Composer Elena Ruehr adds to her extensive discography with Icarus, an album of chamber music infused with hints of history, legendary literature and close collaborations with a multitude of musical colleagues. The repertoire revolves around the string quartet, a genre that generated great acclaim for Elena’s Six String Quartets (AV2379). Elena’s String Quartet No. 7, “A Thousand Cranes”, evokes experiences and resilience of children in wartime, including the internment of Japanese in American camps, and her own father’s escape from Nazi Germany. Her playful String Quartet No. 8, “Insect Dances” – “written for listeners of all ages” – finds a diverse family of bugs engaged in an impish dinner party. Inspired by T. S. Eliot, The Worlds Revolve, for piano and string quartet, conjures elements both ancient and prescient. The title track, for clarinet and string quartet, centres on the Greek mythological character’s excitement as he builds his wings of wax and dares to fly, rather than his dark demise as he flies too close to the sun.

From 1950 and onwards, Allan Pettersson was mainly occupied with working on the monolithic symphonies for which he is best known. But before that, while still a student at the Conservatory in Stockholm and later a viola player in the Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, he composed two sets of songs: Six Songs and Barfotasånger (Barefoot Songs). Of these two, the second would become especially important for the composer, who returned to it throughout his life, quoting various songs from it in his symphonies. In Barfotasånger he set his own poems, full of autobiographical detail and using a highly personal, archaic language. Several of the songs reflect his childhood, as the youngest of four children growing up in a poor working-class neighborhood in Stockholm. All but two of them are in a minor key, in an idiom which alludes to folk songs, hymns and popular songs. They are here brought to sometimes painful life by Peter Mattei, one of the great singer-actors of our time, supported by Bengt-Åke Lundin, with whom he first collaborated almost 30 years ago, on an album of songs by Wilhelm Stenhammar.

Conductor Robert Trevino’s fourth album release on Ondine is focused on the late works of composer Einojuhani Rautavaara (1928–2016), one of Finland’s most celebrated composers after Sibelius and known worldwide for his Neo-Romantic, even mystic compositions. Together with violinist Simone Lamsma and the Malmö Symphony Orchestra the artists are presenting four final orchestral works by the celebrated composer.

Two of the works are world première recordings. In his late period, Rautavaara received several communications from the world’s leading violinists requesting him to write works for them. He was able to oblige them, creating several extensive works featuring solo violin. Fantasia (2015) for violin and orchestra is a work of soft Neo-Romantic harmonies and soaring melodic lines. In 2014, Rautavaara was asked to write a new Violin Concerto. This commission resulted in Deux Sérénades for violin and orchestra which remained unfinished at Rautavaara’s death: the second movement was sketched out, but only its beginning was orchestrated. Kalevi Aho, an accomplished composer of symphonies and concertos who studied composition with Rautavaara at the turn of the 1970s, fleshed out the orchestration in 2018. Lost Landscapes (2005/15) was originally written as a violin sonata, but Rautavaara began orchestrating the work in 2013. The first movement was premiered at the contemporary music festival at Tanglewood in July 2015, but the full premiere of the work took place in Malmö in March 2021, with Simone Lamsma as soloist. In the Beginning (2015) is a concise overture-type work commissioned for a concert opener. The titles of his works were important for the composer, forming part of the ‘aura’ of the work and often even constituting the initial impulse for writing the piece in the first place.

REVIEWS:

There is a transcendent intensity to Rautavaara’s music which is heightened by this writing for strings. All of the music here is relatively recent, the earliest from 2005, but here rearranged for these forces. Lost Landscapes, Fantasia, In the Beginning and Deux Serenades (completed by Kalevi Aho, after the composer’s death) are the four works here. Music to be immersed in and a fitting presentation of some of Rautavaara’s last work.

-- Lark Reviews

All these violin concertante works are attractive, but they are also all rather similar, and there is a preponderance of slow music. So they are best not listened to all at the same time. In the Beginning is different: it shows another side of the composer and perhaps has the best music on the disc.

We have a cosmopolitan team here. The soloist, Simone Lamsma is Dutch, has performed widely and already made a number of recordings. Robert Trevino is American and is a rising star. The Malmö Symphony Orchestra is one of Sweden’s leading orchestras. They all provide assured performances. The recording is sympathetic and the booklet informative. The Fantasia and Deux Sérénades have each been recorded by their commissioners but coupled with different composers, so the Rautavaara fan will find this the most convenient way to collect these works.

