After its first album devoted to Schumann’s first two piano trios, the Kungsbacka Piano Trio now presents the conclusion of this series with the Piano Trio No. 3 in G minor, to which they add the Six Studies in Canonic Form, originally for pedal piano and performed here in an arrangement for piano trio, and an early work, the Quartet in C minor for violin, viola, cello and piano, which was only published in 1979. Composed in 1851, the third Piano Trio achieves the tonal balance Schumann was aiming for with an utmost independence of the three instruments while having ‘obsessive impulses’ running through it, to quote pianist Simon Crawford-Phillips. The Six Studies in Canonic Form that follow appear as small contrapuntal jewels that testify to Robert Schumann’s keen interest in Johann Sebastian Bach’s Preludes and Fugues. Finally, the Quartet composed when Schumann was 18 reveals a wildly creative mind at work, inspired in turn by Beethoven, Mendelssohn and Chopin. Yet, despite these influences, one perceives a distinctive voice that reveals the obsessive qualities that would characterise Schumann’s later works. “A thrilling ride for performer and listener”, promises Crawford-Phillips.

REVIEW:

In Schumann’s Piano Trio 3 in G minor, the Kungsbacka Trio is precise and spry for the entire 26 minutes, and the sound quality is pristine. These musicians find an elegance in the composer that other artists sometimes miss.

The 6 Studies in Canonical Form appear here in their transcription for trio by Theodor Kirchner. The quality is high, but just a few might have sufficed.

The Piano Quartet in C minor is from 1829, making it one of Schumann’s very first attempts at composition. He never finished the piano parts, and so they are completed here by musicologist Joachim Draheim. The Minuet is especially lighthearted, with pianist Simon Crawford-Phillips leading the way. At 33 minutes, this piece is a bit long, with many mercurial shifts of mood and dynamics. Still, this is an impressive album, a happy meeting of performers and material.

-- American Record Guide

Without question born a little too late in a century of huge upheavals, Pierre Sancan has almost completely disappeared from our memories. He nevertheless occupied a place at the heart of the history of French music in the second half of the twentieth century: composer, pianist, teacher, and an extremely endearing personality, as one will discover on this disc.

This program of the Piano concerto, orchestral works, works for solo piano, and the flute Sonatine (played by Adam Walker) serves as a personal tribute to Sancan from both pianist and conductor, and will hopefully help to raise awareness of this gifted composer.

For his second album for Chandos, the flute virtuoso Adam Walker explores the music of British composers with pianist Huw Watkins. Vaughan Williams’s Suite de ballet was commissioned by the French flute virtuoso Louis Fleury (who had given the première of Debussy’s Syrinx). The work uses eighteenth-century French dance forms, a common practice in ‘neo-classical’ composition. Bax’s Four Pieces rescue music from an abandoned ballet originally conceived for Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. Sir Lennox Berkeley’s Sonatina was originally written for treble recorder; James Galway’s championship of the piece made it a staple of the flute repertoire. Howard Fergusson’s Three Sketches were composed intermittently over a period of twenty years. The theme of the third piece is a Hindu melody, ‘Koyalinya bole ambuvan’ (Cuckoos sing in the mango tree). Sonatas by York Bowen and William Alwyn complete this varied and engaging program.

REVIEW:

Seventy-seven minutes of British music for flute and piano might at first glance seem like 40 minutes too much. But that ’s without taking on board the nimble and dazzling skills of flautist Adam Walker, or the individual strengths of the works presented...a new pleasure is never far away in this most accomplished recital, full of the sounds of spring.

-- BBC Music Magazine

After acclaimed recordings of the Third (‘Dausgaard… makes the music sound vital and even revolutionary’, Fanfare) and Sixth (‘This persuasively played work could be no better served’, MusicWeb International), Thomas Dausgaard and the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra now present Anton Bruckner’s Fourth Symphony, ‘Romantic’ in its second version (1878-1880), the one with which this work has become widely known. “Nothing like this has been written since Beethoven” conductor Hans Richter is said to have declared after the successful premiere of Bruckner's Fourth Symphony in Vienna in 1881. This success finally gave the 56-year-old composer the attention and recognition he sorely needed and one can affirm that it was from this day onwards that Bruckner was actually cultivated in Vienna after years of public humiliation. Despite its nickname given by the composer himself, this symphony in no way expresses existential pain. Rather, the romanticism refers to the experience of nature – from sublime forest magic to hunting scenes – emphasized by the horn, the quintessential romantic instrument, which is given a prominent role.

REVIEW:

Dausgaard emerged early on as one of the most convincing HIP conductors of standard repertoire, and he has earned the right to express his individuality in Bruckner under normal conditions, one might say. His involvement with the score is undoubted, which makes the issue of fast tempos mostly irrelevant. Being different is worthwhile only when the difference is musically meaningful. I think that Dausgaard easily passes that test, in a Bruckner Fourth that is among the most striking in years.

-- Fanfare

For the latest instalment in their Mahler series, the Minnesota Orchestra under the direction of Osmo Vänskä presents what many consider to be the pinnacle of the Austrian composer’s entire work, the Ninth Symphony, his last completed symphony. After a vast and emotionally intense first movement that shows an astonishing fluidity of form, theme, texture and tonality, ‘the most glorious thing Mahler has written’ according to Alban Berg, the second movement brings joy and playfulness and seems to evoke both an urban Straussian world and folk music cultures. To the bitter irony and anger of the third movement the last movement, a mystical Adagio, seems to respond with ineffable tenderness. Often regarded as the composer’s monumental – both in terms of scale and emotional scope – leave-taking of the world, the Ninth Symphony can also be understood as a requiem for his daughter who died a few years before, an acknowledgment of the transience of life, a memorial to Vienna, an evocation of fading Austrian and Bohemian landscapes, a homage to a vanishing European cultural world.

