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!

Béla Bartók’s monumental Mikrokosmos, containing 153 mainly short “progressive” piano pieces composed between 1932 and 1939, is both a very special piano method and a collection of wonderfully original performance pieces (the series actually contains almost the complete piano music by Bartók from the 1930s). Finally, it is also a detailed introduction to different aspects of his compositional style. With Mikro-kosmos, Bartók, who was generally reluctant to teach composition, created a veritable method of composition. A series of short piano pieces for the 1913 Piano Method jointly authored by Bartók and Sándor Reschofsky and published by Rózsa- völgyi in Budapest is the most immediate precursor of Bartók’s magnum opus, the six-volume Mikrokosmos. In 1913, the composer’s basic endeavor was to help produce a true modern piano school, in which all performance pieces and some easy exercises made up Bartók’s contribution. The 48 little pieces by Bartók included five-finger exercises, easy contrapuntal pieces, occasional essays in different styles as well as a range of character pieces.

The works on this album were written between 1935 and 2019 by four Hungarian composers: Béla Bartók, who was the teacher of Sándor Veress, who taught György Ligeti, who in turn was an early but formative influence on Péter Eötvös. Their compositions all share the idea of a dialogue between cultured and popular elements, between a Western music tradition and folk music, particularly of Eastern Europe. This idea was formulated in the early 20th century by Bartók himself, who considered the use of folk elements in a piece of art music not only as a tool to revitalize the Classical tradition but also as a mean to unite different cultures. In the works recorded here, the dialogue is manifested in various ways, for instance through references to Baroque idioms and forms as well as folk styles in the solo sonatas by Bartók and Ligeti. In the case of Adventures of the Dominant Seventh Chord by Péter Eötvös it is the dominant seventh chord that stands as a symbol of Western tonality. Recurring frequently, the chord never reaches the expected resolution, however – instead it is confronted with non-tonal materials inspired by the folk music of Eastern Europe.

Based in Germany, the violinist Nurit Stark was born in Israel into a family which hails from Romania. Peter Eötvös’s work – which was written for her – therefore provides the perfect ending to this very personal project, dealing with the ability of music to cross cultural, geographical and ideological borders.

Elias David Moncado, the 21-year-old German-Spanish-Malaysian violinist, has won many 1st prizes and is regarded as a potential top classical artist of the near future. Each of the three composers featured on his new album of violin sonatas dealt in some special way with psychological stress and anxiety in their lives.

"In the Poulenc sonata I find a concealed passion, harsh brutality, and overwhelming pain. The Hindemith sonata contrasts and juxtaposes somber, dancelike, and heroic elements. The timbres in the Bartók are incredibly elaborate, and a general mood of suffering imbues the entire work." --Elias David Moncado

Towards the end of the 19th century, ´several composers were taking a new interest in folk music. Folk tunes, or imitations of them, had previously mainly been used in order to provide ‘local colour’ or as a way of catering to nationalist sentiments, but it was now seen as a means to revitalize art music itself, opening up for new possibilities in terms of rhythm and harmony as well as melody. At the forefront of this development was Béla Bartók, who also considered the use of folk elements as a tool to transcend boundaries – to achieve a ‘brotherhood of peoples’. For his new recital disc, Can Çakmur has devised a program which juxtaposes four composers’ different responses to folk music. Bartók’s Piano Sonata is followed by Passacaglia, Intermezzo e Fuga with which Dimitri Mitropoulos made a clean break with earlier works in a more nationalistic vein. Next comes Çakmur’s compatriot, the Turkish composer Ahmed Adnan Saygun, who in 1936 accompanied Bartók on a field trip in Turkey collecting music. His Piano Sonata was composed some fifty years later, however, and refers to folk music primarily on a theoretical level. Closing the disc is George Enescu’s Piano Sonata No.?3 in D major, which Çakmur in his own liner notes describes as ‘radiating a natural affinity for the village, without sacrificing the compositional value of the work.’

One of the oldest musical instruments we know of, the pan flute was played in many antique civilizations. The sophisticated type used in Romanian folk music is the most familiar to a contemporary audience. The virtuosos who brought fame to the pan flute in the second half of the 20th century include the Romanian musicians Damian Luca, Radu Simion, Nicolae Pîrvu, Gheorghe Zamfir and Simion Stanciu. Liselotte Rokyta studied with four of the “Big Five” and also gained authentic pan flute skills from folk players during a number of visits to Romania. The present album documents that the pan flute also occupies an indispensable position in classical music. The pieces by Bartók and Porumbescu are arrangements of Romanian folk dances, in which the pan flute is commonly employed. Debussy composed his Syrinx for the transverse flute, to which the pan flute (or syrinx) would seem to be an equal variant. The other arrangements are based on 19th- and 20th-century French composers’ works for the flute, as well as the piano and organ. You may have been hard pressed to imagine pieces by Varèse, Honegger or Messiaen played on the pan flute, yet you will certainly be engrossed by Liselotte Rokyta’s performance. The respective composers would undoubtedly have written music for the pan flute too had they had available a musician of her quality. The enchanting voice of the nymph Syrinx in the realm of classical music.

