The award-winning duo ensemble formed by Christian Tetzlaff and Lars Vogt are returning to the masterworks of European chamber music with this new album that includes Ludwig van Beethoven’s three violin sonatas from Op. 30.

The expressive and intimate chamber music recordings by the star duo have gathered numerous awards and their previous album also received an ECHO Klassik award in 2017. Beethoven wrote his three Violin Sonatas Op. 30 in 1801 and 1802. They are relatively early works but already pointing towards the direction of Beethoven’s revolutionary 3rd Symphony, Eroica, which was completed in 1803. Although the influence of Haydn is still visible, in these sonatas Beethoven created movements in all the sonatas that are completely untypical and that had never existed before in this way. No wonder that these delightful works belong to the artists’ favorite works by the great composer.

REVIEWS:

Christian Tetzlaff and Lars Vogt make a formidable team: technically right at the top of their game (Tetzlaff’s bow control is phenomenal), and yet at the same time always managing to convey the notion of taking risks.

-- BBC Music Magazine

This is chamber-playing at its most humane; impossible to hear without feeling a renewed love and admiration for music and performers alike.

-- Gramophone

A triumph: the magnum opus of one of the leading Finnish composers in an excellent and committed performance.

REVIEW:

Musically, this issue is a triumph: the magnum opus of one of the leading Finnish composers in an excellent and committed performance, captured in all its intricate detail by a remarkably clear and faithful recording. The Singing Tree is Erik Bergman's only full-length opera and, as fellow-composer Jouni Kaipainen comments in the booklet, is a ''grand synthesis'' of his life's work. Often it sounds like a compendium of the vocal and instrumental techniques that Bergman has developed throughout his long career (he is now 82) melded together by his vibrant and incisive musicianship.

The fable of the princess who may not see her husband's face is common to many cultures: Bo Carpelan's libretto uses a Swedish version but incorporates elements of many other stories, ancient and more modern. Prince Hatt, imprisoned by his mother, the Witch, is set free by a Princess who first communes with him via the song of the Tree of Life, which they both hear in dreams. Unlike many fairy-tale operas, Bergman and Carpelan lay bare the nightmare that exists at the center of all fables; and as if to emphasize that this is not kids' stuff, the happy ending is marred by the blinding of the Princess through the Witch's dying curse.

My only reservation about The Singing Tree concerns dramatic pacing which, like the musical pulse, is unremittingly slow. A sequence of 22 tableaux divided into two acts (plus Prologue, Interlude and Epilogue), there is often insufficient variety between the scenes which makes the opera seem to be jogging on the spot. Individual tableaux are often effective in themselves but many take not very dissimilar routes to achieve common goals. Only two really dramatic moments alter the relief: at the climax of Act One, when the Princess is lured by the Witch to look upon the face of the sleeping Prince, and the final denouement itself when the Witch is destroyed by the power of Light.<br><br>Written in 1986-8, The Singing Tree is exactly coeval with Sallinen's Kullervo, already issued on CD by Ondine (8/92). This speaks volumes for the commitment, industry and musical culture of Finland and puts most other countries to shame. Where, for instance, are recordings of John Buller's Bakxai or Nicola LeFanu's Blood Wedding, Birtwistle's Gawain or Judith Weir's The Vanishing Bridegroom? Without doubt, Finland is the place to be for opera.

-- Gramophone [5/1993]

2018 Gramophone Magazine Concerto Album of the Year

Star violinist Christian Tetzlaff performs Béla Bartók’s two masterpieces in a new recording with the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Hannu Lintu. This recording continues both artists’ highly successful series of recordings on Ondine.

The two violin concertos of Béla Bartók, completed thirty years apart in 1908 and 1938 respectively, celebrated relationships with two Hungarian violinists: the first romantic, with Stefi Geyer and the second artistic, with Zoltán Székely. Bartók’s 1st Violin Concerto was published posthumously after the composer’s death in 1956, but Bartók reused the opening movement as the first of his Two Portraits for orchestra. He remarked in a letter written in late 1907 or early 1908 that ‘I have never written such direct music before.’ Bartók completed two movements that portray the character of Stefi Geyer to whom the work was dedicated. Completed towards the end of 1938, Bartók’s three-movement 2nd Violin Concerto was a much more substantial concerto than his first essay in the medium and it was dedicated ‘to my dear friend Zoltán Székely’. Székely’s name can also be found in the dedication of his Second Rhapsody. Bartók adopted a rather unusual approach to the overall form of the Second Violin Concerto and the impact of both rural folk music and urban verbunkos on his language can be found in the Second Violin Concerto.

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 and his recording of the violin concertos by Mendelssohn and Schumann received the ‘Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik’.

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REVIEW:

Between them Tetzlaff and Lintu command a compelling and comprehensive view of the multifaceted masterpiece that is the Second Violin Concerto. Their account of the First elevates the work to a whole new level of musical excellence.

