Weill, K.: Kleine Dreigroschenmusik / Concerto for Violin an

Bach: Sonatas for Solo Violin

In this new concerto album one of the greatest violinists of our time, Christian Tetzlaff, performs two standard violin concertos in fresh new interpretations together with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin directed by the orchestra’s exciting new music director, Robin Ticciati.

Christian Tetzlaff is considered one of the world’s leading international violinists and maintains a most extensive performing schedule. Musical America named him ‘Instrumentalist of the Year’ in 2005. His recording of the Bartók Violin Concertos (ODE 1317-2) received both Gramophone and ICMA Awards, and the recording was also a finalist for the BBC Music Award in 2019. His recording of the Violin Concertos by Mendelssohn and Schumann, released on Ondine in 2011 (ODE 1195-2), and Bach Sonatas and Partitas released in 2017 (ODE 1299-2D) received the ‘Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik’. In addition, in 2015 ICMA awarded Christian Tetzlaff as the ‘Artist of the Year’, and he also received ECHO ‘Instrumentalist of the Year’ award in 2017.

REVIEWS:

Tetzlaff may at times excitedly rush his fences, but in collaboration with Robin Ticciati and his alert Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, he transforms aspects of what so many have treated as a sort of Holy Grail into a beer tankard. If Beethoven’s Concerto emerges as uncompromisingly provocative, Tetzlaff’s Sibelius also errs on the side of danger…In many respects, a real knock-out.

– Gramophone (Editor's Choice)

What I especially admire about these entrancing performances by Tetzlaff is the freshness and vitality he brings so effectively to these masterworks. One senses that he is entirely inside the music emotionally. Throughout both works the sound of Tetzlaff’s violin, a modern instrument made by German luthier Stefan-Peter Greiner, is glorious. Under Robin Ticciati the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin excel with firm and resolute playing in performances which are entirely empathetic to the soloist from start to finish.

– MusicWeb International

Lars Vogt continues his series of concerto recordings with the Royal Northern Sinfonia with this new recording of Johannes Brahms’ (1833–1897) First Piano Concerto together with Four Ballades (Op. 10) for solo piano. As in previous albums, Lars Vogt conducts from the keyboard.

The evolution of Brahms’ 1st Piano Concerto took several steps. Originally conceived to become a Sonata for Two Pianos through orchestration it was developed into a four-movement Symphony until reaching into its final form of a Piano Concerto in three movements. During the process, which lasted from 1854 to 1856, some movements were also discarded and replaced by new material. This music is packed with much drama. No wonder since these years were particularly tumultuous in Brahms’ personal life: it was during this period when his great mentor Robert Schumann was sent into an asylum and ultimately died. It was also time when Brahms formed a close, lifelong friendship to Clara Schumann. Some of these feelings might well be echoed in the peaceful 2nd movement, Adagio.

Brahms’ Four Ballades, Op. 10 are works written in 1854 by a young composer barely in his 20s, yet these pieces are technically mature and profound in such a manner that they could even be compared to his final piano opuses.

Lars Vogt was appointed the first ever “Pianist in Residence” by the Berlin Philharmonic in 2003/04 and enjoys a high profile as a soloist and chamber musician. His debut solo recording on Ondine with Bach’s Goldberg Variations (ODE 1273-2) was released in August 2015 and has been a major critical success. Lars Vogt started his tenure as Music Director of the Royal Northern Sinfonia in September 2015. Lars Vogt was nominated for Gramophone’s Artist of the Year award in 2017. His recordings of Beethoven’s Piano Concertos Nos. 2 & 4 (ODE 1311-2) together with the Royal Northern Sinfonia and an album of Dvorak’s Piano Trios (ODE 1316-2) received Gramophone’s Editor’s Choice in May 2018 and in December 2018. His most recent album on Ondine featuring four Mozart’s Piano Sonatas (ODE 1318-2) was also chosen Gramophone’s Editor’s Choice in July 2019.

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REVIEW:

The music-making is nothing short of sensational. This is a bold Brahms D minor with immense character, audacious and courageous. It is also perhaps the most sensitive and subtle reading of the score in recent memory. A wealth of seldom-heard orchestral detail emerges, with exquisite wind-playing especially prominent. Nothing is extraneous; every gesture seems bent towards maximum expressivity.

– Gramophone

This album by the Helsinki Baroque Orchestra playing on period instruments under the direction of Aapo Hakkinen includes Ludwig van Beethoven’s (1770-1827) complete incidental music to Goethe’s Egmont.

