On its new GENUIN album, the Lux Nova Duo takes up the cause of composer Leo Brouwer. The Cuban old master is well known to guitarists and lovers of guitar music but deserves more attention for his gripping, pulsating and multifaceted music! In the unusual line-up with Lydia Schmidl on accordion and Jorge Paz Verastegui on guitar, the Lux Nova Duo presents smaller and more extensive works by Brouwer, such as his Souvenir de Liège, the expansive Triptico concertante or the centuries-spanning Folía a través de los siglos. Through the subtle playing of the Lux Nova Duo, we discover Brouwer's stylistic range, which extends from folkloristic impressions to new, advanced musical language.

A golden age is brought to life for us by sixty1strings on their new GENUIN album. Their unique instrumentation of mandolin, harp and guitar presents a thrilling program of baroque music from Spain, Italy and France. Konstanze Kuß (Spanish baroque harp), Ekaterina Solovey (baroque mandolin) and Negin Habibi (baroque guitar) plunge into the sensual compositions by Antonio Vivaldi, Marin Marais and Domenico Scarlatti with enthusiasm and panache. Both original compositions and arrangements are performed, and the mandolin serves as a full-fledged, silvery-singing substitute for a diva in a hoop skirt and wig...

The Klaviertrio Hannover lands a real coup with its world premiere recording of three piano trios by the composer Emilie Mayer, who has long received too little attention! The works, newly discovered by the ensemble's pianist Katharina Sellheim and specially edited by the trio based on manuscripts, rank with the great piano trios of the 19th century. They are works by a composer whose symphonies were performed throughout Europe in the mid-19th century and whose work secured her a firm place in the contemporary music world. Through its editorial work and inspired interpretation of these three trios, the Hannover Piano Trio provides an essential piece of the puzzle to complete our understanding of the Romantic era!

The series of Mozart symphonies, recorded by Johannes Klumpp with "his" Folkwang Chamber Orchestra Essen at GENUIN, enters the second round. The tradition-steeped orchestra now juxtaposes the first and last symphonies of the Viennese composer of choice: Early and late works in direct comparison, the alpha and omega of Mozart's symphonic cycle, so to speak. The ensemble thus draws connections between works that lie 25 years apart. Its joy of playing and virtuosity brilliantly illuminate Mozart's innovative power and artistic mastery!

A new GENUIN album featuring the Leopold Mozart Quartet is dedicated to the string quartet works of composer Heinz Winbeck, who died in 2019. The Augsburg ensemble, made of four musicians who are active throughout Germany, is known for its high artistic quality, demanding programming, and enormous versatility. Winbeck's three string quartets were written in a period of only five years, between 1979 and 1984, and are the expression of a mature composer at the height of his powers. An unconditional will characterizes Winbeck's music to expressivity and is particularly evident in the interpretation by the Leopold Mozart Quartet: Expansive lines, the use of sparse material, and the search for extreme states – gripping, new chamber music!

In the middle of the 2020 lockdown, Fidan Aghayeva-Edler, an internationally active and recognized artist in the contemporary music scene, recorded the album Fenster (Windows). In this GENUIN production, she has exclusively compiled world premiere recordings by some of the world's leading female composers. There are works by Olga Neuwirth, Isabel Mundry, Olga Rayeva, Helen Grime, Chaya Czernowin and Margarete Huber, as well as the titular Fenster by Jeanne Artemis. An insight into seven different tonal worlds, which the inspiring pianist explores with her vast knowledge of contemporary playing practices and enormous sensitivity.

I TEMPI brings an unjustly forgotten Swiss composer into the limelight. Rudolf Moser, the pupil of Max Reger and teacher and artistic partner of Paul Sacher, created a manifold oeuvre in numerous genres. I TEMPI, an ensemble that performs each work using appropriate, authentic instruments, now presents works by Moser for strings, including pieces featuring the oboe and the harpsichord. Both combinations lead to distinctive timbres, and conductor Gevorg Gharabekyan leads his musicians with prudence and delicacy. Moreover, the orchestra has an equal partner and soloist with the young, multiple award-winning oboist Marc Lachat!

