Ulvi Cemal Erkin was one of the ‘Turkish Five’, contemporaries who established the foundations of twentieth-century Turkish music by combining Western forms with their own folk traditions. His most performed work is Kocekce, a dance suite inspired by the traditional kocek dancers of his native country. The Violin Concerto employs a classical Western structure but also includes a taksim section in its final movement, typical of improvisatory Turkish violin music. The evocative Symphony No. 2 is the apex of Erkin’s symphonic works, its last movement consisting entirely of folk tunes he himself discovered.

Successful string quartet performance is all about communication, in the purest sense of the word: constant giving and exchanging, a communion among the players based on an intimate relationship bound by deep understanding, of the music and of each other. It’s the essence of what is meant by ensemble. When you have that, you can play anything together and make it vital, and most of all, true to the composer’s intent.

As my colleague David Hurwitz said in an earlier review, Brahms’ quartets are “respected more than they are loved”, and can sound “overworked” and “texturally monotonous”. It’s true that you can play unlawfully fast and loose with these quartets and pretty much get away with it, given enough rhythmic finesse and blurring of textures, and these are among the many reasons that listeners, including me, usually aren’t that much in love with these dense, phenomenally busy, complicated pieces. But when you hear them played with the unusual clarity, scintillating detail, and dynamic, exacting, turn-on-a-dime expressive statements uttered by an ensemble of literally one interpretive mind and unassailable technique, you have to rethink the reasons for your avoidance reflex when faced with a Brahms quartet close encounter.

When the New Zealand Quartet made this recording its members had been working and playing together for 20 years, a rarity in the music world, and a situation that pays huge dividends in performance. There are few relationships anywhere in which the members spend more time together, pouring heart and soul into an intensely charged, creative collaboration, its success built both on individual artistic drive and vision, and contingent on compromising, blending, and capitalizing on the strengths of those impulses and passions. Any group that can manage this, whether a married couple or a string quartet, is something of a miracle, and, especially if you’ve seen this group in concert, you know how special it is.

And there is no holding back in these performances: the NZSQ literally attacks and wrestles Brahms’ scores to the ground–a positive, friendly intervention, for the good of all concerned. These performances should not disappoint any listener, whether you hate Brahms or love his music, because they take you out of the realm of preconception and just deliver aggressive, uninhibited, and yes, passionate expressions of these scores, respectful of the composer while always working to realize the fullness of the music that Brahms struggled so long and hard to create.

My only regret here is that with a recording you don’t truly experience what this group is doing. Unless you actually see them in concert, you don’t appreciate the incredible group dynamic that’s happening during a performance, you don’t totally get the ensemble interaction that produces this result. They stand when they perform–cellist Rolf Gjelsten sits on a special raised platform–and there’s a physicality to the communication among the players that’s only comparable to a dance, a ballet. And if you can make a ballet out of Brahms’ string quartets, well, you’ve got something that’s worth listening to.

– ClassicsToday (David Vernier)

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The works on this recording were written by four roughly contemporary Polish composers who settled and pursued their careers in different parts of the world. Grayna Bacewicz's first Violin Concerto displays her own glittering virtuosity as a performer, while Alexandre Tansman wrote his Baroque-infused Five Pieces for the great Josef Szigeti. Michal Spisak considered his neo-classical Andante and Allegro to be "a little story for violin and orchestra", while Andrzej Panufnik's wide-ranging Violin Concerto became a "pilgrimage into my past" and is richly suffused with Polish atmosphere.

Review:

There are four rewarding works to be discovered on this disc, although only two of them are technically concertos. Andrzej Panufnik's Violin Concerto, written in 1971 and recorded in concert in 2014 by ?ód?-born violinist Piotr P?awner, the Kammersymphonie Berlin and conductor Jürgen Bruns. The second movement, with its seemingly endless lines of melody, reminds us that the concerto was written for Yehudi Menuhin and his famous nonstop vibrato. P?awner does those long lines justice here, before wrapping up the piece in a spiky, frenetic Polish dance.

– Guardian

The music and poetry of numerous persecuted and exiled minority cultures flourished throughout the Mediterranean and South America during the 17th century, the sensitivities of these displaced communities retaining powerful resonance today. These ancient narratives on beauty, love, joy and sorrow are expressed through Yaniv d'Or's haunting voice against a "folk-Baroque" instrumental backdrop that reinvents enchanting and distinctive musical worlds.