-- MusicWeb International

Awarded the title Young Steinway Artist in 2020, the Bulgarian pianist Marina Staneva received the 2019 Sam Hutchings Piano Prize and was a 2018 Britten-Pears Young Artist. She has been praised for her serious talent, outstanding musicianship, extraordinary instinctive artistry, and fine technical command. For this her début recording, she presents works by two contrasting Bulgarian composers.

Pancho Vladigerov was arguably the most influential Bulgarian composer of all time. He was one of the first successfully to combine idioms of Bulgarian folk music and classical music. He was also among the founding members of the Bulgarian Contemporary Music Society (1933), which later became the Union of Bulgarian Composers. The British-Bulgarian composer Dobrinka Tabakova studied composition under Simon Bainbridge, Diana Burrell, Robert Keeley, and Andrew Schultz. Her composition Praise was sung at St Paul's Cathedral to celebrate the Golden Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II, and she has received commissions from the Royal Philharmonic Society, BBC Radio 3, Cheltenham Music Festival, Britten Sinfonia, Three Choirs Festival, Wigmore Hall, and, in 2014, the PRS Foundation's first UK New Music Biennial.

Viktoria Kaunzner writes of her new release: “The release of this album was preceded by 15 years of study, analysis and performance of Medtner’s works for violin. Concerts, whether in Prague, as part of a Medtner lecture evening at the University of the Arts in Berlin, the inaugural gala of the Medtner Society in Seoul and more concerts in Paris. It was here that his music came before me for the first time in a magical moment with my guest family during my Erasmus studies: I shall never forget all the subtropical plants, the enormous library, paintings being created and films we saw together and how amidst all this I suddenly heard songs by Medtner. From that day on, a golden thread of sound wove its way into my memory and would not let me go. My fourth album entitled “EurAsian Gold”, which highlights the music of Medtner, was prepared in exclusive techno-acoustic conditions.“

In Voyages, prolific American composer James Lee III takes the listener on a colorful journey through his endlessly creative orchestral music; painting biblical imagery in Beyond Rivers of Vision and celebrating the joyous Feast of Tabernacles in Sukkot Through Orion's Nebula, using well-known spirituals to celebrate the life of abolitionist Harriet Tubman (Chuphshah! Harriet's Drive to Canaan) and reflecting on the ongoing fight for freedom through his grandfather’s personal experiences in WWII (A Different Soldier’s Tale). His music is played here by the renowned ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Marin Alsop.

REVIEW:

Although there may be some in the audience who may be skeptical of music by composers who are pretty much unknown to them, especially contemporary composers, they are in for a treat, for Chuphshah! is an entertaining, very listenable piece, as are all the compositions on this remarkable AVIE recording. From the opening measures of Sukkot Through Orion’s Nebula, with their snare, bass drum, brass, and percussion excitement, you know right away that this is going to be a fun recording for both musical and audio reasons. In his liner note essay, Lee describes Sukkot as “a festive work for orchestra,” and it is certainly that. Next up is the longest composition on the program, the four-movement A Different Soldier’s Tale, based on stories that Lee’s grandfather told him about his experiences in World War II. As you might expect from such a description, it contains some passages of drama and turmoil, as well as passages of pathos and reflection. Beyond Rivers of Vision is in three movements, of which Lee observes “for the most part the form in these pieces is fantasia-like or rhapsodic.” The music has an otherworldly characteristic to it at times that stands in contrast to the drama of the Soldier’s Tale. The CD closes with the afore-mentioned Chuphshah! Harriet's Drive to Canaan, which is based on aspects of the life of Harriet Tubman. His liner note essay is insightful and helpful in understanding what he is attempting to do in all four compositions, but especially so for this one.

As I indicated at the outset, this release is a treat both musically and sonically. The music is energetic and assertive, with plenty of orchestral effects that will show off a good audio system. The engineering team has done a good job, Alsop and the orchestra sound as though they are having a good time playing this mostly extroverted music, and the end result is a highly recommendable release from an exciting young composer.

-- Classical Candor (Karl W. Nehring)

Lukasz Borowicz, conductor, writes: "There are neither performers nor audiences, both at home and abroad, who are familiar with the works of Stefan Boleslaw Poradowski. Excellent composer, educator, conductor, cultural life promoter... his ser-vices to the province of Wielkopolska can hardly be overestimated. For this reason, it was with great pleasure that Poznan Philharmonic Orchestra, it's illustrious soloists, and I began work on an album intended to bring his music back from oblivion, as it undoubtedly deserves to be present on the concert circuit and the phonographic market." The works on this album are world premiere recordings.

