Ondine's successful Paul Hindemith (1895-1963) recordings with the NDR Sinfonieorchester conducted by Christoph Eschenbach continue with another release featuring two major symphonic works by the composer: Symphonie ‘Mathis der Maler' and Symphonie in E-flat.

The orchestra's and Christoph Eschenbach's previous Hindemith release together with Midori won a Grammy Award in 2014.

The ‘Mathis der Maler' Symphony is based on an opera that treats the life of the Renaissance painter Mathias Grünewald. Hindemith started to work on the symphony already prior to the completion of the opera. The symphony was premiered with great success by the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra under Wilhelm Furtwängler on 12 March 1934. This performance was the last premiere of an orchestral work by Hindemith in Germany before the National Socialist regime issued a general performance prohibition applying to his works in 1936.

Hindemith wrote his Symphonie in E-flat during his exile in the United States in 1940. The Symphony is absolute music in the tradition of the four-movement symphony of Beethoven and the romantic period.

REVIEW:

Eschenbach’s trademark fondness for textural warmth and clarity is much to the fore in Mathis, where strings and woodwind are admirably numinous, the complex counterpoint in both the ‘Engelkonzert’ and the ‘Temptation’ beautifully detailed. The central ‘Grablegung’ is slow, rich-sounding and very introverted. The state-of-the-art recording, pristine and wide-ranging but with no sense of dynamic exaggeration, helps him at the big climaxes, which are imposing, at times even monumental, and there’s a beguiling elegance to the instrumental solos that thread their way through the textures. Abbado and the Berlin Philharmonic on DG have more dramatic bite but this is superbly done nevertheless.

Eschenbach’s approach to the underrated Symphony in E flat, meanwhile, is epic, thoughtful and at times startlingly measured. He is wonderfully attuned to the complex trajectory of a work that looks back from a newly acquired place of safety on an old world irrevocably damaged. The opening Sehr lebhaft has terrific élan, the scherzo a supple, gracious wit. The orchestral clarity is again breathtaking. But placed beside the almost reckless energy of Bernstein (Sony—nla) or Hindemith himself (DG), you notice a grander manner and slower speeds. Eschenbach’s longbreathed way with the crucial Sehr langsam steers it closer to ritual mourning than private grief, though his treatment of the work’s closing pages, in which sadness briefly threatens to intrude upon gathering joy, is moving in the extreme.

-- Gramophone

REVIEWS:

Vogt bring qualities of freshness and joie de vivre to the Goldbergs that have often been much less marked. He is not reverential and he has noted – correctly, surely – how entertaining the Variations are. This is a distinguished addition to the discography of the Goldberg Variations in all their glorious elegance.

- Gramophone

Vogt's feeling for the over-arching whole is impressive. He's not above a little 'guiding' either - sometimes drawing attention to detail in a way denied to Bach's harpsichord. But he's sparing in the use of the pedal and, like Schiff and Perahia, inclined to let his fingers sing wherever possible - to laugh, too.

- BBC Music Magazine

Soprano Soile Isokoski sings orchestral songs by three different French composers in her new recording. The recording includes two major works in the French song repertoire - Ernest Chausson's Poème de l'amour et de la mer and Hector Berlioz's Nuits d'été. The disc ends with three finely-crafted miniature songs by Henri Duparc, which are no less of artistic value.

Soile Isokoski is recognized as one of the world's finest lyric sopranos and regularly appears on the most renowned stages. Isokoski made her début at the Finnish National Opera as Mimi in Puccini's La Bohème and has since delighted audiences and critics alike at opera houses in Vienna, Berlin, Munich, Hamburg, London, Milan, Paris, and New York, and at the festivals of Salzburg, Savonlinna, Ravinia, Tanglewood, Edinburgh, and Orange. Soile Isokoski has worked with numerous distinguished conductors. Isokoski has an extensive concert repertoire, and she regularly gives recitals in the most renowned stages.

In this recording Soile Isokoski is accompanied by the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra together with its celebrated Chief Conductor John Storgårds.

This set includes a Blu-ray audio CD playable on Blu-ray players only and a standard CD playable on all CD players.