– Gramophone

Bartok: Sonata for 2 Pianos and Percussion - Bergman: Boreal

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

Bartok, B.: Divertimento / Romanian Folk Dances / Rozsa, M:

This new Ondine release by Danish-born recorder player Bolette Roed includes the music of Johann Sebastian Bach arranged for solo recorder. The works were arranged by Frans Brüggen (1934–2014), famous Dutch recorder player and conductor who was of the greatest importance to the movement of the historically informed performance practice. With the exception of his Partita BWV 1013, Bach wrote relatively few works for the recorder. However, composers like Bach and Vivaldi did themselves arrange many of their works for different instruments. From this point of view the work of arranging Bach’s solo cello and violin pieces for recorder is something what Bach himself could have done, had he been inspired by a talented recorder player himself at the time of his compositions. For this recording several different recorders were being chosen. For the 11 movements written for the violin original keys were kept by changing the recorders accordingly. The cello suites are being played by one recorder only by transposing the original keys down a minor second. Bolette Roed is an award-winning artist who regularly performs with major Danish orchestras as well as with early music ensembles and baroque orchestras in various countries. Roed strives to extend the instrument’s repertoire beyond its established role in Early Music, towards new frontiers of improvisation, folk, and world music. She further aspires to adapt canonical classical works to the recorder and stays in constant dialogue with and commissions new works from today’s composers.

This new album release by the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra under Hannu Lintu presents a new contemporary voice within Finland’s contemporary music scene: Antti Auvinen. This album includes three recent orchestral works by the composer marked by highly pressurised and explosive rhythms and sounds.

The premieres of Antti Auvinen’s (b. 1974) Junker Twist (2015) and Himmel Punk (2016) in the mid-2010s electrified the scene of Finland’s contemporary music: music critics felt that a new major voice in the country’s music scene had been born. Auvinen’s works are often thematically connected to events in the surrounding society. Junker Twist (2015) deals with the topic of rising neo-Nazist ideologies, while Himmel Punk (2016) takes a stand against religious discrimination. The most extensive work of this album, Turbo Aria (2017/2018), is partially based on arias sung by Finnish sopranos a century ago. These ‘arias’ sung by Alma Fohström, Aino Ackté and Järnefelt and the sounds of the accompanying instruments are augmented by the crackles, pops, hisses and other mechanical noises made by the original discs. Yet the work also has a second underlying theme: the refugee crisis. Is this program music? Perhaps – but it does not matter, because the music is equally impressive with the narrative or without it. In 2016, Auvinen was awarded with the Teosto award, one of the biggest music awards in the Nordic countries.

Shortlisted for the 2022 Gramophone Awards!

Composer Magnus Lindberg (b. 1958) is one of the leading names in today’s contemporary music. This album by the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra together with its chief conductor Hannu Lintu includes three works by the composer, including Aura, one of the most prominent monumental orchestral works of our era, together with two other works completed in the 1990s, including Marea and the first recording of Related Rocks. Aura – in memoriam Witold Lutoslawski represents a grand synthesis of Magnus Lindberg’s output in the 1990s. The work was written in 1993–1994 to a commission from Suntory Limited in Japan and was premiered by the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra under Kazufumi Yamashita at Suntory Hall in Tokyo in June 1994. Clocking in at 40 minutes, Aura is Lindberg’s most extensive orchestral work. Although not a symphony, this 4-movement work is closely linked to the symphonic concept represented by Lutoslawski. The composer heard of Lutoslawski’s death while writing the work and decided to dedicate it to his memory.

REVIEWS:

The Finnish Magnus Lindberg is among the world’s leading composers, and this is a mighty sample of his work. The nearly 40-minute Aura is a four-movement continuous structure of extraordinary power, its rich textural agglomerations as architecturally thwacking as they are minutely detailed.

– Sunday Times (UK)

All the performances on this Ondine CD are magnificent with state-of-the-art sound to match. Thus, if you are in the market for a fine programme of Magnus Lindberg, do not hesitate to add this to your collection.

– MusicWeb International

Piano Recital: Raekallio, Matti - MOZART, W.A. / GLUCK, C.W.

Shortlisted for the 2022 Gramophone Awards!

All four American composers on this new album by the Basque National Orchestra and conductor Robert Trevino wrote music that was known, played and esteemed during their lifetimes, but none of them ever had a huge “hit” and so the pieces here are likely familiar only to musical scholars. Yet while it is uncommon enough to find Charles Martin Loeffler, Henry Cowell, Carl Ruggles and Howard Hanson sharing the same album, the conductor Robert Trevino has taken his exploration still further, into the recesses of their repertory – complete with a Hanson piece, Before the Dawn, that has had to wait a century for this, its premiere recording. Robert Trevino’s debut album with the Basque National Orchestra on Ondine featured orchestral works by Maurice Ravel and has received excellent reviews in music media around the world, including the Limelight magazine's 'Recording of the Month'.

REVIEWS:

Americascapes...is an exciting success all the way. Great American music, or great music by American composers? Instead of answering that question, I’d prefer to say that this is great music, full stop. This CD is a must for anyone who wants a thrill without having to resort to yet another recording of music by Ravel or Pictures at an Exhibition. This is Want List material, to be sure.