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Reviews:

Latino Ladino is the latest album from the inventive countertenor Yaniv d’Or. His rich, honeyed falsetto guides us through various Ladino traditions, eventually crossing the Atlantic to the Missa Mexicana of 1677. Here d’Or multi-tracks both voices of Francisco Escalada’s Canten dos Jilguerillos, a wonderful flamenco-infused setting of two goldfinches watching over the Christ child. Flamenco also appears in the Ladino song ‘A la una yo naci’, which d’Or has traced as far as Peru. This sumptuous programme is enhanced by excellent booklet-notes from Richard Jones, who explains how each performance has been constructed in what d’Or himself often calls a folk-Baroque style.

– Gramophone

This recital by countertenor Yaniv d'Or mixes a wide variety of music, from Spain to South America, from the 17th century to the 21st. The program's chief novelty, as the title suggests, is to mix Jewish and non-Jewish elements convincingly; recordings of music from the Ladino tradition of Spain's Jewish community generally focus on that tradition to the exclusion of others. D'Or maps it onto a wider theme of exile and wandering, reaching back to the African-influenced marizápalos and canarios dances cultivated by various composers of the Spanish Baroque, but also bringing in music by Albéniz, the Chilean folk singer Violeta Parra, and even a song of his own composition. But really the main attraction is the limpid voice of d'Or, who has performed this program live and entranced audiences with darkly beautiful readings of traditional Ladino songs from across the Jewish diaspora. An innovative and lovely recording.

– All Music Guide (James Manheim)

Fernando Sor was not only one of the great guitarists of his era but a major composer for the instrument, described by a contemporary critic as "the Beethoven of the guitar". His desire for the guitar to represent a miniature orchestra in timbre is a distinctive feature of his many compositions. The 24 Progressive Lessons, Op. 31 offer a panoramic lexicon for the student, moving from a simple waltz to perpetual motion, whilst the charming Six Little Pieces, Op. 32 further explore technical efficiency and musical expressiveness.

Johann Michael Haydn's music has inevitably been overshadowed by that of his elder brother Franz Joseph, but his music represents some of the best features of 19th century classicism. These four Sinfonias span just over a decade, from the graceful combination of elegance and liveliness in the Sinfonia in D, the muted violins in the Adagietto affettuoso of the Sinfonia in E-Flat, the lovely sicilienne of the Sinfonia in B-Flat to the substantial Sinfonia in F, which features a solo violin and cor anglais playing together or in alternation.

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Dublin-born prodigy John Field enjoyed a wide reputation and great popularity. He was renowned as a soloist for his delicacy of nuance and as a composer for his cultivation of that most poetic of forms, the nocturne. His Piano Concertos were eagerly anticipated and the premiere of the Concerto No. 7 in Paris on Christmas Day 1832 was attended by both Chopin and Liszt. Ingeniously structured in two movements, its Rondo finale evokes the ballroom and Russia in a series of constant contrasts. The Irish Concerto is a reworking of the first movement of Field's Piano Concerto No. 2 in A-Flat Major.

An English aristocrat with a mixed heritage, Georges Onslow was highly regarded for his musical talents during his lifetime, being praised by Berlioz and Schumann and becoming known as the "French Beethoven". Onslow composed 34 string quintets at a time when the string quartet was dominant and his discovery of the double bass to replace the second cello was transformative. Challenging notions of stringed instruments as being merely lyrical in character, these quintets are striking for their contrasts of warm expressiveness and great dramatic intensity. They are true hidden gems to rival the great composers of chamber music in this era.

This album is the first to present an entire program of works by Debussy and Ravel, the greatest exponents of Impressionism in music, transcribed for two guitars. The arrangements bring new life to the rich canvas of sonorities and complex harmonies in these popular works. The reflective atmosphere in Debussy's famous Clair de lune and special upper-harmonic effects in La plus que lente contrast with the "merry romp" of the Golliwog's Cakewalk and Ravel's nod to Schubert in the Valses nobles et sentimentales.

Here’s a welcome reissue from Marco Polo, now on the less expensive Naxos line. László Lajtha (1892-1963) was the major 20th century Hungarian symphonist. He had the good fortune to be picked up by an important publisher early on (Leduc), but suffered from being largely out of favor with the Communist regime for most of his career. He wrote major works in all the traditional forms, in a style recognizably personal and immediately appealing, but without pandering. Aesthetically (as Leduc recognized) his voice was audibly French in orientation, and if I had to categorize him I might say that he was a sort of Hungarian Martinu. The melos of Hungarian folk music underlies much of his thematic substance, but the translucent textures and colorful orchestration have an impressionistic tinge.

