Thalberg: Fantasies On Operas by Bellini

Bartok: Piano Music, Vol. 3: Out of Doors - Ten Easy Pieces

Tchaikovsky: Complete Piano Works

Percussionist Steve Schick [an origianl member of the Bang on a Can All-Stars] releases his first full-length CD on Cantaloupe Music in conjunction with his first book - which promises to be the definitive volume about percussion in the 20th-21st Century. A former percussionist himself, John Luther Adams finds music from the earth and brings it to life in composition - expect an unadulterated ambient soundscape that takes a journey through different sonic textures and environments, aided by a beautiful production and Schick's breathtaking performance.

Includes work(s) for hpsch by Louis Couperin. Soloist: Glen Wilson.

DUBUGNON: Piano Quartet / Incantatio / Frenglish Suite

For his recording of Bach's The Art of Fugue, harpsichordist Sébastien Guillot includes the composer's early autograph versions. Although Bach's more familiar revisions generally were for the better, his first thoughts make for fascinating comparison. Contrapunctus 1's first version contains alternate note readings and lacks the gorgeous coda Bach added as an inspired afterthought. If the piece often referred to as Contrapunctus 10 sounds as if it starts mid-stream, so to speak, that's because we're used to the 22 sublime bars Bach subsequently tacked on to the beginning. The early version of the canon in augmentation and inversion is fascinatingly florid, but without the revision's extraordinary chromatic tension and melodic humor that Guillot brilliantly conveys. Other differences involve ornamental more than compositional refinements.

In an era where a few too many harpsichordists embrace these pieces with fussy agogics, crawling tempos, and a reverential halo, Guillot's fleet, uncluttered, and enlivening interpretations are positively refreshing. Ornaments and cadenzas are infused with improvisatory joy, while Guillot's rolled chords contain more gestural and expressive variety than we often hear. Should you prefer more repose and austerity (and some listeners undoubtedly will), I'd stick with Robert Hill, Gustav Leonhardt, and Davitt Moroney. But if Guillot's extroversion entices, then by all means supplement your collection with this inexpensive, beautifully engineered release.

--Jed Distler, ClassicsToday.com

A native of Cuba, Leo Brouwer is universally acknowledged as one of the most challenging and innovative of contemporary composers. This program brings the guitar into consort with the bandurria, a small lute dating from the 16th century and perennially popular in South America, the combination perfect for expressing the rustic rhythms of Cuban folk style in M�sica Incidental Campesina. This recording covers a kaleidoscopic range of techniques and emotions, from political martyrdom in Chile to the immense vistas of Brazil. The Sonata para Bandurria was composed for one of the virtuoso performers on this recording, Pedro Chamorro.

Toru Takemitsu is widely regarded as the greatest Japanese composer of the 20th century. After the appearance of Folios in 1974 he was acknowledged as a formidable master of writing for the guitar, bringing to the instrument a sensibility and imaginative flair which have seldom been equalled. In the Woods was his final composition. Shin-ichi Fukada and Leo Brouwer were both close friends of Takemitsu, and this programme includes Brouwer’s two heartfelt homages in his memory.

Manuel Ponce is considered by numerous scholars to be the founding father of modern Mexican music. He devoted himself to composing for guitar after meeting Andres Segovia in 1923. Sonatina Meridional is reminiscent and lyrical, and is his response to Segovia’s appeal for a work “of purely Spanish character.” The two versions of Theme varie et Finale are recorded for the first time together on this album. The Andante that is also featured is from a manuscript that was lost in the Spanish Civil War. His final work for guitar, Variations on a Theme of Cabezon, is also featured.

Classical Music

REVIEW:

German harpsichordist and pianist Christine Schornsheim has been making CDs for many years now; I’m mostly familiar with her collaborations with non-period performers such as tenor Peter Schreier and the German oboist and conductor Burkhardt Glaetzner. In fact, the only decidedly “period” CD of hers in my library is a Harmonia Mundi recording of Mozart four-hand music made a few years ago with pianist Andreas Staier on a Stein Vis-à-vis piano/harpsichord. Based on this admittedly limited experience, I was not prepared for the excellence of this release, nor for the depth of her understanding of Bach.

Complete recordings of the Well-Tempered Clavier have been coming fast and furious of late; one need only scan the 70-plus listings of Book I on ArkivMusic to see that the music has attracted harpsichordists and pianists of every stripe and persuasion. Since joining the staff of Fanfare , I’ve personally surveyed four versions, the most exceptional of which is undoubtedly Rebecca Pechefsky’s recording of Book 1 on Quill Classics, reviewed in Fanfare 34:3. The first hint that Schornsheim’s version might be a cut above the ordinary comes in her personal observations about the project, contained in the liner notes: “ The Well-Tempered Clavier has always had a healing effect on me. Whenever I felt bad, I sat down at the nearest keyboard and played fugues.” She goes on to say that despite being an immense challenge, recording the 48 plus 48 has cleansed her soul and given her inner peace. One could interpret this as mere advertising jargon, but I don’t think so. The sincerity of these statements is borne out entirely by the integrity and honesty of the playing on these CDs.