James Newby wished to dedicate his second disc on BIS - a recital of English song - to his sister Laura who passed away in 2015, her daughter, and his mother.

After singing Gerald Finzi’s ‘Fear no more the heat o’ the sun’ at her funeral, he felt it fitting that the cycle from which it is taken, Let us Garlands Bring, would form the centerpiece of the program. Alongside this cycle, pianist Joseph Middleton and Newby have designed a program of English songs that reflect on themes of loss, grief and death – but also joy, love and healing with varying styles, sound worlds and atmospheres. George Butterworth, Rebecca Clarke, Edward Elgar, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Benjamin Britten, Liza Lehmann and Errollyn Wallen are just some of the composers who complete the program, including Arthur Somervell with his cycle ‘A Shropshire Lad’. Like Heinrich Heine’s poems that Schumann used for his famous cycle Dichterliebe, these poems by Alfred Edward Housman deal with unrequited love in first person lyrics. This disc ends on a lighter note with the whimsical song, ‘The Green-eyed Dragon’ by Wolseley Charles, which often concludes live performances as an encore.

When more than 500,000 people gathered in New York's Central Park on 26 June 1993, they wanted to hear only one thing: The voice of the greatest tenor of the twentieth century: the voice of Luciano Pavarotti. A year earlier, Pavarotti had thrilled the crowds in London's Hyde Park - here, in New York, he confirmed once again that he is an undisputed world star. He is accompanied by the New York Philharmonic Orchestra under Leone Magiera, featuring the flutist Andrea Griminelli and The Boys Choir of Harlem, whose voices can be heard on albums of Michael Jackson, Kathleen Battle and many more. The recording of this concert, without doubt one of Pavarotti’s most celebrated performances, includes the famous Puccini arias Nessun dorma and E lucevan le stelle and Neapolitanian songs as 'O sole mio.' This legendary concert is now available for the first time on Blu-ray!

Mezzo-soprano Kitty Whately trained at Chetham’s School of Music, the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, and the International Opera School of the Royal College of Music. Having won both the Kathleen Ferrier Award and Royal Overseas League Award in the same year, she attended the prestigious Academy of the Verbier Festival. She writes of this project: ‘It has been my great pleasure to record with Joseph once again. We have long shared a mutual passion for early-twentieth-century-romantic Lieder and talked of making a disc including songs by Mahler and Strauss. The opportunity to discover and research lesser-known composers from their era has been thrilling and fascinating. As the world endured the pandemic, we all experienced fear and danger and loss in a way that most of our generation never did before, on such a global scale. Joseph and I felt drawn to reflect on grief, mortality, and bereavement.’ The two lesser-known composers featured in the recording are Johanna Müller-Hermann (who studied with several of the most prominent teachers in Vienna – Josef Labor, Guido Adler, Alexander Zemlinsky, Josef Bohuslav Foerster, Franz Schmidt) and Margarete Schweikert, who’s upbringing and life in Karlsruhe and studies with Joseph Haas in Stuttgart could hardly provide a greater contrast – clearly audible in their music.

CONTENTS:

• Müller-Hermann: Wie eine Vollmondnacht, Op. 20 No. 4
• Müller-Hermann: Der letzte abend, Op. 2 No. 4
• Strauss, R: Befreit, Op. 39 No. 4
• Strauss, R: Allerseelen, Op. 10 No. 8
• Schweikert: Wolke I
• Schweikert: Totenhausen
• Schweikert: Zusammen sterben
• Strauss, R: Auf ein Kind, Op. 47 No. 1
• Strauss, R: Rückleben, Op. 47 No. 3
• Strauss, R: Morgen, Op. 27 No. 4
• Müller-Hermann: Die Stille Stadt, Op. 4 No. 1
• Müller-Hermann: Herbst, Op. 20 No. 2
• Müller-Hermann: In Memoriam, Op. 28 No. 5
• Schweikert: Unser Haus
• Schweikert: Die Entschlafenen
• Mahler: Kindertotenlieder
• Müller-Hermann: Widmung, Op. 20 No. 1
• Schweikert: Einem Vorangegangenen

REVIEW:

Throughout Whately and Middleton prove highly persuasive guides; the pianist bringing the accompaniments vividly to life and the mezzo fully committed to the works and impressive, in particular, in getting the texts across.

-- Gramophone

Based, in part, on Shakespeare’s The Merry Wives of Windsor, Falstaff is Verdi’s last work for the stage – and only his second comic opera. And yet the humor in this multilayered masterpiece is distinctly wry, for all the main characters exhibit an array of human weaknesses that are implacably exposed by Verdi and his librettist Arrigo Boito. In this legendary performance from the Salzburg Festival, Herbert von Karajan is not only leading a stunning cast of singers featuring the Wiener Philharmoniker, he too directed the opera, in the amazing set design of Günther Schneider-Siemssen.

The legendary conductor Neeme Järvi celebrated his eighty-fifth birthday in the summer of 2022, in Tallinn, giving a series of concerts with his beloved Estonian National Symphony Orchestra. This album serves not just as a commemoration of those wonderful concerts, but also as a personal calling card for this remarkable musician. The concert overture Polonia, published in 1836, may well have been inspired by Wagner’s encounters with defeated Polish nationalists in Leipzig in 1832. Wagner wrote several concert overtures during this period – whilst plans for his revolutionary operatic output were developing – including Christoph Columbus and Rule Britannia!!

Max Reger composed the Serenade in G major in 1905 – 06; it demonstrates the style and talent of this too-little-heard composer. Brahms set Schicksalslied (Song of Destiny), a poem by Friedrich Hölderlin, in two movements with chorus, but then added a third, an orchestral postlude. Ave verum corpus, possibly Mozart’s best-known setting for chorus, rounds off the program.

