Ernst von Dohnanyi’s piano works are influenced by the late romantic era, with different character pieces woven together as a cycle like the late piano works of Brahms. Dohnanyi first made his mark on the music scene as a pianist. He made his debut in Berlin in 1897 and was at once recognized as an artist of extremely high merit. Similar success followed in Vienna, and then he toured Europe. After he began composing, the piano was his natural instrument to write for. Sofja Gulbadamova has long been a champion of Ernst von Dohnanyi’s piano oevre. Sofja has won prizes at many international competitions in the USA, Spain, France, Germany, and Russia. Several CD recordings of her performances have already been published in Germany and France, and have been widely well-received.

At the time he wrote Enoch Arden, Strauss was known primarily as a composer of tone poems, having made a name for himself with works such as Macbeth, Don Juan, Death and Transfiguration, Til Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks and Thus Spoke Zarathustra. The brilliantly orchestrated symphonic work From Italy was written at about the same time as Enoch Arden. It took Strauss a while to develop a reputation as an operatic composer: his opera Guntram was a critical failure. Of his 16 operas, Salome was the first to achieve any kind of fame, albeit of a rather scandalous and even infamous nature. Pianists have often deplored the fact that the gifted painter of orchestra colour wrote so little music for their instrument. Apart from the early Piano Sonata in B minor, Op. 5, the Five Piano Pieces, Op. 3, the Funf Stimmungsbilder, Op. 9, and Theme, 15 Improvisations and Fugue, there are only the highly demanding piano accompaniments for the lieder and, of course, the piano part in Enoch Arden. Despite its rarity, the 50-minute work in two parts has remained more or less at the fringes of mainstream repertoire. Yet no less than the eccentric Canadian musician and Bach specialist Glenn Gould recorded it, although it ''clearly contains some of the most sentimentally unbearable music that Strauss ever wrote''.

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Le Villi is an opera-ballet in two acts that marked Giacomo Puccini’s debut in the world of opera. It was first staged at Teatro dal Verme in Milan in 1884. Librettist Ferdinando Fontana based the story on the ancient legend of the Willis, fantastic creatures representing the souls of young women who were the victims of love. Anna and Roberto are engaged, but during a trip the man is seduced by a woman and his fiancée dies of heartbreak. Roberto, who is by then abandoned and left penniless, is haunted by remorse and attacked by the revengeful fairies and Anna’s ghost. All the elements of the more mature Puccini are already recognizable: the characters of Anna and Roberto anticipate the “love victim” and the “man without qualities” archetypes of his later operas, whereas some of the composer’s touches of harmony and aria structure foresee his future success. This rare work was chosen to open the 2018-2019 season of Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino and the performance received very good reviews. “Le Villi is an opera full of excellent music, where Puccini’s future grandeur is already recognizable. This production mingles essentiality, intelligence and youth” (Gbopera.it) “Conductor Marco Angius delivers a fierce and passionate performance and under his baton the Orchestra del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino is able to convey all the various shades of the score.” (Gbopera.it)

My own music is influenced by the music of Bach. Having studied in the Bach city" of Leipzig, fallen in love with his fugues as a child and won with his Preludes in the Jugend musiziert competition, achieved my first Bach cycle with the Goldberg Variations (in the USA for my Master in music and my first album recording) - then I was moved more and more deeply by the Credo, the inner conviction, in Bach's music. My imaginative powers, my musical energy (timbres, sounds, creativity, poetry) must be imbued with this richness. New music looks quite different from what it was in Bach's day (some even say it is all philosophy now, no melodies, notes or harmonies required). If modern music is still to be music, even today, and if it is still to enrich people's lives, a thing of value that they can and will remember, then Bach's store of wealth can always come to the aid of us composers. And so it is that J.S. Bach, who never left Germany and spent so long in Leipzig for want of a better position, today more than ever embraces the whole world with a web of his music, in all the places he never travelled to, whether Spain, Franconia, Hesse, Sweden, or far beyond Europe." (Ann-Helena Schl�ter)