It may surprise you to learn that I don’t automatically subscribe to the early-music dictum that the WTC can be played only on the harpsichord. Like any instrument, the harpsichord has its pluses and minuses, and in the hands of a lesser artist, the harpsichord is ruthless in revealing weaknesses in phrasing and technique. (It’s also very easy to sound dull and mechanical on the harpsichord.) The modern piano, on the other hand, with its damper pedal and increased resonance, is less restricting for many artists, allowing for a freer interpretive approach—or so they think. The best artists, of course, can turn a handicap into advantage. Schornsheim capitalizes on the strengths of the harpsichord in ways that are often hard to verbalize, such as the almost imperceptible changes in articulation—which would be lost on the more resonant modern piano—that set one voice against another in a fugue, or the minute applications of rubato that make sense of the rhetoric of a prelude. It is a style of playing grounded in intense study of and appreciation for Bach’s music, but one that never sounds labored, forced, or unnatural. There is nary a misjudged tempo or instance of flagging inspiration here; throughout Books 1 and 2 the level of accomplishment is remarkably high. In the international arena of Bach performance, I predict that this release will enjoy immediate and widespread favor.


Another reason for the serious record collector to consider the acquisition of this set is the choice of instrument. It is the 1624 two-manual Ruckers (enlarged in France in the 18th century) housed in the Musée Unterlinden, Colmar. The instrument has been the subject of numerous recordings, most recently a Centaur CD of Couperin played by Lisa Goode Crawford ( Fanfare 35:4). It is simply one of the most magnificent-sounding French harpsichords in captivity, and it has never been recorded more intelligently and realistically than it is here. Highest recommendation.

FANFARE: Christopher Brodersen

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Classical Music

SOLER, A.: Sonatas for Harpsichord, Vol. 10

Includes work(s) for piano by Enrique Granados. Soloist: Douglas Riva.

Markku Luolajan-Mikkola has a reputation for excellence and already has two Gramophone Awards. With a fan base to match, Luolajan-Mikkola is at the top of his game. In Luolajan-Mikkola’s Linn debut, he tackles the pinnacle of Bach’s productions for violinists: the Partitas and Sonatas. Luolajan-Mikkola transcribed these works for cello. His goal with this recording has been to encapsulate expression and emotion according to the character of each movement. A historically informed musician, he performs on baroque cello.

Review:

Luolajan-Mikkola is nothing if not resolute, and he seems to embrace the struggle as an expressive end in itself. His staunch approach to articulation is tricky to love, but the payoff comes in the slow movements: Sarabandes sung low and husky, unadorned, flawed, and beautiful.

– Guardian (UK)

The second volume in this series reveals once again the amazing flair that Japanese composers have for the guitar. It also explores the ways in which the more traditional aspects of the country's music are brought into the sphere of the classical guitar with variety, subtlety and richness. From Toru Takemitsu's popular arrangement of Nakada's A Song of Early Spring through Akira Miyoshi's lyrical Cinq Poemes pour la guitare to Toshio Hosokawa's evocative Serenade the listener encourters unexpected colors and textures as well as evocations of the biwa and shamisen (types of lute) and the koto, a long zither.

Ignacio Cervantes is a key figure of Latin American piano music. As the cultural and national identity of his native Cuba gained strength through the 19th century, the genres of danza and contradanza became a fixture of the island’s dance and concert halls, providing a bridge between different sections of society. Cervantes’s pieces, which display a similar swing and verve to Scott Joplin’s ubiquitous Rags, synthesize Cuban local humour and colour with the Romantic aesthetic of Chopin. Their titles range from the poignant Adiós a Cuba, to the laughter of La carcajada.

Founded by John Wallace in 1986 to explore and perform the extensive brass repertory, The Wallace Collection is one of the world's pioneering brass ensembles with an international reputation for innovative programming. After a twelve-year sabbatical, the ensemble was relaunched in May 2014 at a Park Lane Group concert in the Queen Elizabeth Hall, London. Currently it aims to achieve the extraordinary and exceptional in brass through focusing on the music of today in close juxtaposition with the lost repertory of the 19th century.

Brass instruments have been prominent in Peter Maxwell Davies’s music since his Op. 1, a trumpet sonata he wrote the year he turned twenty-one. The focus of this record, however, is on music from a long quarter-century later: the Brass Quintet he produced in 1981 and a spray of pieces that came in the immediate wake of that major effort, including not only two smaller items for the same formation but also a horn solo that, though so different in scale, is related in substance to the quintet. Trumpet tunes continue the story into the next two decades.

Robert Schumann's Studien and Konzert-Eteden transform Paganini's violin Caprices into stunningly virtuoso pieces for piano. Containing the hidden 'voice' of his beloved Clara the Humoreske Op. 20 is filled with contrasts Schumann expressed as composing and writing and laughing and crying all at the same time. Ukrainian pianist Mariya Kim has gained global recognition through prizes including the Horowitz Paderewski and China Shenzhen International Piano Competitions and the Seoul and Jose Iturbi International Music Competitions. Her achievements have also brought her a Yamaha Foundation Award.

Classical Music

Includes work(s) for pno by Igor Stravinsky. Soloist: Martin Jones.

Sofia Gubaidulina has found a soulfulness and freedom in the guitar which speaks to her musical language of expressive mood and often mysterious but precise sonorities. In both Repentance and Sotto Voce she combines guitars with lower stringed instruments, creating a virtuosic, multi-dimensional and deeply poetic role for each voice. Fascinating new sounds from the guitar are produced from the most eloquent chorales to remarkable effects using a drinking glass. The earlier Serenade is ‘music for pleasure’, while this première recording of the Toccata reveals a work with a driving momentum that hardly stops.

Influenced by Andrés Segovia, guitar music in Greece saw its heyday in the 1950s. + Soloist Eva Fampas is the daughter of Dimitris Fampas, a leading figure who was taught by Segovia and helped create a globally admired school of playing which has nourished generations of musicians. + This program is representative of the new generation of Greek guitarist-composers, with national sounds and rhythms easily recognized in works such as Kyriakos Tzortzinakis’s vividly descriptive Four Greek Images, and the recent Taygetus, dedicated to Eva Fampas by its composer Nikos Athanassakis.