Nominated for a GRAMMY® Award!

Karina Canellakis offers the first fruit of her exclusive Pentatone collaboration with a recording of Bartók’s 4 Orchestral Pieces and Concerto for Orchestra, together with the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, of which she is the Chief Conductor. The 4 Orchestral Pieces have a strong affinity with the stage works Duke Bluebeard’s Castle and The Wooden Prince, conceived in the same period. The Concerto for Orchestra is one of Bartóks final works, full of folk tunes, and utterly colourful and virtuosic for all the instruments. As such, it’s an ideal piece to showcase the congeniality between the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra and its star Chief Conductor. Internationally acclaimed for her emotionally charged performances, technical command and interpretive depth, Karina Canellakis has become one of the most in- demand conductors of her generation. She makes her Pentatone debut as Chief Conductor of the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra that returns to the label after its participation in Gordon Getty’s Beauty Comes Dancing (2018).

For many decades the orchestras of the German broadcasting service SWR have worked together with many famous musicians from all over the world, including the outstanding pianists selected for this collection, among them Clara Haskil, Jörg Demus, Paul Badura-Skoda, Alicia de Larrocha, Wilhelm Backhaus, and Géza Anda. Furthermore, Chilean pianist Claudio Arrau (1903–1991) is regarded as one of the supreme keyboard masters of the 20th century and must feature in any comparative survey of performances of the central repertoire from Beethoven to Brahms. Annie Fischer (1914–1995), a pupil of Ernst von Dohnányi later went on to make some legendary recordings with Otto Klemperer. Friedrich Gulda (1930–2000) polarized the music scene by embracing the parallel worlds of classical music and jazz in equal measure. He was not only one of the most brilliant pianists of the 20th century with regard to tone and technique, but also one of the wittiest and most musically competent. For decades Wilhelm Kempff (1895–1991) was seen as the leading interpreter of German music from Beethoven and Schubert through Schumann and Liszt to Brahms.

Following their first album for Linn (Dvorák: Legends Op. 59, Czech Suite Op. 39), the WDR Sinfonieorchester and Cristian Măcelaru pursue the same folk vein with two orchestral works by Béla Bartók. Based on a rather childish tale (prince, princess, fairies, and of course a happy ending!), the music of the ballet The Wooden Prince – recorded in full here – has all the ingredients of a masterpiece: masterful scoring for large forces, use of musical themes, an effortless amalgam of folk and late-Romantic elements.

Composed in 1923 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the merging of the towns of Buda and Pest – alongside commissions by Ernö Dohnányi and Zoltán Kodály – the century-old Dance Suite is a six-movement work that has become one of Bartók’s best known compositions. Born in Timișoara, a short distance from Hungary, Măcelaru can boast an unparalleled understanding of Bartók, as evident here.

REVIEW:

For overall quality Măcelaru rivals Mälkki, and comparing the two readings episode by episode, one is as likely as the other to convey a little more mood and color. But neither really has the freshness of discovery and excitement heard in Boulez’s first account on Sony, and neither of the two orchestras, the WDR Symphony and Helsinki Philharmonic, approaches Boulez’s spectacular results with the New York Philharmonic.

Măcelaru is up against it again in the Dance Suite, which has had outstanding recordings from Fricsay, Boulez, Solti, and Iván Fischer, among others. Less raw than Solti, Măcelaru shows himself a master of the score in a reading that crackles with aliveness and presence. He gets animated playing from the Cologne musicians, and you quickly forget that they are not on a par with eminent ensembles in this music.

I was captivated from start to finish, and more importantly, I got a bead on Măcelaru beyond my only other exposure to him, in the Shostakovich piano concertos. There’s no reason not to give this release the same enthusiastic praise that has become the norm for Măcelaru. The recorded sound is full, vivid, and lifelike.

-- Fanfare

Father and son Amiram (violin) and Maxime Ganz (violoncello) present a highly demanding programme on their first joint CD recording with solo sonatas and duos from the first half of the 20th century. Starting with the Duo for Violin and Cello, Op. 7 (1914) by Zoltán Kodály, the Hungarian composer and folk music researcher who, along with Bartók, had the most significant influence on the development of a Hungarian national musical identity. From the latter comes – already from the time of his American exile, the year 1944 – the Sonata for Violin solo, Sz. 117, which is formally inspired by Bach’s sonatas and partitas, and is full of breakneck virtuosity.

The first part Dialogo of the two-movement Sonata for Cello solo was composed by György Ligeti, also from Hungary, in 1948, and then five years later added another movement, Capriccio, to the work, with which he completed the work for the sonata. The second duo on this album, Maurice Ravel’s Sonata for Violin and Cello, dates from 1922; While audiences and critics were initially rather hostile to the change in Ravel’s style that took place here, the work today is received as one of the most poetic compositions by the French composer.

