This release grew out of the fascination of Robert von Bahr, founder and managing director of BIS Records, for the television series House of Cards. It wasn’t only – or even primarily – the script or the acting that grabbed him, however, but just as much the music. Said and done – Jeff Beal, the composer of the House of Cards soundtrack, was contacted and it was soon decided that he should compose a Flute Concerto for the virtuosic Sharon Bezaly. To complement the concerto a selection of music from the series was agreed upon, but with five seasons worth of installments to choose from, this quickly grew into a large-scale House of Cards Symphony which at 83 minutes takes up an album all on its own. So now the decision was made to record and present a lavish release, with three further works: Six Sixteen for guitar and orchestra (performed by Grammy winner Jason Vieaux), Canticle for strings and a brand new House of Cards Fantasy for flute and orchestra. The Norrköping Symphony Orchestra has received international acclaim for its recordings of the hyper-intense music of modernist Allan Pettersson, but here, under the direction of the composer himself, it has taken to the new idiom and welcomes the additional instruments necessary to bring out that House of Cards feeling: electric guitar and bass guitar, drum kit, piano and flugelhorn.

Sebastian Fagerlund has made a name for himself primarily through his concertos and orchestral works. As demonstrated on previous recordings, his music displays a huge range of colors and an uncommon rhythmic vitality, as well as a sure feel for instrumental writing. He has nevertheless also composed a number of vocal and choral works, and in fact the first release on BIS of his music was the opera Döbeln (2010), based on a controversial figure in the war between Sweden and Russia in 1788-90. When Fagerlund received a commission for a second opera from the Finnish National Opera, he found his inspiration closer to our own time as well as to his own field. Ingmar Bergman’s 1978 chamber drama Höstsonaten (Autumn Sonata) tells of the celebrated pianist Charlotte Andergast, and how she is confronted by her daughter Eva, who accuses her of neglect and self-absorption. Bergman’s screenplay has been used as basis for numerous stage productions, but this is the first adaptation for opera. Höstsonaten was premièred at the Finnish National Opera in Helsinki in 2017, with Anne Sofie von Otter as Charlotte – the role for which Ingrid Bergman was nominated to an Oscar as best actress. She is supported by a cast including Erika Sunnegårdh, Helena Juntunen and Tommi Hakala, and the chorus and orchestra of the Finnish National Opera conducted by John Storgårds.

The music on Presentiment, a 2018 release with four orchestral works by Rolf Martinsson, was described by one critic as ‘bold and uncompromisingly personal, eschewing avant-garde modernism and engaging us with solidly expert conventional techniques of composition and orchestration’ (MusicWeb-International.com). The present album features more of Martinsson’s music, performed by the Malmo Symphony Orchestra – a body with which Martinsson has enjoyed a close relationship as its composer in residence. In two of the recorded works, the orchestra – conducted by Paul Magi – is joined by another of Martinsson’s regular collaborators, the soprano Lisa Larsson. Larsson is the soloist in Ich denke Dein..., a song cycle setting five poems by Goethe, Rilke and von Eichendorff, and in Into Eternity, a longer work which in its second half incorporates two poems by the Swedish poet Karin Boye. Into Eternity was composed for the opening of the Malmo orchestra's new concert hall in 2015, and Martinsson wrote it, as well as Ich denke Dein..., with Lisa Larsson in mind. Larsson also appeared on the composer's previous monograph on BIS, in his settings of poems by Emily Dickinson; a performance that led one reviewer to proclaim her 'an expressive artist par excellence, who knows to savour every nuance of the poems' (klassik-heute.de).

Van Gogh’s Sunflowers, da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, Tolstoy’s War and Peace – those works of art that are truly part of the canon of global culture are few and far apart. In music, one work that holds significance for people all over the world is Ludwig van Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, and especially its choral finale. Even today, as we are getting ready to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the birth of its creator, the sheer size and complexity of the symphony is daunting. There are some eyewitness accounts from the first performance, at the Kärntner-Tor-Theater in Vienna on 7th May 1824: we know for instance that Beethoven was on stage himself throughout the performance, but that owing to his deafness he did not notice the audience’s overwhelming enthusiasm. What the Ninth sounded like that evening in Vienna is something we will never know, however – which is why hearing it in a historically informed performance on period instruments is all the more interesting. With impeccable credentials from their 65-album series of Bach’s complete cantatas, and acclaimed recent recordings of Mozart’s Requiem and Beethoven’s Missa solemnis, Bach Collegium Japan and Masaaki Suzuki now give us their rendering of Beethoven’s last and greatest symphony, joined by a fine quartet of vocal soloists.

