Little is known about Francesco Zappa, Milanese composer and cellist of the mid-eighteenth century. This recording allows us, for the first time in modern times, to appreciate the qualities of a musician who, in his lifetime, was welcomed with general, broad esteem. His six Duets for violin and cello, published in Paris and presented here, sound like a polite parlor conversation. If Zappa chooses a classical gallant style, his music is never superficial, and he clearly proves a first-rate composer whose unmistakable trait is his Italian melodiousness.

One aspect in the life and work of the great Genoese virtuoso Nicolò Paganini that may be lesser known but in no way should be underestimated is the pronounced interest with which he dedicated himself to chamber music both as an interpreter and as a composer. He was drawn in particular to the genre of the string quartet – and here we are presenting his energetic String Quartet No. 3, a work revealing his brilliant mastery in the field of chamber music. In his Tre Duetti for violin and bassoon Paganini also proves to be a very sophisticated composer of chamber music who succeeds in lending each of the three duets an individual, independent character. Among other things, these works have in common the beautiful cantability of their themes and a writing style radiating obvious joy in the shared musical experience, in “jouer,” as the French so fittingly term it. The influence of song is in constant evidence when we speak of the Italian instrumental music of the nineteenth century in general and in particular of Paganini’s chamber music or that of composers such as Rossini and Donizetti who distinguished themselves mainly in the field of the opera. In the three duets this vocal influence is naturally combined with the clear requirements of instrumental part writing.

To make the dream come true and record the music for the album, Kaczka and Nadrzycki had to conquer thousands of kilometres and overcome numerous obstacles. The mental barrier turned out to be the hardest: if they wanted to focus strictly on the music, they had to forget about cancelled flights and restrictions, not to mention all the disturbing news regarding the global spread of SARS-Co-V 2 or the insecure artistic and professional prospects for the future in face of the lockdown and closed concert halls. But they succeeded. They managed to devote themselves to the music entirely, the result being an exquisite album that for listeners will prove to be a welcome respite from the pandemic and a space to breathe freely.

Swantje Asche-Tauscher belongs to that generation of young German violinists who win people over with their “expressive, sonorous playing”. At the age of 14, this talented artist appeared as a soloist in the Stuttgart Liederhalle. She had played at the Mozarteum Foundation in Salzburg, performs at festivals such as the Palermo Classica Festival, and is a lecturer at Strings in Motion. For the 2019/2020 season, Swantje Asche-Tauscher held the position of principal second violinist in the Tyrol Symphony Orchestra in Innsbruck. Markos Destefanos is one of the most promising classical guitarists of his generation. Eliot Fisk describes his playing as “charismatic and well-thought-out”, while praising his “powerful intellect”. In addition to winning national and international prizes, Markos Destefanos was awarded a scholarship by the foundation “Live Music Now”, as well as a performance scholarship by the Mozarteum University. He currently teaches at the State Music School of Upper Austria, and increasingly presents masterclasses at home and abroad. Furthermore, since 2018 he has been working as a scientific consultant for the successful music education platform “Tonebase”.

Represented by the Ludwig van Beethoven Association, the Ksiazek Piano Duo is one of the most interesting piano duos in the world; the ensemble is made up of two outstanding Polish pianists, Agnieszka Zahaczewska-Ksiazek and Krzysztof Ksiazek. Since 2012, which marks the beginning of their cooperation, the multi-award-winning duo has given a number of concerts in Switzerland, France, Thailand, Great Britain and South Africa, winning recognition of the audience and critical acclaim. The present album contains works for two pianos by Anton Arenski and Sergei Rachmaninoff, which play an important role in the compositional legacy of both artists. In both cases, the formation of two pianos is an individually-approached creation, although in the case of Rachmaninoff it manifests itself to an exceptional extent; the said creations feature a piano technique using a wide range of possibilities and advantages of the instrument, a technique that both composers perfectly understand.

