Three substantial piano sonatas stand at the heart of a recording that reflects personal and musical independence. For Anis Fuleihan, the juxtaposition of archaic and modern is both kaleidoscopic and playful, while Boghos Gelalian draws on folkloric and late-Romantic influences in his brand of ‘Orientalism.’ Houtaf Khoury’s Sonata No. 4 both questions and reflects unsettling contemporary experience in a work of audacious, pulsing intensity. Tatiana Primak-Khoury is a Ukrainian-Lebanese pianist. She began her concert career in her native Ukraine before extending her activities to performances in Europe, the United States and the Middle East. A laureate of national and international piano competitions, she graduated with honors from the Kiev Lysenko Special Music School in 1991, going on to study for a Master’s degree at the Tchaikovsky National Academy of Music in Kiev in 1996. In 1998 she moved to Lebanon, and has since been committed to expanding the boundaries of her traditional repertoire, constantly searching for and adding new contemporary works by Ovchinnikov, Rautavaara, Saygun and Panufnik among many others.

Nikoghayos Tigranian belongs to the first generation of composers and folk song collectors who laid the foundation of an Armenian national style. Tigranian's piano transcriptions of folk dances is perhaps his most important legacy, emulating folk instruments and capturing and preserving colorful depictions of Armenian folk life that are simple in texture and rich with harmonic and melodic detail. His interest also extended to Persian improvisational vocal-instrumental poems or mugams; expressive pieces that influenced contemporaries and subsequent generations of composers. Mikael Ayrapetyan is a pianist composer and producer. He is also the founder and artistic director of the music project Secrets of Armenia, which aims to increase international awareness of Armenian classical music, and actively organizes concerts featuring Armenian music in venues around the world.

'A Century of Polish Piano Miniatures' takes us on a fascinating journey through a golden era in Polish music, from the great patriot Paderewski via Szymanowski, Bacewicz and Gorecki, to present day composers. This essential collection coincides with Poland's centenary of independence in 2018 with each work representing significant moments in the country's musical and political history. It pays tribute to the bravery of composers who stood up for freedom in art and culture during times of great political turmoil. Anna Szalucka is a Polish pianist who studied at the Stanislaw Moniuszko Academy of Music in Gdansk, the Universitat fur Musik und Darstellende Kunst Wien, and the Royal Academy of Music in London under the supervision of Ian Fountain where she currently holds the Hodgson Piano Fellowship. She has performed many concerts throughout Europe, and has won esteemed prizes at several international competitions.

Grand Piano's Volume 2 of the cycle of complete piano works by the Russian born composer and pianist Alexander Tcherepnin focuses on Tcherpnin's early woks and includes world premiere recordings. Pianist Giorgio Koukl is the Prizewinner of many international music competitions including the H. Rahn competition (Switzerland) and the Alien Competition (Washington DC).

“Türk’s leichte sonatas are both aesthetically accomplished and important to our understanding of the Classical period’s pedagogical practices. Furthermore, the sonatas’ correlation to central stylistic and aesthetic concepts… make their reincorporation into the standard repertoire desirable and perhaps even crucial." – Michael Tsalka

Eduard Ivanovich Bagdasarian was a key figure in the modern development of Armenian music, and his piano works have a unique importance in an oeuvre which covered almost every genre. The tremendously varied 24 Preludes encompass all of the major and minor keys with the added colour of Armenian modes. This mastery of miniature forms contrasts with the impassioned and ambitious Rhapsody, while the archetypally Romantic Nocturne draws on the tradition of the great Russian Adagio.

Vasilije Mokranjac belonged to a prominent Serbian musical dynasty. His great musical gifts combine with an unassertive and introverted nature to create a unique catalogue of often incredibly virtuoso piano music, recorded here for the first time in it's entirety. From the first elegant Menuetto to the last Pr�lude written at the time of his tragic death, pianist Ratimir Martinovic finds Mokranjac's music 'exceptionally profound and spiritually uplifting.' Critically acclaimed pianist Ratimir Martinovic occupies a special status among artists of his generation. From his earliest days he has been uncompromisingly devoted to excellence in music performance, and has been formed into a mature artist of distinctive expression and profile. Born in Kotor, Montenegro, Martinovic studied under virtuoso Kemal Gekic at the Academy of Arts in Novi Sad where he now serves as a professor of piano. He graduated in 1999, giving a recital where he performed Bach's Goldberg Variations, Beethoven's 'Hammerklavier' Sonata, Chopin's Four Ballades, and Prokofiev's Toccata in one night. He received his Master's degree in 2002, conducting and performing the works of Mozart and Haydn, with a full-length concert featuring works by Bach. He has performed at over 700 concerts with over 60 orchestras in prestigious international venues such as the Stern Auditorium at Carnegie Hall, Auditorium Parco della Musica in Rome, Shanghai Oriental Art Center, the Glenn Gould Studio in Toronto, Seoul Arts Center and the Moscow International House of Music. Martinovic is the founder and director of the KotorArt Festival in his hometown. Together with the Mokranjac family, Martinovic is the founder and president of the Vasilije Mokranjac Foundation in Belgrade