This special CD Blu-Ray Audio Ondine release includes world première recordings of three orchestral works by Norwegian composer Rolf Wallin (b. 1957), among the most exciting contemporary composer figures in Scandinavia, performed by the Bergen Symphony Orchestra and Finnish conductor John Storgårds. Fisher King, a concertante piece for Trumpet and Orchestra (2011) features one of today’s greatest trumpeters, Håkan Hardenberger. Composed more than thirty years ago, Id was Mr. Wallin’s first-ever orchestral work. Manyworlds is an extensive, half-hour’s long orchestra work, jointly commissioned by the Bergen, Helsinki and NDR, Hannover orchestras. The title of the work refers to the Many-world theory in quantum physics dealing with a very large, perhaps infinite number of parallel universes. The Blu-Ray Audio disc, an Ondine first, also includes a 2D & 3D Video by Boya Bøckman based on Manyworlds.

Born in 1970, Lotta Wennäkoski’s rich and colorful works often incorporate unconventional playing techniques and noise. In recent years her expressive range has become gradually broader, deeper and more powerful. Soie, a Finnish Radio Symphony commission, is a concertante work for flute and orchestra in three movements. The soloist, Kersten McCall, is the Royal Concertgebouw’s principal flutist. A Tapiola Sinfonietta commission, Hava had its premiere at the orchestra’s 20th anniversary concert. Amor Omnia, a 90 min. silent film score, is Wennäkoski’s most extensive work to date.

One of the most internationally well-known of Finnish composers, Aulis Sallinen (b. 1935) will celebrate his 80th birthday in 2015. In tribute, Ondine is releasing on DVD the 2002 production of his latest opera, King Lear, with the same cast that premiered the work at the Finnish National Opera in 2000. Under the direction of Okko Kamu and featuring a strong cast of singers, the work’s premiere was a great success. Legendary Finnish bass Matti Salminen sings the title role of King Lear; other singers include Lilli Paasikivi, Taina Piira, Satu Vihavainen, Petri Lindroos, Kai Pitkänen, Jorma Hynninen, Sauli Tiilikainen and Jorma Silvasti. The libretto, based on the world-famous Shakespearian tragedy, tells the tragic story of the English king Lear and his struggles with members of his own family, his enemies, and his developing madness.

The fourth album on Ondine by the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir is dedicated to the composer’s complete works for mixed choir. The award-winning choir, one of the finest of its kind internationally, is conducted here by leading Finnish choir director Heikki Seppänen. Choral music was a genre in which Sibelius showed interest from his student days to the near close of his life. This double-disc set includes patriotic works, works closely connected to the Finnish national epic Kalevala, student works, Christmas songs, works based on Finnish poetry, works written for school (including Three Songs for American Schools) as well as works written for academic promotions, inauguration ceremonies and different official occasions. It also includes two versions of the famous Finlandia Hymn. The Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir’s first Ondine release was given an ‘Editor’s Choice’ by the Gramophone Magazine and ‘Disc of the Year’ by German weekly Die Zeit.

REVIEW:

The Finnish choral tradition was rich and active when Sibelius came of age as a composer in the late 1880s, and he wrote choral works all his life. The pieces on this rewarding recording range from folk songs suffused with Finnish character to enigmatic works with sometimes dark lyrics. There are festival and school songs, patriotic anthems, a cantata for an academic degree ceremony and, inevitably, two versions of “Finlandia.” Most of the pieces are a cappella. Many unfold in clear, block-chord settings of the texts. If you want to stump friends with a guessing game, play the beguiling, slightly strange “Glade of Tuoni” from this recording and ask them to identify the composer. You’ll win, as you will by picking up this album.

– New York Times

Helsinki–born Parisian Kaija Saariaho’s music sounds like little else, its kaleidoscopic magic evoking Debussy refracted into the twenty-first century. This album includes the ghostly Terra memoria for string orchestra, expanded from a chamber original for the Emerson String Quartet. The beautifully scored vocal suite from Emilie, a 2011 one-woman opera about pioneering eighteenth-century scientist Emilie du Châtelet, will appeal to those beguiled by Saariaho’s dazzling first opera, L’Amour de loin (the works share a librettist, too, French-Lebanese poet Amin Maalouf). One can’t imagine the high-flying vocal role’s originator, Finnish diva Karita Mattila, being much better than French soprano Karen Vourc’h is here, nor in the shimmering song cycle Quatre Instants, also written for Mattila.