--Fanfare

The performances here are all splendid. As you may have surmised from their excellent previous Ravel CD, Robert Trevino and the Basque National Orchestra seem to have a great thing going: an enterprising conductor leading a talented and enthusiastic ensemble with both swagger and sensitivity to burn. Ondine’s fine sonics let you hear everything that you should, in a warm, well-balanced acoustic frame. You’ll love this.

--ClassicsToday.com

I have thoroughly enjoyed encountering the works on this CD. They are very well played and excellently recorded, with a most detailed booklet produced to a high standard.

--MusicWeb International

A fascinating and gloriously played programme of little-known American orchestral works, assembled and conducted with real care and passion by Robert Trevino. If there’s a masterpiece among the four works on this disc, I’d argue it’s [Cowell's Variations for Orchestra]. William Strickland’s 1963 CRI recording has held up remarkably well but Trevino’s is equally authoritative, played with greater polish, and the recorded sound is first-rate. Urgently recommended.

--Gramophone

Selections recorded in April and May 1991.

20TH CENTURY GUITAR WORKS TIM

Includes work(s) by Giuseppe Verdi, Richard Wagner (Composer), Charles Gounod, Edvard Grieg, André Messager, Oskar Merikanto, Robert Schumann, Paul Vidal, Arthur Goring Thomas, Ruggero Leoncavallo. Soloist: Aino Ackté.

On this album, Peter Jablonski’s third for Ondine, the pianist presents Grażyna Bacewicz’s (1909–1969) dazzling piano etudes and sonatas, barely known outside her native Poland. Jablonski’s albums have received an enthusiastic response and his previous release received Editor’s Choice from Gramophone magazine.

In recent years the music of Grażyna Bacewicz has been enjoying increasing popularity in concert hall programs. Bacewicz was a major Polish composer and a versatile musician: a child prodigy violinist, she was also an accomplished pianist. As a composer, she is known for her inventive, complex, and original musical language, and particularly many of her works for violin are well known. Bacewicz studied first at the Warsaw Conservatory and briefly continued her studies in Paris before returning back home. In 1934, she received a position of concertmaster at the Polish Radio Orchestra. This position proved invaluable to her as a composer, giving her insights into each instrument’s possibilities and orchestral composition. Her music displays many characteristic traits of the twentieth-century that are to be heard in the writings of Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Bartók, and Lutosławski, among others. Jablonski’s piano album covers only eight short years during which the works presented here were composed and brings together, for the first time, both piano sonatas, and both sets of etudes. Sonata No. 1 for solo piano was composed in 1949, but went unpublished for over seventy years until Peter Jablonski edited it for PWM.

REVIEWS:

The two-fold pleasure of this release is experiencing the interesting if unfamiliar music of an important woman composer, played by a pianist in the full flower of his mature, imaginative artistry.

-- Gramophone (Editor's Choice, March 2022)

Bacewicz’s imagination is vast—as Jablonski’s stunning, post-Lisztian performance reveals… He persuades us that Bacewicz’s Etudes are up there with the great sets (Chopin, Liszt, Ligeti)…this is a very valuable release.

--International Piano

There’s a sense of Bacewicz’s compositional imagination really taking wing in these pieces, and Jablonski commits to her vision. The First Sonata feels full of ambition, and Jablonski draws out all of its rhythmic and emotional complexity.

--BBC Music Magazine

Graźyna Bacewicz was probably the most important Polish composer between Szymanowski and Lutosławski...she was also an excellent pianist, good enough to perform in public on this instrument also, and she composed a fair amount for it. There is too much to fit onto one disc and so all recordings of her piano music have involved choices.

Peter Jablonski has made an excellent choice here. Indeed, I think he has chosen the best of her piano music, which has involved excluding some attractive but lesser works.

I have nothing but praise for the Swedish pianist Peter Jablonski’s performances here. Not only is he in full command of the many notes and often complex textures but he articulates them and makes them musical. There are good notes (in English only) and the recorded sound is excellent. This is now the Bacewicz piano recital to go for.

--MusicWeb International (Stephen Barber)

This splendid disc will appeal both to piano mavens and fans of good twentieth-century music alike. Grazyna Bacewicz (1909-69) was a very distinguished composer, and although better known (perhaps) for her solo violin pieces, she had a real feel for keyboard sonority and color. All of the music on this splendidly played disc is worth hearing.

You can listen to this first-rate disc straight through without a moment’s hesitation. It should win her many friends, I should think, not just for Jablonski’s excellent interpretations, but also for Ondine’s gorgeous sonics.

--ClassicsToday.com

Brilliant playing of music that belongs firmly in the concert repertoire.

Of all the female 20th-century composers whose work is now being rediscovered and reassessed, the Polish composer Grażyna Bacewicz (1909-1969) may be the most accomplished and individual. Once a child prodigy on drums, Jablonski’s rhythm is rock solid, but he is also capable of creating a flow. His dazzling, sympathetic performances are tremendous.

--Limelight