Among the most significant composers of guitar duos in the early 19th century, Antoine De Lhoyer was born in September 1768 in Clermont-Ferrand. His musical talents manifested themselves from early on, and he trained in Paris. His teacher Vidal paid tribute to him as ‘the finest guitarist in Europe’. However, at the age of 20, de Lhoyer embarked on a military career as a member of the King’s Guards, shortly before the French Revolution. Life in France rapidly becoming uncongenial for someone with his loyalties, he left France in a hurry and eventually settled in Hamburg, where his compositions were first published at the turn of the 19th century. De Lhoyer’s travels were by no means over, and over the following decades he took up posts as a professional music teacher and performer in St Petersburg, Paris, Corsica, Aix-en-Provence and Alger, the new capital of the French colony in north Africa. Eventually returning to the French capital, he died there in 1852, at the age of 84. The extant duos on this album were composed between 1814 and 1826, and they comprise a substantial proportion of his total output. One would expect the style of his music to reflect the lively, cosmopolitan nature of his career, and so they do, often cast in three- and four-movement sonata forms with picturesque interpolations such as the ‘hunt’ movement of Op.35 No.2 and the graceful Sicilienne of Op.35 No.5. The eight-movement Fantasie Concertante Op.33 is like a Mozartian serenade, with a superbly flowing Andante con variazioni directly succeeded by a brief but tranquil Adagio.

Little is known about the Italian guitarist-composer Filippo Gragnani, but he had a reputation as a ‘skilled concert player’, and composed his Duos for Two Guitars in the troubled post-revolutionary city of Paris. Aimed at professional players, the Duos stand as a testament to Gragnani’s virtuoso technique and vivid imagination while presenting the utmost in stylistic taste and refinement. He gave both players concertante importance in these works, combining fin de siècle Viennese rigor with a fresh Latin temperament, and using contemporary musical conventions with assurance to craft evocative cameos of time and place.

The established Salzburg violinist Thomas Albertus Irnberger has already played with the greatest musical personalities and leading ensembles of our time such as the Royal Philhamonic Orchestra (violin concertos by Beethoven and Elgar). For his most recent recording featuring the Violin Concerto in D by Igor Stravinsky, the versatile virtuoso Irnberger can refer to the collaboration with another world-class orchestra: the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Doron Salomon. In addition to this work from 1931, the Concert Fantasy on Russian themes in B minor Op. 33 by Stravinsky’s teacher Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov is included on this album. Together with Paul Kaspar, piano, with whom he shares a long artistic collaboration, Irnberger also interprets Stravinsky's Suite Italienne, the Duo concertant for violin and piano as well as the Danse russe (Petrushka) and Chanson russe (Mavra), borrowed from stage works.

East West explores musical landscapes from the European and American parts of the globe, resulting in a kind of travel journal that begins in Eastern Europe and then travels westward Duo Aliada is known for their creative approach to adapting classical repertoire for their own instruments. Polish saxophonist Michal Knot and Serbian accordionist Bogdan Laketic formed the duo in 2013 in Vienna, a city whose rich musical tradition reflects its history as a crossroads between Eastern and Western Europe. The following years brought Michal and Bogdan to performances around the world, and into contact with various cultures and musical traditions. This wide range of experiences, beginning all the way back with their childhoods in Eastern Europe, is a major source of inspiration for their music making and for this album.

