Quite simply exemplary and splendidly recorded as well.

The in this series was what I called ‘a valuable corrective to the partial, more generally held view of Czerny as a composer of an exhaustive number of pedagogic studies.’ This view is simply reinforced by volume 2 which is, similarly, a two disc set and which offers the same tangible musical rewards as the earlier volume.
 
There is nothing in the second volume quite as extensive as the massive Sixth Sonata of 1827. Nevertheless we do get four powerfully proportioned sonatas from his maturity played, as before, with powerful eloquence by Martin Jones, one of the most exploratory and energising pianists before the public. The interesting thing about Czerny’s sonatas is that the primary influence is not that of Beethoven. Rather it often sounds to have been Schubert who exerted the greater pull. The opening movement of the Eleventh Sonata, for example, sounds like a Schubert finale, though Brahms’s name is evoked by sleeve note writer Calum MacDonald. The sonata’s slow movement is a romantic soliloquy, its finale a songful, almost Schumannesque one played with warmth and clarity. This sonata dates from 1843. Nearly a quarter of a century earlier his first effort shows similar virtues. It’s a sonata that was admired by Liszt, who dedicated his Transcendental Etudes to Czerny, and is a powerful, exciting and generous spirited five-movement work. In this nourishing piece the central Adagio is hard to overlook, so richly cantabile is it, and so finely played too. Czerny is careful to balance the two faster inner movements; his Prestissimo agitato is galvanically brisk, whereas the Rondo is altogether more relaxed.
 
The Second Sonata is not unlike the First in that it too has five movements, one fewer than the Sixth where, one feels, Czerny did at least emulate Beethoven’s multi-movement example in his late string quartets. It is however much more concise than the earlier work. It has a most touching slow movement and an Allegro agitato that reminds one of the similar movement in the First. Another link comes from Czerny’s schema which is to end both these sonatas with a Fugue. In the First sonata the fugue is linked to earlier material, but not in the Second where the fugue stands, in effect, as a separate entity. The effect is grand, but it does lessen the sense of cumulative tension that the earlier work generated. The Sonatine is more compact still, but belies its name by virtue of its elevated and highly personal powers of reflection. And there are two small pieces. The Chanson sans paroles is spiced with delicious filigree, whilst the Character Etude Op.755 is a lissom and decidedly lovely effusion.
 
There is one remaining volume in this series, and one awaits it with anticipation. Jones’s playing is, quite simply, exemplary and he has been splendidly recorded as well.
 
-- Jonathan Woolf, MusicWeb International

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Includes passacaglia(s) by Heinrich Ignaz Biber. Soloist: Rachel Barton Pine.
Includes sonata(s) for violin and basso continuo by Johann Georg Pisendel. Soloist: Rachel Barton Pine.
Includes work(s) by Johann Paul von Westhoff. Soloist: Rachel Barton Pine.

Simplicity is the key to these chorale-like miniatures and musical landscapes, by turns playful and solemn. This disc is a hymn to life itself.

This disc, reissued in Sony's beautifully packaged 'Music for You' series, highlights the contemporary British composer Howard Skempton at his best and most idiomatic. While his creative peak, to date, is perhaps represented by his orchestral masterpiece Lento, these miniatures are probably more representative of his body of work as a whole and share with Lento a profound ability to communicate with their audience. Simplicity is the key here, and the composer's own booklet notes, while bearing little resemblance to the usual track by track commentary, divide the pieces into two types - chorale-like or landscapes. In one sense, I can see the logic at work here but the music encompasses so much more than that stark description could ever do.

The quintessential pianist for experimental British music of this vintage, John Tilbury, not only finds within himself performances that commune completely with works he is playing, but also contributes a second, highly perceptive booklet note. The composers he chooses to compare are American (Cage and Feldman) but I would add that anyone fond of the piano miniatures by the likes of Sculthorpe or Pärt will find much to please them here. Beyond that, I can, predictably I suppose, hear the ghost of Satie, by turns playful and solemn, at work as well.

This is a recital disc first and foremost and it would be wrong to overanalyse and isolate too many individual elements, some of which might be diminished by separation but certain tracks/pieces I cannot let pass me by without particular mention. The opening tribute to Skempton's teacher Cornelius Cardew is a friendly, unpretentious homage, whereas the extraordinary music, collected here as Images, written for a TV series about photography, places Skempton in the wider context of the English tradition with its incorporation of The Cockfight (a stunningly beautiful realisation) and, not for the first time with this composer, a version of The Keel Row. The Durham Strike reminds us that Skempton is not, unlike many of his contemporaries and, indeed, predecessors, detached from the real world but succeeds in its attempts at the transmutation of the daily grind into something more noble. These ears hear everything from Irish caoines to French impressionism in five and a half minutes of true genius.