Begun in 2012 with the release of Symphony No. 1, Thomas Dausgaard’s four-album traversal of the symphonies of Johannes Brahms is here brought to a close with the composer’s final work in the genre. The E minor Symphony is sometimes described as Brahms’ ‘elegiac symphony’, and has been called ‘one of the greatest orchestral works since Beethoven’. Typical for the composer is the striking degree of motivic relationships throughout the work. This includes the finale in which Brahms demonstrates his full mastery in a towering Passacaglia consisting of 30 variations and a coda. The smallish forces of the Swedish Chamber Orchestra contribute to a transparency and clarity which bring out the finer details of Brahms’ compositional web. As on previous installments, the symphony is coupled with other works by Brahms. Included on the present release is another late work, Tragic Overture, which concludes the programme. These two ‘serious’ works frame some of the most rousing and ebullient music Brahms ever wrote, namely his Hungarian Dances. Composed for piano four-hands, the 21 dances became immensely popular, and Brahms arranged three of them for orchestra himself. Having made his own orchestrations of the remaining 18 dances, Thomas Dausgaard has recorded the full set for his Brahms cycle, with the final nine dances included here.

With this programme of music for cello and piano, Steven Isserlis and Connie Shih transport us to the world immortalized in Marcel Proust’s a la recherche du temps perdu – the Parisian high society and its glittering salons. For the composers of the time these provided a perfect platform for the introduction of new works, performed by the finest musicians in France for a sympathetic, educated and rich (!) audience. And for the music-loving Proust they offered countless opportunities to meet the composers that he so admired (and others that he may have admired a bit less…) The first of these to make his appearance in the programme is no one less than Proust’s one-time lover and lifelong friend, Reynaldo Hahn, with a brief set of Variations chantantes on a theme from a baroque opera. He is followed by Gabriel Faure, whose music Proust gushed about in a letter to the composer: ‘I could write a book more than 300 pages long about it.’

Proust was less expansive about Saint-Saëns’ music even if he admired him as a pianist, but the composer’s First Cello Sonata is nevertheless the centrepiece of the programme, before Henri Duparc and Augusta Holmes make their appearance. These were both students of Cesar Franck, whose iconic Violin Sonata in A major (here in the version for cello) closes this programme of ‘salon music’ – in the best possible sense of the term.

REVIEW:

The writings of Marcel Proust are suffused with music. Proust depicted the world of the Parisian salons of the late 19th century, where both music and literature flourished. This release by cellist Steven Isserlis and pianist Connie Shih does not depict a specific event, but it does plunge the listener into Proust's world. Isserlis brings the necessary heat to the Franck sonata, an arrangement of the composer's cello sonata that the composer himself sanctioned. Another draw is Shih's accompaniment work, distinctive and appropriately intense. For lovers of French music, this is a standout release.

– AllMusicGuide.com (James Manheim)

Still in his twenties, Pétur Sakari studied in his native Finland and in Paris and made his recording début at the age of 18. On his previous disc for BIS, he performed works by five French composers, receiving international acclaim with top marks in Diapason as well as on the Klassik-Heute website. For the present disc, Pétur has chosen to focus on César Franck, performing the composer’s Three Pieces and Three Chorales ‘pour grand orgue’ on an instrument perfectly suited to the repertoire. Completed in 1880, the great organ in the Sainte-Croix cathedral of Orléans is a major – and well-preserved – example of the art of Aristide Cavaillé-Coll, the same maker who had previously built Franck’s beloved organ in Sainte-Clotilde in Paris. (‘My new organ? It’s an orchestra!’ was Franck’s verdict.) Together the two gave the French organ tradition a new impetus with Franck laying the groundwork for a French symphonic organ style while Cavaillé-Coll constructed hundreds of organs capable of producing a sound that was full, homogeneous and modern. The Trois Pièces, which closes with the famous Pièce héroïque, were written for a Cavaillé-Coll instrument built for the 1878 World Fair in Paris. Twelve years later, and only weeks before his untimely death, Franck completed the Trois Chorals. The idea of writing organ chorales was inspired by Bach, but Franck composed them ‘with quite a different plan’: instead of traditional hymns they use an original, freely composed melody which is gradually revealed ‘with great imagination’, as Franck himself put it in a letter to his publisher. Both the Pieces and especially the Chorales have become central works in the repertoire of concert organists.