All of this is quite evident in the First Symphony, a pithy work in three movements that consistently captivates the ear. In memoriam is a big, powerful funeral march that takes a few minutes to get going, but once it does, proceeds memorably. Its central climaxes are aptly harrowing. The early Suite for Orchestra has four movements, including a parodistic Marche burlesque and an equally ironic Can-Can conclusion. Its Valse lente third movement is lovely, as are these performances. The Pécs Symphony Orchestral plays well for conductor Nicolás Parquet, and they are also naturally recorded in a warm, open acoustic. If you missed this series the first time around, grab these reissues as they come.

– ClassicsToday (David Hurwitz)

The music of the Prague-born prodigy Erwin Schulhoff has become increasingly popular in recent decades. He moved through successive creative phases and, on this recording, Spectrum Concerts Berlin focuses on music written between 1924 and 1927. The Cinq Études de jazz explore the “rhythmic intoxication” he described in a letter to Alban Berg, while the Duo for violin and cello and the Violin Sonata No. 2 offer striking parallels to similar works by Bartók, Kodály, and Debussy. The String Sextet contains violent contrasts and almost Cubist montage and was a key work in Schulhoff’s artistic development.

The guitar’s range and sense of national colour are celebrated in this recital by Armen Doneyan, the exciting young French virtuoso, with music from Hungary, Poland, Italy, Spain, Cuba and Brazil. His programme includes Luigi Legnani’s Fantasia, Op. 19 with its scintillating Listzian brilliance, as well as the fiery and evocative Fantaisie on Hungarian Themes by Johann Dubez. The pivotal figure of Francisco Tárrega, who established a unique Spanish voice for the guitar, is included as is the vivacious, flamenco-influenced Sonata by Turina. A contemporary master, Leo Brouwer, is represented by his evocative Rito de los Orishas.

In 1891 Symbolist poet Stéphane Mallarmé asked Debussy to compose incidental music for a theatrical version of his poem L’Après-midi d’un faune (The afternoon of the faun) and the resulting work, with its innovative melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic writing, is both impassioned and expressive. The four-hand arrangement was made by Ravel in 1910. Subtitled “esquisses symphoniques” – or symphonic sketches – La Mer, inspired by the natural phenomena of water, light and wind, is a masterpiece that doesn’t conform to structural convention. Of the evocatively enchanting Images, he wrote that it marked a departure for him, dealing with “realities” not impressionism.

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James Whitbourn is a Grammy® nominated composer whose music is internationally admired for its direct connection with performers and audiences, The Observer describing him as "a truly original communicator in modern British choral music." Carolae is a fusion of the great Christmas traditions at King’s College Cambridge and Princeton University Chapel, with the Missa Carolæ at its heart. Whitbourn’s love of medieval musical language is reflected in his clever use of original melody with famous carols such as Noël Nouvelet, combined with skillful new arrangements of seasonal favorites such as The Coventry Carol.

Argentinian guitarist and composer Jorge Morel’s long and distinguished career has made him a legendary figure amongst guitarists, renowned as “a consummate and virtuoso artist” (Guitar Magazine) whose music is favored for its blend of colorful Latin American vibrancy and North American sophistication. From gently lyrical pieces such as the Milonga del Viento to the life-force of the dance in works such as the Giga Criolla, to the more classical Sonatina, deeply descriptive Pampero and much more besides, this program is a true reflection of the amazing variety of Morel’s creative output.

Vaughan Williams withdrew or destroyed many works from his earliest period, but with its haunting opening and luminous polyphonic textures he considered The Solent as amongst his ‘most important works’. The Fantasia is his earliest known piece for solo instrument with orchestra and contains some of his most bravura writing, contrasting with the graceful geniality of the Suite. Depicting a sublimely pastoral scene and now one of the best loved pieces ever written, Vaughan Williams called The Lark Ascending a ‘romance’, a term reserved for his most profoundly lyrical utterances.