Selections from "Mikrokosmos" were recorded April 29 and May 16, 1940.

LEONARD BERNSTEIN - THE ROYAL

Bartok: Sonata for 2 Pianos and Percussion - Bergman: Boreal

In 1949/50 the Juilliard Quartet recorded the first integral Bartók quartet cycle on disc. The group revisited the six works for stereo in 1963, and again in 1981, with the advent of digital technology. Critical consensus has long considered the 1963 cycle (now released for the first time complete on CD in America) as a benchmark, and rightly so. Some listeners may find the overly close-up engineering a bit monochrome and astringent, yet the Juilliards' uncanny precision, inner rhythmic drive, and pinpoint intonation successfully get past the microphone's unforgiving observation. And even considering today's high sonic and interpretive standards vis-à-vis the Emerson, Hagen, and Takács cycles, these Juilliard performances withstand time's cruel test.

Sample, for instance, the stunning synchronicity of the glissandos and thick tutti chords in the first movement of the Fourth quartet, the textural diversity the players bring to the muted Prestissimo movement, and notice how the all-pizzicato movement's loudest pluckings never compromise pitch definition. In the Second quartet, listen to the gorgeously-layered and controlled slow, sustained lines at the Lento's outset, and revel in the Third quartet coda's joyous intensity and dramatic payoff. I especially like the brisk, effortless conversational quality of the Fifth quartet Scherzo's asymmetrical lines, the group's impeccable dynamic contouring of the unison single lines in the first movement of the Sixth, as well as the hushed, sustained rapture in the same work's final movement. A big thank you to Sony and Arkivmusic.com for making this milestone Bartók cycle available again.

--Jed Distler, ClassicsToday.com

BARTÓK: MIKROKOSMOS GYÖRGY SÁ

Seattle Symphony Orchestra & *Chorus/Gerard Schwarz. Delos DE 3083 [*The Miraculous Mandarin (complete ballet) and Kodály: Háry Janos Suite and Dances of Galánta] (recorded 1988-89)

The Seattle Symphony and conductor Gerard Schwarz give a lighter, leaner, more episodic reading of The Miraculous Mandarin, but one not lacking in energy or brilliance. As is usual with Delos, the recorded sound is superb, naturally balanced and almost palpably solid. – Ted Libbey, author of The NPR Guide to Building a Classical CD Collection, reviewing a previous issue on Delos 3083 now reissued on Naxos 8571201.

Bartok, B.: Divertimento / Romanian Folk Dances / Rozsa, M:

I'd quite forgotten what a marvellous performance this is—even though, when it comes to Bartok's speech-derived vocal inflexions, native Hungarians have the edge (and in that respect, Ferencsik's 1956 team is probably the best). Still, the crux of the drama, its emotional thrust and potent symbolic allusions, all are unequivocally realized by Siegmund Nimsgern, Tatiana Troyanos and Pierre Boulez. Troyanos's Judith has more credibility than most. For example, that wonderful passage 3'21'' into the ''First Door'', when Bluebeard asks Judith why she must open all the doors, and she responds with a confession of love—is seethingly intense, although the frenzied string writing that tails her candid ''because I love you'' rather loses focus in all the steam. Yet Boulez captures to perfection the ambiguous nature of Bartok's heated response, whether Judith really is in love—or just plain curious. Again, at the ''Third Door'' (''Now behold my spacious kingdom''), the impact is colossal, even though digital technology would have stretched the dynamic curve even further. Judith's triumphant, heroically sustained C sounds more genuinely wonder-struck than any other on record, while Boulez's pacing is ideally judged—in fact, throughout this memorable performance, he balances the constituent parts of Bartok's rich tonal palette with a meticulous ear, patiently scaling the score's many texturally complex climaxes. Nimsgern is a tortured, yet commanding Bluebeard, vocally excellent and interpretatively compelling, although the recording does sometimes lend his voice an untypically cavernous quality.

As to CD competition, I would single out the Bluebeards of Sawallisch, Dorati and Kertesz as the best alternative interpretations; and yet if pressured into choosing, I would probably opt for this latest reissue—not only because it seems to me the best sung, but also on account of Boulez's dramatic, psychological and musical perceptiveness. It is one of his finest recordings and if he ever decides to re-record it (say, as part of his current Bartok series for DG), then this Sony production will certainly prove a very hard act to follow. The actual recording is hugely accommodating within the sonic limitations of the period (there are occasional traces of over-modulation), and the CD comes complete with texts and translations. Very strongly recommended.

-- The Gramophone