The new GENUIN release by Christian Mattick (flute) and Thomas Etschmann (guitar) offers an exciting program that spans continents: the first-class duo made of two renowned Munich soloists engages America and Asia in dialogue. Tradition and modernity, meditation and spirited outbursts, delight in novelty and melancholy at the loss of tradition. The two musicians interpret works by Toru Takemitsu, Ravi Shankar, Heitor Villa-Lobos, Astor Piazzolla, and Robert Beaser with tremendous stylistic confidence and a wealth of color that makes one marvel at the possibilities of this unusual duo.

The freshness of works of a young master: this is what we discover on the new GENUIN album presented by the Folkwang Chamber Orchestra Essen under the direction of Johannes Klumpp. In Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Divertimenti K. 136-138, we hear a young composer in the process of growing up. The top-class, versatile orchestra performs these sparkling treasures lovingly and with spirit, full of dynamism and effervescent humor. Energetic concerts, curious programs and musical excellence have been the hallmarks of the Folkwang Chamber Orchestra in Essen for 64 years. In its concerts, the international, young ensemble under the direction of chief conductor Johannes Klumpp explores new limits and experiments with concert forms, genres and styles: other art forms are regularly combined to music in the concerts.

As a servant to his craft, Heinz Rögner was influenced by the musical traditions of his hometown of Leipzig. GENUIN, together with MDR, is dedicating a 4-album box set to the great conductor, featuring concert recordings from the Gewandhaus from 1994 to 2001. Originally from a humble background, the musician worked predominantly in Berlin and Leipzig but was also exceptionally well known and popular in Japan. This album box provides us with superb recordings of Ludwig van Beethoven, Felix Mendelssohn, Franz Schubert and Anton Bruckner, as well as Reger's Mozart Variations and Gershwin's An American in Paris. The MDR Symphony Orchestra and the MDR Chamber Philharmonic perform at their best!

One of the most independent chamber music ensembles on the international scene celebrates its twenty-second anniversary by releasing an album entitled "Black Mass" on the GENUIN label. It is a dark ride through highly emotional music of the 20th century and takes its name from Alexander Scriabin's piano sonata "Messe noire," whose quartet version is presented here for the first time on disc. Also recorded for the first time is the 1st String Quartet by Christoph Staude, one of the first pieces in the ensemble's repertoire. In addition, quartets by Arthur Vincent Lourié and Ivan Wyschnegradsky are featured. All in all, a living history of the quartet and an artistic statement at the highest instrumental caliber!

REVIEW

Schwarze Messe translates as Black Mass, the nickname given to Scriabin’s ninth piano sonata, a version of which appears here. There is no obvious connection with the other works, but they make an enterprising programme, in which three of the four works have links, albeit somewhat loose ones, with Russian Futurism. The Asasello-Quartett specializes in recent and contemporary music and they have also recorded a well-regarded set of the Schoenberg string quartets.

We begin with Arthur Lourié. He was a Russian composer who was involved with the Russian avant-garde in the years before the first World War. After the Revolution he first worked for the Soviet government but then left and moved to Paris where for a number of years he was close to Stravinsky, who entrusted him with the piano arrangements of several of his works. They later fell out. When the Germans seized Paris he moved to the USA, where he remained for the rest of his life. In his early years Lourié was influenced by late Scriabin, but in his later years he became a neoclassicist, like Stravinsky. What I had previously heard of his music was pleasant enough, but minor and derivative. This quartet, however, is a different matter. It is in a late romantic idiom which is moving towards expressionism – in fact, it reminded me of Berg’s early quartet. It is in two quite long movements which are full of interesting and varied material, with perhaps more of a rhythmic drive than the Berg. I was impressed by this work and started wondering about Lourié’s two later quartets.

Christoph Staude stands rather apart from the other composers here, being much more recent and German. He has been around a good long time but has been little recorded, and hearing his quartet, I am not surprised. It dates from 1986 and is full of gestures which were fashionable at the time, such as glissandi, sudden explosive outbursts, harsh sul ponticello writing, mysterious mutterings and even a Bartók pizzicato. The five short movements pass slowly.