– Bradley Bambarger, Listen Magazine

‘Neglected Treasures’ is the second release on Ondine by Anastasia Injushina, an award-winning pianist known for the poetry and sensitivity of her playing. + Featuring some of the lesser-known aspects of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s (1756–91) piano music, this is repertoire particularly suited to her interpretive talents. + Ms. Injushina has made numerous radio and television recordings for such broadcasting companies as ARD, Bayerischer Rundfunk and Finnish YLE, performed at several international music festivals and is AD for her own Helsinki Chamber Music Festival.

This new release from the Latvian Radio Choir conducted by Sigvards Kłava features choral works by three Russian and Latvian composers: Yuri Falik, Artūrs Maskats and Georgy Sviridov. The disc’s themes range from love to nature to the sacred. Five of the works include solo parts sung by two notable Latvian singers, Aleksandrs Antoņenko and Eva Ezeriete. The title work of the recording, Sviridov’s Sacred Love, is a unique example of aesthetically beautiful vocal writing. Sigvards Kļava, since 1992 Chief Conductor and Artistic Director of the Latvian Radio Choir, is one of that country’s most prolific choral conductors. The Latvian Radio Choir is regarded as one of the top professional European chamber choirs. The Choir’s prior Rachmaninov’s All-Night Vigil (ODE 1206-5) was chosen as the Record of the Month, Editor’s Choice and received a nomination in the 2013 Gramophone Awards.

Sergei Rachmaninoff’s (1873-1943) rarely heard, unfinished opera Monna Vanna was the only major score he took with him into exile in the USA after the 1917 revolution. + This new recording is based on Gennadi Belov’s new edition and conducted by an iconic artist and Russian music expert Vladimir Ashkenazy. The second part of this disc features Finnish soprano Soile Isokoski singing seven Rachmaninov songs (including the hauntingly beautiful Vocalise), accompanied on the piano by Mr. Ashkenazy.

Aulis Sallinen (1935) is one of the internationally most well-known Finnish opera composers. At home with large scale works, his Kullervo opera is considered by many his greatest achievement in the field of opera. This re-issue, recorded in 1991 prior to its 1992 world-premiere performance, includes a truly stellar cast of Finnish opera singers with Jorma Hynninen singing the title role of Kullervo. Other singers in prominent roles include Eeva-Liisa Saarinen, Matti Salminen and Jorma Silvasti.

REVIEW:

"Early in the digital era, Tzimon Barto burst onto the scene with a large technique and photogenic looks. He still possesses both. His exotic name belies the fact that he was born in Florida; actually, he was born with the name Johnny Barto Smith, Jr. As a middle school student, he was overweight. Today he is a bodybuilder, and in addition to playing the piano, he is a poet and a philosopher. Formerly, he was a crack addict, but he has been clean since 2008—a transformation spurred, in part, by the sudden death of his young son.

His playing, which is never dull, has had its proponents and detractors. The latter, at least early on, usually would wring their hands over Barto’s musical insensitivity—the triumph of a brawny technique over interpretive subtlety. In recent years, however, Barto’s musicianship seems to have evolved. He still makes controversial, or at least unusual, choices, but now it’s hard to dismiss him as little more than a pounder or a banger.

There’s little danger of monotony in a Paganini-themed release such as this one, given the different approaches taken to the famous theme by Liszt, Brahms, Lutos?awski, and Rachmaninoff. Even so, Barto’s ebullient reading of the Brahms makes it sound more like Rachmaninoff than ever before, and I was reminded of the unlikely criticism—I don’t remember where I read it, however—that Brahms tried too hard to be popular. Barto really does play Brahms to the balconies, and it’s a lot of fun, if rather dark and demonic. The pianist’s heavy use of the sustaining pedal doesn’t allow for the most open of textures, however, and many will complain about how he conflates the two books of variations into one.