In 2013 a group of Krakow-based instrumentalists shared the stage as part of the European Workshop for Contemporary Music, conducted by maestro Rudiger Bohn. Having then played together at Darmstadt's Internationale Ferienkurse fur Nee Musik, the musicians established an independent body. A couple of events held in a community center by one of the town's exit roads and in a then neglected theater marked the beginnings of Spoldzielnia Muzyczna contemporary ensemble, a group who specializes in performing new music. This is the ensemble's first entirely self-curated and self-produced album. It includes compositions which shaped the group's identity.

Witold Rowicki, one of Poland’s most important conductors of the 20th century and leading figure of his generation, is internationally known especially for the complete recording of Dvorák’s symphonies with the London Symphony Orchestra as well as for his impulsive Tchaikovsky performances. In his native country he was admired as the conductor to whom Witold Lutoslawski dedicated his brilliant Concerto for orchestra and who strongly promoted the music of his compatriots. The Tchaikovsky studio recordings presented here were made in 1962 (Fifth Symphony) and 1969 (Sixth Symphony) with the Südwestfunk Symphony Orchestra and in 1979 (Nutcracker Suite) with the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra. Rowicki had many other appearances with German orchestras, each of them enthusiastically greeted by the press and the public.

REVIEW:

Witold Rowicki was surely Poland’s ‘number one’ conductor in the second half of the 20th century, a fascinating musician not to be underrated, who always had plenty to tell us about whatever repertoire he tackled.

What a pity that Rowicki didn’t tackle the Nutcracker Suite in the studio. Well, happily SWR has come up with an all-Tchaikovsky double-pack featuring that very suite (with the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra, 1979) in addition to Symphonies Nos. 5 and 6, both with the SWR Symphony Orchestra.

The suite’s highlights are surely the incisive, super-swift Overture and a ‘Waltz of the Flowers’ that is elegant, unhurried and precise. Both the suite and the Pathétique are offered in reasonably good stereo sound, the symphony volatile in the extreme, the initial statement of the first movement’s secondary theme free and rhapsodic, the Allegro molto vivace third movement broadening near the close before speeding up again, the finale charged with emotion.

The Fifth (1962) is heavier, the transition to the second idea very emphatic, the Andante cantabile slow movement deeply elegiac, with raging full-orchestral interjections. The finale is broader than is generally the fashion nowadays but is none of the worse for that, its peroration speeding excitedly. A fascinating set that should prove stimulating for all fans of charismatic conducting and will hopefully prompt further Rowicki releases and reissues. There must surely be plenty of broadcast recordings hidden away in various radio archives.

-- Gramophone

In August 2020, Signum Classics began releasing Cantus’ COVID-19 Sessions. Recorded on March 17, 19, and 20 at Westminster Presbyterian Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the COVID-19 Sessions came together quickly as society began to shut down amidst the growing outbreak in the United States. The artists recorded these 19 tracks thanks to the expertise of members Chris Foss (audio) and Jacob Christopher (video). The COVID-19 Sessions were first released on YouTube and Facebook in the spring of 2020 and racked up millions of views, prompting Signum to release the tracks internationally on digital music providers like Spotify, iTunes, Apple Music, and Amazon Digital in higher-than-CD-quality audio. The artists write: “The inspiration for this project came during the week of March 8, when word began spreading of the coronavirus’ presence in the United States. As gatherings became limited, it quickly became clear that we needed to postpone our spring program... As we made those hard decisions at home, our national touring schedule was simultaneously unravelling. Presenters faced the same looming challenges and concerns as we did, and they also began to postpone or cancel all of their upcoming programs. We soon found ourselves with our earned revenue sources, which comprise two-thirds of our budget, cut off. Amidst these concerns, a more fundamental uncertainty grew with the guidelines on social distancing and the prohibitions on large gatherings. How can we, how can you, how can anyone create a sense of community during a crisis like this? We recognized we had a limited window in which to offer what we could as artists. These recordings are the result of that action — we wanted to come together in a time of great stress and uncertainty and offer what we could to the world, our community, and each other.”

Includes music by Jean Sibelius, Mari Esabel Valverde, Hildegard von Bingen, Melissa Dunphy, Eric Whitacre, Billy Joel, and more.