Next we have a transcription for string quartet of Scriabin’s ninth piano sonata, the work after which this disc is named. This is one of the most powerful and convincing of Scriabin’s later works. He takes three themes, all basically quite simple: a descending chromatic scale, a repeated rhythm with a falling semitone and a rising passage, and out of them gradually weaves an extraordinarily sinister and menacing work, culminating in a chromatic cascade which in the right hands can make the flesh creep. The problem is that the work is very idiomatically written for the piano, for example exploiting the ictus of repeated notes and the waves of sound created by the sustaining pedal. The transcription is quite nicely done, but I would rather have heard a work written for the string quartet.

Finally we have the first string quartet of Ivan Wyschnegradsky. He was another Russian who went into exile in Paris. His speciality was writing in microtones, that is subdivisions of the octave finer than the semitones of our normal tonal system. He wrote mainly in quartertones, but also in third, sixth and even twelfth tones. Many composers have been intrigued by the idea of microtones, and you can hear the occasional use of them as decorative elements in works by Enescu, Bartók and Szymanowski. Wyschnegradsky was much more thorough-going in his devotion, in particular, to quartertones, and he even wrote a short textbook, Manual of Quartertone Harmony. His second quartet here is in three short movements which show a Bartókian energy and drive with a vigorous opening and some attractive lyrical writing. The quartertones don’t make an entrance until a cello theme part way into the first movement and thereafter you can hear them, particularly in a passage of dense and very peculiar-sounding harmony. However, the work is an attractive one, and I found myself entertaining the heretical thought that it could have been revised into normal writing without losing anything important. Wyschnegradsky seems to me to have been a potentially valuable composer who wasted his life going up a blind alley.

The performances here are compelling and the recording good. The Lourié quartet seems to me a genuinely valuable work and the Wyschnegradsy an interesting curiosity. The Staude is a dud and the Scriabin transcription a wasted opportunity. These seem to be the only currently available versions of all the works here. There are, of course, many recordings of the Scriabin sonata in its original piano version, and there was once a recording of all three of Lourié’s string quartets by the Utrecht quartet on the now-defunct ASV label. So a mixed bag and a disc for the adventurous.

Stephen Barber

From the nature sounds of the opening to the edgy "heavy metal" of the conclusion: this GENUIN release by the Lake Brass Ensemble is a production full of good humor and meaty sounds! The young musicians under Norbert Stertz perform this richly orchestrated brass music with an impressive low brass group, with two tenor horns and a tuba providing a velvety, fleshy lining to the brilliance of their dazzling colleagues. In addition to two world premiere recordings - Kerry Turner's Lake Constance Fantasy and Alexander Reuber's Cerberus - the tracklist features known and unknown, but above all magically shimmering works: film music by Hans Zimmer and John Williams, symphonic selections by Gustav Mahler, and chamber music by Dmitri Shostakovich. Simply brilliant!

The Athens State Orchestra, the oldest symphonic ensemble in Greece, pays tribute on it's new GENUIN release to one of the country's most significant 20th-century composers: Yorgo Sicilianos. The program presents large-scale, dramatically charged orchestral works spanning three decades: Sicilianos' Symphony No. 2, dedicated to the memory of the great Dmitri Mitropoulos; "Antiphona" for brass, strings, and timpani; and the symphonic poem "Daimon", inspired by Thomas Mann's seminal novel Dr. Faustus. With Ilias Voudouris - a central figure in Greek musical life - on the podium, the orchestra brings Sicilianos' colourful and intricately crafted sound world vividly to life, with passion and striking attention to detail.

The Athens State Orchestra is the oldest symphony orchestra in Greece. On the occasion of Mikis Theodorakis' 100th birthday, GENUIN evokes the spirits of his homeland and of classical antiquity in three symphonic works by Greece's most famous composer-works that played an important role toward the end of his life: from the early "Sinfonietta" in a new version, through the folk-inspired "Rhapsody for Guitar and Orchestra," to the equally moving nine-part "Rhapsody for Cello and Orchestra," Theodorakis's last orchestral work. The young, rising Kornilios Michailidis leads Greece's premier orchestra with verve, while the album's soloists contribute at the highest standard of playing to these remarkable recordings!