For forty years the Bohemian composer Leopold Koželuch produced a sequence of keyboard sonatas that some commentators preferred to those of his great contemporary, Mozart. The four sonatas on Volume 8 exemplify Koželuch’s vitality and expressive breadth. Sonatas Nos. 31 and 32, published in the year of Mozart’s death, are notable for their exploration of new technical devices and a daring harmonic palette worthy of Clementi.

The eight world premiere recordings included in this programme are played from a treasure trove of unpublished manuscripts obtained by Geoffrey Burleson from the Bibliotheque nationale de France, each of them filled with strong and imaginative ideas. Further virtuosic rarities by Saint-Saens include a solo transcription of his exotic Africa for piano and orchestra, and fantasies on works by Beethoven, Gounod, Liszt, Bizet, and others. Geoffrey Burleson has an active career as a performing artist, and has performed in such prestigious venues as the Eglise St-Merri, Paris; the American Academy in Rome; the Sibelius Academy, Helsinki; the Dimitris Mitropoulos Hall, Athens; the National Museum of Art, Mexico City and De Doelen, Rotterdamas as well as with the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, the Arlington and New England Philharmonics, and the Holland Symfonia. He is on the piano faculty of Princeton University and the City University of New York Graduate Center, and is professor of music and director of piano studies at Hunter College, CUNY.

Arthur Vincent Lourié (1892 - 1966) was a Russian composer who embraced the Russian Revolution but later became disenchanted and moved to the West settling in Paris. There he became a friend of Igor and Vera Stravinsky. He may have influenced Stravinsky in the adoption of the Neo-Classic style of the 1920s. In addition to being a composer, Lourié was also a painter. Born: Naum Izrailevich Luria, later changed to Artur Sergeyevich Luriye and finally Arthur Vincent Lourié. He adopted the middle name Vincent in admiration for the artist, Vincent van Gogh.

ADOLF BARJANSKY was born in Odessa into a wealthy Russian-Jewish family, and received his musical education in Vienna, Paris and Leipzig, studying piano with Carl Reinecke and Salomon Judassohn. Barjansky composed relatively few works, but his highly attractive and original piano music reveals the influence of Schubert, Beethoven and Brahms with a wealth of Russian color, as heard in the Fantasy Pieces. The 6 Piano Pieces are impressionistic and radiant, while the large-scale Piano Sonata No. 1 uses spatial sound as a principal means of expression, blending it with a highly modern simplicity and transparency of structure that anticipates 20th-century minimalism. Julia Severus began playing the piano at the age of four. She graduated from the Berlin University of Arts and from the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory, where she studied piano with Mikhail Voskresensky and Lev Naumov. Wishing to explore piano ensemble repertoire, she founded the Aurora Duo and Quartet, performing numerous premieres and world premieres, among them Rodion Shchedrin’s Hommage à Chopin in the presence of the composer, followed by a recording for two pianos, eight hands, of Russian Romantic Piano Transcriptions (Naxos 8.557717). Her solo recordings, including Tchaikovsky’s opera and song transcriptions (GP795), have been highly praised. Julia Severus lives and works in Paris and Berlin.

Also available: 20th Century Foxtrots, Vol. 2 and 20th Century Foxtrots, Vol. 3

 

During the inter-war period, in the cities of the West, a younger generation found ways to enjoy life in the form of dances such as shimmies, foxtrots, tangos and Charlestons: strong rhythms that became a symbol of a carefree and decadent era. The new jazz craze took hold everywhere, and Krenek’s opera Jonny spielt auf became an overnight sensation. The inter-war Zeitgeist in Vienna and the Czech lands is reflected in a programme full of première recordings – many of which were hits in their day – rich with fashionable dynamism, syncopation and joie de vivre. Born in Vienna, Gottlieb Wallisch first appeared on the concert platform when he was seven years old, and at the age of twelve made his debut in the Golden Hall of the Vienna Musikverein. A concert directed by Yehudi Menuhin in 1996 launched Wallisch’s international career: accompanied by the Sinfonia Varsovia, the seventeen-year-old pianist performed Beethoven’s ‘Emperor’ Concerto. Since then Wallisch has received invitations to the world’s most prestigious concert halls and festivals including Carnegie Hall in New York, Wigmore Hall in London, the Cologne Philharmonie, the Tonhalle Zurich, and the NCPA in Beijing, also the Ruhr Piano Festival, the Beethovenfest in Bonn, the Festivals of Lucerne and Salzburg, December Nights in Moscow, and the Singapore Arts Festival.