Most of these pieces were written between 1970 and 1981, although they are not individually dated, and now it is surely time that Skempton gains the recognition he so richly deserves. Like the often very similarly inspired, though more "rock" aware music of Brian Eno's younger brother Roger, it positively bleeds artistic integrity and is what really ought to be playing on Classic FM's "chillout" sessions, rather than the pseudo-filmic ephemera of Einaudi et al. Absolutely essential, it reminds me of so many things I love in music, from the vaults of the ECM back catalogue to the contents of Singing Together I learnt as a child thirty years ago, this disc is a hymn to life itself.

-- Neil Horner, MusicWeb International

Reminiscences is a collection of Chopin's best loved works for solo piano, each one of personal significance to Portuguese pianist Arthur Pizarro, who in turn delivers sensitive and thrilling performances. Originally released in 2005, Chopin: Reminiscences is re-issued as part of Linn's ECHO series that offers a second chance to enjoy the best of the label's award-winning catalog. The inspiration for the title came from Arthur's experience of Chopin frequently being played in his childhood home, as well as being the original name of the C sharp minor Nocturne. Arthur plays a Bluthner grand piano, which responds phenomenally to his dazzling articulation, while giving huge sonorous depth to the sound.

A beautiful set of the great William Byrd's harpsichord music, well-played on four excellent instruments.

My Lady Nevells Booke is a collection of 42 pieces for keyboard by William Byrd. It seems that it was compiled for, Elizabeth Bacon, the third wife of Sir Henry Nevell but there is some uncertainty surrounding this attribution. This luxurious book, bound in leather and decorated with gold, contains one of the largest groups of keyboard works by Byrd. It includes some pieces that are found only in this book and which appear to have been composed especially for this collection.

While many recordings of Byrd’s keyboard music exist, there seems to be no other complete set of the works in this book. There is one exception, of course, in the shape of Davitt Moroney’s extraordinary Complete Keyboard Music on Hyperion. In addition to this being a full recording of the collection, the set benefits from the use of four outstanding instruments by Keith Hill. They are a lautenwerk (or lute-harpsichord), which is used on the first piece of the set, as well as a dozen others; an Italian single manual harpsichord; and two Flemish double-manual Ruckers copies.

It has become somewhat trendy to record English keyboard music on multiple instruments. Moroney’s set includes several harpsichords, muselar virginal, clavichord, chamber organ, and organ. This gives a more varied range of colours than a single instrument is capable of delivering, and, in most cases, better represents the variety of instruments used at the time. We can contrast this with Bach’s music, where the harpsichord was the norm - though Bach probably played a clavichord at home, and much of his music sounds excellent on that instrument. English music of the kind found in My Lady Nevells Booke was played on a variety of instruments. Recordings like this therefore have the advantage not only of presenting excellent music, but also of providing a more “authentic” experience. This is how listeners might well have heard the music. Of course, they would never have heard all three-and-three-quarter hours of this music in one sitting.

As for the music itself, William Byrd’s keyboard music is both idiomatic of his time, and unique. The very first work in this set, My Ladye Nevels Grownde, played on lautenwerk, is a French-like work with broken chords and attractive melodies. Farr plays this with subtlety and detachment, letting the music come through. The lautenwerk fits this piece very well, as it does most of the others where it is used. Another very attractive ground, Hughe Ashtons Grownde, sounds almost like Couperin with its ornamentation and style brisé. The Italian harpsichord used gives it a beautiful, almost other-worldly sound. This piece is slow and introspective, and, again, the combination of music, performer and instrument is nearly perfect.

Many of Byrd’s keyboard pieces are combinations of galliards and pavans. These two-part works feature a first movement, the pavan, which is slow and melodic, much like a saraband. The second part is much more lively and rhythmic. Thematically related, the pavans are generally longer than the galliards, and one can imagine how people would dance to these types of music, though harpsichord pieces were more for simply playing than for accompanying dancers. Each pavan/galliard set is played here on a single instrument, with the instruments changing from one set to the next. Listening to just the pavans and galliards gives an excellent introduction to Byrd’s music, and highlights the varied colours and tones available from the four instruments used here.

While Byrd did not write suites, as the French or Germans did, he did produce some pieces that are relatively long in comparison. Several pieces go over the eight- or nine-minute mark, including the excellent Have With Yow to Walsingame, a set of twenty-two variations. The performance here is understated, and exploits every possible effect of the Colmar Ruckers copy on which it is played.