REVIEWS:

The quality of choral singing of the Latvian State Choir is rightly celebrated, and this is a beautifully shaped performance [of the Schicksalslied], with vocal warmth and blend, and the orchestral postlude bringing a radiant conclusion.

-- BBC Music Magazine

This is a marvellous recording...Although Brahms’s Schicksalslied enjoys numerous recordings, Järvi’s is distinguished by the radiance and depth of the first and last sections as well as the vehemence of the central allegro.

-- Gramophone

As well as being a thoroughly attractive concert conducted with characteristic élan by Chandos star conductor Neeme Järvi, this program represents for collectors a very useful way of acquiring a variety of pieces, some unfamiliar, some less so… this is a very tempting disc.

-- CDChoice.co.uk

The critically acclaimed Italian composer Vito Palumbo has had works performed all over the world by leading orchestras. He began his career with postmodern experimentation, going on to different forms of music theatre. In recent years Palumbo has focused on works for full orchestra, exploring the possibilities of colors and textures – sometimes with the help of electronics – and putting the concept of ‘historical memory’ at the centre of his own composing.

With echoes seemingly coming from Alban Berg’s violin concerto, Palumbo’s own Concerto for Violin and Orchestra (2015) displays bittersweet lyricism. Characterized by a dramatic language and driven by a strong and varied rhythmic impulse, the single-movement work also offers transitional moments of static beauty typical of the composer’s usual finesse in the scoring. With its title echoing the past, Chaconne for 5-string electric violin and electronics (2019-20) highlights the different ways in which the electronics intertwine with the live electric violin, within a conception animated by a strong theatrical sense, like a script for a play that does not reject emotional gestures. About this work, the composer has remarked ‘I want the meaning of my music to be apparent from listening, without the need for verbal justification.’ Both works are championed by the violinist Francesco D’Orazio, a close collaborator of the composer and the dedicatee of the Chaconne.

REVIEWS:

Cast in a single movement of around 30 minutes, the Violin Concerto (2015) starts out with sepulchral stirrings that gradually open out texturally and dynamically on to an evocative backdrop for the soloist to pursue a mainly lyrical and often imaginative discourse. While the violin is very much first among equals across what unfolds, its contribution stands out owing to the fastidiousness of Palumbo’s orchestration; notably during those later stages (of a piece in several arclike sections) when other instruments come briefly if tellingly to the fore to extend the music’s expressive remit. A final and evidently defining climax precedes its dying down towards the musing and even mystical serenity with which this work closes.

Francesco D’Orazio is the assured soloist both here and in Chaconne (2019-20), its scoring with electronics testament to the scrupulousness by which Palumbo approaches the medium. In the initial ‘Woven Lights’, a five-string electric violin is heard in the context of sampled sounds whose gestural immediacy decreases as these are drawn into a sonic continuum as unpredictable as it is imaginative. A long and often plangent cadenza makes way for ‘The Glows in the Dark’, the violin now surrounded by 30 pre-recorded variants of itself as this music assumes a rarefied while also capricious quality typified by tangible weightlessness.

Francesco Abbrescia has realised the electronics with audible sensitivity, and the London Symphony Orchestra respond with equal finesse to the astute conducting of Lee Reynolds. Warmly recommended[.]

-- Gramophone

Palumbo himself has mentioned Berg’s 1935 Violin Concerto as an inspiration for his own concerto of 2015, and connections are clear in the more recent piece’s sumptuous harmonies and deep lyricism (a wonder-filled section near the end even sounds uncannily like a John Williams movie score). There’s a sense of ever-expanding melody that soloist Francesco D’Orazio captures excellently in his warm, generous playing, with an expressive, finely controlled vibrato and abundant character across the rhapsodic writing; the London Symphony Orchestra provides spirited support under Lee Reynolds.

D’Orazio swaps his Guarneri for a five-string electric fiddle in Palumbo’s two-movement Chaconne, which first pits the soloist against a shimmering electronic backdrop, and later against 30 mirror images of himself. It’s a volatile, sometimes elusive piece that blends fantasy and sonic adventurousness, and D’Orazio responds with far harder-edged, sometimes astringent playing that stands out beautifully against the composer’s washes of sound. The massed, high-pitched violins set microtonally apart in the Chaconne’s second movement make for a rather headache-inducing, if impressive, sonic texture, but it’s the piece’s uneasy relationship with more traditional tonality and playing, and its joyful celebration of the wild unpredictability of sound that make it particularly striking. Recorded sound is close, warm and clear throughout.

-- The Strad

Of the two scores the first is a Concerto for violin and orchestra. This is in a single-tracked 30-minute movement. A solution of tense foreboding and beetling catastrophe are the order of the day. The violin evokes thoughts of Ifrits rising like evocations of flame and driven upwards by superheated thermals. Palumbo embraces some ferociously stropped violent dissonance but weaves in a romantic style: Walton/Berg. It is as if a sky-soaring Ariel is gripped by a mystical pilgrimage. There are moments of appeasing calm (8.40), hesitant wispy writing deep in the undergrowth (18.11). Pizzicati and precipitous slides recall Hovhaness with the solo instrument slipping frictionless and free. (28.00). All ends in silence. This work will appeal to those who warm to the Violin Concerto by Missy Mazzoli – also on BIS.

A change of instrumental cams and gears comes with the other work: a Chaconne for five-stringed electric violin and electronics (2019–20). There’s no orchestra this time. The music is in two substantial movements: Woven Lights and The Glows in the Dark. The first of these has the soloist juxtaposed with sampled sounds and electronics. The second has D’Orazio’s solo plus 30 pre-recorded electric violin parts. Like the more conventionally scored Concerto this work is intricate and delicate: a jangling and twangling Prospero’s Island. It’s another impressively virtuoso piece – a thing of wonder.

As is BIS’s practice these days, the CD comes with a supportive essay and other written material. It’s all in a cleverly contrived card sleeve.

