Innovative and enthralling mezzo-soprano Anne Sofie von Otter already has a successful discography, including her critically acclaimed album with Brad Mehldau Love Songs, and her Grammy award-winning Douce France. For this release, Anne has joined with Brooklyn Rider, a trailblazing and frequently favorited string quartet. The project which ensued presents music from iconic artists in both the classical and pop music worlds. Brooklyn Rider is violinists Colin Jacobsen and Johnny Gandelsman, violist Nicholas Cords, and cellist Eric Jacobsen. Based in New York City, the ensemble is known for playing contemporary and unusual repertoire. The group founded the Stillwater Music Festival in 2006. New works written just for Anne Sofie and Brooklyn Rider come from composers Nico Muhly, Brooklyn Rider’s own Colin Jacobsen, and Pulitzer Prize winner Caroline Shaw. Works from Brooklyn Rider’s ‘Almanac’ project are also included, which The Boston Globe called “an all-over-the-map stylistic tour and a treatise on present-day quartet writing.”

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REVIEW:

What is so remarkable about Anne Sofie von Otter is her ability to assimilate so many different styles and make them her own. Nowhere on this album is there a sense of a classically schooled singer who tries to incorporate music from another world in her traditional way of singing. She adjusts her way of singing to the material in question—and it sounds natural.

– MusicWeb International

After Il barbiere di Siviglia, the Petite Messe solennelle is Gioacchino Rossini’s most celebrated composition. Composed 1862-64, the highly unusual Petite Messe solennelle comes from Rossini’s final creative period, divided from his career as an operatic composer by an interval of nearly thirty years and by a radical questioning of the purpose of composition, which was accompanied by an equally spectacular renewal of his musical style. The Petite Messe solennelle was founded as homage to Louis Niedermeyer (d. 1861), Swiss musician and close friend of Rossini’s, as recent research has established. For this live recording from 2014, the forces of the orchestre de chambre de Paris and conductor Ottavio Dantone were joined by four outstanding vocal soloists: Soprano Julia Lezhneva, Contralto Delphine Galou, tenor Michael Spyres and bass Alexander Vinogradov.

This cycle for voice, clarinet and string quartet, the sole work on this recording, has as its title the most explicit reference in Alberto Posadas’s work so far to the shadow, and to darkness. Nevertheless, such allusions also abound in the rest of his oeuvre: though whether more apparent or more hidden, they are often somber, veiled, obscure. Throughout the cycle, the metaphorical presiding role of shadow and darkness goes beyond purely visual connotations. The ‘beauty of sound shadows’- to borrow a phrase from the celebrated volume of homage to Gerard Grisey edited by Danielle Cohen-Levinas- sublimates the metaphor into an acoustic component running through the whole cycle. Alberto Posadas was born in Valladolid in 1967, where he received his first musical training. Later he moved to Madrid to study composition with Francisco Guerrero. His work has explored the relationship between music and nature, mathematics, and other artistic disciplines. For years he has researched what he calls ‘micro-instrumentation,’ a concept based on the idea of obtaining musical material from the resources offered by the acoustic of the instruments at a micro level.

FRANCK Violin Sonata. DEBUSSY Cello Sonata. POULENC Cello Sonata • Anne Gastinel (vc); Claire Désert (pn) • NAÏVE V5259 (61: 20)


This is an excellent version of Poulenc’s Cello Sonata. It has a persuasive sense of direction and a well-judged series of tempo decisions. It’s also warmly played, and ensemble between Anne Gastinel and Claire Désert is watertight. If your classic recording of choice is that of Pierre Fournier with Jacques Février—and I suppose that 1971 LP disc looms large in the discography—then you should know that the newcomers have their own views about things, and they ensure a convincing milieu for the work. Maybe the older pair breathed more naturally at certain points in the first movement—one feels their paragraphal phrasing is the more natural—but that doesn’t limit admiration for Gastinel and Désert, who take a more incisive tempo for the slow movement and sustain it well. It’s a passionate point of view, but then it is a passionate movement and one of the most outspoken in all of Poulenc’s music. Witty badinage restores things in the Ballabile third movement, and while Fournier emphasizes some of the more spectral moments in the finale with greater impact and immediacy, the more up-to-date and natural dynamic range of this Naïve recording proves laudable. This then is a compelling and first-class account of the sonata.


