The viola da gamba is generally regarded as a chamber music instrument, which rarely seeks the accompaniment of an orchestra, but apparently this was more common than one assumes nowadays. The discovery of four hitherto unknown gamba concerts in the music library of the Eleonore von Munster (1734-1794) at Ledenburg Castle is a special stroke of luck, for one of the four works is by Carl Friedrich Abel, whose concerts have so far been considered lost. On this latest COVIELLO release Thomas Fritzsch and the Merseburger Hofmusik play gamba concerts of Abel, J.C. Bach, Raetzel and others. Thomas Fritzsch was born in Zwickau and grew up in the midst of a lively tradition of Saxon church and house music. After studying cello and viola da gamba at the Leipziger Musikhochschule, he began freelance activity as a specialist for the music of the 17th and 18th centuries. Today, he is one of the most revered gambists in the world.

Two of the most popular romantic Russian piano works from the mid-1870s are heard on this new album from the celebrated Barry Douglas. Lyricism lies at the heart of the twelve movements of Tchaikovsky’s ‘The Seasons’ (1875-76), commissioned by the periodical Nouvelliste to appear monthly, accompanied by poetic epigraphs. Tchaikovsky got his servant to remind him of his duty on a certain day in the month, and composed each piece in a single sitting. Each reflects characteristics of a different month, the style is simple, the mood introspective. While the poetic aspect of The Seasons was prompted by the individual musical contributions, ‘Pictures at an Exhibition’ (1874) was provoked by a visit which Mussorgsky made to an exhibition of sketches and paintings by his late friend Viktor Hartmann. The technically demanding memorial, a popular genre in Russian romanticism, is here played thoughtfully and sympathetically by Barry Douglas.

REVIEWS:

Musorgsky’s magnum opus requires pianism of dazzling virtuoso panache, and here Douglas is really in his element. His supreme technical ease and tonal control when the notes start flying – as in the ‘Ballet of the Chicks in their Shells’, ‘Limoges’, and (especially) ‘Baba Yaga’ – brings a special sense of frisson.

– BBC Music Magazine

I don’t know how long he has had these works in his repertoire but they sound like old friends, well played-in. Few performances of Pictures have been imbued with such musical and textual integrity; each section is deftly characterised; the full tonal and dynamic range of the piano brought appropriately to bear.

– Gramophone

Berlioz wrote his own text for L'Enfance du Christ, which he composed in 1853 and 1854. It was first performed at the Salle Herz, Paris on 10 December 1854, with Berlioz conducting. He described the work as a Trilogie sacr�e. The first of it's three sections depicts King Herod ordering the massacre of all newborn children in Judaea; the second shows Mary, Joseph, and Jesus setting out for Egypt to avoid the slaughter, having been warned by angels; and the final section portrays their arrival in the Egyptian town of Sa�s where they are given refuge by a family of Ishmaelites. Berlioz was not religious as an adult but remained all his life susceptible to the beauty of the religious music that had enraptured him as a child. Sir Andrew Davis conducts the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and MSO Chorus and an outstanding team of soloists in this Surround Sound SACD recording.

The Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev was one of the giants of 20th century music. Reference Recordings is proud to present the Utah Symphony conducted by Thierry Fischer, in grand new performances of "Alexander Nevsky" and the "Lieutenant Kijé Suite", two of his most brilliant and dramatic musical works. The music of Lieutenant Kijé was originally written as the score to the film of the same name, released in March 1934. Prokofiev soon adapted it into the five-movement Lieutenant Kijé Suite, first performed in December 1934, and which quickly became a favorite in the international concert repertoire. Then, in 1938, Prokofiev collaborated with film director Eisenstein to create the score for the film Alexander Nevsky. He later adapted much of his score into the large-scale cantata for mezzo-soprano, orchestra and chorus featured on this recording.