-- MusicWeb International

The year 2023 has served contemporary music rather well on record. Among its many highlights, Vito Palumbo’s new album Woven Lights burns bright indeed. Coming five years after the composer’s first BIS Records release, the second volume brings together two notable scores focusing on the violin – in its acoustic and electric raiments – featuring Francesco D’Orazio as soloist.

The album opens with Palumbo’s thirty-one-minute Violin Concerto (2015) in one movement, followed by the twenty-seven minute Chaconne (2019–20) for electric violin (five strings) and electronics. Cast in two movements – which can also be performed separately – the latter features sampled sounds, electronic soundscapes devised by Francesco Abbrescia and up to thirty pre-recorded electric violin parts.

Documented on microphones at Abbey Road Studio 1, London on 17 September 2016, with D’Orazio joined by the London Symphony Orchestra under Lee Reynolds, the Violin Concerto is given an immersive workout on the new album. Although conceived as extended monolith, one hears traces of more traditional concerto scheme embedded within its awe-inspiring arch. Scored for solo violin and [orchestra], the violin concerto is awash with formidable instrumental writing, giving rise to an enthralling sequence of soundscapes.

Emerging from nowhere, the music begins to take shape in various orchestral noises; tam-tam pulses, low drones, Tibetan bowls and ascending vibraphone patterns. Out of the string fabric, violent orchestral pulses are drawn as the introduction draws to its close, paving the way for the solo violin to enter the soundstage. Accompanied by glockenspiel and strings, soon joined by woodwinds, the soloist begins to unfold an endless melody – to put it in Birtwistlesque terms – colorized by muted brass. This leads to rousingly kinetic section with virtuoso violin figurations and percussive orchestral interjections, contrasted some pages later by cloud-like arpeggios.

Cooling down, the concerto flows into its meditative central section of dazzling color, where the soloist’s candle-lit musings are echoed by translucent orchestral chiaroscuro. Here, Palumbo draws some astounding textures from the solo instrument and the symphonic ensemble alike. However, the music does not linger. Jagged soundscapes re-emerge some four minutes later in a passage of splendid unrest. This, in turn, leads to astounding near-stasis of utmost sonorous focus. Almost imperceptibly, the textures grow increasingly volatile, channeling all their repressed energy into an inevitable burst of instrumental electricity. Out of the rumors, a shadowy section remains, marked by loose melodic threads hanging mid-air between the orchestral instruments and the solo violin – a high-point in the concerto’s musical subtlety.

Rippling figurations mark the transition into a toccata-like tour-de-force passage, featuring hyper-kinetic instrumental singing from the soloist, answered by fluid orchestral propulsion. Cooling down to a riveting hall of mirrors, characterized by slowly-rotating melodic arches and dream-like woodwind pulses, the music crossed the threshold back to the surreal realm from whence it first emerged. Transformed by its journey, the concerto fades into tangible silence.

Given in dream-of-a-performance by D’Orazio and the LSO with Reynolds, the Violin Concerto is served with full spectrum of timbral nuance. Unraveled in ever beautifully aligned layers, the interplay between the soloist and the orchestra comes off admirably throughout the entire musical quest. Embraced with absolute control over the musical narrative, D’Orazio’s take on the solo part is nothing short of remarkable. Peerless in their studio work, the members of the LSO deliver a wonderful take on the orchestral score. Guided by Reynold’s attentive podium sensibilities, the musical discussion between the LSO and their soloist are always spot-on, their sonorous clarity being enhanced by sensitive engineering and post-production.

A concerto for the focused listener, Palumbo’s score keeps unlocking its sonorous secrets in the course of repeated iterations, lending itself marvelously even to the most zealous close examination.

The title track of the album, the eighteen-minute Woven Lights first movement of the Chaconne seems to stem from some realm interrelated – somewhat – to the pensive central sections of the Violin Concerto. An ever-permuting interplay between the fully written-out electric violin part and its real-time computer-processed echoes, interwoven with sampled sounds of glass and metal, the movement is perhaps best described as the musical equivalent of northern lights – if one is to resort into simple analogies. Sonorous aurora of gorgeous blues and greens, the tapestries of Woven Lights call forth a plethora of associations related to time and space, yielding to transformative listening experience.

Bridged with a cadential passage, the music is carried over into The Glows in the Dark second movement. An intricate web of live and pre-recorded parts, the eight-minute soundscape gazes into the open space and nebulae beyond, zooming in and out of musical cloud-formations resulting from multiples of the solo instrument. A quest into the unknown, aural apparitions travel across the resulting contrapuntal network, to a dazzling effect. Disappearing beyond our scopes, the music dissolves into interstellar space, calling forth the listener’s mental theater to complete its narrative.

A superlative rendition from D’Orazio and Abbrescia, the fused creativity of solo instrumental performance and its electronic reimaginations yields to veritable sonic discovery, exploring strange new worlds through shared musical ritual. Fabulously realized on the new album, the Chaconne is a milestone score.

-- Adventures in Music

Born in Liège, Belgium, in 1873, Joseph Jongen showed an outstanding precocity for music from a very early age, and was admitted to the Liège Conservatoire at the extraordinarily young age of seven. He won a First Prize for fugue in 1895 and honors diplomas in piano and organ the next year. In 1897, he won the Belgian Prix de Rome, which allowed him to travel to Italy, Germany, and France, where he experienced the music of Brahms and Richard Strauss, Fauré, Debussy, and Ravel, all of which would exert an influence on the young composer. Although he composed in numerous genres, including the symphony and concerto, as well as chamber music, instrumental pieces, and choral works, it is his output for the organ for which he is now best known.