What we know as ‘Handel’s Opus 3’ is most likely little more than a brazen attempt by the London publisher John Walsh to make some quick money. In 1715, Walsh had issued a pirated edition of Corelli’s 12 Concerti Grossi Opus 6 which proved an instant success and left him constantly looking for similar opportunities. Almost 20 years later, perhaps in the knowledge that the royal protection granted to Handel’s musical output was about to expire, Walsh assembled a set of six orchestral pieces for a wide range of instruments. He prefaced them with a wholly misleading title-page – based on Corelli’s style-defining collection – and advertised them as Handel’s ‘Opera Terza’. It is likely that Handel never took part in the selection and organization of the individual movements, although he may have been involved in the revisions made when a reprint was necessary a few years later. Selected from various sources, the six concertos certainly don’t form an organic cycle – in complete contrast to the future Op.?6 concerti grossi, which Handel carefully conceived as a set. The fact remains that Opus 3 contains some of Handel’s best-loved music, in instrumental combinations that are colorful and often unexpected – aspects that Martin Gester and his musicians in the Tasmanian period band Van Diemen’s Band make the most of.

REVIEW:

Handel's op. 3 collection is a test for any group: staying true to the letter & spirit of the score, while keeping the music sounding fresh and alive. Martin Gester and his Tasmanian group Van Diemen's Band have done exactly that, in this wonderful new album from BIS. There's plenty of fire burning here, but it's within the context of impressive musical discipline and lightly-worn Historically Informed Performance scholarship. BIS provides the kind of direct and transparent sound that allows Early Instruments to flourish. This is a highly recommended release!

-- Music for Several Instruments

The phrase memento mori has its origins in classical antiquity, but the injunction to remember one’s own mortality has been a feature of different cultures and religions throughout the ages. Just as death is universal, so is our need to adjust to this fact, and to consider our lives with it in mind. The arts are, and have been, an important means in helping us do so, which is why the laments gathered on this album speak to us all. The Austrian ensemble klingzeug has gathered examples from across 500 years – from the "Planh" (plaint) by Raimbaut de Vaqueiras, a Provençal troubadour of the early 13th century, to Locatelli’s Sinfonia funebre. Two of the most famous of all musical laments have also found their way onto the disc, albeit not in the form we normally hear them; transferred to a violin, Dido’s Lament from Purcell's Dido and Aeneas has become a song without words, while Dowland’s "Lachrimae" is heard in one of the many arrangements made of it, here by the German composer Johann Schop.

The love for the Latvian landscape is audible in the piano works of Latvia’s greatest living composer, Peteris Vasks (b. 1946), especially in his Seasons, the composer’s most frequently performed piano work. For this album pianist Reinis Zarinš has brought two other piano works alongside The Seasons as first recordings: Vasks’ early piano work Cycle (Zyklus) from the 1970s, and a new piano work, Cuckoo’s Voice. Spring Elegy (2021), written by the composer for Reinis Zarinš during the pandemic.

Ever since his concerto debut at the age of ten, Reinis Zariņš has performed as a concerto soloist, recitalist, and chamber musician throughout Europe and North America. He has participated in prestigious music festivals including the Lucerne Festival, the Bath International Music Festival, and the Scotia Festival of Music. His thoughtful virtuosity has delighted audiences at Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, London’s Wigmore Hall, New York’s Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, and the Tchaikovsky Concert Hall in Moscow. Reinis has collaborated with leading orchestras including the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the Moscow Chamber Orchestra, Kremerata Baltica, and the Ostrobothnian Chamber Orchestra, and with conductors Pierre Boulez, Peter Eötvös, Pablo Heras-Casado, and Andris Poga, among others.