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REVIEW:

The Lieutenant Kijé Suite's piquant opening movement, ‘Kijé’s Birth’, is notable for some nimble playing, especially from the Utah Symphony’s woodwinds. ‘Romance’ is nicely shaped and I liked the contributions of the tenor saxophonist. The cheeky music of ‘Kijé’s Wedding’ is nicely pointed and the tuba ‘oompahs’ add a suitably amusing touch. In the concluding ‘Kijé’s Funeral’ Prokofiev offers a kind of musical obituary by weaving in snippets from the four preceding movements. This is a very nicely done performance and I enjoyed it.

The Alexander Nevsky cantata is a vivid, theatrical score and in the right hands it certainly packs a punch. This new version from Thierry Fischer has a lot going for it, not least the vivid recorded sound.

The quality of the sound is immediately evident in ‘Russia under Mongolian Tyranny’ where the brooding atmosphere established by Fischer and his orchestra is emphasised by the wide-ranging recording. The sound has impact and genuine presence, offering a vivid aural picture of the orchestra. The Utah choirs make a strong showing in the delivery of their long phrases in ‘Song of Alexander Nevsky’. Things really get cracking in ‘The Crusade in Pskov’ where the oppressive dissonance of Prokofiev’s music is strongly projected by the orchestra, reinforced eventually by the choir. The recording has power and clarity, maximising the impact of the performance.

– MusicWeb International

The unjustly neglected and often dissident music of Ruth Gipps is with this album finding all the resonance it deserves by Rumon Gamba and the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, having already championed many British composers from the twentieth century with their series devoted to British Tone Poems and Overtures from the British Isles. While, not surprisingly, there are echoes of the most popular composers of the time – Sibelius, Walton, and Vaughan Williams – the music is notable for its personal voice, confident conception, and vivid writing for the orchestra. Gipps herself actually felt her best works were those for orchestra. In a programme of contrasting impressions and emotions, Symphonies Nos 2 and 4, the former inspired by the Second World War, offer an approachable tuneful idiom. They are complemented by the lyrical, shorter Song for Orchestra and the early tone poem Knight in Armour, premiered at the last Night of the Proms in 1942.

In the last years of his life, John Cage wrote a great many so-called "Number Pieces" the title indicating the number of performing musicians. While most of these pieces indicate which instruments are to be played, as well as the sounds that are to be produced, other pieces offer only general tone descriptions or a framework for choosing the tones oneself. What these pieces do have in common is time\-organization: Cage designates the measure within which the tones must be played. Should one play these sound\-sequences within the interval quickly, then one must wait for the beginning of the next measure in order to continue; should one play with an even slowness, the separate intervals are joined without interruption. And so, each performance of the same piece is different: in one instance an even flow of sounds, in another a pulsation of rapid responses accompanied by pauses (including all variations). An exception is "Two²". Here the two pianists do not play according to a stopwatch, but rather by reacting to one another: Although the piece indicates measure, it does not assign tempo or even pulse. While both interpreters play independently of each other, they may continue on to the next measure only when the other player has finished his. Cage decided on the number of tones within a measure by drawing upon the rules of Renga, Japanese linked poetry, in which the number of syllables per verse are set at 5, 7, 5, 7, 7. As the pedal is continuously depressed, the notes sound into one another and this inner structure remains undetected.

Edward Gardner's Mendelssohn in Birmingham series continues with a recording of Overtures. As with the previous volumes, a reduced size CBSO join Gardner in Birmingham Town's Hall, where Mendelssohn himself conducted many of the UK premieres of his own orchestral works. The majority of works in the programme were written as concert overtures, spanning the length of Mendelssohn's career from the early Midsummer Night's Dream composed when he was just 16 though to 'Ruy Blas' written towards the end of his lifetime. Two of these overtures were written as the opening movements of larger works: 'St Paul', his first great Oratorio from 1836, and his overture to 'Athalie', incidental music written for Racine's play. The Trumpet Overture is the earliest work here, written possibly to precede a performance of Handel's Israel in Egypt, and allegedly Mendelssohn's father's favourite piece!

