This disc is the first in an exciting new collaborative series between Brilliant Classics and the International Barrios Guitar Competition. 2011 First Prize Winner Elise Neumann presents a fine recital of solo guitar works, spanning a period from the 1920s to the 1960s and featuring workings by Barrios, Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Ponce, and Asencio. Neumann's virtuosic and exquisitely sensitive playing brings a sense of space and light to these selections, showing her to be a star in the making.

This survey of 20th c. sonatas written for solo guitar, featuring a whopping thirteen world premiere recordings, marks yet another original project from the spirited and adventurous Italian guitarist Cristiano Porqueddu, “a point of reference for the new generation of guitarists”, bringing together a wide range of guitar sonatas by Baev, Biberian, Cavallone, Manén, Migot, Gilardino, Rózsa and Porqueddu himself. It is a journey through wildly differing styles, from Impressionism to Expressionism, from the simple to the complex, from the folkloristic and descriptive to absolute music. Mr. Porqueddu, a prolific Brilliant Classics recording artist, wrote the set’s extensive liner notes, which feature work-by-work descriptions and annotations.

Echoes of Spain

Edward Elgar at Woolsey Hall

Spanish Guitar Favourites

This disc was shaped by the encounter between one of the great composers of our time, Mauricio Kagel, a unique and engaging pianist, Alexandre Tharaud, and some of his close chamber music partners. It reaches out to its audience with a great sense of humour and tenderness.

Includes Sonatas no. 8, op. 13, "Pathétique;" no. 17, op. 31/2, "Tempest;" no. 21, op. 53, "Waldstein;" no. 23, op. 57 "Appassionata;" no. 9, op. 14/1; no. 16, op. 31/1; no. 24, op. 78; no. 25, op. 79; no. 26, op. 18a, "Les Adieux;" no. 17, op. 90.

"• Played by Sviatoslav Richter 1952-55 • Richter shows all the needed skills and understanding of the composers mystical compositions. • Reference recordings!"

Includes work(s) by various composers. Soloist: Susan Jane Matthews.

Mary Preston, In Concert!

Marches

After the success of the First Barrios Guitar Competition CD (Elise Neumann, BC9287), this second issue by the 2012 winner Emanuele Buono establishes the extremely high level of this competition. This CD features Studies and Preludes by Cuban composer Leo Brouwer, one of the best-known and appealing guitar composers of the 20th century.

Includes suite(s) for harpsichord by Jean-Philippe Rameau. Soloist: Stephen Gutman.

Includes work(s) for piano by Sergei Taneyev. Ensemble: Russian Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra. Conductor: Thomas Sanderling. Soloists: Joseph Banowetz, Adam Wodnicki, Vladimir Ashkenazy.

Classical Music

RAMEAU Suites: No. 4 in A/a; No. 5 in G/g. La Dauphine. Les petits marteaux. RAMEAU-GUTMAN Pièces de clavecin en concerts: Concert No. 5 in D/d. RAMEAU-BALBASTRE Pigmalion: Giga • Stephen Gutman (pn) • TOCCATA 0052 (68:48)


I am always overjoyed to hear a new recording of Rameau’s keyboard music performed on the piano; it is a repertoire which I find completely underappreciated by most pianists today who favor the works of either Bach or Scarlatti for their recital programs. For whatever the inexplicable reasons, it is both their loss in playing this repertoire and ours in hearing it performed on an instrument capable of such tonal nuances as benefits this music. That said: This is the third and last of Stephen Gutman’s recordings of the complete keyboard music of this master, but only the first that I’ve heard. After playing this disc over and over again this month, I’ll be sure to run—not walk!—to my nearest shop to obtain the first two releases which I’ve missed out on thus far.


Luckily for me, Gutman here performs two of Rameau’s greatest keyboard suites—the one in A-Minor/Major, which ends with the virtuosic Gavotte with six variations (or doubles as he labels them), most likely modeled on the “Air and Variations” from Handel’s D-Minor Suite, and the one in G Major/Minor, which includes some of the most famous of Rameau’s excerpted pieces—“La poule,” “Les sauvages,” “L’enharmonique,” and “L’egiptienne,” among others. From the very first notes of the opening A-Minor Allemande, the pianist’s sense of exploration, his wide tonal palette, and his rhythmic freedom can all be heard to good advantage, along with his intimate and scholarly knowledge of these works—from correct ornamentation to matters of tempo. Importantly, the pianist looks to characterize each of these movements in their own particular way, and does so well—from the serious Courante to the intimate Sarabande, from the athletic and virtuosic “Les trois mains” to the exuberant and joyful “La triomphant.” Perhaps the only aspect I miss a bit comes in the concluding Gavotte, where just a bit more bombast could surely do no harm; here the minute characterization of each variation takes away from the inherent drive to the end which should pervade the entire set. As the following Suite in G is comprised of mostly named movements— à la Couperin—it benefits even more so from Gutman’s quick and profound characterization: “La poule,” being one of the best examples, demonstrates just how quickly he can portray these musical numbers. From the opening repeated-note gesture one is pulled in, only to be startled by the quick flourishes which drive the music forward. The ornaments found throughout the piece are hardly simple trills or mordents—rather, they are sounds of the hen herself. Though “Les sauvages” could be a bit more brutal in character, the pianist’s tendency to emphasize the gallant and graceful aspects in the music is in keeping with the age. “L’egiptienne” makes for a mysterious, yet rousing, conclusion.