The Serbian-American pianist Ivan Ilić helps to redress the balance with this new recording of two of Jongen’s substantial sets of Préludes for piano. The 13 Préludes, Op. 69 are expansive in nature and extremely poetic – each bears an evocative title. They are dedicated to Émile Bosquet who gave their première, in 1923. The 24 Petits Préludes dans tous les tons were begun in 1940 and (like Bach’s preludes and fugues) circle through each and every key, major and minor. Arranged in twelve pairs, the minor key following the major on the same tonic note, these works reflect Jongen’s affinity for (and mastery of) their free form, as well as demonstrating his mature compositional style.

REVIEW:

The reputation of Belgian composer, organist, and educator Joseph Jongen (1873-1953) basically rests upon one work, his Symphonie concertante for organ and orchestra. However, he composed prolifically in many genres. His solo piano works fall between Franck’s burnished chromaticism and young Scriabin’s sensuous textures while flirting with Debussy and Ravel. Such a style works best when served up in small doses, such as in the Preludes Op. 69.

Jongen may not be a memorable tunesmith, and his phraseology tends to be square, but his exquisite harmonic sense and idiomatic, well-crafted handling of the keyboard more than compensates. In the Op. 60 group, you have, on one hand, Eau tranquille’s gently persistent double notes that contrast to Appassionato’s hammered-out chords that step right out of the finale of Scriabin’s Third sonata.

The 24 Petits Preludes in all of the major and minor keys are less ambitious technically and more conservative, even academic in style. The purity of the contrapuntal writing in slower pieces like Preludes Nos. 10 and 20 smacks of organ technique, while No. 22’s imitative writing suggests a Passepied from a Bach suite in slightly updated modern dress. The pieces fuse charm and seriousness in equal portions, and say what they need to say without overstaying their welcome.

The music’s workmanship mirrors Ivan Ilić’s caringly detailed interpretations. For example, he shapes No. 18’s cascading patterns into cogent melodic arcs, while imparting subtle shadings of timbre to No. 11’s unassumingly beautiful chords. He scales Op. 69 No. 13’s dynamics with care, ensuring that the motoric build-ups do not get too loud too soon, and thereby generating steady momentum. Tempo choices similarly appear to be judicious.

While one might prefer Diane Andersen’s gaunter and more scintillating reading of Papillons noirs (Op. 69 No. 11) in her complete Jongen piano music cycle for the Pavane label, Ilić’s deliberation better allows you to absorb the harmonic motion, together with extra breathing room for the dancing right-hand triplets. In short, Ilić’s mindful virtuosity serves the music first and foremost throughout this highly recommendable and well-engineered release.

-- ClassicsToday.com

As core members of the ensemble Wigmore Soloists, Michael Collins, Isabelle van Keulen and Michael McHale present four works for clarinet trio composed over a period of some 130 years. Mozart’s Kegelstatt Trio was long believed to have been composed during a game of bowling. The writing is reminiscent of a conversation between three friends in which contrasts are not excluded: we hear affection, divergences and even disagreements. This atmosphere of friendly, playful, and sometimes very intimate exchange also pervades Schumann’s Märchenerzählungen (Fairy Tales). While its spirited conviviality might give the impression that this work was the product of idyllic times, it was actually composed during Schumann’s last full year of sanity before his final mental collapse in 1854. There is a similar atmosphere of warm intimacy in Max Bruch’s Eight Pieces, written in 1910. Four of them are presented here, giving not a single hint of the approaching First World War. Based on a Russian folk tale, Stravinsky’s stage work L’Histoire du Soldat may be less good-natured than the preceding works. But the music is wonderfully entertaining, borrowing from various genres, including jazz. The composer’s trio version consist of five movements and has deservedly become his most frequently performed chamber composition.

REVIEW:

As expected, the performances are excellent. The Mozart is wonderfully lyrical; the Stravinsky crackles with energy; and the Schumann and the Bruch have the intensity and heartfelt phrasing the composers require. Collins leads with his clear and resonant timbre, dazzling fingers and articulation, and superb musicianship; and McHale lends splendid tone, touch, technique, and sensitivity. Van Keulen demonstrates terrific versatility all through, from warm contralto utterances to spunky fiddle playing, though sometimes her viola lines are a little thin and scrappy. Even so, the profound devotion to each score makes this album very worthwhile.

-- American Record Guide

Huw Watkins’ song cycle Echo, composed for soprano Ruby Hughes and premiered in 2017 at Carnegie Hall, is at the center of this artfully crafted recital. Setting texts by five different poets, the cycle is a work centered on melancholy – on transience, remembrance, and in the final song a numbed cry of inconceivable loss. As such it permeates the entire program, adding a new and unexpected depth to that which precedes as well as follows. Another strand of the recital is the idea of how composers across the ages have addressed and echoed one another lovingly in their music – often in the most nuanced and unconscious way. Bach’s solo keyboard works capture something of a sense of timelessness, or more accurately, inspire an emotional connection that transcends time. A similar affinity seems to inform Britten’s folksong arrangements and his realizations of Bach’s Geistliche Lieder as well as the Purcell realizations by Thomas Adès and Tippett. A different kind of echo is created by the inclusion of Britten’s version of Dafydd y Garreg Wen(David of the White Rock) – a nod to the performers’ shared Welsh heritage. Closing the disc, three songs by contemporary British composers admired by both Watkins and Hughes also resonate with the previous works, bringing the program full circle.

REVIEW:

Here, in a recital that includes two world premieres, Hughes and longtime collaborator Huw Watkins combine contemporary works with works from centuries past. Somber themes connect them: the transience of life. Loss. Grief.

Watkins’s five Echo songs are exceptionally beautiful. Listen to the falling cascades in his setting of Emily Dickinson’s “For Each Ecstatic Instant.” Admire how vocally responsive Hughes is in the Purcell, how fragile and precious she sounds in Errollyn Wallen’s “Peace on Earth,” and how much she can communicate with barely a whisper of sound. Marvelous.

