Classical Music

14.99

"•The Rite of Spring is performed here in a brilliant piano transcription by Vladimir Leyetchkiss. • The piano transcriptions of the Prokofiev are by Prokofiev himself. • Pianist and pedagogue Dr. Svetlana Belsky is an internationally in-demand recitalist and chamber pianist, noted for her stylistic versatility and remarkable rapport with audiences. • She is the Coordinator of Piano Studies at the University of Chicago."

Classical Music

Classical Music

Seascapes is a collection of some of the finest and most interesting sea-influenced pieces in piano literature.From peaceful meditations, dramatic reflections of violent waves, to a depiction of marine luminescence, these pieces truly encompass the vast possibilities for creation that the majestic sea can inspire.Pianist Janice Weber is a member of the piano faculty at Boston Conservatory and MIT.“Maximum virtuosity with minimum gesture is a particular Weber talent...no bravura gestures divert attention... She is a musician's musician - and a listener's musician.” (Bergen Record)

I greatly enjoyed Viviana Sofronitsky’s Mozart piano concertos (see review), and still dip into it on a fairly regular basis – always a positive sign that good first impressions have held up over the longer term. This Schubert recording uses an instrument by the same maker, with a fortepiano modelled on one by Conrad Graf (1819) built by Paul MacNulty. The remarkable variety of colours and textures available from this instrument is fully explored by Sofronitsky in the Wanderer Fantasie. From it she coaxes exquisitely delicate music-box soft moments, muffled tones and the kind of sharply observed dynamic drama which can become a little monotonous on a modern piano.

Melvyn Tan set the standard for fortepiano recordings in past decades, and his Virgin Veritas two disc survey of Schubert’s music, which includes the Impromptus D935 and D899, is still very much worth having. The EMI recording is a little gentler than the Avi-Music balance, with more distance between the listener and the instrument. Tan is more romantic in approach, allowing for more rubato and sustain where Sofronitsky is more direct. The first Impromptu D899 is a typical example, in which the articulation of the notes seems as important as the shaping of melodic lines and phrases to Sofronitsky. This is a challenge in its own right: who can we say is more accurate? Do we allow for more generosity of romantic spirit in music which still feels the pull of Mozart, or do we emphasise the classical in music which expresses emotion in the deepest ways available to but stretching the style and idiom of the day. Sofronitsky by no means plays without expression, but her articulation is more angular than most versions you will probably have heard until now. I could accuse her second Impromptu D899 of being too choppy and vertical sounding. Indeed there are passages where the repetitions seem to stack up rather than moving the musical narrative along. That said, the contrast of touch and the dramatic world created also have plenty to offer. The singing melody of the third Impromptu D899 provides an illusion of a sustained line on any piano. Sofronitsky carefully and effectively paces the movement so that this works as well as possible. Even so, the balance of melody is a mote too weak against the myriad accompanying notes though still sweeping along with fine and at times touching character. The last of the D 899 set is rather magical in its opening and closing bars, the lightness of touch – I take it with soft pedal – creating an ethereal atmosphere you’re unlikely to hear anywhere else, certainly not with Tan. The music comes into focus and advances as the effect is lifted, and the progression into the minor key is all the more dramatic for this extra layer of colouration.

The comments for D899 apply to a large extent also to the Impromptus D935. Sofronitsky obtains the maximum effect from the instrument. There are many aspects of these pieces which one can discover anew when hearing it on a fortepiano as opposed to a modern concert grand. You can tell the shading of light and dark in the first of the D935 set is exactly the effect Schubert would have had in mind, though the almost skipping tempo with which the second piece opens may or may not have been what he had in mind. Sofronitsky connects this with the dance rhythms which are the origins of the work. He seeks depth of expression in its brilliant contrasts of tonality and dynamic, rather than exploring artificial profundity in languor of tempo. The disarming melody of the third in this set is perhaps presented a little too heavily for my taste, though there is a marvel of difference in some of the variations which follow. The closing dance of no. 4 is lively and full of surprises.

