Schubert, F.: Schöne Müllerin (Die)

SCHUBERT: ADAGIO & RONDO, PIAN

Rubinstein & Moszkowski: Piano Concertos

Sallinen, A.: String Quartets No. 1-5

This solo album by cellist Wilhelmina Smith features works for solo cello by Esa-Pekka Salonen and Kaija Saariaho. Both composers belong to a generation of modernist Finnish composers whose work has gained broad acceptance in musical culture throughout the world. While each composer has a clear individual artistic persona, as a group they are known for pushing sonic boundaries. In writing for strings and, in particular on this recording, the cello, Salonen and Saariaho exploit the outer reaches of the technical possibilities for both the instrument and the performer. Wilhelmina Smith is an artist of intense commitment, poetic insight and dazzling versatility. As a soloist and recitalist as well as a collaborative musician and festival director, Smith has consistently advocated for composers with whom she has developed vital relationships, to have their music creatively positioned within an intellectually engaging context and performed with the utmost passion and technical assurance.

Prokofiev, S.: Symphony No. 2 / Summer Night / Autumnal Sket

Prokofiev, S.: Piano Sonatas Nos. 1-3 / Visions Fugitives

PROKOFIEV: PIANO SONATAS 7, 8

Selections recorded August 1996.

Prokofiev, S.: Violin Sonatas Nos. 1 and 2 / Violin Sonata i

Prokofiev, S.: Symphony-Concerto in E Minor / Merikanto, A.:

"The life-force of Kaija Saariaho's music is its feast of sensory awakening and shocking emotional nakedness. A raw honesty permeates the atmosphere of mystery. This music is an obsessive, immersive and magical weather system bringing ecstasy, cleansing, and renewal." - Peter Sellars

On the occasion of her 60th anniversary in 2012, this 4-CD collector's box contains recordings of fourteen orchestral works by Grammy-awarded Kaija Saariaho, many of them featuring vocal or instrumental soloists. This specially priced anthology highlights the Finnish composer's oeuvre from 1986 to 2007, a period that follows the evolution of her compositional style from the early days of her career to more recent times. The featured works have helped to cement Saariaho's international position as one of the most successful living composers and have garnered her several important awards along the way (Grawemeyer Award 2003, Musical America's Composer of the Year 2008, MIDEM Classical Award 2009, Wihuri Sibelius Prize 2009, Sonning Music Prize 2011). Kaija Saariaho has been the New York Carnegie Hall's Composer-in-Residence since the beginning of the 2011-12 Season.

The recordings were made between 1992 and 2008 have been previously released by Ondine to international popular and critical acclaim.

Cello Recital: Gustafsson, Jan-Erik - SZYMANOWSKI, K. / KODA

REVIEWS:
American Record Guide (11-12/97, pp.257-58) - "...These songs are well-loved in Finland, and you'll know why when you hear them....Jorma Hynninen could sing the phone book and it would be gorgeous....He doesn't over-inflect; he always sounds natural..."

Hvorostovsky’s voice is perfectly weighted and his artistry honed by long experience sufficient to give these songs his finest interpretation.

Now in his fiftieth year, Dmitri Hvorostovsky has been singing internationally for almost a quarter of a century. It would be reasonable to expect some small signs of wear in his vibrant baritone. There is perhaps now a trace of roughness where before all was smooth, uninterrupted tone and the top can become decidedly a little rocky when he leans into the note but all in all his baritone remains in remarkably fine shape. The bottom notes are dark and resonant, the middle only a little grainy when he sings mezza voce (as at the end of no.5) and the top G’s continue to ring out thrillingly with only a hint of a flap. Any signs of stress are, in any case, hardly inappropriate in music as desperately passionate as this.

Perhaps it is too much to listen to the whole programme at one sitting, given that the preponderance of the music is so melancholy and soul-sifting in that famous Russian idiom. I don’t say that there is a lack of variety in the programme, especially when both singer and pianist interpret with such commitment and passion. Rachmaninov’s melodic gifts are in such evidence but over an hour of such intensity can be wearing. My favourite items so far are the mounting ecstasy of the second song, “Do you remember, the evening?”, the haunting “She is as beautiful as the moon”, opening with strummed arpeggios reminiscent of Schubert’s “Dioskuren” and continuing with melismata in a distinctly Polovtsian minor mode, and “In the silence of the mysterious night” climaxing with a magnificent G-flat and a long-breathed piano D to conclude. I also love the dignified restraint of no.6, so Russian with its rolling underlay and punctuating chords, building to a great cry of pain.

This is Hvorostovsky’s first recording on the Finnish Ondine label, with whom he has signed a long-term contract. Although he has recorded some of these songs before, his voice is now perfectly weighted and his artistry honed by long experience sufficient to give them his finest interpretation. It helps to have a native speaker intone texts by some of Russia’s greatest 19th century Romantic poets.

The recording is perfect; there is a lovely balance between the singing tone of the piano and the singer’s sonorous baritone. Estonian pianist Ivari Ilja is Hvorostovsky’s regular accompanist and plays wonderfully, with agogic freedom, shaded nuance and great variety of colour.

-- Ralph Moore, MusicWeb International