-- Stereophile

After two stylistically diverse anthologies – In Motion and Renewal – the United Strings of Europe and their director Julian Azkoul have chosen to devote their latest project to a single composer: Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. They open with the composer’s Serenade, a tribute to Mozart’s divertimentos, but infused with Tchaikovsky’s characteristic pathos and melancholy. It is one of his most popular works, with the especially beloved Waltz as its second movement, and a finale featuring Russian folk songs. The other works included on this recording are arrangements tailor-made for the ensemble by Julian Azkoul. Andante cantabile, the slow movement of Tchaikovsky’s First String Quartet, is a piece of great emotional power, based on an old folk song which Tchaikovsky reportedly heard in the Ukrainian town of Kamenka. Composed following a stay in Florence, the Sextet is brooding in temperament and despite its title arguably more Russian than Italian in character. Like the Serenade, it makes use of classical forms and devices but also includes passages evoking traditional Russian music. After completing the work, Tchaikovsky – who was otherwise his own harshest critic – wrote: ‘it’s frightening to see how pleased I am with myself’. The album closes with At Bedtime, an early composition for mixed choir with a meditative quality reminiscent of Eastern Orthodox chant that lends itself well to the string orchestra textures.

The GRAMMY Award Winner Metropole Orchestra, GRAMMY Award Winner John Beasley, and GRAMMY Award Nominee Maria Mendes present a new live recording. Fado music is undeniable for the Portuguese people and for all of those who seek for nostalgic love in the past and present. And so is saudade – a Portuguese word that doesn’t translate to any other language in the world.

"Fado and saudade are forever bound. They both express the melancholic longing for the past and the hopes it becomes present once again. They also express the belief in destiny as a fortunate and fatalistic power that you cannot escape from. This music is about how I feel Fado and how I love it, free of definitions, free of limitations. This is no Fado album. This is no traditional Jazz music. This is an adventure that is real and can be felt by everyone. As love is." --Maria Mendes

Editor's Choice at Jazziz October 2022

REVIEWS

With her critically acclaimed 2019 album Close To Me, Mendes spotlighted her ability to bring disparate influences together with her vibrant fusion of symphonic jazz and Portuguese Fado, the folk music of her homeland. Now, Mendes brings her singular vision to the concert stage in collaboration with master keyboardist-arranger John Beasley and Metropole Orkest on her new live album, Saudade, Colour Of Love...the album expands the emotional intensity of its predecessor’s hybrid sound with the backing of a full orchestra. The lush symphonic sound sparks when it meets the interplay of Mendes’ brilliant quartet and the singer’s fervent vocals.

--DownBeat

Drawing songs from her Grammy-nominated album Close to You and adding new material, Mendes and producer, co-arranger and conductor John Beasley get the balance just right: Sinatra-esque orchestral introductions, rippling jazz piano, the melancholy drama of fado, her own forays into scat and improvisation. Check out the epic “Verdes Anos,” which starts with soft strings, moves into a fiery piano solo, and ends with the Orkest doing battle with Mendes’ high-pitched cries and squeals. “E Se Não For Fado” fits squarely in the ballad tradition, keeping the improvisation to a minimum to make the most of its lovely melody.

Mendes soars as both singer and scatter on her own “Dança Do Amor,” while “Quando Eu Era Pequenina” takes a traditional Portuguese tune and sends it into orbit. Beloved Brazilian composer Hermeto Pascoal contributes a brand-new piece to the program, and “Hermeto’s Fado For Maria” ends up as a highlight of the record. Mendes closes the album with “Meu Pobre Capitão,” a new co-composition with Beasley whose creamy melody and Latin shuffle send the audience out smiling. Pulling from two different traditions on Saudade, Mendes manages to make a new one of her own.

--The Big Takeover

There are few things as exciting and as challenging as singing with a full orchestra.  Maria Mendes has a voice, toned by technique and colored with emotion, that soars like another instrument atop the awesome arrangements of the Metropole Orkest conducted by John Beasley.

[Mendes] offers us Portuguese Folk songs, colorfully arranged and plush with orchestration. The mastery of John Beasley as arranger and conductor shines like gold. This project is Maria Mendes’ dream-come-true album, recorded, May of 2022 in Amsterdam.  Her voice is as natural and multi-layered as the orchestra and her exquisite range soars above the instruments like a powerful bird in flight. Maria’s range is astounding and the way she weaves jazzy scat sounds into the production is both unique and ear-catching. John Beasley builds the production around her vocals beautifully, attentive to the details of her delivery, while all the time, enriching this amazing orchestra with his sensitive, dynamic arrangements.

Here is an artistic and unusual project, infused with jazz, rich with classical overtones and culturally prominent.

--Musical Memoirs

Celebrating its fiftieth anniversary in 2022, the Brodsky Quartet has performed more than 3000 concerts on the major concert stages of the world and has released more than seventy recordings. A natural curiosity and insatiable desire to explore have propelled the group in many artistic directions and continue to ensure it not only a place at the very forefront of the international chamber music scene but also a rich and varied musical existence. As they comment in their booklet note: ‘It seems fitting to mark the milestone by recording this epic and most celebrated of chamber works, Schubert’s String Quintet in C major, a piece which we have lived with since childhood, and which we have played with a long line of illustrious cellists. One of our earliest performances took place with Terence Weil, our mentor at college, at his retirement concert, just as we were starting out on our professional journey. Now the wonderful young Laura van der Heijden, who comes to this recording with a maturity which belies her years, represents with respect to us a similar age gap, proving that age is insignificant where there is a meeting of musical minds. Now we look forward to whatever our sixth decade might bring.’

REVIEW:

In this exceptional interpretation of Schubert’s C major Quintet, there are plenty of moments where the players individually or collectively make something happen – a tiny inflection in the phrasing here, an applied touch of color there. Yet nothing is overdone, and the music always flows as it wants to.