Benjamin Bruns began his singing career as an alto soloist with the boys' choir in his home city of Hanover. After four years of private singing lessons with Prof. Peter Sefcik, he studied at the Academy of Music and Theatre in Hamburg under the Kammers�ngerin Renate Behle. While still a student, he was offered a permanent contract by the Theater Bremen, a position which allowed him to build up a broadly based repertoire at an early stage. It was followed by a similar contract with the opera house in Cologne. His professional journey then took him via the Dresden State Opera to the Vienna State Opera. His repertoire contains such roles as Belmonte (Die Entf�hrung aus dem Serail), Tamino (Die Zauberfl�te), Don Ottavio (Don Giovanni), Ferrando (Cos� fan tutte), Camille de Rosillon (The Merry Widow), Loge (Das Rheingold), or the Italian Tenor in the Strauss operas Capriccio and Der Rosenkavalier. Since his debut in summer 2012 he sang the Steersman in The Flying Dutchman for five seasons at the Bayreuth Festival. Oratorio and lieder form an important counterweight to Benjamin Bruns's stage work. At the heart of his extensive concert repertoire are the great sacred works by Bach, Handel, Haydn, Mozart, Schubert and Mendelssohn. He has sung with such renowned ensembles as Berliner Philharmonics, the S�chsische Staatskapelle Dresden, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Munich Philharmonics, the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, the Bach Collegium Japan, the WDR Symphony Orchestra as well as Choir and Orchestra of the Accademia di Santa Cecilia in Rome or the Akademie f�r Alte Musik Berlin. Together with pianist Karola Theill he is regularly giving Lied recitals, dedicated especially to the important cycles of Schumann, Schubert and Beethoven. But also songs by Wolf, Britten, Faur�, Szymanowski and Strauss are to be found in his programs.

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Nicola Vaccaj belonged to the Neapolitan school: a pupil of Paisiello and contemporary of Rossini, whose fame somehow obscured his own, he was well known and appreciated at his time, to the point that an extract from the last Act of his Giulietta e Romeo was chosen to substitute the same aria in Bellini’s I Capuleti e I Montecchi for an 1832 performance and this shift has remained common practice until the end of the 19th century. Therefore it’s hard to believe that Vaccaj’s most notable success was neglected for such a long time as it “is an opera that could easily hold its own among the better-known works in the bel canto canon. It has taut plot, with a strong libretto, written by Romani, and is full of well-constructed ensemble pieces”(Alan Neilson – Operawire) Within a traditional, 16th century setting, director Cecilia Ligorio choses to convey a sense of doom and tragedy which the entire work is imbued with, from the choice of costumes and settings to the stage lighting. “It really was a well-paced, and visually pleasing production that successfully captured the love and hatred which drives the narrative forward.”(Alan Neilson – Operawire)

For the first time in modern times, Festival della Valle d'Itria stages the Neapolitan version of Handel's Rinaldo, a pastiche with a Mediterranean allure which Leonardo Leo assembled in 1718 and which was considered lost until a few years ago. The story behind this most rare opera is captivating: the score of Handel's masterpiece was illegally brought to Naples by the castrato singer Nicol� Grimaldi, who first interpreted Rinaldo in London. Once in Italy, the work was rehashed by Leo as well as other local composers, who adapted it to the taste of the local Neapolitan public, adding some intermezzos and amusing characters. Director Giorgio Sangati turns this work into a "ba-rock" opera set in the 1980's, where the struggle between Christians and Turks becomes a battle between pop-rock singers (the Christians) and dark-metal ones (the Turks). These two factions represent two opposite perspectives on love and life. Conductor Fabio Luisi is at the head of the baroque Ensemble La Scintilla, a group of specialists in the baroque repertoire. Excellent reviews for the vocal cast who endured an almost 4 hour performance, special mentions to Carmela Remigio (Armida) who was defined "vocally majestic and most convincing in her acting skills", whereas Teresa Iervolino (Rinaldo) impressed the critics for her vocal and acting skills en travesti and her ability "to convey all the melancholic shades of Handel's music" (Luca Ciammarughi, classicaviva. Com).

