes into his own. I defy anyone to listen to the irrepressible final Rondo from the Sonata in A Flat Major No. 35, or the slinky, near-jazz of the C Major Sonata’s first movement Allegro and not find themselves grinning with delight at such irreverent, instinctive musicianship.

--Limelight (Alexandra Coghlan)

Each recording in this 40-disc set has been selected by Chandos Managing Director, Ralph Couzens, son of the label founder, because it represents a turning point, or ‘Landmark’, in the development of the label.

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Founded by Brian Couzens in 1979, Chandos quickly established itself as one of the world’s leading classical labels. The ‘Chandos Sound’ has become a benchmark for quality, renowned alike among artists and critics around the globe.

From its inception, Chandos has specialised in recording British music, and in bringing lesser-known (and unknown) music to public attention. Released to celebrate the 40th Anniversary of the label, this handsomely packaged 40-disc set comprises 40 complete recordings from Chandos’ extensive catalogue.

Each of the four decades is represented, and each recording has been hand-picked by the Managing Director, Ralph Couzens, because it represents a turning point, or ‘Landmark’, in the development of the label.

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Excerpts from select reviews of previously released volumes included in this set:

Prokofiev: Symphony No 6, Waltzes Suite, Etc. / Järvi, Royal Scottish National Orchestra - NLA


This 1984 recording put the somewhat neglected Sixth Symphony of Prokofiev back on the musical map; it remains on balance the finest available.

– ClassicsToday.com

Vaughan Williams: London Symphony; Butterworth: Banks of Green Willow / Hickox, LSO

Conductor and orchestra respond with an unquenchable spirit, generous flexibility and tender affection that suit VW’s admirably ambitious inspiration to a T, and Chandos’s sound is big and bold to match. Quite simply, an essential purchase for anyone remotely interested in British music.

– Gramophone

Ravel, Debussy & Massenet / Bavouzet, Tortelier, BBC Symphony

Bavouzet gets the tempo changes in Ravel's G Major Concerto absolutely right, following up with one of the most songfully flowing and elegantly shaped accounts of the Adagio on disc, and concluding with an absolutely scorching finale. The Massenet encores are both novel and delightful.

– ClassicsToday.com

This third album of Arianna Savall and Petter Udland Johansen with their ensemble Hirundo Maris on Carpe Diem Records is a musical journey along coasts and oceans, an ode to seafarers and travelers from ancient and modern times, to their lives, hopes and dreams. The windrose points into all cardinal points, encompassing all different cultures and places on earth in it's movement. At the same time, it can be a symbol for the inner travels of the human soul which may aim into all different directions and places throughout life. In this sense, the songs on this album connect inner and outer journeying through music and poetry, just as countries and people are connected through oceans, currents, and winds.

The third volume in this series of the music of George Antheil includes his ‘Capital of the World’ Suite and the first symphony. George Antheil first studied composition in Philadelphia with Constantin von Sternberg, a former pupil of Liszt’s, who made his teenage student spend an entire year writing a series of fugues based on the same theme. In 1919, he went on to study with Ernest Bloch. Under Bloch’s tutelage, Antheil quickly fulfilled his ambition to write a symphony inspired by the New Jersey milieu in which he had grown up: this marked a deliberate abandonment of academic compositional techniques in favor of music driven by emotional and atmospheric stimuli. Antheil based his ballet Capital of the World on a 1936 Ernest Hemingway short story entitled “The Horns of the Bull,” which tells the tale of a young Spanish boy who works as a waiter in a hotel in Madrid, but dreams of becoming a matador.

REVIEW:

As with the previous instalments in this ongoing retrospective, the performances are superb and vividly recorded. Again, Storgårds is generally more incisive and emotionally generous than Hugh Wolff, whose Antheil series for CPO set a high bar.

– Gramophone

C�sar Franck's R�demption (1873) is a pivotal work. It is an "ode-symphony," coming at the crossover point between oratorio, opera and symphonic poem - a vein brilliantly exploited by Franck in Psych� (1888) and Les B�atitudes (1891). R�demption also marks a further progression: with this vast fresco C�sar Franck became "le p�re Franck", leading father figure in the new French compositional school, the composer of maturity, creator of Le Chasseur maudit (1883), the Variations symphoniques (1885) and Les �olides (1885). Here we see the organist becoming a virtuoso in handling grand orchestral or vocal forces and taking his place amongst the major composers of the Symbolist period.