So we have here an exemplary recording of great music; Byrd was arguably England's greatest composer of music for the keyboard. Beautiful instruments are deployed and the sounds of all four are luscious. The sessions took place in a fine acoustics with a hint too much reverb, but otherwise the instruments can be heard in all their splendour. The picture is completed by sensitive and distinctive playing. Elizabeth Farr is an excellent performer and seems perfectly suited to this music. I regret to say that I was unfamiliar with her before hearing this set.

If you do not know William Byrd’s keyboard music, you have no excuse now. This is undoubtedly the best collection available for its price - thank you, Naxos. If you are familiar with this music, you’ll certainly want this 3 CD box. Not only is it well-played and on beautiful instruments, but it contains all the works from Lady Nevells Booke, the only such set available right now. Trust me; you simply can’t go wrong with this.

-- Kirk McElhearn, MusicWeb International

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This is a hybrid Super Audio CD playable on both regular and Super Audio CD players.

Despite the fact that Kaikhosru Sorabji wrote his Transcendental Studies in the early 1940s, most of these individual pieces were not performed for more than fifty years after their composition. This new release is Fredrik Ullen’s fifth installment in his survey of these works, and features twelve of the 100 studies. Sorabji’s Transcendental Studies Nos 72-83 are featured on this release. Especially intriguing is No 75, a Passacaglia, which is one of the longest of these works at almost 29 minutes. The piece receieved its debut performance in 2003 by Fredrik Ullen himself.

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Pianist Jenny Lin, in her second release for BIS, scores with a program that's as substantial and historically important as her first (Chinoiserie) was entertaining and amusing. Ruth Crawford Seeger commands respect for a number of reasons: as one of the first significant American woman composers; as a representative of the progressive school in the first decades of the last century; and not least as an ethnomusicologist and expert on American folksong. This first CD devoted entirely to the original piano works (there are also numerous folksong arrangements) not only contains several world premieres but also permits us to see the composer's achievement whole, in all its variety. Just as importantly, while some of these pieces have enjoyed previous recordings, Lin's performances equal or better the competition in every case.


The pieces here fall into two broad categories: first, lightly diverting character pieces of conservative cast (Little Waltz, Little Lullaby, Caprice, Jumping the Rope, Whirligig), some composed with a pedagogical purpose (We Dance Together, Mr. Crow and Miss Wren Go for a Walk--A little study in short trills); second, more exploratory works that take notice of various more modern trends such as impressionistic or chromatic harmony, free atonality, expressionism, and complex rhythms. These are the pieces that offer the pianist real technical and interpretive opportunities, and Lin makes the most of them. In a transitional work such as the Sonata of 1923, her bravura attack on the music's eruptive elements traces the emergence of Crawford Seeger's mature style with the same clarity with which we can see a painter like Mondrian beginning to reduce traditional or naturalistic forms and images to a few basic, abstract lines. The Theme and Variations from the same year continues this process, offering Lin scope for some brilliantly clear finger work (in the first variation especially) and Lisztian display.


In the marvelous Kaleidoscopic Changes on an Original Theme, Lin simply outplays Virginia Eskin (Albany), offering both greater structural integration and more physical excitement. The Nine Preludes, Crawford Seeger's most popular keyboard works, appear here in two groups of five and four respectively, this second batch incorporating for the first time unpublished corrections to the printed text in the composer's own hand. Sarah Cahill recently recorded an outstanding version of the preludes for New Albion, and her smoother tone and magical pianissimos complement Lin's more sinewy, highly contrasted approach. In the Eighth Prelude, for example, Lin takes a bit more time than Cahill but also offers a greater range of tempo and dynamics. Lin adds to her program all three possible versions of the challenging Piano Study in Mixed Accents (though they are listed in the booklet in the wrong order), and plays them perfectly.


The program concludes with The Adventures of Tom Thumb for narrator and piano, a delightful piece in the same vein as Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf--or (more aptly) Poulenc's The Story of Babar the Little Elephant (dating from 1925, Tom Thumb actually precedes both chronologically). The composer's daughter, Peggy Seeger, completed the text especially for this recording, while Lin and narrator Timothy Jones enthusiastically chart the story's progress in words and tones. Toss in excellent recorded sound, very informative notes (though the tray card misidentifies some of the premieres), and the result is a 75-minute-long program that combines both revealing scholarship and care in repertoire selection with musicianship of the very highest caliber.
--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