This precious collection of piano-four-hands works from the foremost musical minds of Portugal in the 20th and 21st centuries can serve as a welcome introduction to the classical music of Portugal for those who may not know it. But there is a greater significance and added value to this thoughtful recital programme, in that it traces back the genealogy of modern Portuguese classical composition – and pianism! – to roots firmly planted in German Romantic soil. It links the living composers to their teacher and inspiration, the great composer–ethnographer Fernando Lopes-Graça who undertook research into Portuguese folk music on a par with what Vaughan Williams and Bartók & Kodály did in their own nations, and then links Lopes-Graça back to his piano professor, the great virtuoso and music educator José Viana da Mota, himself a pupil and disciple of Liszt. The album opens fittingly with a set of Portuguese Folk Melody treatments by Lopes-Graça, the third in his three-volume set being dedicated exclusively to piano four hands. Immediately, the national colour welcomes listeners to the distinct ethnicity of Europe’s far southwestern corner, a historic and pre-historic crossroads for Celtic, Roman, Gothic and Moorish cultures. This is followed by the Sonatina of his student, Sérgio Azevedo, bristling with the Neoclassicism he inherited from Lopes-Grac¸a. Then to the wellspring, Viana da Mota’s Opus 7 singing with a Mendelssohnian lyricism, yet nonetheless tinged with the innate longing of the Portuguese soul. The expressionistic, effusive atonality of Lapa’s Storyboard returns the listener to the modern era, and to finish, Victorino d’Almeida’s heartfelt Ballad (for a child about to be born) embraces melody and tonality once again, from a post-modern vantagepoint.

REVIEW:

The Portuguese duo of Duarte and Madeira play all of the works here with nationalist fervor. This is an opportunity for them to use all their abilities to bring Portuguese music into the spotlight. The largest work on the program is the final Balada (for a child to be born) by Antonio Victorino D’Almeida (b.1940). It is a big piece, clearly inspired by the romantic Ballades of Chopin and Liszt, with effective 20th Century touches. It is quite effective. In all, this is a most enjoyable recording.

– American Record Guide

The four works on this release, all composed in the 1940s, embrace the lingering end of one musical tradition and the vigorous upsurge of another. Mellifluous, retrospective and playful, the Duet Concertino and Prelude to Capriccio were works from Richard Strauss’s final phase – an old man’s refuge from the barbarism of war and its aftermath. What the public thought of them was incidental, even irrelevant. In the same decade, Aaron Copland and other younger American composers were reaching out, via radio, recordings and film, to a new mass audience. The European influence of Appalachian Spring and the Clarinet Concerto, though inescapable, was minimized in a populist, vernacular idiom that absorbed folk music and jazz.

Richard Stamp unites some of the finest instrumentalists from the UK and Europe in these performances – featuring celebrated orchestras the Academy of London and the Royal Northern Sinfonia with renowned Austrian soloists Ernst Ottensamer and Stepan Turnovsky. Stepan Turnovsky joined the Vienna State Opera and Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra in 1978 and has kept the position of Solo Bassoonist there since 1985, performing with conductors such as Herbert von Karajan, Leonard Bernstein, Karl Böhm, Carlos Kleiber amongst many others. The late Ernst Ottensamer was a former principal clarinettist at the Vienna Philharmonic and an avid performer of chamber music – founding numerous ensembles and collaborating with musicians such as Sir Simon Rattle, André Previn, Daniel Barenboim and Rudolf Buchbinder amongst others. In 2005 he found a clarinet trio with his sons Daniel and Andreas Ottensamer – themselves the Principal Clarinettists of the Vienna Philharmonic and Berlin Philharmonic Orchestras. This present performance represents his last concerto recording.

REVIEW:

It is for the two Strauss performances that I can offer an enthusiastic thumbs up. Ernest Ottensamer died suddenly in 2017 at the age of 61, and the Copland was his last concerto recording. That, too, adds to the value of this release. Signum deserves gratitude for saving all four performances from being lost and forgotten.

– Fanfare

Explore this unique collection of classical and popular favorites, performed by BBC2 Young Chorister Finalists, Will & Kate James with pianist Malcolm Archer. Includes special commissioned arrangements of "Angels" and "Over the Rainbow" by George Arthur. For more than 3 decades the BBC2 Young Chorister of the Year competition has been scanning the United Kingdom for the finest young vocalists. Previous winners have gone on to star in West End musicals, sign recording contracts, and appear on various television and radio programs.