-- BBC Music Magazine

Regular duet and two-piano partners Hélène Mercier and Louis Lortie have returned to the studio for this all-Debussy program. The album features duets written by the composer himself -such as the Petite Suite, the Six Épigraphes antiques and the Marche écossaise sur un thème Populaire; as well as a number of arrangements of his solo piano pieces (the Première Arabesque, La Fille aux cheveux de lin and the "Slavic" Ballade). The album ends with André Caplet’s monumental arrangement of Debussy’s best known orchestral work, La Mer. Stripped of its orchestration, this two-piano version allows the listener to more easily appreciate Debussy’s ground-breaking harmonic innovation. The album was recorded in the concert hall at Snape Maltings in Suffolk, using a pair of Bösendorfer 280 VC grand pianos.

REVIEWS:

Regular duet and two-piano partners Hélène Mercier and Louis Lortie present this all-Debussy program, starting and ending on the water. The duo characterize Debussy’s impressionism well with playing that is sensitive and charming.

The album ends with André Caplet’s monumental arrangement of Debussy’s best known orchestral work, La Mer. Stripped of its orchestration, this two-piano version allows the listener to more easily appreciate Debussy’s ground-breaking harmonic innovation.

-- Cumbria Times (Andrew Palmer)

The playing by the two distinguished pianists is faultless, distinctly outlining the notes with a clarity of separation; the recording in the superb acoustic of the Snape Maltings captures the sound ideally; the presentation of the booklet, with extensive and informative notes in three languages by Roger Nichols, is excellent; and the music itself, I need hardly add, is marvelous.

Most frustratingly then, is that Debussy’s masterpiece for the two-piano repertoire, his late En blanc et noir, is missing. That, however, is not to say that the purchaser of this very full disc is under-compensated. Nevertheless, there might be something to be said for letting us hear Debussy’s music in two-piano and piano-duet arrangements, especially those published during his lifetime, even when we may suspect that reasons of commercial necessity may have prompted their original issue.

-- MusicWeb International

The expressive immediacy of Aram Khachaturian's music, with its sensuous melodic writing, vibrant orchestration and rhythmic drive, resulted in a popularity equaled by few composers of his generation. Composed in 1936, the Piano Concerto was the work that established Khachaturian’s name. Cast in the customary three movements, it is scored for a sizable orchestra, with notable contributions from both side-drum and military drum in the percussion section. In the second movement there is also an extensive solo for a so-called ‘flexatone’; it is often put forward that Khachaturian in fact intended the part to be played on the musical saw, as it is on the present recording. Thirty years after the Concerto, the composer returned to the genre with his Concerto-Rhapsody for piano and orchestra. This time the score offers prominent roles for the xylophone, marimba and vibraphone, which contribute towards making this one of the composer’s most colorful works. The demanding solo parts are here performed by the young Jordanian-Palestinian pianist Iyad Sughayer, with spirited support from the BBC National Orchestra of Wales under Andrew Litton. Sughayer made his acclaimed début as a recording artist with an album of Khachaturian's piano works and sandwiched between the two works with orchestra he here presents the piano version of one of the composer's best loved pieces, the Masquerade Suite with its yearning opening Waltz and closing Galop.

IN CONVERSATION: ENRICO PIERANUNZI ON VOYAGE IN TIME

Voyage in time (a suite in nine movements) is conceived in the likeness of the suites of dances typical of the Baroque era. Some titles (Minuet, Courante, Pavane) may surprise the listener who associates our names with Jazz music. It is certainly true that our three previous albums were all Jazz albums. However, this fourth encounter - our second album for Challenge Records, after Common View (2020) - is a completely different recording, both in terms of line-up and material. The movements, composed by Jasper and arranged together during our recording session, reflect our shared love of classical music and combine classical forms with a very open improvisational approach. The result is a sort of journey back and forth between the musical languages of our time and of times past. A very special Voyage In Time, in fact, in which you are all invited to take part.

REVIEW:

Somsen has written a nine-part suite in which the two bring their musical storytelling to sparkle along the formal lines of baroque dances... Everything else is illustrious art of playing, is a fine feeling for the breath of the counterpart.

-- Jazzthing

On Synergy, flautist Sharon Bezaly and her musician friends demonstrate that one plus one can be much greater than two. Featuring works that celebrate the coming together of like-minded musicians, this project is a reminder, after more than two years of a pandemic that has affected all of us, that true musical synergy can only be achieved 'face-to-face’, rather than ‘remotely’. With his Concerto for flute and recorder, Telemann not only creates a fusion of different musical styles of his time – namely Italian, German and French – but also shows a gift for borrowing elements from popular music. Saint-Saëns brings swirling colors and energy with a Tarentelle for flute, clarinet and orchestra, that at times displays obsessive, even threatening undertones. From the same period, Doppler’s Concerto for two flutes is not far from the world of opera, providing the two soloists with ample opportunity to shine like two singers in front of an orchestra. In addition to celebrating the synergy created between musicians, the last two works featured on this disc, Bachianas Brasileiras No. 6 and Suite from the Orchestral Works, are telling examples of synergy between composers: it is as if Villa-Lobos and Mahler were shaking hands with Johann Sebastian Bach across distances of thousands of miles and hundreds of years.

REVIEW:

The principal attraction of this SACD, as good as the performances are, is the uniqueness of the program. Sharon Bezaly, one of the outstanding flutists of our time, has brought together composers not particularly associated with each other, and from different eras. While each performance is enjoyable, the real success of the disc is how the imaginative program flows in such a lovely way.

On Telemann’s Concerto in E Minor for Recorder, Flute, and Strings with harpsichord continuo. Bezaly is joined by one of the world’s premier recordists, Michala Petri, and their interplay is delightful. The final Presto is particularly inventive and sparkling in the way the two soloists play off each other.