The young Stravinsky became acquainted with large parts of the Western music repertoire through piano arrangements. That might have been one reason for his later compositional practice to arrange major works for piano duet or for two pianos as well. With the new album "Petrushka", the Bugallo-Williams Piano Duo has achieved it's intention to present a complete collection of Igor Stravinsky's published piano arrangements. The present recording contains two ballets which show Stravinsky's compositional development within the genre: the almost film-like burlesque "Petrushka" (1910/11) as well as the abstract late work "Agon" (1953/57) which puts the ancient Greek concept of competition into a contradictory musical setting. In addition, it contains two arrangements of concert pieces: "Concertino" for string quartet (1920) lives on the alternation between homogeneous instrumental passages and soloistic crossed accents. The orchestral "Scherzo a la Russe" (1944) as 'jazz commercial' testifies to Stravinsky's adaptation to his life in America as well as to his love of the Russian types of form at the turn of the century. In their recording, Helena Bugallo and Amy Williams present the special charms of Igor Stravinsky's music in 'black and white': The piano arrangements reflect the sheer brilliance of his oeuvre in a concentrated form.

This outstanding new release is Volume 12 in the Lucerne Festival edition produced by Audite. In cooperation with Audite, Lucerne Festival presents outstanding concert recordings of artists who have shaped the festival throughout its history. The aim of this edition is to rediscover treasures- most of which have not been previously released- from the first six decades of the festival, which was founded in 1938 with a special gala concert conducted by Arturo Toscanini. These recordings have been made available by the archives of SRF Swiss Radio and Television. This edition represents a sonic history of the festival. This installment is a sensational archive discovery including two of Wilhelm Furtwangler’s favorites: a live recording of the Manfred Overture (1953), presumed lost until recently and now released for the very first time, alongside Beethoven’s Eroica and Schumann’s Fourth Symphonies, remastered for the first time using original tapes.

Alessandro Scarlatti's St John Passion was the first Passion setting written in seventeenth-century Italy. Scarlatti treats the role of the Evangelist (composed in the mezzo-soprano register) in highly unusual fashion, giving his narrative numerous emotional passages. The Voice of Christ (bass) is invariably haloed by a string accompaniment. The version presented by Leonardo Garc�a Alarc�n inserts meditations assigned to the chorus; these are taken from Scarlatti's Responsories for Holy Week, polyphonic settings that reveal a little-known genre practiced by this composer.

The Fantaisie sur la Tempete de Shakespeare was composed shortly after Berlioz had won the coveted Prix de Rome (at the fourth attempt) with his cantata Sardanapale, and was originally conceived as a concert overture, with chorus. After various reworkings of the material, the four-movement Fantaisie, as recorded here, became the finale of Berlioz’s ‘monodrama’ Lelio- a juxtaposition of existing material interlinked with dramatic monologues recited by the ‘artist’ at the center of the work. Symphonie fantastique, Berlioz’s best-known work by some distance, remains an evergreen in the orchestral repertoire, and beloved of audiences the world over. The idiomatic approach to orchestration, grounded in Berlioz’s musical training in French provincial wind-bands, and the revolutionary approach to the prevailing conventions of musical form at the time shine through in the five-movement masterpiece, which remains one of the most vividly programmatic symphonies ever written. This recording was made after a pair of performances in September 2018 in the Roy Thomson Hall in Toronto, and is made in Surround Sound.

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REVIEW:

You might not think the world needs another reading of the Symphonie fantastique, but Davis' ease with the orchestra enables him to pull off a number of unusual orchestral effects. The real find here is the Fantaisie sur La Tempète de Shakespeare (Fantasy on Shakespeare's The Tempest). It is a charming collection of delicate orchestral displays complete with a choir singing words from The Tempest, or something like them, in Italian. The Toronto Mendelssohn Choir achieves special grace here, and this little performance is worth the price of admission.