Saving the best until last, it is the Wanderer Fantasie which impresses me most on this recording. Viviana Sofronitsky’s performance is one which fascinates at all levels. The anticipation of hearing how certain passages will sound on the MacNulty instrument is always rewarded with refreshing and unusual sonorities and tremendous inventiveness. Being a huge fan of Schubert’s piano sonatas and lieder I’ve been less keen on this work in general, but hearing the way it can sound on fortepiano and played so expertly has revived my interest more than somewhat. Schubert’s melodramatic writing makes absolute sense with this instrument, and the at times almost orchestral sounds which emanate clearly show how Schubert anticipates later generations and names such as Wagner, Berlioz and Liszt in his exploratory harmonic relationships and thematic developments. The difference between a pp and f or ff isn’t just soft or loud here, and the change in colour and texture between different moments is hard to describe in words. Take the bass line from 1:51 to 2:10 in the second movement Adagio, which has a driven, vocal quality as the dynamic increases. I find the personality which emerges from this kind of effect quite bewitching, and the entire piece comes alive in this version.

This recording probably won’t substitute your favourite concert grand performances, but if you still perceive listening to the fortepiano as a kind of hair-shirt experience then this disc should make you think again, though it does require decent equipment to bring the best of the subtleties of colour to the fore.

-- Dominy Clements, MusicWeb International

All works transcribed for two guitars by Julian Gray and Ronald Pearl.

Classical Music

Sono Luminus announces the release of Icelandic ensemble Nordic Affect’s debut album on the label, Clockworking, featuring the music of five Icelandic women composers – Anna Thorvaldsdottir, Hildur Gudnadóttir, María Huld Markan Sigfúsdóttir, Hafdís Bjarnadóttir, and Thurídur Jónsdóttir. The album was recorded by Georg Magnússon at The Icelandic National Broadcasting Service, with mastering and post-production by Valgeir Sigurdsson.

REVIEW:

[A] brilliantly sensitive sound mixed more like up-close ambient music than chamber music, and it's one of the most evocative releases edging on either category in recent memory.

-- WQXR

Classical Music

Langston Hughes wrote his poem “Let America Be America Again” in 1938. The country was crushed by the decade of depression that had squashed so many American dreams, and was threatened by the gathering clouds of the impending war in Europe. Birth right and skin color posed restrictions to the justice and liberty which rest at the heart of American promise, and America was a country divided. Today, we still live in troubled times, where circumstances and skin color still keep the American promise out of reach for so many. The music featured on this release is a tribute to the generations of American men and women, both black and white, both immigrants and pioneers, who dreamed and accomplished the impossible. American music is made of everything that we are, coming from so many different people and places and expressing so many dreams. Lara Downes is a best-selling pianist, who with this release makes her Sono Luminus debut. She performs constantly across the United States, and has also been featured on European stages. This important collection of American repertoire includes three world premieres, and is a unique program which will resound with listeners in today’s world.

Classical Music

The acclaimed pianist Barry Douglas presents Volume 2 of his series devoted to solo piano works by Johannes Brahms. The wide breadth of repertoire encompasses works from Brahms’ early twenties to some of his final piano compositions and showcases Douglas’ immense musicality and technical acumen. Simply top-rate performances of Brahms.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

LISZT Années de pèlerinage • Louis Lortie (pn) • CHANDOS 10662 (2 CDs: 161:20)


There’s been no dearth of Années de pèlerinage recordings over the past year or so. Predictably, they range from the compelling (Libor Novacek, Années I and II, Landor 290 and 278; André Laplante, Années I, Analekta 29980), to the less good (Michael Korstick, Années I and II, cpo 777478 and 777585), to the deeply disappointing (Jerome Lowenthal, Années complete, Bridge 9307). The new, complete Années de pèlerinage of Louis Lortie, however, is in a class all its own. He approaches this summit of romanticism steeped in the music of Liszt (his recording of all the works for piano and orchestra, Chandos 10371, a collaboration during 1999–2000 with George Pehlivanian and the Residentie Orchestra of The Hague, is one of the finest). Lortie is a richly imaginative musician and a pianist of cultured refinement whose interpretations invariably tend toward understatement. These 26 pieces occupied Liszt for some 46 years and, along with the Sonata, are emblematic of his achievement as a piano composer. You get the sense that Lortie has long lived with the entire cycle, coming to know (and love) each of its components equally well. Add to this his unstinting identification with Liszt’s poetic message, and you have all the elements required for an Années de pèlerinage of tremendous freshness and originality.