REVIEWS:

Alongside the world premiere recording of Vasks’ first-ever piano piece Cycle (1976) and the epic, complete The Seasons — four freestanding works composed between 1980 and 2008 — Cuckoo’s Voice—Spring Elegy (2021) serves to reinforce a sense of the importance to Vasks of his ongoing calling ‘that he must, until his last breath, glorify God’s world and people and his fatherland’, as Zariņš puts it. Yet, while Cycle especially is a welcome reminder of Vasks’ more astringent youthful style, and his writing is never less than intensely felt, there’s little trace here of the outright anguish that has often characterized his better-known string pieces. It’s as if Vasks is writing from inside nature as opposed to merely observing it: there’s an overarching stillness and acceptance within the sometimes dramatic push-pull of growth and decay explored throughout—and the contrasting moods he traverses ultimately nestle within that bigger process, albeit to varying degrees of comfort.

Zariņš’s impeccable pianism is hugely to thank for this, and his capacity to trace cohesive narratives through often lengthy, apparently free-wheeling but rigorously composed, works. Most satisfying is ‘Autumn Music’ (1981) which looks stylistically backwards and forwards even as it rounds The Seasons and the album itself.

-- BBC Music Magazine

This has the premiere recordings of Zyklus (Cycle) from 1976 and Cuckoo’s Voice. Spring Elegy from 2021. Cuckoo’s Voice is improvisatory and generally meditative, though it does have a few clamorous climaxes. Then Cycle bursts in with notes firing as if from a machine gun, taunting and acerbic. Its pauses are foreboding. Zarins brings out some impressive sounds from the insides of the piano: gradations of pizzicato and a pulsing, ringing “wub-wub-wub” from some low frequencies at the end of the ‘Prologue’. Most string-plucking from pianists sounds awkward, but Zarins gets loveliness out of it, even evoking a zither in the ‘Nocturne’. The repetitive rumblings and clattering chords of ‘Drama’ are too close to pompous avant-garde pounding for my taste, though I have to admit that Vasks manages to preserve his own Baltic voice through it all. The ‘Epilogue’ ties the preceding movements together and ends with what sounds like bricks dropping onto the strings.

The Seasons clocks in at 52 minutes. ‘White Scenery’ is a somewhat minimalist reverie, while ‘Spring Music’ goes for nearly 20 minutes, rippling and ringing and shaking the whole world by the collar with vernal urgency. This spring is the opposite of the English pastoral type and more like a tempered, transparent version of one of Messiaen’s bird-song pieces. The harmonies of ‘Green Scenery’ veer closer to England, but the repeated chords soon turn to tedium. Irritation turns to exasperation in ‘Autumn Music’ and its unending strings of repeated notes similar to tremolo on a guitar. It is more bearable when I concentrate on it (rather than, say, listening to it in the car), but rarely has a piece driven me up the wall so quickly.

Zarins’s playing is superb, and any Vasks fan will want this.

-- American Record Guide (Stephen Page)

Pianist Reinis Zarinš impresses with evocative music-making. In coaxing beautiful colors from the piano, he renders well the more subtle as well as the more immediate moods of the music.

-- Pizzicato

Although born in Sweden, Klas Torstensson has spent most of his working life in the Netherlands following his studies in Utrecht in the early 1970s. Stylistically, he may call to mind Varèse, Xenakis and – perhaps more distantly – Stravinsky. First and foremost, however, Torstensson’s music is personal and distinctive. It is often nourished by his experiences of nature: rough granite, the sea, ice in the frozen Baltic inlets, the polar ice cap. His Lantern Lectures were composed in the aftermath of his opera The Expedition, about an ill-fated journey to the North Pole. While occupied with the opera he had received commissions from several different ensembles, and he therefore decided to write a cycle of works for these ensembles – compositions to be performed separately or as ‘movements’ forming a greater whole. The four lectures portray fundamental elements and phenomena in Nordic nature: bedrock with stratified memories of its violent origins (Solid Rocks I & II), traces of the Northern Lights (Aurora Borealis) and potholes, cylindrical holes drilled into the bedrock under glaciers (Giant’s Cauldron). They all involve 12 to 15 players, and are connected by Brass Links, brief interludes for trumpet, horn and trombone. Lantern Lectures is here performed by Norrbotten NEO, an ensemble dedicated to the promotion of contemporary chamber music, conducted by Christian Karlsen.

