This new recording is about polyphonic references between the great counterpoint artists Byrd; Gibbons; Bach and the contemporary composers John Tavener; Oliver Knussen; John Adams; Markus Horn and Xiaoyong Chen. The two Bach Ricercari from the Musical Offering form the bracket. The exciting connection of the individual; different works to each other is created by the polyphonic structures; the modal church keys or by religious; spiritual references. 429 years lie between the work of Byrd and the work of Xiaoyong Chen composed for the LP. With Bach; Byrd; Gibbons and Contemporary Music; the listener can expect a recording that is wonderfully audible; in a positive sense unexhausting. You have to get involved with the depth; the space and sometimes the silence; but it is worth it; because the music changes your own self and focuses attention on you. "I'm interested in the connections between different epochs and their polyphonic structures. So obviously there was no way that I could ignore Johann Sebastian Bach. However; I considered what to combine with his Ricercares a 3 and a 6 from The Musical Offering. First I thought of William Byrd; as I knew that polyphony and contrapuntal style were important to him; despite the fact that he was almost 150 years older than Bach. I began with vocal polyphony and arrived at Orlando Gibbons and virginal music; which I wanted to combine with contemporary music. And then the search began..." (Alexandra Sostmann)
Hans Werner Henze is one of the outstanding composers of the 20th century. To mark his 100th birthday, this edition will contain almost all the recordings released on the WERGO label, some of which were produced under his supervision - an extensive collection that does not claim to be complete, yet serves as an impressive testament to a versatility that echoes Henze's open-mindedness and cosmopolitan outlook: in terms of cultural history, politics and society, as well as form and composition. Regrouped and divided into groups of works in this edition, the recordings, some of which are no longer available, will be released in five CD box sets. Following the already published symphonies, the edition now continues with orchestral works and instrumental concertos, chamber music and piano music, vocal music, and concluding with stage works, including the previously unreleased recording of "Der Prinz von Homburg". In addition to the symphonies, Henze wrote a wide range of orchestral works and concertos, from the early 'Kammerkonzert' to the 'Ouverture für ein Theater', composed in the year of the composer's death. Forms and genres alternate in an impressive way; alongside playful compositions for ballet stands the strict formal design of works as it is in 'Antifone', composed for the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. In this way, the orchestral works and concertos form a varied and lively counterweight to Henze's cycle of symphonies.
Henze: Heliogabalus imperator - Works for Orchestra
Wergo
CD · 1 disc
$20.99Jun 14, 2019
The relationship between Hans Werner Henze and Oliver Knussen was one of great mutual respect. The German composer admired the British conductor and composer for electrifying performances of Henze's own and other composers' works. Knussen was an untiring and enthusiastic champion of his friend Henze's music. The recordings collected here display Knussen's deep understanding of Henze's music. Knussen conducts the BBC Symphony Orchestra in sensitive and meticulous performances of compositions ranging from the composer's middle period to his last completed work. Los Caprichos transforms the bitterness and sarcasm in Francisco Goya's famous series of etchings into a tender and melancholy "Fantasia per orchestra" that makes only sparing use of contemporary stylistic devices. The large orchestral work Heliogabalus Imperator - a programmatic depiction of the life and death of the notorious Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus - also provides evidence of Henze's self-assured and idiosyncratic interpretation of modern music idioms. The Englische Liebeslieder for solo violoncello and orchestra express a wide range of emotional states, which are brought to life by cellist Anssi Karttunen.
Nightshade Trilogy was composed by Poul Ruders over a span of 17 years- between 1986 and 2003. In the composer’s words, it is “a collection of compositions that evoke for me an almost Gothic association with pale moonlight, tombstones crypts and the elusive shadows deep inside an ancient forest at the deep of night.”