The Debussy sonata reprises the virtues of the Poulenc, though it does so in a way that signals the players’ freedom from convention. They don’t play in as arresting a manner as those pioneering French musicians Maurice Maréchal and Robert Casadesus, who, in their 1930 recording, performed with unselfconscious directness. But they do abjure some of the more outré gestures that have accreted to, say, the Sérénade’s pizzicatos, which is well and good in my book. They play with assurance throughout, though my own preferences lie with the classic older statement and also with the more phrasally suggestive playing of Tortelier and Gerald Moore in their 1948 disc, now in a huge Paul Tortelier EMI retrospective box.


The last work is the transcription of the Franck Violin Sonata made by Jules Delsart, with the approval of the composer, in 1888. This has been an increasingly popular option for cellists, and Gastinel and Désert play with a canny appreciation of when to press on and when to fine-down tone. Gastinel’s vibrato speed is well judged, and the pianist, who shoulders most of the truly taxing demands, acquits herself estimably.


This fine recital has been warmly recorded, is well balanced and reflects well on all concerned.


FANFARE: Jonathan Woolf

A luminous, easily recognizable instrument, and a symbol of Italy's learned and popular musical tradition, the mandolin has been the subject of several major compositions throughout the history of music. First of all, the famous concertos by Vivaldi: two of them appear here on this intensely romantic album (‘Come une volta’) that Julien Martineau - one of today’s greatest figureheads of the instrument - has recorded for Naïve. We also finally get to hear, thanks to the world premiere recording by Julien Martineau, the legendary, virtuosic and poetic second concerto (of which the manuscript was lost) by Raffaele Calace (1863-1934), who was often described as "the Paganini of the mandolin". The instrument is in fact so close, in many ways, to the violin. The Caudioso concerto completes an album which, steeped in authenticity and musical excellence, honors and lends prestige not only to the art of mandolin, but also to Italian and musical culture as a whole.

In 2005, with the world premiere of Cinq poèmes de János Pilinszky, accentus met Bruno Mantovani for the first time. After this first commission, three other works followed, marking further collaborations. This beautiful artistic partnership is now celebrated with the release of Mantovani: Voices, an album that follows upon such contemporary and critically-lauded accentus vocal portrait collections celebrating living composers as Pascal Dusapin’s Requiem[s] (in 2000) and Philippe Manoury’s In-harmonies (2010). The versatile musician Bruno Mantovani (b. 1974) is firstly a composer, but also a conductor; he produces a weekly broadcast on France musique and runs the Conservatoire national supérieur de musique et de danse in Paris, a post he’s held since August 2010. + His music regularly connects with the history of occidental music (Bach, Gesualdo, Rameau, Schubert, Schumann) or the popular repertory (jazz, oriental music). + The international success of his work was immediate, and is today performed by renowned soloists and prestigious orchestras worldwide.

Recorded live in concert, Paavo Järvi created and conducted this thrilling programme of orchestral arrangements of chamber music works. The result is a world-class encounter between some of the most important names in music history. Works by Brahms, Shoenberg, Bach, and Webern are included. Currently in his third season as Music Director of Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra, Paavo Järvi and the orchestra have just returned from a very successful tour to China and. Previous tours have taken them to major European Festivals, including the BBC Proms, the Rheingau Musik Festival in Germany and the Robeco Summer series in the Amsterdam Concertgebouw.