Michele Fazio graduates in Piano, Master of Arts, with the highest grades and praise at the Conservatory “Niccolò Piccinni” in Bari under the guidance of Mr. Cinzia Falco. He continued his studies privately from the beginning with the Mr. Alfonso Soldano and he perfected under the high magisterium of the Mr. Pierluigi Camicia at the European Arts Academy Aldo Ciccolini’ of Trani. His first transcriptions for piano entitled ‘Baccanale’ from the Opera ‘Samson and Dalila’ by Saint Seans and the ‘Notturno per Orchestra’ by J. Massenet from the ‘Suite N. 1 Op. 13’ are in progress, and he is releasing his first piano album, that will be released in the 2022, with the prestigious American label ‘Centaur Records’, with which he is under contract, entitled ‘100 years of Sonata form’ , dedicated to three sonatas composed in exactly 100 years, The Second Sonata of Brahms, Bartok’s Sonata and Ginastera’s Sonata.

Living Language is pianist Jacob Greenberg’s consideration of musical style and evolving cultural legacy, across a broad range of pieces. This disc explores how composers build on their history with a highly personal creative vocabulary, bringing their work forward into the present; these artists give thoughtful tribute while also seeking renewal. The program features Béla Bartók’s virtuosic Improvisations on Hungarian Peasant Songs, the boogie-woogie and stride piano-inspired Endless Shout by George Lewis, Chopin’s patriotic and wistful op. 41 Mazurkas, Wang Lu’s modernized guqin music titled Constellations Apart (a premiere recording), and Leoš Janáček’s kaleidoscopic suite In the Mists, rooted in the rhythms of spoken Czech and marked by profound grief.

Despite its long history, the trombone has a very limited chamber music repertoire. Jörgen van Rijen, principal trombonist of the Concertgebouworkest, has wished to rectify this deficiency by initiating a fruitful collaboration between his own instrument and the string quartet, the pinnacle of chamber music. Mirrored in Time thus presents a collection of powerful arrangements and attractive new works covering a wide range of styles. Together with the Alma Quartet, van Rijen has created a wonderful springboard for the further development of the trombone repertoire in chamber music. Framed by adaptations of contemporary pieces by Bryce Dessner and Chiel Meijering respectively, this recording presents five pairs of works. Each of these consists of an arrangement of an existing composition from bygone times mirrored by a recent or completely new work. John Dowland is echoed by Nico Muhly, Béla Bartók by Dimitar Bodurov, Gabriel Fauré by Jacob TV, Erik Satie by Florian Magnus Maier and Robert Schumann by Martijn Padding. With this programme, Mirrored in Time tells the story of what might have been – and how it is now.

There is no piece of music that the Patricia Kopatchinskaja cannot play in a way that unwinds your expectations and forces you to hear it anew.

This new recording marks the reformation of the legendary duo of Patricia Kopatchinskaja and Fazil Say. The Moldovan violinist says the Turkish pianist ‘is a volcano, with an indomitable strength and energy’, while he emphasizes the ‘freedom’ that her ‘spontaneous playing’ exudes: ‘At each concert, she creates a different character and tells a new story.’ The explosive duo presents a program devoted to Bartók’s Violin Sonata no.1 (‘a marvel from start to finish, one of his finest works’, says Patkop), Brahms’s D minor Sonata (‘I imagine a feather in flight at the opening of the sonata’) and Janáček’s Sonata, ‘an extreme work, wounded and heart-rending’.

REVIEW:

There is no piece of music — works by Tchaikovsky or Schoenberg, or an old folk tune — that the violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja cannot play in a way that unwinds your expectations and forces you to hear it anew. So it is with the latest chapter in her partnership with the intrepid Turkish pianist and composer Fazil Say. The Janacek sonata that opens this recording and the Bartok Sonata No. 1 that closes it clearly play to the duo’s strengths: curiosity, an impatience with convention and exceptional technique. They pounce, almost too eagerly, on each of the Janacek’s lightning-quick mood changes; and in the Bartok, a piece in which the two instruments work virtually at cross purposes, they achieve an ESP-like mutual responsiveness.

Their rendition of Brahms’s Violin Sonata No. 3 in D minor, however, is the paramount achievement here. Resisting the urge to swath this wistful music in a big luxuriant tone, Kopatchinskaja adopts a timbre that’s sometimes bristly, sometimes gossamer-light. She and Say push the music to extremes: The quiet moments seethe and the outbursts approach violence, but it’s all done with impeccable control. The piece sounds bereft and heartbroken even as it avoids the clichés of Romanticism. It’s not the way I’d want to hear it played every time, but it’s invaluable for offering a glimpse deep into a work you might have thought predictable, which is exactly what these imaginative musicians are after.