What distinguishes Beethoven’s Egmont are great dramatic emotion of style, tightly unified musical ideas, and an absolute determination to create a sense of the triumph of freedom as the Utopian dream of the whole of mankind. The overture, the only one of the ten numbers to be heard regularly today in the concert-hall, draws all these intentions together in concentrated form. Its meaning is revealed only in context, together with the interludes and the final musical episodes.

A MusicWeb International Recording of the Month!

Steadfast Ondine have here gathered four world premiere recordings of works by Finnish contemporary composer Rautavaara. In the 1970s and early 1980s I associated him with the thornier groves of avant-garde dissonance as evidenced by the Third Symphony. In fact, time and again, I have been reminded that Rautavaara reaches out to many listeners beyond any narrow elite. His early Cantus Arcticus (1972) is miraculously accessible. A concert late last year also underscored the same message. The BBC Philharmonic under Carlos Miguel Prieto in MediaCity Salford played his Symphony No. 7 Angel of Light. This is a surgingly and phantasmally lyrical three-quarter hour work belonging among the last century's melodic treasures, close to Silvestrov's Symphony No. 5, the symphonies of Alla Pavlova and Ned Rorem's Lions.

Rubáiyát (2015) is a song-cycle using verse from Edward Fitzgerald's translation/realization of the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyam (1048–1131). We are fortunate to hear Gerald Finley singing it in its orchestral version. His voice is clear yet lush of tone. He sings across an incessantly inventive and beckoning orchestral arioso. His enunciation is sharply focused and while his 'line' is usually independent of the accompaniment he puts across the poetry's carpe diem philosophy with eloquence. Rautavaara does not shy from word and line repetition and grasps the opportunities provided by the most famous (least neglected) verses. The work begins with an abrupt plunge ‘in media res' and, as if further to emphasise the message, ends abruptly, without grace line or flourish, on the words 'O make haste'.

Verses have been popular with composers. Apart from Bantock's three-hour setting there are the song-cycle by Liza Lehmann, Arthur Foote's Character Pieces after Omar Khayyám, Robert Blum's Symphony No. 1 Omar Khayyám for orchestra and baritone, Lex van Delden's Omar Khayyám cantata, works by Charles Cadman, Henry Houseley, and in the 1970s, Alan Hovhaness's Rubaiyat for narrator, accordion and orchestra. There are also smaller-scale contributions from Hindemith and Penderecki.

Into the Heart of Light (Canto V - 2012) is the latest installment in the composer's series of works for string orchestra. The first of the Cantos dates from the 1960s. This glowingly confident example of lofty melodic writing for massed strings reaches across to the angelic ecstasy of the Seventh Symphony.

Balada (2014) sets texts by Lorca. It's a substantial piece for tenor, mixed choir and orchestra. On this occasion Mika Pohjonen is the soloist. The work was premiered in Madrid in May 2015. Its burning fervour injects a flaming drama which is put across with muscular commitment by both choir and orchestra. The music moves in approximately the same universe as the more demonstrative moments in John Tavener's big choral-orchestral works as well as recalling Szymanowski's Third Symphony Song of the Night and Barber's Prayers of Kierkegaard. As usual my intention here is to give some flavour of what you will hear, not to imply any lack of originality.

The Four Songs from the opera Rasputin are arrangements by the composer for mixed choir and orchestra. No doubt we will hear the whole opera before too long; the sooner the better. It's certainly a fruitful subject and story. The massed choral effect is redolent from time to time of Sibelius's Kullervo. The orchestral tissue gleams, shines and glitters around the plangent and awed singing. There's a touch of Mussorgsky's voice of the people here.

The notes by Kimmo Korhonen and a typically fine recording, lacking nothing in impact and subtlety, serve to complement some glorious music-making. This will make converts and have them exploring Ondine's already bejewelled Rautavaara pages.

– MusicWeb International (Rob Barnett)

This is a beautiful selection of Sviridov’s choral music.