Harold in Italy was commissioned from Berlioz by the virtuoso violinist Paganini, who wanted something to show off his fine new viola. Actually, that’s not quite true; Paganini thought he was paying for a flashy concerto, but what he got was a symphonic poem. The viola plays the part of Byron’s Childe Harold, while Berlioz relives his own happy memories of travelling the wilds of Italy, meeting the locals in the mountains, encountering priests, brigands, and travelling musicians. Paganini was disappointed, and never played it… and despite an enthusiasm for most Berlioz, I’ve tended to agree with Paganini, and never quite hit it off with Harold. Until now.

Why the change of heart? Well, let’s look at the forces: Mark Minkowski’s ensemble Les Musiciens du Louvre-Grenoble on period instruments, and for a band that began with the baroque, this is serious mission-creep, and their approach changes things in all kinds of subtle ways. Antoine Tamestit is the viola soloist, and from his gentle, folk-like first entry, and the breathless hush with which it’s echoed, there’s genuine intimacy, and the most delicate accompaniment. The plangent melancholy of the solo viola’s upper reaches contrasts beautifully with its woody depths; there’s the piquant edge of the winds, the purposeful gleam of brass; darker colours and lighter textures than a modern orchestra, and a subtle rebalancing of dynamics – so much seems like chamber music. Minkowski finds a lightning-fast response to Berlioz’s sudden outbursts, easily flowing tempos, and scurrying strings and razor-sharp attack in the Brigands’ Orgy – and everything worked out with Paganini, who was dazzled by the score when he finally heard it.

The same sense of seductive intimacy pervades Berlioz’s song cycle Summer Nights, and while mezzo Anne Sofie von Otter may not have quite the purity of tone which graced her previous recording, she seems to emerge from inside these songs, and the deliciously moulded accompaniments support her with grace and rare sensitivity. The transparency and detail are a tribute to the recording as well as the playing, the booklet is luxuriously appointed with evocative landscapes, and there’s a nice bonus: Otter and Tamestit together at the end for Marguerite’s song of the King of Thule from Berlioz’s The Damnation of Faust. I’ll be damned: at last an account of Berlioz’s Harold I want to keep.

-- Andrew McGregor, BBC Music [1/27/2012]

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Several of Berlioz’s works have been recorded using period instruments, among them the Symphonie Fantastique and the Grande Messe des Morts. However, I can’t readily recall many period performances of Harold en Italie. Sir John Eliot Gardiner made a very fine recording with his Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique and violist Gérard Caussé for Philips but that was way back in 1994 and I’m not sure that it’s currently available. So Marc Minkowski and Les Musiciens du Louvre-Grenoble seem to have the field pretty much to themselves.
 
I’m happy to be able to report to anyone wanting a version of this work on period instruments that this new recording should more than meet their needs. Minkowski conducts with flair and his orchestra is excellent. Berlioz was one of music’s most innovative orchestrators and period instruments can bring out the tangy, original colours of his scoring exceptionally well. It’s a joy to hear the orchestral score in a performance of this quality; and that’s an observation that applies to the other music on the disc as well.
 
Right from the start of Harold the grainy strings and slightly rasping brass are a delight. When the solo viola enters (track 1, 2:59) the husky tone is beautifully set against the pastel shades of the accompaniment, chiefly the gently rippling harp and cooing clarinets. Hereabouts, Antoine Tamestit, a splendid soloist, conveys the melancholy air of Harold very well indeed. Later in the movement Minkowski whips up the music excitingly. Though I’m a great Berlioz fan I have to admit that the second movement doesn’t seem to me to be one of his most interesting movements. Moreover, the viola part is so uneventful that it’s not hard to see why Paganini, having commissioned the work, wasn’t interested in playing it – though, to his great credit he not only expressed admiration for the piece when he heard it performed but also paid Berlioz the agreed fee.
 