Anyone who has witnessed the welcome accorded to a national football team returning home after winning an international trophy might find it hard to believe that, not all that long ago, composers too were the object of similar popular adulation. The contest that gave rise to the most extreme transports of delight and pride was the Prix de Rome. Instituted by the Belgian government in 1841 on the model of the French prize of the same name, it was awarded every two years to young composers of under thirty. After being awarded the Prix de Rome in 1897, Joseph Jongen (1873-1953) began to compose vast works for cello and orchestra. These testify to a culture both Germanic and French which allows him to make the link between the works of Richard Strauss- whom he met in Munich- and Ernest Chausson. These three pieces are performed by the brilliant French cellist Henri Demarquette, accompanied by the Liege Royal Philharmonic- whose reputation is well known- conducted by the Austrian chef Christian Arming.

The legendary conductor Vladimir Ashkenazy, with the Oxford Philharmonic Orchestra and the promising young violinist Irmina Trynkos, presents the premiere recording of three works by Nimrod Borenstein. The past few years have seen a number of Borenstein's compositions presented at prestigious venues in London, Zurich, Paris, and New York. ‘If you will it, it is no dream’ was written especially for a concert given by Ashkenazy at the Royal Festival Hall in 2013, where it met with great acclaim. While Borenstein is a supremely melodic composer, he draws attention in his works to his special use of counterpoint, which he says could be described as ‘multimelodic,’ suggesting the eternal but ever-changing flow of time, in which events constantly overlap with one another. This technique is characteristic of both ‘If you will it, it is no dream’ and ‘The Big Bang and Creation of the Universe.’

Almost forty years after his first recording on Chandos, this unique limited-edition release gathers some of the best and most-awarded recordings on the label by one of the most prolific conductors of all time: Neeme Järvi. It highlights a 200+ discography that explores an astonishingly wide repertoire, with selections from the legendary complete series of Prokofiev’s symphonies and Tchaikovsky’s ballets to the groundbreaking discoveries of composers such as Atterberg or Suchon. It features nearly a dozen of the numerous orchestras with which he has collaborated, including the RSNO, Chicago Symphony, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, and Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, all here celebrated at their best. Offered at a very special price and retaining the original covers, this product also includes very special notes by James Jolly, Editor in Chief of Gramophone, as well as exclusive photos and interviews with figures central to Järvi’s extraordinary musical life.

Past praise of previously released material included in this set:

Prokofiev: Symphony No 6, Waltzes Suite / Järvi, SNO

As in all of his Prokofiev symphony recordings–this was the first, by the way–Järvi really digs into the music. The engineering is as big and bold as the performances. This recording deserves classic status.

– ClassicsToday

Smetana: Má Vlast / Järvi, Detroit Symphony

Järvi and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra deliver an expansive reading of the complete work, and their feeling for the music's vivid imagery and richly Romantic expression is spot on.

– All Music Guide

Paul Hendrich's sound system is a coherent whole in which individual parameters of a musical work (such as harmony or rhythm) are ordered by analogous processes. Each composition expanded the boundaries of the system and created its next layers. The uppermost layer could not exist in this structure without all the lower levels. In this sense, every other piece of Paul Hendrich is a metaform, because it uses the musical language developed in earlier compositions. At first glance, Paul Hendrich's thick scores seem complicated. However, they are composed of simple processes. This simplicity would appear to us if we could look at this work as a multidimensional space, which we can trace each parameter separately. Performed by Ensemble Musikfabrik, this release brilliantly displays the composer's genius.