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Lera Auerbach's music is direct, immediate in impact, volatile in mood, and never at a loss for big gestures. As I indicated in my review of an earlier Auerbach BIS release, the composer clearly has imbibed from the bountiful Shostakovich/Schnittke watering hole, but her own voice always comes across, especially in her gift for pulling ingenuous surprise endings out of the blue. Following the same key scheme as Chopin's Op. 28 Preludes, Auerbach's own group of 24 provides plenty of stimulating listening and comprehensive pianism. In the G major and B minor Preludes, for example, Auerbach takes the slow, obsessive repeated-note aesthetic of Ravel's Gibet to new and dramatically disquieting levels, while sprinkling sparse, dissonant melodic droplets on top of a lulling left-hand ostinato in the F-sharp major. The E-flat starts out like a brooding chorale prelude injected with late Shostakovich gloom and doom, then builds to a slow-motion, frenzied climax. The G-sharp minor contains more harmonic spice than most brutally pounded-out marches.

Although stylistically similar to the Preludes, the Ten Dreams Op. 45 are much darker in tone and last half as long (they take 21 minutes to the Preludes' 45). The opening movement of the Chorale, Fugue and Postlude is the work's strongest, where resonating B minor chords with endless fermatas stand as pillars for slow, processional chorale-like phrases that seem to provide their own Russian male choir.

I'm glad that BIS has taken advantage of the composer's keyboard prowess, because Auerbach plays Auerbach marvelously. She commands a huge sonority and wide dynamic range, along with fluid, flexible fingers that can handle anything. In particular, Auerbach is a past master at balancing those closely-voiced chords she loves so that each note stands in clear relation to its neighbor, like jewels in a tiara rather than grains in mush. She may not push the composer/pianist tradition into new terrain, yet there's no doubt that Lera Auerbach has something quite potent to say.

--Jed , ClassicsToday.com

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If ever there was a composer for today, that composer is William Bolcom. Just as music of all kinds is omnipresent in our lives, so it is in his work. If he likes it, it?s in?and it?s not a carefully refracted influence (like Christopher Rouse?s rock) or a sarcastic juxtaposition of quotations ( à la Schnittke), it?s just there . Bolcom drew upon Ivesian Americana in his 1976 piano concerto; he created a languorous passage of jazz fiddle in his violin concerto because he admired Joe Venuti?s licks, and look at the broad stylistic vocabulary at work in his fearless, monumental setting of Blake?s Songs of Innocence and Experience (also available on Naxos, and indispensable). On this disc, in the sometimes-uniform sound world of duo-piano, the stylistic variety he displays is typically wide-ranging.


The earliest piece is the short Interlude from 1963 (rev. 1965). Composed when Bolcom was a student, it employs the then obligatory atonal language. He was studying with Darius Milhaud and Olivier Messiaen in Paris at the time, but a few years later, he discovered and fell in love with ragtime. Bolcom is, of course, also renowned as a pianist (as soloist and accompanist to his wife Joan Morris) and his recordings, as well as his compositions, helped to re-establish rag as a form. From 1969, we have here a rag ( The Serpent?s Kiss ) and a cakewalk ( Through Eden?s gates ), rearranged from a solo piano suite for Richard and John Contigula (who recorded it on one of their Connoisseur discs, long gone). These are both laid-back, loving pieces; in the cakewalk, which the composer describes as ?[conjuring] the image of Adam and Eve calmly cakewalking their way out of Paradise,? we find a passage where one of the pianists knocks out a syncopated rhythm on the wood to the other?s ?stop? chords: a genuine tap-dancing turn, and how better to depict Adam and Eve?s cheeky defiance of God?


The longest work here is the two-movement suite, Frescoes (1971). Here Bolcom adopts the avant-garde devices of the 1970s: aleatory passages, explosions of dissonance, and above all the exploration of tone color. The pianists double at various points on harpsichord and harmonium: it?s all very spooky and George Crumbish, apart from one moment where Bolcom switches gears and suddenly we?re hearing a ?till ready? intro to a Broadway point number. Throughout its 28 minutes, Frescoes holds out attention due to the composer?s sophisticated ear for texture and his sense of fun. The 1993 Sonata in one movement is more straightforward stylistically (although references to Schoenberg and Debussy pop up), because Bolcom concentrates his energies on structure, fusing Classical first-movement sonata form with the overall fast/slow/fast layout of a full sonata.