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This opera, which had fallen into oblivion, was revived in 1973 in the Dutch city of Zaanstad (the Saardam of the libretto) and staged at Bergamo’s Teatro Sociale as part of the Donizetti Festival in a new critical edition made for the Donizetti Foundation by Alberto Sonzogni. In the plot, the Tsar Peter the Great works incognito as a carpenter at the shipyard of Sardaam to acquire technical knowledge to carry back home. On the podium, the knowledgeable Roberto Rizzi Brignoli leads the orchestra of the Donizetti Opera, assisted by the internationally renowned cinema director Davide Ferrario. In the cast, Andrea Concetti (a successful artist who has sung throughout the world) is joined by singers who are emerging in the belcanto repertoire, such as Giorgio Caoduro, Juan Francisco Gatell, Irina Dubrovskaya and Aya Wakizono.

Spooky sounds and ghostly wailings are usually what come to mind when people imagine the sound of the theremin. With “Air Électrique”, Thorwald Jorgensen and Kamilla Bystrova go beyond the novelty of the theremin and let the music speak for itself. With the premier recording of Lera Auerbach’s “10 Preludes for theremin and piano”, the standard of the album is set. This compositional tour-de-force presents colourful melodic music which exploits the unique characteristics of both the theremin and the piano. The angular modernism of Lydia Kavina’s “Suite for theremin and piano” and Olesya Rostovskaya’s haunting “Juliet” show more of the theremin’s unrivalled sonic possibilities, clearly illustrating what is possible with this combination of instruments. The album also presents two chamber music pieces. The first is the world premiere of Joseph Schillinger’s “Bury, Bury me Wind”, in which Thorwald and Kamilla are joined by mezzo soprano, Itzel Medecigo. The other is the spectacular “Fantasy for theremin, xylophone and piano” by Valery Beluntsov, in which Thorwald plays not only the theremin but also the virtuosic xylophone part. All in all “Air Électrique” is an album for both lovers of the theremin and piano, and lovers of music in general.

The string quartet is at the very heart of 20th century British music, encompassing some of the quintessential works of the chamber music repertory. This compendium features fine examples of the genre, revealing the precocious talents of Benjamin Britten and John Ireland, the quicksilver craftsmanship of Frank Bridge and Alan Rawsthorne, the ‘captured sunshine’ of Edward Elgar’s writing and the evocative pastoral renderings of Arthur Bliss and Arnold Bax. Although the musical styles of each of the composers featured in this collection are unique, their contributions are unified by an innate understanding and mastery of the string quartet form. The multi-award winning and twice Grammy Award-nominated Maggini Quartet’s consummate and much lauded interpretations of these works are presented here together for the first time.

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

Ireland: String Quartets

These works make for gratifying listening. The performances from the Maggini Quartet are simply magnificent: what devotion these musicians lavish on this music. Furthermore, the recording is quite superb in its intimacy, blend, and balance — the listener feels like the “fifth” member.

– Fanfare

Bax: String Quartets Nos. 1 & 2

Both quartets are important contributions to the repertoire, something made abundantly clear by the Maggini Quartet's masterful, deeply felt, and finely executed readings. The ensemble's burning conviction will make you a believer too.

– ClassicsToday

Alwyn: String Quartets Nos. 1-3

With controlled vibrato and sharp attacks, theirs is a compellingly stark, uncompromising, physical approach, stressing the modernity of the works. Lyrical sections, as a result, stand out in bold relief.

– Fanfare

In terms of genre, Allan Pettersson was uniquely single-minded: during his entire career as a composer (1953–80) he produced only a dozen or so works that were not symphonies. By name, Violin Concerto No. 2 is one of these, but it is fair to say that it straddles the divide. Pettersson himself remarked: ‘In reality my work was a Symphony for violin and orchestra. From this results the fact that the solo violin is incorporated into the orchestra like any other instrument.’ It should therefore not come as a surprise that Christian Lindberg has chosen to include this massive 53-minute work in his acclaimed and award-winning series of Pettersson’s symphonies, realized in collaboration with the Norrköping Symphony Orchestra. The concerto was written in 1977, 28 years after its predecessor, the Concerto for Violin and String Quartet (1949). In that work, written while Pettersson was still studying, the composer was experimenting with radical ideas that are not to be found in his later compositions. Concerto No. 2 is rather characterized by the central role given to one of Pettersson’s Barefoot Songs – a trait that appears in several other mature works. Throughout the score, the song ‘The Lord walks in the meadow’ provides motivic material but is also quoted extensively. The hugely challenging solo part was first performed by Ida Haendel in 1980, and is here taken up by Ulf Wallin, who with an extensive discography has already proved himself to be one of the most intrepid violinists of today. The album closes with Pettersson’s last musical thoughts: a 207-bar long fragment generally regarded and referred to as a sketch for the composer’s Seventeenth Symphony. The fragment has been performed in public on one or two occasions, but it is only now that a wider public is given the opportunity to hear it.