Pianist John Wilson, like his mentor Michael Tilson Thomas, is a servant of the music rather than its dictator and he knows both when and how to step back and let it speak.

The dynamic young American pianist John Wilson first encountered Michael Tilson Thomas (affectionately known as "MTT") in 2015 when he was a fellow with the New World Symphony. John’s protégé status quickly evolved to that of close confidant and collaborator, leading to this solo debut album featuring the world-premiere recording of the title track, MTT’s three-movement suite for piano, Upon Further Reflection. MTT explains innumerable influences that are embedded throughout the work, including the piano music of Debussy and Schumann, bossa nova, gamelan, ragas, Monteverdi, Berg, and Peggy Lee’s rendition of the song "Alley Cat," all of which “flowed together in a way that seemed completely natural... to me anyway.” In 2019, John premiered a portion of Upon Further Reflection that was broadcast live on MediciTV to an audience of over 50,000. John embellishes the album’s Americana theme with two titans of the solo piano repertoire – Aaron Copland’s early Piano Sonata – a work lesser-heard than the composer’s other works for solo piano – and Earl Wild’s virtuoso arrangements of seven of George Gershwin’s most iconic tunes.

REVIEW:

Given the scope and versatility of his long conducting career, it’s no surprise that Michael Tilson Thomas’s work as a composer has, until now, largely passed under the radar. In recent years, though, it’s begun to emerge. MTT’s latest champion is the pianist John Wilson, a former fellow with the conductor’s New World Symphony and a brilliantly gifted pianist.

His new album, Upon Further Reflection takes its cue from Tilson Thomas: the title track is a three-movement meditation on the artist’s early life, while subsequent selections by Earl Wild and Aaron Copland draw out different strands of MTT’s personality and long career. Taken together, the program paints an affecting portrait.

Upon Further Reflection is an ingratiating piece. Its freshness derives partly from its eclecticism – echoes of jazz, bossa nova, and Broadway collide with more abstracted, nostalgic expressivity – and partly from its wild virtuosity. Indeed, no small part of the thrill of Wilson’s performance is hearing the terrific dexterity with which the pianist dispatches its busiest textures (particularly the concluding “You Come Here Often?,” its material adapted from an aborted 1977 musical).

While Wilson’s just as comfortable with the music’s more ruminative moments – the reflective and somewhat brooding outer thirds in “Sunset Soliloquy (Whitsett Avenue 1963)” are tenderly shaped – much of this piece, like MTT, is smartly extroverted. The profile of the refrains in “Bygone Beguine (1973)” grow in intensity and definition as the movement proceeds, but they never lose their soulful vibe.

Filling out the disc are Wild’s 7 Virtuoso Etudes after Gershwin and Copland’s Piano Sonata.

The Wild set, with their knowing adaptations of familiar tunes, fit smartly alongside Reflection. And Wilson, whose playing is magnificently secure and flawlessly balanced, gives a reading that rivals Wild’s own for character; it exceeds it for recorded quality.

Wilson’s account of Copland’s Piano Sonata is shaped with similar thoughtfulness. This 1942 score is years removed from the populist composer of that day – its harmonic acerbity recalls the Piano Variations of 1930 much more than Rodeo or Appalachian Spring. Regardless, it’s a powerfully-structured work whose three movements chart a course from turbulence to nervous peace.

The pianist has got real sympathy for this music: how it’s structured, how the melodic line develops, its drama is paced, the shifting tone colors, and so on. His control of dynamic contrasts and balances in the first movement are masterful, as is his transition in to the driving Allegro. In the central Vivace, the music shimmers, while the stentorian, oracular gestures at the start of the finale simply melt into the movement’s concluding diatonic counterpoint.

True, that transition provides one of the most powerful contrasts on this disc – and it’s more a compositional accomplishment than an interpretive one. But Wilson, like his mentor MTT, is a servant of the music rather than its dictator and he knows both when and how to step back and let it speak. The result is a performance of raw power and touching beauty.

-- The Arts Fuse (Jonathan Blumhofer)

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.