Johannes Brahms is considered Beethoven’s successor in terms of his orchestral output, but for chamber music it was more the Romantic mantle of Robert Schumann that he assumed, vastly expanding its scale and ambitions in the 19th century and remaining a towering influence until well into the 20th. The First Piano Quartet has a deeply felt Andante con moto at its heart, and a sprightly ‘Gypsy Rondo’ finale. Brahms started writing the Third Piano Quartet in the difficult period of Schumann’s final illness, later re-composing it to create a work of symphonic proportions, distinctive power and striking beauty.

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The players have the feel of a group who have become welded together by years of mutual performances, the balance between them, as melodies are woven, being so perfectly weighted. The tempos also have that natural feel with scherzos that are never rushed, while the string intonation is impeccable.

– David Denton's Review Corner (November 2016)

László Lajtha was one of the leading Hungarian composers of the first half of the twentieth century. Of his nine symphonies, Symphony No. 2, from 1938, is an intense, sombre and brooding work as if foreshadowing the horrors of the war to come. Volume 1 of this original Marco Polo series can be heard on 8.573643. A Marco Polo reissue. With his contemporaries Bartók, Kodály, and Dohnányi, László Lajtha was one the leading Hungarian composers in the first half of the twentieth-century, and his position as the country’s greatest symphonist is unrivalled. Of his nine symphoniesSymphony No.2, Op.27 dates from 1938 and is an intense, sombre, and brooding work as if foreshadowing the horrors of war to come. Asked to compose incidental music for the film of T.S. Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral Lajtha responded with a magnificent score, which can also be enjoyed as an autonomous composition called Variations, Op.44.

One of China's leading contemporary composers, Jia Daqun has often drawn on the traditional music of his native country. Flavour of Bashu derives its themes from Sichuan opera with its astrigency, rhythmic uncertainty and distinctive piquancy. The Prospect of Coloured Desert is one of his best-loved works, composed for Yo-Yo Ma's Silk Road Project. Counterpoint of Times is a chamber concerto of fascinating complexity, whilst the String Quartet has been enriched with folk tunes and vivid performing techniques. Volume 1 is available for download on 970241.

Before his thirtieth birthday the young Catalan composer Antonio Soler had become maestro di capilla and organist at the Escorial palace, positions he held for hte rest of his life. Many of his keyboard sonatas were written for Don Gabriel, son of King Carlos III, and they represent his greatest compositional achievement, effortlessly embodying the dual influences of Domenico Scarlatti and the emergent Viennese school. Each sonata in Volume 6 has its own distinctive character, from the ingenious contrasts of No. 63 in F major and the harmonic sophistication of No. 64 in G major to the delicious Iberian colours evoked in No. 66 in C major.

This programme of four colourful, contrasting but complementary works for small orchestra celebrates the lighter side of four twentieth-century Italian composers, centring on Alfredo Casella’s Divertimento for Fulvia, composed for his young daughter. Casella’s friend Gian Francesco Malipiero wrote Oriente immaginario (Imaginary Orient) for a Futurist play by Achille Ricciardi (1884-1923). Franco Donatoni once called his simply-titled Musica (Music) ‘kind of Schoenberg gone a bit neoclassical’ – but also with a great sense of humour – while Giorgio Federico Ghedini’s Concerto grosso is a twentieth-century tribute to both Bach and Beethoven.

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Shostakovich’s two Piano Concertos span a period of almost thirty years. The youthful First Piano Concerto is a masterful example of eclecticism, its inscrutable humour and seriousness allied to virtuoso writing enhanced by the rôle for solo trumpet. Written as a birthday present for his son Maxim, the Second Piano Concerto is light-spirited with a hauntingly beautiful slow movement. With the permission of the composer’s family, Boris Giltburg has arranged the exceptionally dark, deeply personal and powerful String Quartet No. 8, thereby establishing a major Shostakovich solo piano composition.



REVIEWS:


We have no shortage of excellent versions of the two Shostakovich piano concertos, including Igoshina’s on CPO and Marc-André Hamelin’s on Hyperion. Here is another. These are big, bold, in-your-face performances that find a wider range of expression in both works than you might have believed possible. Much of the credit for this belongs to Vasily Petrenko as well, who continues his series of top-notch Shostakovich recordings for Naxos.

In the First Concerto, particularly the outer movements, Giltburg attacks the zany, theater music themes with unbridled ferocity, finding a bitter edge of desperation for all the music’s wackiness. The bright, up-front sonics and Rhys Owens’ piercing trumpet complement the approach, and there is also some remarkably precise ensemble playing from the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic strings. It’s an exhausting cliff-hanger of a performance.