Yondani Butt was born in Macau. He studied conducting with Wolfgang Vacano (1906-1985) at Indiana University, majoring in chemistry. He continued to study conducting with Josef Blatt (1906-1999) at the University of Michigan while pursuing his chemistry degree. Hailed by Robert Marsh of the Chicago Sun Times as ''an outstanding talent'', Yondani Butt has received acclamation from critics and audiences for his many recordings and concert performances. He died on August 28, 2014. ''Anyone seeking these two symphonies on one disc, together with a generous 'filler' into the bargin, could hardly do better than to acquire this eminently recommendable issue'' Robert Matthew-Walker, International Record Review on the original release of Symphonies Nos. 3 & 4.

Robert Schumann composed the Op. 47 Piano Quartet in E flat major in his so-called ‘chamber music year’ of 1842, immediately after finishing the famous piano quintet in the same key. Despite the proximity in time and tonality, there are clear differences between the two works: the quintet tends more towards a concertante dialogue between the piano and string quartet while the quartet favours equality between the four parts – even if the cello has something of a leading role among the strings. Some ten years later, the young Johannes Brahms was entrusted with the task of making a piano four-hands arrangement of the quartet, and it is quite possible that this contact with Schumann’s chamber music for piano and strings opened his eyes to the potential of the genre. In any case, with its almost inexhaustible motivic abundance and captivating energy Brahms’s Piano Quintet in F minor, Op.34, is one of the most often performed works for these forces. Completed in 1864 it had actually started off as a string quintet which Brahms first reworked as a sonata for two pianos before arriving at the final scoring. Performing these two central works in 19th century chamber music is Yevgeny Sudbin and an international group of eminent string players consisting of violinists Hrachya Avanesyan and Boris Brovtsyn, violist Diemut Poppen and cellist Alexander Chaushian.

REVIEW:

There’s no lack of personalities on display here. Here we have a band of equals. The players are thrillingly daring in the Scherzo of the Schumann, taken at breakneck tempo with fizzing accents, but though you suspect that Sudbin is the ringleader here, there’s plenty of give and take within the group.

– Gramophone

On two previous albums, Yevgeny Sudbin and Osmo Vänskä have released Beethoven’s three last piano concertos to critical acclaim. Distinctions include Editor’s Choice in Gramophone and top marks from the Italian magazine Musica and the German website Klassik-Heute.de, and performances have been described as ‘electrifying’ (classicfm.com), ‘absolutely stunning’ (Fanfare) and ‘a Beethoven experience you will not want to miss’ (ClassicsToday.com). For the final release in their cycle, Sudbin and Vänskä have travelled to Helsinki to team up with Tapiola Sinfonietta, one of the top Nordic ensembles, and well suited for these earlier and more classical of Beethoven’s concertos. Of the two, the one we now know as the Second was actually begun several years before Concerto No. 1, and indeed even before Beethoven left Bonn for Vienna. During the following decade, Beethoven returned to the score repeatedly and made substantial revisions – including composing a new final movement – and ultimately the C major concerto reached publication first. Both concertos were conceived long before Beethoven's involvement with the symphonic genre, and the influence of Mozart and Haydn is evident in the interaction between the orchestra and the soloist – but Beethoven's individual spirit is nevertheless unmistakeable.

This new release presents Mozart´s “Haydn“ Quartets & “Prussian“ Quartets. "In the maturity of their musical disposition, the melancholy beauty of their melody and the absolute facility in the handling of the part-writing" (Dietmar Holland), the three "Prussian" Quartets surely constitute the most important chamber music of Mozart's final years. There were many different opinions heard about the “Haydn“ Quartets - the most beautiful probably being that of Joseph Haydn himself, to whom the six quartets were dedicated. Speaking to Leopold Mozart after a performance in February 1785, he summarized his impressions as follows: “I tell you in the sight of God, as an honest man, your son is the greatest composer I know in person or by name: he not only has good taste but the greatest compositional knowledge as well.” The works are brilliantly presented here by the Klenke Quartett.