The opening work, Recuerdos, is a three-movement suite from 1991 that specifically pays homage to three Latin composers, Ernesto Nazareth, Louis-Moreau Gottschalk, and Ramón Delago Palacios. Bolcom does not merely ape the sound of these composers; he understands and recreates the innate qualities that made them popular (as Ravel did in his piano homages to Chabrier and Borodin). Thus, Bolcom pinpoints the lazy playfulness of Nazareth (?creator? of the choro , according to the notes), the florid panache of Gottschalk, and the full-blooded bravado of Palacios. (Milhaud obviously started this particular ball rolling with his own Latin-derived music; Bolcom the pianist made a wonderful, sympathetic recording for Nonesuch of Milhaud?s Saudades do Brazil. It demands to be reissued.)


The distinguished duo-piano team of Elizabeth and Marcel Bergmann play Bolcom?s music for all it?s worth?which means going over the top when necessary. The recording is excellent, encompassing the extremes of forte and piano in a dryish but not cramped acoustic. Also, whoever determined the order of works on the CD made a brilliant decision: the final marcato chords of Recuerdos are virtually the same as the opening marcato chords of Frescoes . In the first, they represent the flamenco stamping of a final Spanish cadence, and in the second, a call to attention for a journey through a stunningly contrasted harmonic and sonic terrain. This canny juxtaposition epitomizes the composer?s eclecticism. Bravo, Naxos: now for the five (or more?) symphonies! Meanwhile, this disc goes on my first Want list.


FANFARE: Phillip Scott

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Less than three years have passed since Yevgeny Sudbin's remarkable début on disc: a Scarlatti recital which caused reviewers to compare the then 25-year4 old pianist favourably to Horowitz and Pletnev. The following Rachamninov disc cause Piano Magazine (UK) to describe him as 'a major world-class artist'. The latest offering - an intriguing double-bill of Tchaikovsky's and Medtner's First Piano Concertos - was released previously this year, earning him an 'Editor's Choice' in the Gramophone. The grounds for that distinction, as given in the magazine, are certainly just as apt for the present Scriabin recital: 'Yevgeny Sudbin's performance here fairly explodes with imagination, feeling and desire. Here, one feels, is a pianist hungry to test himself intellectually and emotionally as well as technically.'

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C. P. E. Bach was a chamber musician at the court of Frederick the Great for nearly three decades. He was also one of the greatest keyboard players in Europe. His compositional mastery is exemplified by the six 'Prussian' Sonatas of 1742, works of great expression and stylistic interest. His desire to explore 'musical speech' was accompanied by bold contrasts, tremendous dynamism, and acute sensitivity for the shaping of slow movements. These reveal his inventive, forward thinking harmonies that both acknowledge the past but also strike out in vivid new directions. Susan Alexander, Max is recognized internationally as a leading forte pianist and clavichordist specializing in the music of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. A featured performer on international radio and television, she is known to festivals, museums, universities and music colleges world wide.

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Boris Giltburg, the Russian-born Israeli pianist who won the 2013 Queen Elisabeth Competition, is that genuine rarity: a pianist whose Rachmaninov is entirely idiomatic yet intensely personal in a way that yields fresh perspectives on this well traversed repertory.

His sense of rhythm is impeccable, with a chaste application of rubato that is organically derived from the life of the phrase. He is a master of the great surges and retractions of energy so specific to the composer. Giltburg’s pellucid sound is never forced; his large dynamic range has a soft spectrum, between mezzo-piano and ppp, which is infinitely calibrated and shaded. His eloquence derives from a poise and restraint that, while uniquely his own, is not unlike the aristocratic delivery that was the hallmark of Rachmaninov’s playing.

Without ostentation or fuss, he has examined these scores in every kind of light, lived with them and come up with a vision that, without being wilfully contrarian, is nevertheless something beyond received wisdom. I suspect that before long this vision will place him among the truly memorable Rachmaninov interpreters, an elect including Moiseiwitsch, Horowitz, Kappel, Richter and Cliburn. His originality stems from a convergence of heart and mind, served by immaculate technique and motivated by a deep and abiding love for one of the 20th century’s greatest composer-pianists.

– Gramophone

Guitarists have been transcribing Bach’s music for their instrument practically since there were guitarists and music by Bach, and although there are other versions of at least some of the keyboard works known as “English Suites” transcribed for guitar duo, this first of two volumes appears to be the first of all six suites to be offered on disc. If you know these pieces in their keyboard versions, or you are a fan of guitar music and are curious as to how the Montenegrin Guitar Duo’s renditions serve in this format–you’ll find the performances technically assured, interpretively nuanced yet free of mannerism, and very carefully, expertly balanced across registers and between voices. In other words, these are very fine realizations that lovers of Bach and the guitar will appreciate. Strongly recommended.

- CLassicsToday

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