Giltburg and Petrenko’s vision of the theoretically light and easy Second Piano Concerto is even more striking. From the dry, perky winds at the start to the positively cataclysmic first movement development section, this is clearly a performance that has tremendous character–one which finds plenty of menace beneath the music’s breezy, sometimes comical, sometimes sweetly romantic exterior. It makes you sit up and listen with fresh ears, truly.

The two concertos really are two short for a single disc, and finding appropriate couplings is always an issue. This is where things get really interesting. Giltburg has made transcriptions of some of Shostakovich’s music for string quartet, the Waltz third movement from the Second Quartet, and the entire Eighth Quartet. He evidently had permission from Shostakovich’s family, which means nothing, as family members are usually terrible guardians of their illustrious ancestral legacies.

The Waltz works well enough, but the Eighth Quartet is an impossible piece to transcribe for the keyboard. This is string music, plain and simple. The sustained notes in the fourth movement simply cannot be reproduced on the piano, although with clever pedaling and a sensible tempo Giltburg almost pulls it off. The savage second movement sounds positively tame here: evidently it’s much easier to push a string quartet to its limits than it is a Fazioli.

Curiously, however, it’s impossible to call the performance as such a failure. It’s quite moving in its way, and if you know the original, either as a quartet or in its chamber symphony version, you can’t help but come away with a renewed appreciation of Shostakovich’s genius for matching the music to the (original) medium. But please, let’s not have any more of these experiments. One is more than enough. A great disc.

– ClassicsToday(David Hurwitz; 10/10)

Giltburg has all the agility, power and expressive intensity Shostakovich’s piano concertos demand, plus the temperament to negotiate their mercurial shifts of mood. Every phrase is imaginatively colored or nuanced, and never out of gimmicky point making, always because he has something worth saying. And he has found like-minded partners in the RLPO and Petrenko, who not only follow and support him superbly but also respond and provoke where appropriate.

– Gramophone

What is so appealing about this record is that the Boris Giltburg has rethought the works through the prism of the composer’s experiences. The first concerto is wonderfully skittish, a series of melodic in-jokes and exchanges with the orchestra. The second concerto, determinedly frisky, is played with a reckless to-hell-with-it abandon. With devastating precision, Giltburg has interpolated between the concertos his own piano reductions of one movement of the second string quartet and the entirety of the eight quartet, contemporaneous with the two piano concertos, exposing the composer’s seditious inner thoughts. This is a constantly illuminating, almost faultless project.

– Norman Lebrecht

After a period as a court composer at Detmold, Brahms returned to the city of his birth, Hamburg, in January 1860. Here, in relative tranquillity, he explored the then rare piano quartet repertoire. The Piano Quartet No. 2 received a very sympathetic hearing in Vienna, Clara Schumann even preferring it to its immediate predecessor, the Piano Quartet, Op. 25 (Naxos 8572798). Its lyricism is heightened by a romantically beautiful Adagio. Mahler's vibrant Piano Quartet in A minor dates from 1876, the end of his first year at the Vienna Conservatory, where the only completed movement was first performed.

Enrique Soro rose to great esteem not only as Chile's leading composer but as a distinguished pianist, conductor and teacher. The Sinfonia romantica was the first symphony to be composed in Chile and remains the most important example of the genre in the country's musical history. Soro's melodic distinction, mastery of orchestration and his sense of form are equally distinguished. The Tres aires chilenos espouse a kind of nationalism, fusing Chilean folk music, specifically the tonada, with the European classical tradition. The rousing Danza fantastica is a perfect concert opener.

If you enjoy fluent, finely crafted classical period symphonies then this well-played, well-recorded disc is for you. Kozeluch was one of a constellation of Czech symphonies active in eighteenth-century Vienna. His Bohemian roots show in his music’s innate tunefulness, as well as his free use of woodwind instruments. The only thing lacking is that flash of genius, those moments of the unexpected that make Haydn so memorable.

The four works here are nicely varied. The Symphony in C major (No. 6) includes trumpets and timpani. That in G minor has three movements; all of the others have four. Two works, the D major and C major symphonies, begin with impressive slow introductions. Development sections are fully worked out, and the slow movements really sing. Marek Stilic leads lively, smartly paced performances, and gets fine playing from the ensemble. This is music well worth getting to know, and I look forward to further releases in the series.

– ClassicsToday (David Hurwitz)