Michael Collins and Bezaly play Saint-Saëns’s Tarantelle with total communication, lingering lightly over lyrical passages while clearly enjoying their virtuoso moments as well.

The big surprise for me was the Concerto in D Minor for Two Flutes by the flute virtuoso and composer Franz Doppler (1821–1883). The music is almost vocal in its melodic shape, but the remarkable aspect of the score, surprisingly, are the passages where the two flutes must play in unison. Bezaly and Walter Auer come close to making us believe that they are a single flute.

Next comes the one work without orchestra, Villa-Lobos’s Bachianas brasileiras No. 6, scored for flute and bassoon. Bram van Sambeek is a brilliant technician, but more importantly he produces a rich sound from his bassoon and provides harmonic support for Bezaly’s flute.

Her combination of rich tone and rhythmic precision is just right for The Mahler-orchestrated selections from the Second and Third Orchestral Suites. While no one would mistake this for an historically informed performance, it is an extremely stylish one. Michael Collins and the Swedish Chamber Orchestra bring elegance to the Air and energy to the Gavotte from the Third Suite. As an encore Bezaly give us a repeat of the Badinerie from the Second Suite.

BIS’s usual high standards of engineering and informative program notes round out a truly lovely disc.

-- Fanfare (Henry Fogel)

Hélène Clément, violist with the Doric String Quartet, is the current holder of the viola previously owned by both Bridge and Britten. Her ambition, quickly formed once she first played this instrument, has been to create a testament to both composers and the instrument that binds them all together. This recording, where Hélène is joined by pianist Alasdair Beatson and Dame Sarah Connolly, is the realization of that ambition. Hélène writes: ‘Frank Bridge owned and played the beautiful viola made by Francesco Giussani, in Italy, in 1843. Benjamin Britten was Frank Bridge’s most beloved pupil, and Bridge gave him the viola as a parting gift when Britten had to embark on a ship’s journey to the United States at the outbreak of the Second World War. The composers were never to see each other again. To record the viola repertoire of both composers, producing the very sound that they would have had in their ears, the sound that inspired their love for the instrument and its special language, became a priority for me.’

REVIEW:

The soul of this beautifully constructed recital is the luminous variety Hélène Clément extracts from the 1843 Giussani viola owned by Frank Bridge and passed on to his favorite pupil, Benjamin Britten. The anguished overlapping of mezzo and viola at the climax of ‘Where is it that our soul doth go?’ is one of many revelations on the disc.

-- BBC Music Magazine

"Bavouzet’s Haydn is unmatched in its zest and its wit. But it is also substantial, informed and deeply rewarding."

--The New York Times on Bavouzet's Haydn Sonatas cycle, 2022

Jean-Efflam Bavouzet’s survey of Haydn’s piano sonatas reaches its conclusion with this 11th and final volume. As with the previous releases, the acclaimed pianist has included repertoire from different periods of Haydn’s career to create a recital of interest in its own right, as well as the completion of the series.

Jean-Efflam notes: ‘It has been eleven years since the launch of this project to present Haydn’s sonatas, not in their chronological order, but as collections juxtaposing works from different periods. The program for this final album was actually the first one to be devised: I wanted to place side by side the very first and the very last sonata. Then the idea of fleshing out the sonata cycle with other major pieces began at volume four, with the addition of the famous Variations in F minor, and finally this last volume is made up of as many sonatas as other types of works. The complete series is thus able to offer music lovers all the sonatas identified to date, together with the other major keyboard works.’

REVIEWS:

Joseph Haydn once remarked: ‘I was not a magician on any instrument, but I knew the power and effect of all of them.’ This knowledge he used to good effect in his cello concertos, composed some twenty years apart for two different cellists in ‘his’ orchestra at the court of Prince Esterhazy. Both works are firmly established in the concert repertoire, but this has not always been the case. Concerto No. 1 in C major was long believed to be lost and it was only in 1961 that a set of parts were discovered in the Prague National Museum. The D major concerto, on the other hand, was never lost, but for a very long time there was doubts concerning its provenance. Only when Haydn's manuscript was found in 1954 could the work’s authorship be clarified beyond doubt.

These two jewels in the cello repertoire are here performed by the acclaimed Swiss cellist Christian Poltéra who also directs the Münchener Kammerorchester. Closing the disc is a work composed some 150 years later: the composer and viola player Paul Hindemith wrote his Trauermusik for himself to perform at a concert commemorating the death of George V of England in 1936. It is here heard in the version for cello and strings.

REVIEW:

Christian Poltéra is front and centre in these vivacious performances of Haydn’s two cello concertos. His ‘Mara’ Stradivari is in fine voice, throaty and gruff in chivvying low-register passages but singing plangently in the high-lying lyrical writing that is such a feature of both works.

-- The Strad

Gity Razaz was born in Tehran, where she spent her formative years before moving to the United States in 2002. Razaz’s identity as an immigrant is integral to her artistic work, in terms both of the subject matter that attracts her and the musical structures she employs. The relationship between the grounded and the ephemeral inhabits much of her music: her choice of titles reveals a poetic sensibility, but her music is never purely cerebral. Instead it is often anchored by the visceral, as with the punchy rhythms and earthy colours of The Strange Highway for cello octet. That piece, which has given name to the album, takes its inspiration from a poem by the Chilean author Roberto Bolaño. Two other works on the disc also have extra-musical roots: Legend of Sigh is a retelling in music of an Azerbaijani folktale while Metamorphosis of Narcissus was inspired by the famous painting by Salvador Dalí. In both these works Razaz embraces electro-acoustic techniques as a means of enhancing her palette.

The five works on the disc were composed between 2007 and 2020, with the earliest piece being Duo for violin and piano. The latest work is Spellbound, a solo for viola inspired by the mournful sound quality of Persian instruments such as the ney and kamanche.