Nathan Ben-Yehuda pursues a fulltime solo concert career as a classical pianist but also plays with Astral Mixtape, an innovative crossover quartet writing new works and reimagining classics from Monteverdi to Rimsky-Korsakov, and playing with ideas and thematic material from Sigur Ros to Radiohead and Four Tet. We end this album with two tracks by Astral Mixtape. Track 6 offers Goddess Gardens, including intoxicating “mixtape” snippets from Scheherazade and Vaughan Williams’ Lark Ascending, as well as more recent fare. Seven Hellos closes the album on track 7, an original composition by the four members of the quartet. Astral Mixtape is clearly close to Nathan’s heart: “I am part of this wonderful band of fellow classical musicians who are seeking to reimagine the conventional roles of our instruments, and applying non-classical approaches to arrangement and composition in our works. Astral Mixtape is the collaborative project most personal to me.” Before we get to Astral Mixtape, however, Nathan’s solo piano repertoire makes a powerful statement. Not only can Nathan handle the thorny Knussen Variations, but he plays Haydn beautifully, and he recorded my favorite performances to date of both Ravel’s Gaspard de la nuit and Villa-Lobos’ Rudepoêma. Nathan kindly agreed to play Gaspard for this project, but also Peter Sculthorpe’s Nocturnal. –Bob Attiyeh, producer
Visions offers Tamara Stefanovich and Pierre-Laurent Aimard’s return to Pentatone, presenting a programme revolving around Messiaen’s intoxicating Visions de l‘amen for two pianos. This centrepiece is surrounded by Enescu’s Carillon nocturne, Knussen’s Prayer Bell Sketch and Clock IV from Birtwistle’s Harrison’s Clocks. The works performed all share a fascination for the sound of bells, and Stefanovich and Aimard invite the listener on a mesmerizing acoustic journey. Tamara Stefanovich is captivating audiences worldwide with a broad repertoire ranging from Bach to contemporary composers, and made her Pentatone debut with the critically-acclaimed album Influences (2019). Widely acclaimed as a key figure in the music of our time and as a uniquely significant interpreter of piano repertoire from every age, Pierre-Laurent Aimard enjoys an internationally celebrated career. His exclusive engagement to Pentatone has led to a complete recording of Messiaen’s Catalogue d’oiseaux (2018) and a recording of Beethoven’s Hammerklavier Sonata and Eroica Variations (2021).
REVIEW:
Here’s a disc for pianophiles, those with a penchant for the mystical, and campanologists alike. As the song has it, “A bell’s not a bell ’til you ring it”, and here bells toll, peal, chime, carillon and knell throughout a cleverly programmed, acutely played recital by Pierre-Laurent Aimard and Tamara Stefanovich that dazzles with its poetry, intensity and clarity.
The disc’s title, Visions, alludes to the hallucinogenic effect of Messiaen’s Visions de l’Amen in which bells sound with an intoxicating allure that speaks of a sense of otherness rooted in self-interrogating interiority. In its searching dialogue between two pianos surface religiosity serves as the portal to something altogether more transcendental and intimate.
Aimard’s familiarity with the work is unimpeachable, having played it, he says, “from the age of 15, turned the pages when Yvonne Loriod and Messiaen performed it, worked on it with him, and played it countless times”. More recently, it has been a part of his concert appearances with Stefanovich, and such accrued acquaintanceship pays enormous dividends here.
With due seriousness and gravity, Aimard assumes the imposing first piano role originally inhabited by Messiaen himself, Stefanovich voicing the narcotic zeal and fantasy of the second piano part, written for and first performed by Loriod. The result, an exercise in atomised contrasts, is something special.
Aimard carries the disc’s adroit finale, Harrison Birtwistle’s Clock IV (from Harrison’s Clocks) inspired by Dava Sobel’s book Longitude about the race to invent a marine chronometer. One of the composer’s “chiming pieces”, it discreetly echoes Messiaen even as its prodigious chord clusters and dramatic dynamic contrasts belong self-evidently to him alone. Aimard dispatches it with due declamatory virtuosity.
Nigel Simeone provides detailed, informative, and accessible notes, the recorded sound, in Stefaniensaal, Congress Graz, Austria as exemplary as you would expect of Pentatone.
Violin and piano duo Tamsin Waley-Cohen and Huw Watkins explore a violin and piano programme spanning four generations of musical imagination. Prokofiev's F minor Sonata captivates with it's dramatic intensity and baroque-inspired clarity. Stravinsky's Duo Concertant enchants through five lyrical musical poems, blending wit, elegance, and classical poise. Knussen's 'Reflection', written for Waley-Cohen and Watkins, immerses listeners in a jewel-like world of colour and introspection, where every note is deliberately placed. Watkins's Violin Sonata fuses modern lyricism with bursts of earthy vitality, creating a dialogue of subtle contrasts.