Georgy Sviridov’s Canticles and Prayers is considered by many as one of the most important works in Russian sacred music. In this new recording the Latvian Radio Choir under Sigvards Klava offers impressive renditions of music from this collection by the Russian master. Sviridov, a pupil of Shostakovich, began writing religious works in 1969. Since then these works have come to form an important part of his oeuvre. In the 1980s Sviridov had several projects to write a liturgy or a mass. In the end, the sketches of his sacred music came to form a cycle titled Canticles and Prayers. The work was created at a turning point in the history of Russia, the perestroika years that ended in the collapse of the Soviet state. The composer was keenly affected by the events of those years, building a monument to his era. The main body of Canticles and Prayers was assembled between 1988 and 1992. In September 1997, Sviridov selected the versions he thought best, approving the final order for the first three parts and making the final edits to the score. This work remained incomplete at the time of his death in 1998. Canticles and Prayers was thus Sviridov’s last work. The recording also includes the chorus The Red Easter based on a cycle of Easter hymns. Previous releases of the Latvian Radio Choir on Ondine have been highly successful. For instance, the recording of Rachmaninov’s All-Night Vigil was chosen as the Record of the Month, Editor’s Choice and received a nomination in the Gramophone Awards in 2013. Also, their more recent releases of choral works by Valentin Silvestrov and Eriks Esenvalds received Gramophone Editor’s Choice.

REVIEW:

This is a beautiful selection of Sviridov’s choral music. There is a subtlety to phrasing of the Latvian Radio Choir’s performance of the Trisagion (track 2, ‘Holy God’), for example, that often eludes Russian and Ukrainian choirs. And this serves them well too in the remarkable Having beheld a strange nativity, especially in the last movement, with its ‘increasing’ alleluias, and their mastery of dynamics means that they can bring it down to the quietest of pianissimos in nanoseconds.

The cycle on texts from the Old Testament is less familiar but has similarly outstanding moments—the second, ‘Sprinkle me with hyssop’, is particularly memorable in its alternation of male and female and choral groups—and in fact strikes me as one of the most likely works on this disc to enter the repertoire of Western choral ensembles. ‘Taynaya vechera’ might also do so, but here I come to my most serious reservation regarding this disc, which has nothing to do with the wonderful performances but everything to do with the disastrous translations in the booklet.

Do acquire this disc, listen to the frequently wonderful music and the consistently astounding performances but recycle the booklet.

– Gramophone

The calendar year 2023 marks the 90th birthday of Krzysztof Penderecki (1933–2020), one of the most prominent 21st Century Polish composers. Sacred themes and texts surround the creative work of Penderecki, including many of his large-scale works. This album consists of the majority of his impressive sacred a cappella choral works which are mainly written in Latin. These deeply religious choral works are modern classics which will, no doubt, remain in the choral repertoire for years to come.

REVIEW:

Penderecki’s sacred choral oeuvre is usually worthy of the best efforts singers are willing to bring to it. And here we have the self-recommending proposition of one of the world’s finest choirs bringing that music to life in the warm, reverberant space of St John’s Church in Riga, Latvia. The Ondine engineering makes it an even more emphatic win.

— American Record Guide

Sibelius, J.: Symphony No. 4 / Pohjola's Daughter / Finlandi

MELARTIN: SYMPHONIES NO 1 & 3

Orchestral Music - Sibelius, J. / Grieg, E. / Nielsen, C. (S

KLAMI, U.: Lemminkainen's Adventures on an Island / The Cobb

REVIEW:

On the face of it, it makes good sense to group these three relatively early works by Schnittke together on one disc, and the documentary interest of the issue is enhanced by the fact that both sonatas are dedicated to Mark Lubotsky. The downside is that Schnittke is rarely at his best in these pieces, and the recording allows the piano too great a degree of rather harsh prominence.

The First Sonata (1963), which documents Schnittke's emergence from the cocoon of conformity to a style that owes much to Shostakovich, and its wide range of reference, from serialism to Latin American rhythms, is now less striking than the skill with which Schnittke shapes the third movement's gradually intensifying melodic line. In the Second Sonata (1968), again, it is the growth of continuity out of fragmentation that impresses, giving the single-movement structure a substance it would otherwise lack. Even so, the sonata is more a manifesto of defiance than a fully realized proposal for a new musical order. It is to the credit of both performers that they don't try to oversell the music's aura of iconoclasm, though a recording more favorable to the violin would have done these well-considered accounts greater justice.

Schnittke concocted his Suite in the old style (1972) from various film scores. It would be unduly censorious to complain of the composer's self-indulgence in music as charming as this, and in any case a more sinister note enters the final ''Pantomime''. Here, at least, the authentically alarming later Schnittke briefly stands revealed.

-- Arnold Whittall, Gramophone [4/1994]

Saariaho: Maa (Earth)