In the third movement Minkowski ensures that the music lilts most persuasively. There’s an excellent and entirely appropriate rustic feel in this performance. There’s tremendous drive and spirit in the finale. Minkowski and his orchestra dispatch the Orgy of Brigands with gusto and élan. Here, as elsewhere in the score, the primary colours of Berlioz’s score are brought to life vividly. I think it helps that the recording is quite close – though by no means oppressively so – and this, plus the transparency of the period instruments, means that a welcome amount of detail registers.
 
Les Nuits d’Été is equally successful. Anne Sofie von Otter is a singer I admire very much though sometimes she can seem a little cool. That’s not the case here. For example, she offers some ardent singing in ‘Sur les lagunes’. This is a darkly passionate setting and Miss von Otter really communicates expressive grief. By contrast, in the opening song, ‘Villanelle’, we hear her at her most engaging in a light, eager rendition of the song. In ‘Absence’ her control in the refrain ‘Reviens, reviens, ma bien-aimée’ is wonderful – as is that of the supporting players. She and Minkowski combine to invest ‘L’Île inconnue’ with a surge of buoyant energy. This delightful, happy reading is a fine end to an excellent account of the cycle. Once again the orchestra more than plays its part in the success of the performance. The lively tempo and alert playing in ‘Villanelle’ is a delight – especially the chattering woodwinds. At the start of ‘Le Spectre de la rose’ the grainy strings under the unison flute and clarinet provide a lovely mixture of timbres, supporting the singer’s poised delivery of a beautiful, sustaine d line. The nutty orchestral timbres are an important feature in ‘Sur les lagunes’.
 
Finally, to complete our pleasure, Miss von Otter and Antoine Tamestit come together to give a fine performance of ‘Le Roi de Thulé’. Here the plangent viola tone is a perfect foil for von Otter’s gently wistful singing.
 
This is a very fine disc and also a fascinating one which I urge all Berlioz admirers to hear. Not only are the performances extremely good but also the production values are high. This applies to the recorded sound, which, as I’ve already indicated, is good. Even more does it apply to the sumptuous booklet which is beautifully illustrated. The booklet also includes, in addition to a useful note, an extract from Berlioz’s Memoirs concerning Harold en Italie.
 
This is one of the most stimulating Berlioz releases that I’ve heard in recent years.
 
-- John Quinn, MusicWeb International

French pianist Lise de la Salle's new album is an outstanding, shining and subtle concept album built around Bach's music. Lise de la Salle selected pieces of Bach and works composed as a tribute to the giant of Leipzig: Busoni, Liszt, Roussel e.a. Four additional pieces have been commissioned to French classical and jazz pianist Thomas Enhco. Since 2001, Lise de la Salle has enjoyed an impressive international career that has seen her perform in every leading concert hall in Europe, the United States and Asia. She works closely with the conductors Fabio Luisi, James Conion and Osmo Vanska, among others, and has also played under the direction of Ludovic Morlot, James Gaffigan, Sir Andrew Davis, and others. She is regularly invited to perform with orchestras such as the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and the London Symphony Orchestra. Her previous albums have garnered her critical acclaim.

Bach: Praeludien & Fugen

Drummer Mark Guiliana is renowned for his work with Avishai Cohen for several years from 2002 to 2009. ‘Locked in a Basement’ is his debut album as band leader and producer. Hailed by The New York Times as “a drummer around whom a cult of admiration has formed,” Mark Guiliana brings the same adventurous spirit, eclectic palette and gift for spontaneous invention to a staggering range of styles. Equally virtuosic playing acoustic jazz, boundary-stretching electronic music, or next-level rock, he’s become a key collaborator with such original sonic thinkers as Brad Mehldau, Meshell Ndegeocello, Donny McCaslin, Matisyahu, and the late, great David Bowie.