Born in 1963, John Pickard is best known for a series of powerful orchestral and instrumental works and previous recordings on BIS of his music have received critical acclaim in reviews such as Gramophone (''simply stunning''), American Record Guide (''superb works in wonderful readings'') and BBC Music Magazine (''an absolute triumph''). The present album brings together some of Pickard's most recent orchestral compositions, in performances by two of his long-time collaborators: the BBC National Orchestra of Wales and conductor Martyn Brabbins. The opening work is Symphony no. 5, which was composed in 2014 with these performers in mind. Lasting some thirty minutes, the symphony is in a single continuous movement. It requires no less than three timpanists who are placed at the back of the orchestra to the right, left and centre, leading to some dramatic antiphonal exchanges. The symphony is followed by Sixteen Sunrises, the result of the composer's wish to compose a piece ''filled with light''. The title of the piece refers to the number of sunrises that can be observed during a twenty-four-hour period from the International Space Station, as it orbits the earth. Musical depictions of sunrises are normally gradual processes, but viewed from the ISS, a sunrise occurs in a matter of seconds, and it is the idea of suddenly shifting from darkness to light that formed the basis of the shape of Pickard's piece.

Martha Argerich was born in Buenos Aires in 1941 and in the course of her career has risen to become the best-known female pianist in the world. She attracted attention at the early age of three at a school performance. Her formal musical education began when she was five years old, and in 1949 she publicly performed piano concertos by Mozart and Beethoven in Buenos Aires. She was able to attend concerts given by the great pianists of that era and was very impressed with their skill. Friedrich Gulda accepted her as a student in 1955 and she went to Vienna to study with him, although he freely admitted that he did not know what he could teach her. In 1957 she won first prizes at piano competitions in Bolzano and Geneva. Her early recordings made in Buenos Aires (1955) and Geneva (1957) form an interesting part of this collection. These were followed by performances at radio stations in Hamburg and Cologne and then by her first official vinyl recordings. She gained early international recognition in 1961 thanks to a concert in Leningrad, now Saint Petersburg, where Martha Argerich performed together with the brilliant violinist Ruggiero Ricci. An example of that historic performance is included in this first audio documentation of the beginnings of this exceptional pianist’s career.



REVIEW:

This is young Argerich, sometimes errant Argerich, but mostly thrilling and thoroughly compelling Argerich. While her pacing can sometimes push limits, she is excellent most of the time; put simply, you are far more likely to be astounded than dismayed.

– MusicWeb International

Seen as the successor to Beethoven by many of his contemporaries, Johannes Brahms combined traditional form with an originality o fmusical language that has inspired generations of composers. His two string quintets are, like Mozart's, scored with two violas for richness of texture and harmonic depth. The positive mood of the First String Quintet reflects the sunny resort of Bad Ischl where Brahms composed during the spring of 1882, while his Second String Quintet combines symphonic breadth with nostalgic melancholy in what was originally intended to be his final chamber work. Formed in 1987, the New Zealand String Quartet has established a distinguished international reputation over the past three decades. The ensemble's discography includes all the quartets by Mendelssohn, Bartok and Berg, and this recording completes their three albums of Brahms chamber music for Naxos.

Paul Frankenburger left his native Germany in 1933 in response to the National Socialists' rise to power. Up to that point he had been fully immersed in the German tradition and his compositions followed in the footsteps of the great German post-Romantics like Mahler. Yet after arriving to the British Mandate of Palestine, not only did he change his name to Paul Ben-Haim, but his compositional style underwent a profound change as well. Devised by the young violinist Itamar Zorman, this album tracks how the music of the region gradually became an integral part of Ben-Haim's compositions. Six works spanning four decades represent different stages in this process of synthesis between East and West, the transformation of Frankenburger into Ben-Haim. Zorman, a prize-winner in the 2011 Tchaikovsky Competition, is supported by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales and Philippe Bach in the opening Evocation (Yizkor) from 1942, and the Violin Concerto, as well as in the arrangement (by the father of the soloist) of a Toccata, originally composed for the piano. These are interspersed by Three Songs without Words and Berceuse sfaradite, one of Ben-Haim's most popular works, in which Itamar Zorman is partnered by pianist Amy Yang. Also part of the programme is Ben-Haim's last composition for the violin, the Three Studies for Solo Violin, written in 1981 for Yehudi Menuhin.