-- New York Times (David Weininger)

The centerpiece of violinist Movses Pogossian's "Hommage à Kurtág" is his recording of Kurtág's "Signs, Games, and Messages" for violin (there are others in the series for different instruments). Pogossian has developed a close working relationship with Kurtág, and his interpretations reflect his reverent stance towards the eminent composer as well as the input received from him. Echoing the importance of the concept of homage within "Signs, Games, and Messages", Pogossian commissioned several composers to write works in honor of Kurtág — Aida Shirazi, Gabriela Lena Frank, Kay Rhie, and Jungyoon Wie contribute new works to the project, alongside "Melodia" from Bartók's Sonata for Solo Violin, providing repertoire context.

This project tells of European-American musical exchange at the beginning of the 20th century, the golden era of the transatlantic liners. Through concert tours and emigrations, the chosen composers toured and emigrated across the Atlantic, experiencing foreign impressions and recalling traditional themes. They were inspired by folk music, poetry to blues. I present these facets in original and arranged works for harp. “In the Atlantic crossings and the mutual influences of European and American composers, I felt my own family history with changing migration across the ocean.” (Anne-Sophie Bertrand)

Bartók's Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta (1936) enjoyed right from the beginning a roaring success, being praised by critics as a masterpiece. It was also the composer's last work published by Universal-Edition in Vienna. A fierce opponent of Nazism, he stopped co-operating with his main publisher soon after. The Divertimento (1939), though definitely not a “lightweight”, does hardly give any indication of the political circumstances and events at the time it was created. The piano works on the present recording, arranged for percussion ensemble, are in their original form miniatures whose strong rhythms almost predestinate them for percussion arrangements (Bartók himself experimented extensively with percussion instruments and was familiar with them).

Pietari Inkinen is one of the noted rising stars on the international conducting scene. His comprehensive experience in both opera and symphonic repertoire enable him to shape various repertoire into powerful, convincing interpretations. As chief conductor of the Deutsche Radio Philharmonie, he achieved superb performances

This is the second recording for Quartz from Olwen Morris, offering a cross section of works from the Classical period through the early 20th century. Olwen Morris grew up in war-time rural Wales, where she was first taught by Josef Gruenbaum, a musician and lawyer from Stuttgart, who with his family had fled Nazi Germany. Olwen made extraordinary progress, and enrolled at 14 as the youngest student at Cardiff College of Music, (later becoming the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama). She soon made her first early live broadcasts, including a concerto with the BBC Welsh Orchestra, and debut concerts in Cardiff’s City Hall and Reardon Smith Theatre. Teaching, directing church music, organ improvisation and chamber music have all played parts throughout a lifetime in music, but solo playing continues to remain the vital center of it all. Her performances of the Viennese classics are remarkable for their insight and depth, and her playing of French music for sensitivity to sensual sound, also reflecting her long close association with northern France, where her artist husband, David Morris painted.

Classical Music

Margherita Porfido writes of her new release: "The title I wanted to give to my recording work of contemporary music for harpsichord speaks of miniatures, but I would not want to mislead the listener into thinking that it is small music. Of course, if it will be great music, I leave it to posterity to decree it! I just have to say that this compact disc contains several compositions for the new harpsichord, as if they were small paintings, miniatures, and so, as the painter would use all the colors of his palette, from the softest to the darkest, from the warmest to the coldest, much the same way I wanted to build the path of the music that is contained inside, thinking of colored sound images. Bringing the harpsichord forward, into the contemporary world, entrusting it to the pen of great current composers, of various musical backgrounds, from classical music, contemporary to jazz, such as those who are in this CD was the goal that I set myself, because I believe that the harpsichord is still very up-to-date and that it's sound is even now to be explored."

An exceptional piano recital recently recorded by Swiss pianist Marija Bokor: Works by Bart�k, Vaughan-Williams and Benjamin Yusupov (b. 1962). B�la Bart�k's "8 Improvisations on Hungarian Peasant Songs" was completed in 1920. After the "15 Hungarian Peasant Songs", the "Improvisations on Hungarian Peasant Songs" are the second work by Bart�k to bear those peasant songs in it's title. Bart�k himself later described the way in which folk melodies are confronted with refined avant-garde sounds as an "extreme limit". In terms of motives, too, he breaks up the song structures so radically that the title "Improvisations" best describes his approach to folk music. Ralph Vaughan Williams' six piano pieces from the "Charterhouse Suite" are a sequence of charming and delightful English-style dances. The music harks back to the composer's school days at England's elite Charterhouse School. The score is colorful and light-hearted, and one wonders why these pieces have not long since found their way into the standard repertoire of pianists. Benjamin Yusupov's compositions are based on both Western and Eastern musical traditions, drawing especially on musical traditions of various Jewish ethnic communities with the goal of creating a new style of Israeli music. Marija Bokor has selected the following works for her recital: Subconscious Labyrinths, Metaphor, Melancholy & Crossroads No.2. Exciting music worth discovering!