Amid the Alpine landscapes of Book I, the Swiss Year, Lortie conjures uncluttered vistas and pristine atmosphere with unhurried tempos that give each phrase plenty of breathing room. The mini-triptych within the cycle, Au lac de Wallenstadt, Pastorale, and Au Bord d’une source, is painted in luminous colors, highlighted here and there with an exquisitely inflected tempo rubato . When the bucolic idyll is shattered by Orage, Lortie lets loose this implacable force of nature with phrasing that is so deftly shaped, pedaling so restrained, and dynamics so infinitely calibrated that each gust and cascading torrent seems audible. Vallée d’Obermann , the centerpiece of the Swiss Year, has been, at least in recent decades, the most frequently excerpted piece from the cycle. Divorced from context, and in spite of its formal interest, the Vallée has come to typify the 19th-century set piece, more creaking and tear-stained with each iteration. Lortie will have none of that. In a performance both masculine and heartfelt, we sense Obermann’s struggle toward spiritual rejuvenation through the majesty of nature. In place of a sob sister, we have a psychological drama, a genuine pilgrimage, at once gripping and imminently credible, that restores the dignity and stature of this wonderful piece.


Book II, the first of the two Italian Years, demonstrates Lortie’s success in both the scintillatingly intimate miniature and the implacable grandeur of the epic. The chaste refinement of color and line in Raphael’s Milan altarpiece are evoked in an ecstatic reading of Sposalizio. The three Sonnetti del Petrarca provide an interesting case of how the over-exposed can be imbued with new luster and meaning. Lortie achieves this with an unambiguous directness and simplicity of utterance. It is as though we hear Petrarch’s poems declaimed. The fioritura cadenzas emerge organically from the text, a piacere, each note beautifully articulated and perfectly suited to context. Moreover, the Sonnetti exemplify Lortie’s characteristic phrasing, always delineated by what can be maintained with human breath. The culmination of Book II, Après une lecture du Dante: Fantasia quasi Sonata , known as the Dante Sonata , is the longest piece of the entire cycle and far away the most technically challenging. The stentorian introduction draws on an unusually varied dynamic palette to set the stage for the drama that will unfold. In the Presto agitato assai , evoking the whirlwinds of the Inferno, Lortie maintains extraordinarily extended crescendi and decresecendi , drawing on an infinitely calibrated dynamic control and acute rhythmical inflection. Later, in the transition between the second statement of the redemption motif and the return to the infernal maelstrom, he uses the strategy again with stunning results. Over the course of a minute and 20 seconds, and through 22 note-filled measures covering more than two pages in the score, Lortie builds one long, seamless crescendo of overwhelming magnitude. At the return of the tremolando redemption motif in the piano’s upper registers, it sounds like shimmering violins. The final apotheosis seems a blaze of light, though here, as throughout the piece, there is no hint of overplaying or empty bombast. It might be added that in the Dante Sonata, and in pieces like the Chappelle de Guillaume Tell from Book I and Book III’s Sunt lacrymae rerum, where Liszt exploits the piano’s lowest register, it sounds as though the bottom-octave strings of Lortie’s Fazioli grand are a quarter mile long.