Between 2003 and 2015, Ronald Brautigam recorded all of Beethoven’s music for solo piano – a huge undertaking resulting in a grand total of 15 highly acclaimed albums. Choosing to perform the works on the fortepiano, Brautigam began with a sonata cycle which caused one reviewer to talk of a challenge to ‘the very notion of playing this music on modern instruments, a stylistic paradigm shift.’ In 2010, after nine albums of sonatas, he went on to record the composer’s variations, bagatelles and other piano pieces – a staggering array of works ranging from a Bagatelle lasting 11 seconds to the monumental Diabelli Variations, and from a charming Rondo in C major composed by a 13-year old Beethoven, to what is often referred to as the composer's ‘Last Musical Thought’, an Andante maestoso dated 1826. Brautigam’s sonata recordings were released in a box set in 2014, and they are now followed by this 6-album set of the remaining works for solo piano, in the original hybrid format, and with full documentation in the form of the original booklets. Composed over the course of more than 40 years, the music is performed on three different instruments, all by the master builder Paul McNulty, demonstrating the rapid development that the fortepiano underwent during Beethoven’s lifetime.

REVIEWS:

This is a wonderful set, in which Ronald Brautigam excels in his conclusion to his survey of the complete solo piano music of Beethoven. I appreciate that some people do not like the sound of the fortepiano, but the instruments chosen for this set and edition as a whole, show the breadth of sound that was available at the time, and some people will be surprised by just how full a sound it is. Brautigam’s choice of tempos is well-measured and thoughtful, and his playing is nuanced throughout, resulting in this set being one that I have found difficult to take off my CD player. The performances certainly mark Brautigam out as a leading interpreter of Beethoven’s music regardless of the style and type of piano used.

– MusicWeb International

Brautigam’s fortepiano survey is magnificent, comprising four full discs of variations (including Eroica and Diabelli), the complete bagatelles, rondos and other miscellaneous pieces. Disc 1 begins with a charming rendition of the Op 33 set followed by a tranche of pieces dating mainly from the 1790s; the late sets Opp 119 and 126 are delivered with a sense of simplicity that can only come from depth of knowledge.

– International Piano

This extensive release features all of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s opera recordings live from the Bolshoi Theater. Made between 1936 and 1963, these recordings showcase not only one of the finest venues in the world, but one of the world’s finest composers. Tchaikovsky wrote his first opera, The Voyevoda, in 1867. After a disastrous premiere, the self-critical composer burnt the entire manuscript of the work. Luckily, most of the score has been reconstructed from the individual parts. It is included in the first portion of this release for modern listeners to make up their own minds about the music. Luckily, his feelings about his first opera didn’t stop him from pursuing more within the genre. As a composer of opera, Tchaikovsky could seek inspiration in centuries of operatic tradition in Western Europe, but the history of the opera in Russia had only just begun a few years before he was born. While Tchaikovsky welcomed the ideas of Western Europe, he faced rivalry from “The Mighty Handful” of nationalist Russian composers. Despite a rocky first few operas, Tchaikovsky went on to find later success as he walked a middle-road between operatic tradition and Russian nationalism. While his operas never found the success that his ballets did, this release proves that they are the works of a brilliant mind.

Born in a provincial Swedish town in 1947, Anders Eliasson started playing the trumpet at the age of 9 and soon after formed his own jazz band. In his teens he began to study classical music, however, and aged 19 he was accepted into the composition class at the Royal Academy of Music in Stockholm. Here modernism reigned supreme, and Eliasson felt out of touch with a style that he later described as petrified and intellectualized. His own idea of music was completely different, and he went so far as to say that he did not, in point of fact, compose music but merely assisted in its birth. Eliasson first came to wider notice during the second half of the 1970s, with his Disegno per quartetto d’archi and Canto del vagabondo for boy soprano, choir and orchestra. But as he himself acknowledged, it was in the early 80s that he truly began to find his own voice, for instance with chamber works such as Notturno and Senza risposte. During the rest of Eliasson’s career, it would be compositions for large forces that attracted the greatest attention, in Sweden and abroad: from Symphony No. 1 (1986), which received the Nordic Council Music Prize, to the great oratorio Dante Anarca and Symphony No. 4, premièred by the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra in 2007. He continued writing chamber music throughout his life, however, and the Trio from 2010 was to become one of his last works. Specializing in contemporary music, the seven members of Norrbotten NEO have devised a programme that includes the first recordings of Notturno and the Trio for violin, vibraphone and piano, and at the same time offers the possibility of following a unique voice in contemporary music over the course of four decades.