Grammy Award-winner Alex Klein, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s principal oboe emeritus, and pianist Phillip Bush perform works by composers from both sides of the Atlantic who were caught up in or deeply moved by 20th-century political turmoil. The Brazilian-born oboe virtuoso’s passionate project, with its underlying appeal for tolerance, encompasses works by Czech, German, British, American, and Brazilian composers. Much of the music evinces a calm lyricism and melodious beauty that belie the composers’ difficult circumstances. Some were exiled from their native countries, others despaired of impending war. One, Pavel Haas, died in Auschwitz. Paul Hindemith’s 1938 Sonata for Oboe and Piano, written in Swiss exile, is said to represent happier days in his native Germany. Pavel Haas’s Suite for Oboe and Piano, composed at the outset of Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia, shares the complex musical language of his teacher, Leoš Janácek. William Bolcom’s ultimately hopeful Aubade – for the Continuation of Life, written amid early 1980s fears of nuclear war, forges a fragile coexistence between cello and piano. Benjamin Britten’s Temporal Variations, written on the eve of World War II, expresses the composer’s anti-militarism. José Siqueira wrote his tuneful Three Etudes for Oboe with Piano Accompaniment shortly before fleeing Brazil’s military dictatorship. Klement Slavický’s professional musical career had been derailed by the Czech Communist regime by the time he wrote his virtuosic Suite for Oboe and Piano.

American-Australian harpist Emily Granger makes her solo debut recording, In Transit, with a collection of contemporary works that reveal the breadth and beauty of harp music from her two countries.

Memories and moods infuse Tristan Coehlo’s evocative title track as well as the composer’s The Old School, recalling an artists’ residence in Australia’s Blue Mountains where he first met Emily. Laura Zaerr’s rhythmical River Right Rhumba is inspired by West African drumming, whilst Sally Greenaway’s Liena, named after Melbourne-born harpist Liena Lacey, draws upon jazz and Latin dance music. Ross Edwards evokes a fantasia in his hypnotic The Harp and the Moon, whilst Libby Larsen’s bold Theme and Deviations is a tease on the traditional musical form. Sally Whitwell’s Undiminished is just that both harmonically and in spirit. Emily’s virtuosity is on full display in Kate Moore soaring Spin Bird, inspired by Jonathan Livingston Seagull, and in Nancy Gustavson’s Great Day, steeped in colorful glissandi showing off the harp in all its glory. Turning her hand to arranging, Emily has adapted Elena Kats-Chernin’s Blue Silence, originally for cello and piano, underscoring the works calming, healing and meditative properties; and Augusta Read Thomas’ Eurythmy Etude “Still Life”, originally for solo piano, stemming from the Greek meaning for beautiful and harmonious rhythm. Emily closes the album with Deborah Henson-Conant’s The Nightingale, one of her earliest musical memories as a young harpist.

British composer Julie Cooper presents her commercial album debut, composed during the COVID-19 lockdowns. This musical diary represents Cooper’s reflections on the continuous cycle of life as experienced so vividly by many during this time. This theme is explored most prominently in the central 4-movement work, the ‘Contemplation Suite’, featuring the soprano Grace Davidson, where the changing of light and dark in the day and its effect on our circadian rhythms is brought to light. The album opens with the title track ‘Continuum’, written and narrated by celebrated Bridgerton and Dr Who actor Anjoa Andoh, poignantly setting the tone and message for the rest of the album. Julie Cooper is an award-winning British composer whose music is broadcast extensively on Film, all BBC television and radio channels, ITV, Channel 4 and 5 and all visual media worldwide. She has scored multiple cinematic orchestral and intimate chamber albums for television drama, film, wildlife documentaries, advertising and video game music, along with numerous drama commissions for Theatre, BBC Radio Drama and the concert platform.

"Increasingly, Shostakovich's music is captivating people all over the world and appealing to their deepest emotions. Almost like no other, it bears witness to a traumatic political epoch while remaining a timeless expression of existential human feeling and experience. For me personally," said conductor Mariss Jansons, who died two years ago, "Shostakovich is one of the most serious and sincere composers of them all." Now BR-KLASSIK is releasing two more outstanding performances by this important Soviet-Russian composer: his impressive Concerto for Piano, Trumpet and String Orchestra, and his Ninth Symphony - performed live by the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks under its long-time principal conductor Mariss Jansons.

Shostakovich's (first) piano concerto features impressive pianistic virtuosity, bold experimentation, satire, and caricatures of different musical styles. The composer wrote it in the summer of 1933, only a few weeks after the completion of his opera "Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk". This concerto in particular demonstrates the immense versatility and magnificent talent of the still carefree 26-year-old Shostakovich. He blends a wealth of musical thoughts and ideas into a colorful and fascinating kaleidoscope. Despite the wealth of different stimuli, the concerto does not seem chaotic or overloaded: the young composer effortlessly maintains the balance. Shostakovich performed a similar balancing act between creative work and conformity to the state in his Ninth Symphony, which premiered on November 3, 1945. Instead of the expected heroic, regime-conformist orchestral thunder along the lines of his Seventh Symphony, the "Leningrad”, the music heard here was playful, without pathos, somewhat witty, full of allusions – yet something did not seem quite right. This musical conundrum, full of ironic refractions and caricatures of melodramatic and triumphant music, was recognized by the censors as a masquerade, yet one that was not easily decipherable.