But the most remarkable feature of this outstanding recording is the third Année . Its seven pieces represent a distillation of Liszt’s late style and inhabit psychological realms seldom traversed by other 19th-century composers. A number of pianists who recorded the first two books simply don’t venture into the third, and those who have seem confounded sooner or later. Lortie, on the other hand, has plumbed the depths of these strange yet deeply artistic creations, developing interpretations that are remarkable in sharpness of focus and clarity of expression. The best-known of the set, Les Jeux d’eau à la Villa d’Este, combines the utmost delicacy and refinement with a disarming simplicity. Phrases are sculpted with unerring proportion and contour. The villa’s hundred fountains sparkle and splash in a virtuoso display of exquisitely understated pianistic finesse. Nor are the implications of Liszt’s Biblical reference to the waters of everlasting life neglected; a sense of ecstatic spirituality pervades the whole as though it were a sacrament in sound. Musically speaking, the Marche funèbre for the Emperor Maximillian, with its dark impasto and difficult transitions, is one of the most challenging pieces in the set. But what has remained a puzzle in many otherwise creditable performances of the third Année is compellingly deciphered by Lortie. Liszt’s idiosyncratic rhetoric is rendered comprehensible, including the problematic fortissimo trionfante in F?-Major that in so many other readings simply falls flat. Book III opens with Angelus , a prayer to the guardian angels, and closes with Sursum corda , “lift up your hearts,” a reference to the preface to the canon of the Mass. The blend of intuition, intellect, and philosophical insight Lortie brings to Sursum corda , with its prismatic harmonies undulating over the fixed anchor of a pedal point on E, creates a mighty culmination of the cycle.


On this recording, Venezia e Napoli , the supplement to Book II, is placed at the end of the recording, following the stylistically distant third Année . It is an interesting choice, which casts Venezia e Napoli as a sort of encore to the entire cycle, bringing us back to earth after the lofty metaphysics of Book III. Incidentally, the Tarantella is fierce. The recording was made during three days last November at Potton Hall, Dunwich, Suffolk, and the Chandos engineers captured the sound of Lortie’s Fazioli grand brilliantly.


This Années de pèlerinage is unquestionably one of the finest releases thus far during the Liszt bicentennial. Time will tell, but it also may be the finest recording of the work to date. Not to be missed.


FANFARE: Patrick Rucker


-------

Louis Lortie's survey of the complete Années de Pèlerinage adds up to his finest Liszt playing on disc. The interpretations abound with new-found reserves of virtuosic flair and poetic sensitivity. You hear both of these qualities in the opening piece, La chapelle de Guillaume Tell, where Lortie varies the murmuring tremolo chords with subtle nuances yet doesn't hold back in the climactic Allegro vivace. You hear similar textural variety and heightened drama throughout Aux cypres de la Villa d'Este II.

In both Orage and the Dante sonata Lortie's superb technique enables him to articulate the long stretches of octaves in shapely legato lines that are executed with minimum pedal. This similarly applies to the ferocity and momentum Lortie generates in Vallée d'Obermann's peroration. Whereas pianists like Claudio Arrau and Muza Rubackyté take their time to savor Les jeux d'eau à la Villa d'Este's jet-spray arpeggiated figures, Lortie's comparable accuracy and finesse reveals them in a lighter, more playful manifestation. Lortie's well-judged tempo relationships create unity and momentum in Venezia e Napoli's Tarantella, but I prefer Marc-André Hamelin's almost offhanded panache and astounding repeated-note technique. While Chandos' slightly diffuse and distant sonics don't match Rubackyté's Lyrinx release for detail and warmth, they do reflect Lortie's robust sonority as one might experience it in a small concert hall. Strongly recommended.

--Jed Distler, ClassicsToday.com

Classical Music

Classical Music

The four-disc re-release of York Bowen’s Works for Piano is performed by the Dutch pianist Joop Celis. Gramophone Magazine described Volume II as “triumphant… not a single piece on this excellently recorded disc could be in more sensitive hands.”

Classical Music

The fourth volume in our series of Charles-Marie Widor's Organ Symphonies, performed by Joseph Nolan on the magnificent Cavaille-Coll organ of L'eglise de la Madeleine, Paris. Widor showed early talent for the organ; for decades he was the embodiment of it's might and splendor across the Gallic domain - his 'Organ Symphonies' were genre-defining in their influence. Joseph Nolan is an internationally renowned organist, acclaimed as 'brilliant and such an astute musician' (Gramophone UK).

Classical Music

...Here is my humble tribute to someone who, with his music, managed to cultivate in me the taste and desire to champion the character and colours of the folk music of Argentina. - Robert Aussel