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Grieg: Piano Concerto & Peer Gynt / Bavouzet, Gardner, Bergen Philharmonic
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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
Ichmouratov: Letter from an Unknown Woman / Bushkov, Belarusian State Chamber Orchestra
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.’
Bennett: Orchestral Works, Vol. 2 / Wilson, McGill, BBC Scottish Symphony
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.
Her Voice
Szymanowski & Karlowicz: Violin Concertos
VIOLIN 2019
Reger: String Trios Nos. 1 and 2 - Piano Quartet No. 2
VIOLIN CONCERTOS
Weinberg, Penderecki & Schnittke: String Trios / Trio Lirico
Duos for Violin & Double Bass
Haydn: The Complete Piano Sonatas, Vol. 6 / Bavouzet
"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)
Landmarks: 40 Years of Chandos
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
The Wind Rose
Antheil: Orchestral Works, Vol. 3 / Storgards, BBC Philharmonic
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
Franck: Rédemption
Jongen: Works for Cello & Orchestra / Arming, Demarquette, Liege Philharmonic
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.
Borenstein: Orchestral Works / Trynkos, Ashkenazy, Oxford Philharmonic
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.’
A Lifetime on Chandos / Neeme Järvi
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
METAFORA
Elgar: The Music Makers & The Spirit of England / Connolly, Staples, Davis, BBC Symphony

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.
DON JUAN
Mozart: Piano Concertos, Vol. 4 / Bavouzet
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.
Enescu: The 3 Symphonies / Rozhdestvensky
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.
Boccherini: Stabat Mater & Sinfonia in D Major / Rial, Orchester le Phenix
Brescianello: Concerti a 3, Vol. 1 / Der Musikalische Garten
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.