REVIEW:

I don’t think of any first-rate recording as needless, and this release, despite its short timing, features two excellent performances, even though Yefim Bronfman already has a recording of Shostakovich’s Piano Concerto No. 1 on Sony. That version, from 1999 with Esa-Pekka Salonen and the LA Phil, is nimble and quick, and it finds Bronfman more scintillating than he is in Munich in 2012.

The new Symphony No. 9, BRSO version is a live account from Vienna’s Musikverein in 2011, and in every way it is splendid. Superb recorded sound captures every detail and instrumental color in the score, and the orchestra shows off its world-class status. Jansons’s touch is light and lively, giving the symphony an irresistible buoyancy.

Thanks to some highly individual solo playing from the BRSO’s first desks, which expressively ranges from soulful melancholy to dizzying brilliance, this concert performance displays great emotional variety, including wit and suspense. I can warmly recommend it as one of Jansons’s best efforts in Shostakovich, and you can bypass the stingy timing of the CD by resorting to digital downloads and streams.

This CD is extracted from BR Klassik’s 68-disc Jansons Edition. Final applause is briefly included.

-- Fanfare

Ranging from the 18th century to the music of our time, this collection of critically acclaimed recordings explores the significant contribution to solo piano repertoire made by a wide variety of women composers. These rare and important pieces include the works of the celebrated pianist Anne-Louise Brillon de Jouy and of Hélène de Montgeroult, whose sonatas are distinctive additions to the Classical and early Romantic periods. Maria Szymanowska’s deft dances contrast with the fearsome demands of Teresa Carreño, herself a great virtuoso. Vítězslava Kaprálová was the most important female Czech composer of the 20th century, while Agathe Backer Grøndahl was one of Norway’s most respected composer-pianists. Tanya Ekanayaka continues the lineage in her own diverse and hybrid pieces.

Volumes included:

Carreño: Rêverie & Selected Music for Piano
Szymanowska: Complete Dances for Solo Piano
Kaprálová: Complete Piano Music
Pioneers: Piano Works by Female Composers
Brillon de Jouy: The Piano Sonatas Rediscovered
Ekanayaka: The Planets & Humanity - Piano ReflectionsMontgeroult: Complete Piano Sonatas
Backer Grøndahl: Piano Works

REVIEWS:

French pianist Nicolas Horvath reveals more of the music of Hélène de Montgeroult, the pianist, composer, and teacher whose background influence on such seminal figures as Chopin and Schumann – and quite possibly Brahms – is only now being acknowledged. Horvath makes appealingly light work of her nine keyboard sonatas, several recorded for the first time.

-- BBC Music Magazine

Nicolas Horvath clearly enjoys de Jouy’s work, and delivers readings which are spirited and lyrical, playful and reflective, easing into the minor mode (in which most of the sonatas were composed) as though at the daybreak of Romanticism. In this particular recording, I was struck by the clarity of sound, which made it easier to hear the evenness and responsiveness of Horvath’s touch.

-- Fanfare

Venezuelan pianist-composer Teresa Carreño had a dramatic, colorful career that is hard to believe. Of the works presented in this fascinating recording, all but one are world premieres. This music has a gentle melancholy. Several of these miniatures have Chopinesque harmonies and perfumes. The album ends on an upbeat note, the composer’s Opus 1, a highly accomplished waltz full of scintillating episodes written for Gottschalk. The latter must have been knocked out by this charmer.

Alexandra Oehler plays with sensitive phrasing and skillful voicing. Her refined musical sensibility is just right for this repertory. The recording, like the music, is warm and inviting.

-- American Record Guide

 

For the fifth volume in her series of Erik Satie's piano music, Noriko Ogawa reaches back to an early period in the composer's life. A large part of the program comes from Satie's so-called mystical period. Influenced by medieval plainsong and avoiding all pathos, Satie resorted to austere melodies based on rhythms and harmonies simplified to the extreme; he turned away from the concepts of development and variation in favour of simple repetition of perfectly symmetrical phrases. In other words, he broke completely with the classical-romantic tradition. In its purity and abstraction, Satie’s music from this period seems surprisingly modern by comparison with that of his contemporaries. The title of this volume is Ésoterik Satie, a nickname given to the composer during the period when he began a collaboration with Joséphin Peladan, the grand-master of the ‘Rose-Croix catholique du temple et du graal’, an artistic movement close to symbolism and esotericism. Satie’s fascination for the Middle Ages is reflected not only in the music itself, but also in the titles of some works, such as Ogives (the pointed arches of Gothic architecture), Danses gothiques or Fête donnée par les Chevaliers Normand.