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

The music of Grazyna Bacewicz (1909–1969) has been enjoying a revival during the past two decades. Bacewicz was an outstanding figure in 20th-century music, a major Polish composer and a versatile musician. This album by the award-winning pianist Peter Jablonski, pianist Elisabeth Brauß, the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra and conductor Nicholas Collon includes some rarely recorded gems: the composer’s Piano Concerto together with the late Concerto for Two Pianos and Orchestra in its first digital recording. Also included is the composer’s homage to Bartók, Music for Strings, Trumpets and Percussion, as well as the composer’s early exuberant Overture, written during the German occupation of Poland.

Estonian composer Tõnu Kõrvits (b. 1969) belongs to his country’s most prominent composers. His works are rich with delicate atmosphere possessing a particularly Northern feel combined with a romantic and Impressionistic touch. This new album by the award-winning Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir, Tallinn Chamber Orchestra and conductor Risto Joost is the final volume in a trilogy of works for choir and orchestra. Moorland Elegies (ODE 1306-2), You Are Light and Morning (ODE 1363-2) and The Sound of Wings form a kind of a trilogy, albeit this was never a purpose in itself. All three works were performed first by the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir and Tallinn Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Risto Joost. The first two cycles are linked to the elements of earth and water. In this final part of the trilogy everything is carried by the element of air, and those existential themes which Tõnu Kõrvits has dealt with for decades in his works – nature, life, death, suffering, love – find a liberating and soaring solution. The composer has said that it is “the brightest work in the trilogy (...), which emanates the most light. It is a song of flying, of dreaming, of courage and unconditional love.”

One of the sources of inspiration for The Sound of Wings was Amelia Mary Earhart’s attempt to be the first woman in aviation history to fly around the globe together with navigator Fred Noonan, which was cut short whilst crossing the Pacific Ocean. On her specially adapted red Lockheed Model 10-E Electra, Earhart was supposed to make a last land stop on Howland Island, but due to a fault in the navigation system she was unable to find it. Neither Earhart or the remains of her plane have ever been found. Earhart’s last radio transmission – inspiring due to the steadiness and matter-of-factness of the pilot’s voice – gave the titles to the two instrumental parts of the work. The element of air, the wind, the emptiness, flight and liberation in the music are embodied by the solo viola. The flageolet passages of the solo viola, the trills, the motifs which sway up and down pass through the entire piece, introducing as well as completing it. Wind images painted through sound can also be found in the orchestra and choir parts. Kõrvits’ instrumentation is sensitive and imaginative, just like his extraordinary talent of using the choir in the most varied but always singing way.

REVIEW:

Tonu Korvits (b 1969) is possibly the most prominent Estonian composer of his generation, known particularly for his choral music. His music is lyrical and firmly tonal, though smooth, bluesy chromatic tones give it an elusive, hypnotic quality. He writes with genuine beauty, finding a kind of magic in tonality that is all too rare these days.

The Sound of Wings (2022) concerns Amelia Earhart. The text doesn’t so much follow a narrative but rather a succession of abstract meditations on emotions, aspirations, and sensations she might have felt while in the air. A solo viola evokes the ephemeral but liberating qualities of air with harmonics; it reaches its apex in a full-blooded solo in the last movement. The choral writing is consistently tender and lyrical, with attentive, natural text-setting. It is slow and often reserved, but always interesting and often quite moving. We also get the short but achingly beautiful ‘Sunday Wish’ (2020/22).

Wonderful performances from the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir and Tallinn Chamber Orchestra, under the direction of Risto Joost. The choir is particularly exceptional, singing with a consistently gorgeous tone. Notes and text in Estonian and English.

-- American Record Guide

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

John Wilson’s third volume of the music of Eric Coates combines some of the composer’s larger-scale works with miniatures and two marches.

The Cinderella Phantasy frames the well-known fairy-tale from Cinderella’s perspective, glossing over the more brutal elements of the original, with some notably descriptive writing for the dream sequences, the ball and of course the happy ending.

The Three Men is to some extent autobiographical, as Coates explores his love of his native Nottinghamshire countryside, his love for London and his love of the sea.

The Three Elizabeths is a suite of portraits of three great figures in English History – Queen Elizabeth I; Elizabeth of Glamis (then the Queen Consort, now remembered as the Queen Mother), and Princess Elizabeth (who of course became Queen Elizabeth II).