– All Music Guide (James Manheim)

Born in Ontario in August 1919, Tommy Reilly studied violin from the age of eight, and began playing harmonica at the age of eleven. Though he had played in England in 1935 – 37 and continental Europe in 1937 – 39, it was not until his arrest (while studying violin at the Leipzig Conservatory) and subsequent internment 1939 – 45 in prisoner-of-war camps that he developed his virtuosity on the harmonica, basing his ideas of phrasing and interpretation on the playing of Jascha Heifetz. Returning to London in 1945, Reilly began parallel careers as a concert soloist and recitalist, a popular BBC radio and television performer, and a studio musician-composer. He performed with most of the major European orchestras and toured all over the world as a concert soloist. Inspiring the composition of more than thirty works by other composers, Reilly also transcribed a great deal of repertoire for the instrument, in addition to composing his own works. In 1967 he designed a concert harmonica, later manufactured by Hohner and marketed as the Silver Concerto Chromonica. In 1992, he became the first harmonica player to be made a Member of the Order of the British Empire. His other awards included the Gold Medal of the Deutscher Harmonika-Verband, and a Golden Badge from the British Association of Composers, Authors and Songwriters. Sir Neville Marriner and Igor Stravinsky were among those who admired his playing.

For the third time on the Phi label, Philippe Herreweghe gives us the opportunity to (re)discover three cantatas by Johann Sebastian Bach – Nimm von uns, Herr, du treuer Gott, BWV 101, Ihr werdet weinen und heulen, BWV 103 and Mache dich, mein Geist, bereit, BWV 115. After two albums of cantatas written during the composer’s first year in Leipzig (LPH006 and LPH012), the Belgian conductor and his Collegium Vocale Gent, orchestra and choir, will be performing three cantatas he composed during his second year as Kantor at St Thomas’s. The choir and vocal soloists are once again challenged to produce performances of subtlety and refined virtuosity, and the instrumentarium is as rich and colourful as those heard previously in this series. This album, a genuine delight for aficionados and novices alike, precedes a further disc of cantatas which will be released in spring 2018.

The VI Suittes voor’ t Clavier, Opera Prima by the 17-year-old Dutch composer Reijnold Popma van Oevering were the first to carry forward the innovative harpsichord suite concept of the French composer Francois Dieupart, whose “English” Suites begin with a substantial prelude or overture, a model that was to become widely imitated a few years later in northern Europe. Popma van Oevering’s Opera Prima, with a certain Italian and north German flavour while at the same time bearing witness to an individual style, was to become widely disseminated in Europe, as appears from the mark it left on composers including Bach, Handel and even Mozart. His six harpsichord suites are presented here for the first time as a complete recording, made partly on the monumental Christiaan Muller organ in Leeuwarden, built in 1727 upon the initiative of the composer.

This imaginative recording project offers virtuoso treatment of folk music from Hungary and Taiwan, illuminating many aspects of the respective cultures. Winners of both the First Prize and Amadeus Prize at the London International String Competition, the Formosa Quartet was hailed as "spellbinding" by BBC Music Magazine. They have given critically acclaimed performances at the Ravinia Festival, the Caramoor Festival, and many other esteemed venues. Formed in 2002 when the four founding members came together for a concert tour of Taiwan, Formosa Quartet is deeply committed to championing Taiwanese music and promoting the arts in the land of its heritage, as well as exploring diverse and adventurous mediums for string quartet. In 2013 the members of Formosa Quartet founded the annual Formosa Chamber Music Festival, where they continue to serve as artist faculty.

George Perle described his journey as "a path toward a new kind of tonality. Music that was going to do what music used to do, with its basis being the twelve-tone scale instead of the diatonic scale". Annotator Christopher Hailey writes that "It is not necessary to go into analytical details because what Perle created was a language of such cogency and immediate appeal that no technical knowledge is necessary for its appreciation. It is music that is bracing without being strident, vigorous without being disjointed, sharply etched without being dryly acerbic; it is witty, lucid, stimulating, and, above all, deeply humane. With this new recording, the Seattle Symphony, cello soloist Jay Campbell, and conductor Ludovic Morlot present five previously unrecorded works by the American master George Perle.