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REVIEWS:

 

This new recording is an utterly delightful collection of Austrian and Czech foxtrots and other dance music, performed with panache and great affection. Most of the music was written in the 1920s and 1930s when the composers were prompted by publishers to write popular (and commercial) dance music. You can imagine this inventive, rhythmic, and sensuous music being played in pre-WW II Vienna and Prague dance halls and cabarets.

 

– MusicWeb International

While jazz-inspired music by the likes of Stravinsky and Weill has never been forgotten, the similar efforts of dozens of other composers from the same period have fallen into obscurity. Now some of those experiments are enjoying a fresh hearing. The German pianist Gottlieb Wallisch’s revealing and entertaining new recording is mostly made up of world-premiere recordings of these dance-oriented works, in their piano arrangements.

By grouping these works geographically, he said, he anticipates creating “an encyclopedia of music from this time.” The second volume in the series — devoted to pieces by German composers — is scheduled for release in the fall.

If you’ve heard of the Czech composer Jaromir Weinberger, it’s likely for the Polka from his opera “Schwanda the Bagpiper.” (Herbert von Karajan was a devotee of that orchestral excerpt.) But he also composed an entry in the annals of the jazz-age dance known as the shimmy, garlanding his miniature with streaks of New World suavity.

In a 1925 lecture, the Austrian composer Ernst Krenek asked aloud what the listening public wanted. “The answer,” he continued, “will perhaps be somewhat frightening: none other than dance music.” The arrangement on Mr. Wallisch’s recording was created by the composer Jeno Takacs as part of a potpourri of selections from the opera.

Jaroslav Jezek’s “Bugatti Step” was, when it was written, a calling card for its composer — including with the “jazz orchestra” that he led at the time. Mr. Wallisch’s take on the solo piano arrangement of the piece is a cut above several other contemporary performances. He has plenty of forward motion, but his way of approaching Jezek’s propulsive writing results in a smooth ride. “It’s not a Charleston or a quick-fox,” he said. “I don’t think it needs the fast-as-possible tempo.”

– New York Times

Also available: 20th Century Foxtrots, Vol. 1 and 20th Century Foxtrots, Vol. 3

 

The first volume in this series traced the inter-war craze for carefree dance music in Austria and the Czech Lands (see GP813). This latest album focuses on Germany where jazz-influenced music flourished from the mid-1920s onwards even in the face of some social, political and racial opposition. Cabarets and dancehalls rejected this nationalist resistance and the Weimar Republic rejoiced in a cross-pollination of symphonic jazz and Kunstjazz – a fusion of dance and classical elements. The many previously unrecorded pieces here chart the progress of this vigorous musical rejuvenation. GOTTLIEB WALLISCH has performed on stage at the world’s most prestigious concert halls and festivals: Carnegie Hall New York, Wigmore Hall in London, the Cologne Philharmonie, the Tonhalle Zurich, and the NCPA in Beijing, also the Ruhr Piano Festival, the Beethovenfest in Bonn, and the Festivals of Lucerne and Salzburg. Conductors with whom he has performed as a soloist include Sir Neville Marriner, Dennis Russell Davies, Kirill Petrenko, Martin Haselboeck and Bruno Weil. Orchestras he has performed with include the Vienna Philharmonic, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Frankfurt Radio Symphony, Franz Liszt Chamber Orchestra Budapest and the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra. He has made numerous recordings for record labels, including Naxos. Gottlieb Wallisch is a Steinway Artist.



REVIEW:

One of the year’s most surprising and consistently charming recording projects continues to gather steam. The second volume of the pianist Gottlieb Wallisch’s “20th Century Foxtrots” compendium follows up on the sprightly success of the initial set.

In Wallisch’s latest batch of performances there are once again some discoveries from lesser-known artists. (Multi-movement works by Leopold Mittmann and Walter Niemann are a delight to encounter.) The new album kicks off with a spirited performance of a Paul Hindemith fox trot. And this edition also includes the world premiere recording of a piano arrangement of a “Tango” by Kurt Weill.

– New York Times (Seth Colter Walls)

While Weinberg was establishing his reputation in Moscow with serious music, he also composed twenty-three charming miniatures to meet the demand for children's music in the Soviet Union. These were criticized for being too sophisticated, but like the 21 Easy Pieces may be intended for audiences of all ages. Allison Brewster Franzetti renders them beautifully.

Regarded in his lifetime as one of the foremost composers of the romantic era Raff was forgotten for most of the 20th century. Now his reputation is being restored as a new generation of performers and music lovers rediscover him and treasure his music's beauty and vitality. Vol. 3 of his complete solo piano works Includes world premiere recordings.