Lost Love is a wistful Romance written in 1939, while the much later Sweet Seventeen is a beautiful waltz, inspired by Eric and his wife Phyliss’ love of dancing. In fact, the title refers to his first date with Phyllis, at the Blenheim Restaurant, the day before her seventeenth birthday. Two marches complete the program – the Television March was commissioned by the BBC (just three weeks before the date of broadcast!) for the resumption of television broadcasting in 1946. The Dam Busters March was used as the main title for Michael Anderson’s 1955 film and is arguably the composer’s most widely known work.

REVIEW:

The Dam Busters march became the biggest and final hit of Coates’s career. John Wilson’s way with it – letting that tune glide in almost imperceptibly, relishing the moment when the violins decorate it, like sprinkling icing on a cake – typifies his approach.

-- Gramophone

The award-winning Silesian quartet present a new album featuring two composers from Warsaw – Joachim Mendelson and Graznya Bacewicz. After completing his music studies in Warsaw and Berlin, Joachim Mendelson moved to Paris in 1929, where he joined the Association des Jeunes Musiciens Polonais, a society founded in 1926 to facilitate the study, publication, and promotion of the works of young Polish composers. Bacewicz also received support from the Association, and from Paderewski, and studied in Paris with Nadia Boulanger. The associations’ aims included re-establishing a national musical life at the highest level back in Poland (after more than a century of joint occupation by Russia, Prussia, and Austria), and both composers returned to Warsaw and worked there until 1939. Mendelson taught at the Institute of Music, and Bacewicz became leader of the Polish Radio Symphony Orchestra and continued her career and a composer and soloist. Mendelson was imprisoned in the Warsaw ghetto until 1943 when he was murdered by the Gestapo. Five of his works survive, thanks to the French publisher Max Eschig, including the quartet and quintet recorded here. Both Bacewicz works on this recording were rejected by the composer, and never included in her catalogue of works. It is extremely lucky that the manuscripts have survived, preserved at the National Library in Warsaw. Half a century after her death the Royal String Quartet prepared performing scores and gave the first performances.

Serbian-Swedish Djuro Živkovic has quickly established himself as one of Europe’s leading young composers. His musical style is strongly marked by Byzantine Orthodox music – spiritual, mystical and characterized by fantastic narration, virtuosic instrumentation and a stylistic, highly profiled sound. Živkovic’s music presents a profound and abstract space to reflect on the subject matter of mystery, ecstasy and transcendence. Citadel of Love is a highly personal ensemble work which manages to create a mystical aural experience. The narrative voice of the piano together with the other six instruments, subtly adding voices as well as percussion instruments, carries the listener from beginning to end through an inner drama of intensity and fullness of soundscapes.

I Shall Contemplate… II is an intimate chamber piece for viola and small ensemble, stylistically similar to a sacred cantata, in which improvisatory techniques contribute to the free and unencumbered compositional process. Here, Živkovic’s use of ancient scales creates an archaic, echoing space. The text, spoken by the soloist, comes from old Byzantine mystical books. Finally, Night Music is a fascinating crossover work in which piano works by Alexander Scriabin are mixed with newly composed musical layers, thus adding to the Russian composer an absurd fantasy, estranged passion and exotic illusions.

Così fan tutte is Mozart's third opera to a Da Ponte libretto. It is in opera buffa style and has only six characters, two couples and an elderly philosopher and a trusted maid. In this recording Lesley Garrett sings the part of the maid, Despina, and the celebrated veteran Sir Thomas Allen the philosopher, Don Alfonso. Despite the somewhat cynical storyline this opera contains some of Mozart's most memorable and sublime music. The conductor, Sir Charles Mackerras, has spent many years researching performance practice of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and is a noted authority on Mozart's operas. He writes of this recording, 'it is indeed a pleasure having the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment lending its expertise in tonal colour, phrasing and rhythmic impulse to Mozart's wonderful score...I have chosen to record this English version of Così fan tutte with the traditional cuts, thus making it closer to a staged performance'. The English translation, by the Rev. Browne, was first used in London at a performance conducted by Sir Charles Villiers Stanford in 1890.