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REVIEW:

The performances by the Seattle Symphony are excellent. Ludovic Morlot displays a great understanding of this challenging music. His control of the orchestra is remarkable. The sound quality is very clear and lets all of the subtle nuances of the music be heard.

– Fanfare

The distinguished baritone Randall Scarlata regularly performs the German song repertoire with pianists including Cameron Stowe, Jeremy Denk, Jonathan Biss, Inon Barnatan, Laura Ward and Gilbert Kalish. Mr. Scarlata is a regular guest with The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, Chamber Music Northwest, and the Seattle Chamber Music Festival. Gilbert Kalish's profound influence on the musical community as pianist and educator has established him as a major figure in American music making. His recordings for Bridge Records include his memorable partnership with the mezzo-soprano Jan DeGaetani and a recent solo album of music by Schubert, Beethoven and Haydn. Here, he tackles a well-known favorite in the Lied repertoire: Franz Schubert’s Winterreise.

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REVIEW:

As a stirring and elevating musical experience, as opposed to one that is harrowing, I find Scarlata’s Winterreise utterly compelling. This is an alternative to performances that leave your nerves jangling, and I love it. I could listen to this man serenade me all day. Gilbert Kalish is equally wonderful.

– Fanfare

Evgeni Bohzanov invites you to a Voyage deep into the heart of German Musical Romanticism with this superb program combining moving transcriptions of works by Brahms and R. Strauss with Schubert's last sonata, one of the greatest masterpieces in music history. Born in 1984 in Bulgaria, Evgeni Bozhanov completed his studies in Essen and Dusseldorf with Professor Georg Friedrich Schenck. His international career launched following top prizes at international competitions including the Sviatoslav Richter International Piano Competition in Moscow, Queen Elisabeth Competition in Brussels, Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in Fort Worth, Texas, and International Chopin Competition in Warsaw. He has appeared as a soloist with orchestras including the National Orchestra of Belgium, Philharmonia Orchestra, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, and others.

Sardanapalo, who prefers wine and concubines to politics and warfare, and Mazeppa, who dies with glory, having endured pain and humiliation: dramatic literary models, impressively set to music by Franz Liszt. Written at the same time, these works represent Liszt's ideas striving to unite literature and music, on the one hand modernising Italian opera and on the other advancing towards the symphonic poem in his orchestral writing. The Sardanapalo manuscript comprises the first act. For 170 years the material lay dormant in the Goethe and Schiller archive in Weimar: it was only in 2017 that David Trippett deciphered, edited and orchestrated the manuscript at the University of Cambridge. Kirill Karabits conducts the Weimar Staatskapelle: Liszt's orchestra in the city in which he composed the opera. Audite continues its series of the great Weimar Kapellmeister-composers.

In 2016 Sarah Defrise unearthed more than twenty unpublished songs by Joseph Jongen (1873-1953), some of them preserved amongst the composer's private papers. Such a discovery is an important event in the Belgian musical landscape. This young soprano now offers the first complete recording of these songs, of which this constitutes the first volume. We have chosen to focus on works from both the composer's youth and his maturity. This album therefore presents an unpublished cycle of setting of poems by Armand Silvestre (1892), the famous cycle op. 25 (1902), from which the first song had always previously been missing, and a selection of later songs dating from 1909 to 1928. Jongen's sensitive and subtle art is carried by the intelligent and luminous performance by the duo formed by Sarah with the English pianist Craig White.

Also available from the Silesian Quartet on Chandos: Bacewicz: Complete String Quartets

The 2017 Gramophone Award-winning Silesian Quartet here presents its second recording on Chandos, again devoted to the works of the Polish female composer Grazyna Bacewicz, in a rare programme full of contrast and individuality. The four works brought together here – two unusual quartet formations and two piano quintets – form an integral part of the central, chamber music strand in Bacewicz's output. While the Quartet for Four Violins and the First Piano Quintet have maintained a strong presence in both concerts and recordings, the intriguing Quartet for Four Cellos and Second Piano Quintet are lesser-known pieces. This is yet another must-have, preceding the fiftieth year of Bacewicz's death commemorations, a composer whose music is now considered by broadcasters, promoters, critics, and artists as an essential part of the Polish repertoire.