The Liszt Études, on the other hand, are surprisingly delicate (mostly), and sometimes even witty. If Barto’s Brahms stings like a bee, his Liszt often floats a hummingbird, to quote another part-time poet from the recent past. The “Octave” Étude (No. 2) feints and struts, and insinuates and shouts like a soundtrack to an old Tex Avery cartoon. “La chasse” (No. 5) is made to sound like Rameau. Barto also raises eyebrows by running the six études together with nary a pause.

Both parts of the Lutos?awski, a work for two pianos, were recorded by Barto, and assembled later. It’s a muscular reading, but the music responds well to an approach such as this, and the result is an unqualified success."

-- Fanfare: Raymond Tuttle

D. SCARLATTI Harpsichord Sonatas • Janne Rättyä (acc) • ONDINE 1232-2 (57:10)


After a couple of generic paragraphs about the music, mixing the usual, uninformative clichés with some eyebrow-raising opinions (“Scarlatti introduces a veritable history of Spanish music into his style and enables sonic invention to blossom from the dry soil of the harpsichord....”), the liner notes finally deal briefly with the question that might interest anyone curious about this album: why an accordion? The answer does not satisfy: “The nuanced attention to sonic shape at every moment of the melody, figure or gesture ... the stunning range of color....”


The accordion is a keyboard-based wind instrument. Its range of color is based on stops. If you’re looking for nuance and color, the piano is far better at it, because dynamics can be applied individually to each note. Dynamics on an accordion apply to all notes across the board at any given time by varying the degree of air pumped through the bellows. It’s safer to say what the liner notes in all their vague effusiveness never point out, that Janne Rättyä is an excellent classical accordionist who has collaborated with a host of modern composers, and understandably wants to claim some Baroque territory for his instrument as well.


How does this work out in practice? Rättyä is careful to select music that plays to the strengths of his instrument. The F-Minor Sonata, K 386, features lively two-part counterpoint, and the accordionist is an agile technician. He also plays several slower works, such as the well-known Sonata in C Minor, K 11, where a guitar-like, single-note melody is played in the right hand. This allows him a degree of freedom with dynamics, and also reveals his sensitivity in phrasing. He shows himself of much of the same mind as harpsichordist Richard Lester, with his flexible, folk-inflected tempos, rather than more Italianate performances in Scarlatti’s keyboard music that emphasize consistent rhythms. Some of the moderate tempo pieces benefit from a similar treatment. The E-Major Sonata, K 135, sounds very playful here, without losing its forward pulse, and the pastoral-like G-Major Sonata, K 13, is picked out with grace.


I find matters less successful when Rättyä tries to push beyond these boundaries. The popular F Minor Sonata, K 519, and D-Minor Sonata, K 52, are muddy in their bass voicings, because the instrument’s rounder tone blends the notes of the chords rather than allowing them to stand out distinctly. But in general, the album hews to the plan laid out above: faster, two-part counterpoint pieces, and slower ones with a simple single-note melody in the right hand. This makes for a certain monotony, since there’s far more to Scarlatti than that, but a few selections at a time make for attractive listening. Up to you.


FANFARE: Barry Brenesal


The truth is that Rättyä does some amazing things from a purely mechanical point of view: some of the quicker sonatas, such as K.386 in F Minor, have seldom been played more accurately on any instrument, and the accordion’s near total absence of resonance makes it impossible for the player to hide. You just have to keep going. It’s like getting stuck on a roller coster. In slower, more emotionally affecting music the instrument frankly sounds silly. Strike that–it sounds silly everywhere, but give Rättyä credit for taking this project completely seriously and doing everything that he can with the limited resources that he’s stuck with. He even arranges the sonatas into quasi-scholarly groups by key, although he’s limited to C, F, E, G and D (major and minor). The sonics are terrific."

-- David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

With The Snow Queen, the Finnish National Ballet scored a hit. This success was due not only to Andersen's wonderful story and its brilliant staging but also to the music of composer Tuomas Kantelinen. He says he wanted "to write music that is melodic, beautiful and accessible, as its principal function is to put viewers of all ages into a cheerful Christmas mood. It is a deliberate nod towards the tradition of Christmas ballets for the whole family, such as Nutcracker. I had a great deal of fun creating character dance pastiches that illustrate the conceptions that people have of the musical styles of various countries."