Distinguished British music interpreter Sir Andrew Davis joins forces with the BBCSO once again, this time with acclaimed soloists Dame Sarah Connolly and Andrew Staples, in this thoughtful presentation of the last two substantial choral works of Sir Edward Elgar. The matury of Elgar as an orchestrator is obvious in both works on this album, notably, in ‘The Music Makers’ (1912), during passages in which he quotes from ‘Sea Pictures’ and the Violin Concerto, and in representing the sound of aircraft in ‘The Spirit of England’ (1917). Elgar uses self-quotation to reflect: ‘The Music Makers’ is a canvas of self-reflection, written quickly following a period of illness. The orchestral introduction is introspective, melancholic, and noble, before the words of Arthur O’Shaughanessy’s poem and much self-quotation within the music offer an insight into the sense of nostalgia and awareness of the loneliness of the creative artist felt by the composer. ‘The Spirit of England’ reflects on the sadness and desolation of war felt by a nation, with the inclusion of quotations from ‘The Dream of Gerontius’ in some of the more negative stanzas that Elgar found harder to set. Specified in the score for tenor or soprano, all three movements are sung here by a tenor in a recording first.

Classical Music

Jean-Efflam Bavouzet’s first three volumes of Mozart concertos with the Manchester Camerata and Gábor Takács-Nagy have been received with widespread acclaim, and so it’s with some excitement that we release the keenly anticipated fourth instalment in the series. Composed within just one month in early 1785, these two concertos are among the most popular of all of Mozart’s piano concertos. No. 20, K 466, was his first concerto in a minor key, and it’s dark and stormy nature contrasts the light and sunny feeling of concerto no.21. As with so many of his piano concertos, both works were composed for the Vienna concert series, and given their premiere performances with Mozart at the keyboard. The two concertos are interspersed on this recording with a vivid performance of the Don Giovanni Overture, which further demonstrates the exemplary playing of the Manchester Camerata.

From the Bolshoi to La Scala, from the Stockholm Philharmonic to the Vienna Symphony, the forty-five-year carrier and notably famous supple stick technique of Gennady Rozhdestvensky have made him one of hte most respected twentieth-century conductors in Europe. This release celebrates his superb Enescu series with the BBC Philharmonic. The Romanian composer was one of the most prodigiously gifted musicians of the twentieth century: a great violinist and composer, a distinguished conductor, an accomplished pianist, able cellist, and a famous violin teacher. Although relatively modest, his published output contained some substantial works, such as the folk-inspired Romanian Rhapsodies and romantically influenced symphonies, all featured here.

For the setting of the contemplative but highly emotional text of the medieval sequence Stabat mater Boccherini chose an intimate chamber music instrumentation of soprano and string quintet (in his preferred instrumentation with two violins, viola and two cellos). The five string instruments are not only accompaniment, but together with the singing voice they transform into one instrument section, so that one can speak of a sextet for singing voice and string quintet. With the angelic singing of Núria Rial, the work becomes a real treat for lovers of beautiful voices and chamber music lovers alike. Nuria Rial studied voice and piano in her native Catalonia and was a member of Kurt Widmer's class at the Basel Academy of Music. In 2003, she was awarded the "Preis der Helvetia Patria Jeunesse Stiftung" by the Pro Europa - for her exceptional achievements as a singer. She has performed at all the leading music festivals in Europe and collaborates with such conductors as Ivan Fischer, Sir John Eliot Gardiner, Paul Goodwin, Trevor Pinnock, and Teodor Currentzis as well as notable ensembles, including Concerto Köln, The English Concert, Kammerorchester Basel, Collegium 1704, Il Giardino Armonico, Les Musiciens du Louvre, Elbipolis Barockorchester, Le Cetra Basel and L’Arpeggiata, Festival Lucerne Strings.

For a long time Giuseppe Antonio Brescianello worked as Kepellmeister at the Wurttemberg court in Stuttgart. His concerti a tre are actually triosonates for two violins and basso continuo. In these charming chamber music works Brescianello finds his own style, which is characterized by sonorous slow phrases and joy in virtuosity. The ensemble Der musikalische Garten, which has always been highly praised for its musical discoveries, recorded the first six of the 12 concerti a tre. The musicians of the ensemble Der musikalische Garten are current and graduated students of the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis and have met in Basel. The ensemble engages intensively in the German music of the seventeenth century, especially in the scordatura repertoire, of which most important representatives are H. I. F. Biber, Joh. H. Schmelzer or J. Pachelbel. However, the ensemble is always searching for new, rarely or never performed scordatura repertoire. The ensemble was selected as “Promising Ensemble 2011” by the IYAP Antwerpen and won second prize and audience’s prize of the international competition “Van Wassenaer” in Amsterdam 2011.