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REVIEW:

Bacewicz can generate momentum in the space of a four-minute movement and integrates eloquent bleakness with some of the sharpest, most light-footed musical wit since Haydn…This disc deserves to make a lot of converts.

– Gramophone

Born in L�dz (Poland) Grazyna Bacewicz is the most eminent inheritor of the 19th century violinist-composers in the lineage of her compatriot and predecessor Henryk Wieniawski. She was one of the most important composers of the mid-20th century, a remarkable concert artiste who left a catalogue of over 200 works, including five Sonatas and a Partita for violin and piano as well as two solo violin sonatas that feature in this boxset commemorating the 50th anniversary of her death. Her style is close to the French neoclassicism of the interwar period, though she increases it's vitality and clarity while infusing it with a blend of delicacy and highly individual rigor. All her works reveal rhythmic sophistication and a characteristic approach to metre, a juxtaposition of exuberance and lyricism. In short, music that is vivacious, sensitive and mischievous; the composer excelled in her treatment of a stringed instrument while in parallel drawing out the lines of a piano part bristling with life. The French violinist Annabelle Berthom�-Reynolds loves rare, powerful scores. She has imbued herself with this music and with her partner the Bulgarian pianist Ivan Donchev, they both fill this music with vitality and poetry to make this boxset a real discovery and already a classic interpretation.

ANDREW SCOTT PLAYS ALMEIDA

Arlene Sierra, Vol. 3 presents chamber music composed over a sixteen year period (1997-2013), by the brilliant composer. An American composer based in London, Arlene Sierra writes music that takes its impetus from rich sources including military strategy, game theory, Darwinian evolution, and the natural world. Her music has been lauded for its “highly flexible and distinctive style” (The Guardian), and its “remarkable brilliance of color, rhythmic dexterity and playfulness” (NPR Classical). Declared “a name to watch” by BBC Music Magazine, Arlene Sierra is the subject of a critically-acclaimed series of portrait discs with Bridge Records. She has received fellowships from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the MacDowell Colony and the Tanglewood Music Festival, and has had portrait concerts at the Crush Room, Royal Opera House, London, the Yellow Barn Music Festival, Vermont and Columbia University’s Miller Theatre, New York. A Takemitsu Prize-winner and Latin GRAMMY nominee, Sierra has received commissions from BBC Radio 3 and the BBC Philharmonic, the New York Philharmonic, Seattle Symphony, Bremen Philharmonic Society, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Albany Symphony, the Cheltenham, Huddersfield and Tanglewood Music Festivals, and many ensembles and soloists.

The Halle and Sir Mark Elder follow their previous highly acclaimed DeBussy albums, with a stunning orchestral collection including a world premiere recording. This collection features works from across the composer's career, from his early winning of the Prix de Rome, as a result of which he composed the delicate cantata La Demoiselle elue in 1887. Recorded following the highly acclaimed Proms performance and featuring stand-out soloists Anna Stephany and Sophie Bevan, hailed by reviewers. The enigmatic Nocturnes date from 1897-9 and show the composer at the height of his orchestral powers, in music that is highly evocative of mood and which displays deft instrumental writing. Mastery of instrumental writing is further evidenced in the technically demanding Premiere Rhapsodie, which calls upon the full range of emotions from the soloist; here the Halle's Principal Clarinet, Sergio Castello Lopez. The album features a world premiere recording of Colin Matthew's orchestration of the piano piece Les soirs illumines par l'ardeur du charbon, unknown until it's discovery in 2001. This arrangement follows Matthews' universally acclaimed orchestrations of the DeBussy Preludes.