The duet repertoire for two basses is hardly extensive in the field of opera, let alone in the world of Lieder. One might therefore expect an album titled Romantic Bass Duets to feature a collection of rare works by second- or third-rate song composers. This release, however, presents a first-class repertoire in rather unfamiliar arrangements. What is needed here are two singers and a pianist who fit the bill in terms of imagination and creativity. The idea of this album, the first edition of which appeared as a limited edition in 1986 and can now be obtained only from second-hand sources (if at all), was conceived by the pianist Wilhelm von Grunelius. Born in Berlin in 1942, von Grunelius was the pianist of choice for the recitals sung by the distinguished singer Harald Stamm. Born in Frankfurt am Main in 1938, this bass was a friend of Kurt Moll (1938-2017), a fellow bass of the same age. Samm once recalled in conversation that the idea first arose at a social meeting with Moll and his wife, prompting von Grunelius, a short time later, to go and research the repertoire. The result is this spectacular recording.

On her first Pentatone album, pianist Tamara Stefanovich presents a highly personal selection of solo works by Bach, Bartók, Ives and Messiaen. Influences shows how these extraordinarily original and idiosyncratic composers let themselves be inspired by the exterior world, thereby demonstrating how authenticity comes from looking outside as well as inside. The repertoire spans from Bach’s embrace of Italian musical elements in his Aria variata alla maniera italiana, Bartók’s incorporation of folk elements in his Improvisations on Hungarian Peasant Songs, and Messiaen’s use of Hindu rhythms in Cantéyodjayâ to the collage of marching bands, sounds of trains and machinery, church hymns, ragtime and blues in Ives’ first piano sonata. In all cases, the exterior influences lead to deeply original and personal sonic galaxies. In that respect, the pieces presented here underline how identity results from a constant dialogue with our surroundings, ever changing and enriching our perceptions of ourselves and the world.

-----

REVIEW:

The overall excellence of Tamara Stefanovich’s interpretations is enhanced by a superb multichannel recording characterised by full-bodied ambience an concert-hall realism. Stefanovich voices Ives’s thick and ringing choral dissonances from the bottom up, taking full measure of the music’s spaciousness and resonant potential. After more than an hour of substantial 20th-century fare, the appearance of Bach proves a veritable tonic in Stefanovich’s hands.

– Gramophone

This album presents extraordinary works of three twentieth-century composers with diverse cultural backgrounds, underlining the versatility and legacy of the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande in its centenary year. Richard Strauss’ Schlagobers (Whipped Cream, 1924) is a playful ballet set in a Viennese Konditorei, of which the orchestral suite is featured on this album. With its lively mix of Viennese waltzes and modern harmonies, light-versed tunes interspersed by sudden outbreaks of ravishing beauty, all brilliantly orchestrated, it can be considered a further exploration of the composer’s “Rosenkavalier style”. Claude Debussy is featured with Jeux, Poeme danse (1912), another piece created for a ballet performance, built around an erotic nocturnal search for a lost tennis ball that Pierre Boulez characterized as a “Prelude à-l’Apres-midi d’une Faune in sports clothes”. Debussy’s Jeux has been a major source of inspiration for post-war avantgarde composers such as Boulez and Stockhausen, and, therefore, the transition from Jeux to Gyorgi Ligeti’s Melodien, fur Orchester (1971) is not jarring. Melodien has the unmistakable mix of sensuous yet eerie soundscapes that makes most of Ligeti’s works so filmic and appealing. This album adds a significant chapter to the Pentatone discography of the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, which already contains the complete Bruckner Symphonies with Marek Janowski, three dance-oriented albums with Kazuki Yamada, and concerto recordings with renowned soloists such as Arabella Steinbacher, Johannes Moser and Denis Kozhukhin. On this album, the OSR’s new chief conductor Jonathan Nott makes his Pentatone debut.