REVIEW:

Noriko Ogawa is a sure guide to these pieces. She plays them on an 1890 Erard piano, which has a bright, clear, rather shallow tone. The booklet is very informative, though the pieces are not played in the order in which they are discussed. These works are best taken a few at a time. Satie’s world is intense but it is also narrow, and the pieces here are all rather similar.

-- MusicWeb International

Following her critically acclaimed recording of Mozart Concertos with Sir Roger Norrington and the RSNO, Francesca Dego turns to a selection of his Sonatas with her long-term recital partner Francesca Leonardi. Dego commented ‘Francesca and I have been playing together for seventeen years, more than half my life and the totality of my career. To work as a duo on a regular basis means reaching common interpretative solutions, ones that sum up each player’s qualities, and creates a great sense of mutual responsibility. What you do together somehow feels naturally complete. We decided to build this album around our very favorite Sonata, KV 454 in B flat major, which we had been performing for many years and in which Mozart’s simplicity and flamboyance coexist in perfect harmony.’

REVIEWS:

Born in 1972, Albert Schnelzer belongs to the most widely noticed Scandinavian composers of his generation. He has written in all genres, and the present album includes a concerto as well as both orchestral and chamber works. Schnelzer’s orchestral output has attracted great attention, with A Freak in Burbank belonging to his most often heard works. Inspired by Haydn as well as by the filmmaker Tim Burton, it has been played more than 70 times to date, in venues such as the Berlin Philharmonie, the Amsterdam Concertgebouw and the Royal Albert Hall. It here appears on album for the first time, performed by the Västerås Sinfonietta conducted by Simon Crawford-Phillips. The same team has also made the premiere recordings of two other works: Burn My Letters – a commission for Clara Schumann’s 200th anniversary – and the violin concerto ‘Nocturnal Songs’, composed for Ilya Gringolts. Interspersed with these are three chamber works – Dance with the Devil, Apollonian Dances and Frozen Landscape – performed by some of Sweden’s foremost instrumentalists.

REVIEW:

A Freak in Burbank is an exciting and vivid work, full of insistent rhythms, quixotic harmonies, and colorful orchestration. There is a capricious spirit in it that grabs the attention of the listener, much as, for example, Haydn’s music does.

Dance with the Devil is for solo piano, and also grabs the attention of the listener from its very first notes. The opening, in fact, is cut from the same musical cloth as is Bartók’s Allegro Barbaro, and like that seminal work Dance never lets up in its energy level. The notes aver that the piece is influenced by heavy metal music.

Burn My Letters—Remembering Clara is scored for chamber orchestra and depicts in music the voluminous correspondence between Clara Schumann and Johannes Brahms. In this rather neo-Romantic work, the composer has attempted to capture something of the energy and lust for life of Clara Schumann, in addition to representing the hectic life she lived as a touring pianist. In this work, he has attempted to assimilate (successfully, I think) the frankness in which Schumann writes about her doubts, fears, and sorrows. Despite such heavy concepts, the piece has a lightness and airy quality about it that I find most attractive.

The program turns back to the realm of chamber music with Apollonian Dances for violin and piano. Violinist Cecilia Zilliacus and pianist David Huang are both clearly masters of their respective instruments, and the work simply couldn’t be in better hands.

Frozen Landscape remembers a vivid experience from Schnelzer’s youth when he was up in the mountains of northern Sweden. This piece’s unrelenting quiet dynamic level sustains interest throughout its seven-and-a-half-minute duration. Both cellist Jakob Koranyi and pianist Huang pull off exquisitely what must be a difficult work to bring across.

The concert concludes with Schnelzer’s Violin Concerto No. 2, “Nocturnal Songs,” a 25-minute work from 2018.

The work was written for violinist Ilya Gringolts, who performs it at the highest level here, even the finger-busting finale. First-class orchestral support is supplied in the pieces that require it by Simon Crawford-Phillips and the Västerås Sinfonietta, an ensemble of which I’ve been previously unaware but glad to have become acquainted with.

This CD is splendid in every parameter, and I am truly delighted to become familiar with the work of such a talented member of the newer generation of Swedish composers.