The other works here include two transcriptions—one made by Gutman of the Concert No. 5 from the Pièces de clavecin en concerts , which includes three movements (“La Forqueray,” “La Cupis,” and “La Marais”) and the Giga from Pigmalion , possibly transcribed by one Claude-Bénigne Balbastre. Of the two works, the former is the more impressive piece, originally conceived, as is was, for a chamber ensemble of strings and keyboard; the opening work, “La Forqueray,” is actually a four-part fugue, which Gutman carefully choreographs for performance on a single keyboard—no small feat! While there are, of course, interesting little details left out, Gutman is careful to capture the most important aspects of the piece, in both transcription and performance.


Throughout this very fine recital Gutman proves himself a guide of the first order—not only does he understand this music both inside and out, he never allows the scholar in him to inhibit the performer; rather he uses the knowledge to bring out the best in this music. And while I may have my quibbles about matters of performance, there is hardly a movement in the entire recital that will not charm and delight the most judgmental of listeners. Recorded in generally good, though somewhat dry, sound and accompanied by excellent program notes (both by Graham Sadler and the pianist himself), this is a release to savor. Recommended.


FANFARE: Scott Noriega

"Perahia is a Chopin interpreter of the highest order. There is an impressive range of color and an imposing sense of order. This is highly poetic playing and an indispensable acquisition for any Chopin collection." -- The Penguin Guide to Compact Discs & DVDs

Piano Transcriptions: Beethoven's Symphony No. 5 & 1st Movem

Classical Music

A decade or so ago, a recital of Franck and Liszt from Murray Perahia might have caused some surprise. But one of the most refreshing things about this artist is his growing refusal to be typecast. The Franck (like all but two of the Liszt pieces) was recorded at The Maltings in Snape, a venue he knows and likes so well. This I enjoyed for its stylish reminders of the composer's long devotion to the Church—i.e. for a strain of simple devoutness, free from all heart-on-sleeve emotionalism, with which he invests the first two movements. The central choral is allowed an easy flow, and I liked his dynamic restraint in the first two statements of the chorale theme itself so as to leave plenty in reserve for the characteristically Franckian emergence from darkness into light as the work progresses. Discreet pedalling ensures that texture never clots in the fugue, and the homecoming is truly joyous.

The rest of the 60 minutes go to Liszt, and here my only slight (but only very slight) disappointment came in the Mephisto Waltz, recorded in UCLA's Royce Hall in Los Angeles. Needless to say it is played with all Perahia's customary command, finesse and what I can only describe as aristocratic musical discernment. Yet I still felt that just that last touch of devilry was missing on the dance-floor (even more piquant accentuation might perhaps have helped), and likewise the ultimate in lingering sensuous seduction in Liszt's "lascivious, caressing dreams of love". For the rest I have nothing but praise—starting with the cutting intensity Perahia brings to the melodic line in Petrarch's tale of unrequited love ("Sonetto 104"). By comparison, Louis Lortie on Chandos (in a less forward and less sharp-cut sounding recent Maltings recording) seems to shrink from this sonnet's acutest disquiet and pain—such as in the passage marked agitato, and then crescendo and rinforzando from about 3'46"-4'17" in track 5 of Perahia's disc. Perahia's liquidity in "Au bard d'une source" and shimmering whispers in the first Concert Study, "Waldesrauschen" (as spacious as Arrau's—now part of the Philips Arrau Edition) are wholly ravishing as sound per se, while "Gnomenreigen" in its turn brings reminders of that delicately scintillating brilliance that always gave him a place apart when gambol ling with Mendelssohn in concerto finales. His range of keyboard colour in the concluding Rhapsodic espagnole (the second and finer of Liszt's pair) is as ear-catching as are his rhythmic spring, his teasing caprice and his exuberant climaxes.

Full marks to his engineers for so faithfully capturing so wide a dynamic range—and, incidentally, to Sony for including so generously spacious a booklet (with full quotations from Lenau, Petrarch and Schiller).