Zoltán Kodály’s later years were dominated by a series of choral works but his early reputation centered upon chamber music, notably two string quartets, a Cello Sonata (8.553160) and the two masterpieces heard on this recording. The Duo for Violin and Cello, Op. 7 combines Classical form with folk influence, while the Sonata for Solo Cello, Op. 8, with its expanded harmonies and tone colours, is one of the greatest solo cello works since Bach’s Cello Suites. György Ligeti continued the Hungarian lineage with his Sonata for Solo Cello, a succinct but pivotal work in his compositional development. Gabriel Schwabe has established himself among the leading cellists of his generation. He is a laureate of numerous national and international competitions, including the Grand Prix Emanuel Feuermann and the Concours Rostropovich in Paris. In 2009, he won the prestigious Pierre Fournier Award in London. He is a regular guest at festivals such as the Jerusalem International Chamber Music Festival, the Kronberg Academy Festival and the Amsterdam Biennale, and has performed with artists including Isabelle Faust, Christian Tetzlaff, Lars Vogt, Kirill Gerstein and Jonathan Gilad.

REVIEWS:

Schwabe’s magnificent interpretation of Kodaly’s Solo Sonata op. 8, another of the masterpieces of the cello repertoire, is declamatorily expressive and no less excellent for its polished sound. A perfect intonation and a lot of refinement as well as wonderful dynamic and colour nuances make up the richness of Schwabe’s playing.

With this CD, Schwabe has definitely given further proof of his mastery. Highly recommended!

-- Pizzicato

The tonal palette here is expanded by the inclusion of Kodály’s Duo for Violin and Cello, in which Schwabe’s musicianship is matched by that of Hellen Weiss…This is also important music and—in the hands of such players—essential listening.

-- BBC Music Magazine

Navona Records presents PAINTED MUSIC from Quatra Duo. This album of works for flute and guitar by four heralded contemporary composers unlocks the imaginative, expressive power of these beloved instruments. The first piece, commissioned as a Christmas gift by Quatra Duo’s Jeff LaQuatra for his then soon-to-be wife and duo partner Michelle Stanley, is James McGuire’s Suite for Flute and Guitar. The six-movement piece reveals the composer's affinity for jazz, popular music, and even impressionism; all the while it demonstrates the performers’ virtuosic range on their instruments. Painted Music from composer Bryan Johanson is a sonata, once again broken into six movements. Each of these is inspired by a different painting from early 20th-century, Swiss born artist Paul Klee. Fish Tale is a surreal and eclectic piece that imagines the journey of a fish from the ocean, to the fish bowl, and far beyond; the music recounts these piscine adventures through a dazzling array of musical styles and colors, from African thumb piano, samba, folk music, and more. From the Dreaming is the work of Australian visual artist, classical guitarist, and composer, Phillip Houghton. The music, inspired by Houghton’s visit to the Australian outback, reflects the grandeur and raw power of the country’s climate and ecosystems. Searing heat, ancient riverbeds, scurrying geckos and violent storms are all reflected in the dynamic twists and turns of the flute and guitar. PAINTED MUSIC, as its name suggests, utilizes these two instruments to imprint a gallery of images onto the canvas of the mind. Far from being limited by the duo format, here Quatra Duo seems to relish the challenge. The listener is left with a new sense of what can be accomplished with merely two instruments—in the hands of the right musicians, that is.

Renata Johnson-Wojtowicz is a soprano who, from the beginning of her career, has been associated with the Silesian Opera; she is also a teacher and participant of many music festivals. Renata Johnson-Wojtowicz’s debut album Ah! Mia vita! proves the singer’s preference for a diverse repertoire. The artist presents a unique set of vocal hits from opera, operetta, and musical. The recording is crowned with two excellent duets: “Sull’ aria” from the opera The Marriage of Figaro by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (performed with Magdalena Dobrowolska) and the famous Flower Duet “Viens, Mallika, les lianes en fleurs ... Dôme épais, le jasmin” from the opera Lakmé by Léo Delibes (together with Aleksandra Kalicka).