-- Fanfare

This exciting quintet of young Scottish Gaels, DLÙ, are winners of the ‘Danny Kyle Open Stage 2018’, and were nominated for the MG Alba Scots Trad Award, ‘upcoming artist of the year’, in 2019. Their debut album Moch champions the Gaelic language and culture while blending progressive arrangements, eclectic musical influences and youthful energy. The result – face-paced traditional Scottish tunes with funk, rock and pop – a sound that is uniquely their own. “The greatest reward for those mostly unsung champions of Gaelic language, music and culture is that bands like DLÙ are in the world today.” -Mary Ann Kennedy

A Gramophone Editor's Pick, Shortlisted for the 2022 Gramophone Awards

Recommended by MusicWeb International

A Boston Globe Best Classical Album of 2022

Hans Abrahamsen's Schnee (Snow, 2008) is a gorgeous marvel which encapsulates winter. The instrumental cycle, already a classic of the twenty-first century, comprises a set of ten canons making up an hour of ghostly, feathery music. There is no hurrying, but great depth. As Abrahamsen himself says: ‘In Schnee, a single moment is stretched as far as possible. At some point, the music disappears. There is just a breath of air left’. Founded in 1972, Lapland Chamber Orchestra is the most northerly professional chamber orchestra in Finland and indeed in the entire EU. The orchestra has 18 full-time members and its Artistic Director is conductor John Storgårds. The first ever Principal Guest Conductor, for 2019-2021, is Tomas Djupsjöbacka. Based in Rovaniemi, the orchestra is a regional orchestra that regularly tours the Province of Lapland, but also performs elsewhere in Finland and abroad. The orchestra has performed in festivals such as Savonlinna Opera Festival, Helsinki Festival, the Korsholma Music Festival and the LuostoClassic event. The latest tours abroad have taken the orchestra to Canada, Hungary, Austria, Algeria and the BBC Proms in London.

"The sounds Abrahamsen craves...translucent across a large range of actual expression, hugely complex on the page but delectably simple to the ear, are exceptionally realized and recorded here." -Gramophone

Review

...for a number of years after 1990 [the Danish composer Hans] Abrahamsen composed hardly anything, finding himself in a compositional impasse. The present work Schnee (snow), is one of those with he found his way out of this impasse, and it has been widely admired. However, Abrahamsen’s biggest success so far has been with his 2013 song cycle Let me tell you, using the words of Ophelia from Hamlet. This won the Grawemeyer Award and was voted the greatest classical composition of the twentyfirst century by a poll of critics in 2019.

During his compositional silence, Abrahamsen busied himself with arrangements of the music of other composers, including Bach. He was particularly intrigued by Bach’s set of Canons BWV 1072-8, which he arranged with the aim of repeating them again and again. This gave him the idea of writing his own music using canonic techniques. When he received a commission to write a work for a festival in 2006 he wrote what became the opening two movements of Schnee. The whole work is organised as a set of paired canons, each having an a and a b version. There are also three Intermezzi. Abrahamsen thought of each pair of canons as together forming a third, three-dimensional piece. He also thought of stereoscopic pictures, which two nearly identical pictures give the impression of depth to the viewer.

Each pair of canons is shorter than its predecessor. Furthermore, the ensemble is divided into two groups: sitting on either side of the percussionist on the left we have the strings: violin, viola, cello and one piano. On the right are the woodwind: flute (doubling piccolo and alto flute), oboe (doubling cor anglais), clarinet (doubling E flat and bass clarinet) and a second piano. These are used in contrasting ways. There are also strong contrasts in pace. In the three intermezzi, the wind and stringed instruments are tuned down slightly, creating interference patterns with the pianos, which have normal tuning.

So much for the technicalities of the work, though one could go on a good deal longer about them. What does it sound like? Well, it begins very quietly, so quietly in fact that at first I thought there was something wrong with my equipment. There are very high violin notes and then a melody picked out on the piano. The second set of canons moves rapidly, like walking through swirling snow. The fourth set uses the same sleigh-bells which Mozart used in his Sleigh Ride (Die Schlittenfahrt) from his Three German Dances K. 605. The fifth set uses the device Bach exploited in Contrapunctus 13 from The Art of Fugue of two pieces, one of which is the inversion of the other. At the end, the music just disappears. The work is completely absorbing and gripping and creates a unique atmosphere.

It is beautifully recorded; I was listening in ordinary two-channel stereo, but this is a SACD and should sound even better in that medium. There are helpful sleevenotes, in English and Danish, from which I have borrowed, and altogether this is a memorable disc.