Scriabin and Mozart: two composers rarely associated, yet the juxtaposition here seems clear when performed by Zlata Chochieva. In this first album, the Russian pianist, new to the naïve label, is ingenious in both the cycles of fragmented variations and the more opulent sonatas or preludes. This project is inspired by the 150th anniversary of Scriabin’s birth, but Zlata Chochieva has been a fan of the Russian composer since her childhood as he was the first to appeal to her emotions as a listener and performer. Associating him with the classical Mozart – rather than a romantic composer, as is usually the case – enables Zlata Chochieva to conjure up an unexpected kinship that benefits from her vibrant and graceful style, rising to thrilling virtuosity. “The perfection in the phrasing, the polyphony and the formal proportions, plus the concision and the lack of superfluous notes are just some of the points that link Scriabin to Mozart,” she explains.

By its title and its twelve violin concertos, Vivaldi’s L’estro armonico immediately captures the imagination. Rinaldo Alessandrini and his Concerto Italiano, with the addition of high-calibre keyboardists, present the full collection with the six additional adaptations for keyboard by Bach. This Opus 3 published by Vivaldi in 1711 vibrates with the virtues of a poetic energy taken to the highest level of expressivity, embodied in the subtle and virtuosic exchanges between a string orchestra and four, two, then one solo violins. The stylistic principles developed in each piece were completely new and inspired for the time, the virtuosity intense, and the success considerable, rapidly reaching beyond the frontiers of La Serenissima. Which is how Bach, seven years younger than Vivaldi and drawn to the polyphonic dimension of these “multi-voiced” pieces, adapted several of them for organ and harpsichord.

A few months ago, Avishai Cohen was releasing his symphonic album “Two Roses”, a “once in a lifetime project", he said. After a successful release and more than a hundred reviews around the world – the Israeli composer, singer, and bass player returns to jazz with a dazzling new trio: Elchin Shirinov, still on the piano and, on drums, the arrival of the young and incredibly talented Roni Kaspi, who joined the band during the 2021 summer tour. This new album “Shifting Sands”, recorded in August 2021, re-engages with this very special alchemy that Cohen’s music provides: fresh and expansive melodic lines, diverse and sophisticated rhythms and a musical elegance that only he can achieve.

REVIEW:

Consistency and excellence are two of the most fundamental requisites for achieving an optimal career in music. The Israeli bassist and composer Avishai Cohen has maintained those standards for many years, and his new trio emerges with a powerful offering that should reinforce his status as a jazz-based titan. This formation enlists familiar, longtime collaborator Elchin Shirinov on piano with a relative newcomer and recent Berklee graduate, 21-year old drummer Roni Kaspi. The results of their initial collaboration are stirring from start to finish.

Cohen's confidence in his team and his material is apparent from how often he remains in the background. On the opening "Intertwined," Shirinov sets the tone and gets the first solo while Kaspi snaps across the rims and cymbal heads in lead-type notation. Cohen does not come to the fore until two songs later, on the relaxed "Dvash," the first of three solo-type interludes, then demonstrates his proficiency on the bow during "Chacha Rom." "Hitragut" is a sweet summer song that lands like a Central Park serenade. Many pieces follow a basic structure that begins with one or two sharply repeated patterns, rolls into transitional overlaps, then returns along the opening framework in a formula that fits the album's title theme perfectly.

One of the most impressive things about this this exceptional record is how much masterful mileage each member gets from a relatively small number of notes or beats. Top rank creativity, aptitude, and technique are some other things that make for musical success. There is an abundance of all that and more to be found in this new trio.

-- AllAboutJazz.com (Phillip Woolever)

Only now are we fully aware of the true immensity of Vivaldi’s concerto repertoire. The violin is by no means the only instrument he favored: the place of the bassoon in his work catalogue is remarkable for its size and stylistic homogeneity, as well as for his solistic treatment of an instrument previously confined to the continuo. Seven new concertos here join the twenty-six already recorded in the first four volumes of the Vivaldi Edition, an anthology Sergio Azzolini embarked on in 2009 with L’Aura Soave, and now builds on with L’Onda Armonica.