-- Joan Chissell, Gramophone [10/1991]

Bach: Toccatas, BWV 910-916

Iconoclastic takes on Romantic masterpieces that are at times infuriating, other times mesmerizing, often both.

Recordings taken from CBC television transmissions from CBC Studios, Toronto on December 9th, 1970 and September lst-4th, 1967.

While most of us turn gratefully to music we cherish and admire, Glenn Gould often performed and even recorded music he despised. And reading his accompanying comments - an infuriating mix of brilliance and jargon, insight and psycho-babble - the omens are not good. "Whenever Chopin tackled large-scale forms and tried to write pieces demanding a high degree of organization he almost invariably came to grief." To illustrate his point Gould chooses the Third Sonata, anaesthetizes it and after "freezing up the heat of life" applies his surgeon's scalpel. Chopin's occasional flutter with a form of romantic polyphony (the start of the development of the first movement) momentarily engages his sympathy, but elsewhere the essentially vocal conception of keyboard writing and the ecstatic entwining of melody and counter-melody are clearly viewed as frivolous. The overall result is so literal and Teutonic that it left this listener, at least, stranded, gasping for air and longing to break Gould's stranglehold. His didacticism in the finale's exultant bravura is notably perverse and rarely have I heard a performance by a great pianist that more obviously declares his limitations.

Gould's Mendelssohn is scarcely less cramped (though he responds to the hymnal pieties of the Song without Words. op. 30 No. 3 with surprising warmth) but his Scriabin is, arguably, as mesmeric as it is strange. All listeners nurtured on an ultraromantic Russian tradition will jettison Gould's alternative and spring more than a few questions. Why so ponderous in the powerfully striding drammatico rhythm of the Third Sonata's opening? Since when is a languorous Andantino the same as Presto con allegrezza in the Fifth Sonata? From anyone else such things would be unacceptable. But from Gould you pause to reconvene, to reconsider and note that there is nothing random or inchoate about his conclusions. Both these performances, together with some wintry Prokofiev, hold a powerful and compelling fascination.

The final record contains a damp squib rather than a jeu d'esprit (the Strauss Burleske was another work that gave Gould heartache rather than joy) and a heavily personalized, monochrome Beethoven Emperor Concerto. Here, once again, are rhythms in the opening flourishes articulated like so much phonetic spelling and a deliberately poker-faced, uninflected response to the Adagio's espressivo. Conductor and orchestra fight to match their soloist's aggression but end sounding tubthumping and militaristic. Gould was, incidentally, a last-minute replacement in the Beethoven for the ever-indisposed Michelangeli, a situation that provoked the impish riposte from Gould, "My God, just think that the Number One pianist is going to substitute for Number Two". All these discs contain either previously unreleased material or first authorized issues.

-- Gramophone [4/1996]

Classical Music

Pianist, scholar and pedagogue Paul Badura-Skoda may best be known to the music loving public at large as an exponent of the Viennese classics. In fact, Badura-Skoda's lengthy career covers far more musical ground than he is usually given credit for, from his awesome teenage prowess as an accordion virtuoso to the flamenco-inspired flair he brought to Frank Martin's Fantasie, a work written especially for Badura-Skoda. In January 2005, we heard Badura-Skoda in an intimate, semi-private recital in New York, where the 77-year-old pianist covered a wide repertoire range with consummate authority and still-impressive technical command, notably in a shimmering, intense performance of Ravel's Ondine from Gaspard de la nuit. A selection of Chopin short pieces proved no less idiomatic, and served to remind US this composer also has preoccupied Badura-Skoda for a long time. Chopin also figures in the pianist's uncommonly large and wide-ranging discography of more than 200 releases, including the present 1971-5 studio recordings, all but one piece being released now for the first time.

There was no composer whose works were more frequently passed off as Mozart's than Eberl. Even more surprising is the documented fact that there was no protest from Mozart against the use of his name on Eberl's compositions. Eberl, a friend and (probably) a student of the great man, did mind but was too timid to take action until after Mozart had died. Finally, he published a notice in a widely read German newspaper claiming ownership of a number of his compositions attributed to Mozart. Despite this, his works still continued to be published under Mozart's name. This in itself is a telling indication as to the contemporary opinion of the quality of Eberl's works, but critical reviews of his day also spoke of works published under his own name reaching the heights of Haydn's, Mozart's and the young Beethoven's. -- Seven world premieres are presented in this collection of Eberl's solo piano output by forte-pianist John Khouri, whose previous recordings of Clementi, Hummel, Cramer, and others on Music & Arts have been acclaimed for authenticity and artistic excellence.