--MusicWeb International (Stephen Barber)

The Golden Age of Leopold Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra" describes the 25 years from 1912 during which a London-born church organist took a provincial American ensemble and built it into one of the finest orchestras in the world, noted for its precision, virtuosity, and splendid tone-color. With the advent of the microphone during the 1920s, Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra made an enormous number of 78rpm discs that would become landmark recordings. For much of this time Stokowski concentrated on basic repertoire – including Beethoven, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Sibelius, Debussy, Mussorgsky and many others. However, side-by-side with familiar pieces went a number of works which no-one else had recorded before or, indeed, has recorded since! Although Stokowski was to record certain compositions several times over during his long career, there were a number which he recorded only once – on 78s made with the Philadelphia Orchestra. This unique collection of restored recordings brings together just those items which fall into this "rarities" category, and it demonstrates Stokowski's incredibly wide-ranging musical sympathies. It covers many periods and styles, from melodies centuries old to colourful Iberian and Oriental works, together with music of 20th-century America.

Rocking Horse Road is the debut recording of Jacqui Dankworth and the Brodsky quartet, bearing witness to a musical relationship that stretches back almost two decades. Jacqui Dankworth is one of the most highly regarded and celebrated vocalists in the UK. The Sunday Times called her ‘One of our finest singers, regardless of category’, whilst the Guardian noted she ‘exhibits a subtle control of dynamics and a voluptuous tonal richness that seems to make almost any material sound special’. Formed in 1972, the Brodsky Quartet have given more than 3,000 concerts around the world, and recorded over 70 albums, covering both the core classical repertoire and collaborations with a wide range of artists from all walks of musical life. The album covers a wide range of material that this partnership has gathered and honed over the years: compositions by Harvey Brough, David Gordon, Charlie Wood and Jacqui Dankworth herself sit alongside arrangements of songs by Björk, Sting, Diana Krall and Elvis Costello.

At the dawn of the 19th century, the guitar was a very widespread instrument both in courtyards and living rooms. Vienna and Paris were cultural centers of great appeal, attracting artists and musicians from all over Europe. The transcription of operatic pieces was a common practice and intended for those who wished to remember, listen to and in some way perform the beautiful pieces heard in the theatres. In this release there are arias and cavatinas by more or less known authors, all linked to the Neapolitan school; the transcriptions were done by François Doisy, Anton Diabelli, Mauro Giuliani, Roger Dias, George Henri Derwort, and many of them are recorded here for the first time. The soprano Alessandra Borin performs this “bel canto” florilegium with an incredible ductility of her vocal technique, accompanied by Alessandro Marchiori playing a copy of the historical guitar Etienne Lapravotte (ca 1830), built by the luthier Gabriele Lodi di Carpi (Modena - Italy).

Renowned countertenor Iestyn Davies and pianist Joseph Middleton perform Schubert's tragic song-cycle Die schöne Müllerin (The Beautiful Maid of the Mill). Adapting poetry by Wilhelm Müller, the song cycle, D. 795, marks the beginning of the end of Schubert's life.

Released under the house label of St John's College, Cambridge, this recording acts as a celebration of Iestyn Davies's formative period at the college; beginning there as a 7-year-old probationer in 1987, he progressed to become Head Chorister, ultimately returning to study as a choral scholar. Alongside full texts and translations, the booklet includes a background on the work by noted Lieder expert Susan Youens, as well as reflections on Iestyn's time at St John's from the College's past and present Directors of Music – Christopher Robinson and Andrew Nethsingha.

Jennifer Kloetzel’s lifelong journey with Beethoven began early: she was eight years old when her teacher placed the composer’s second cello sonata on her music stand, opening the door to an odyssey of intrigue and, ultimately, obsession with the composer’s music. Since then, rarely has a day passed without Beethoven being a part of Jennifer’s life. She has studied and performed all of the composer’s duos and trios. As founding cellist of the Cypress String Quartet, she spent 20 years rehearsing, performing and recording the string quartets. Jennifer now arrives at a career milestone with this recording of Beethoven’s Complete Works for Cello and Piano. Views vary as to what comprises Beethoven’s “complete” works for cello and piano. Jennifer’s discerning choice includes the five Sonatas for Cello and Piano, three sets of variations – based on arias from Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte and Handel’s Judas Maccabaeus – and the Horn sonata for which the composer also wrote a cello part. Jennifer spares no attention to detail across the entire spectrum of this significant recording project. Her performing partner Robert Koenig plays on a 19th century Blüthner concert grand piano. The illuminating liner notes are penned by Beethoven scholar William Meredith who boldly states, “if there were only the five cello sonatas of Beethoven left of all his music, these alone would have cemented his place in history.” The recording was made in the stellar acoustic of Skywalker Sound. The 3-album set is lavishly packaged in a deluxe digipack. The title track, “The Conquering Hero” – from the opening set of variations from Handel’s Judas Maccabaeus – evokes everything for Jennifer about Beethoven’s music, coming from a place of triumph and joy.