A New York Times 25 Best Tracks Selection for 2018 - Fanfare

Following acclaimed albums devoted to Britten, baroque lute songs and German lieder, Grammy Award-nominated tenor Nicholas Phan continues to spread his wings with Illuminations, an album featuring compositions by Benjamin Britten, Claude Debussy and Gabriel Faure who were each inspired by the poetry of two nineteenth century French literary titans, Paul Verlaine and his protégé and eventual lover Arthur Rimbaud. The intertwined lives of the French poets and composers manifested themselves in Faure’s impassioned Verlaine-inspired ‘La bonne chanson’ and Debussy’s ‘Ariettes oubliees’ drawn from Verlaine’s ‘Romances sans paroles.’ Just decades later Britten was inspired by Rimbaud’s influential prose-poetry ‘Les Illuminations.’ Critical acclaim for Nicholas Phan has been widespread.



REVIEW:

Britten captures the blend of bizarre, beautiful, decadent, and courtly elements in Rimbaud's symbolist poems. These mingled emotions enliven Mr. Phan’s singing on this recording, starting with the opening “Fanfare,” in which, in trembling voice, he declares that he alone holds the key to this savage parade (of life).

– New York Times

On this release, the Trondheim Sinfonietta, founded in 1998, has gathered four works from the three decades encompassing the ensemble’s existence. All four seem to be haunted by an even deeper past: Bent Sørensen’s Minnelieder is the composer’s third version of a work originally sparked-off by a book about the 14th century, while Toshio Hosokawa’s Drawing, from a decade later, was inspired by the very start of life. Kristin Norderval’s Chapel Meditation began its existence as an improvisation, but looks back to music from centuries earlier, while the most recent work, Mantra by Ellen Lindquist, also mines a venerable musical tradition, that of the age-old Indonesian gamelan orchestra that for over 100 years has had an influence on Western composers such as Debussy, Britten, Steve Reich et al. Set for varying forces and numbers of performers, the four works together form a fascinating picture of the kaleidoscopic possibilities open to composers around the turn of the millennium.

There are many questions surrounding Johann Sebastian Bach’s ‘Six Solos for violin’, or the Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin, as they are usually called today. When did he compose them, and why, and for whom? In what circumstances were they performed? And why would a master of polyphony choose to write for a melody instrument with limited scope for polyphony or chords? We can only guess at the answers – which makes the works all the more fascinating. The legendary violinist George Enescu famously described the set as ‘the Himalayas of violinists’, but for more than 200 years they were primarily regarded as pedagogical exercises rather than compositions worthy of the concert hall. Felix Mendelssohn and Robert Schumann tried to popularize them by making versions with piano accompaniment, while Busoni did away with the violin altogether in his transcription of the famous Chaconne from Partita No. 2. But since Yehudi Menuhin made the first complete recording of the Sonatas and Partitas, between 1929 and 1936, they have become a staple during violin recitals, on disc and in concert. Fascinating performers and audiences alike with their architectural perfection as well as their emotional range, these are works that lend themselves to very different interpretations, and on this recording it is the Bach of Finnish violinist Jaakko Kuusisto we hear. Himself a composer – as well as violinist and conductor – Kuusisto remembers beginning to study individual movements from the set at the age of ten. The music has been with him ever since, and to him ‘no other works for the violin provide a higher challenge or greater beauty’.

REVIEW:

Kuusisto plays with an offhanded, technical nonchalance, as if there were neither any of the traditional expectations or technical hurdles to overcome. Everything sounds so organic and natural that listening becomes increasingly enjoyable. The musical detail can certainly be heard, yet Kuusisto does not force that conspicuously on the listener.

– Klassikheute.com (Germany)

Vienna around 1900 was a melting-pot in several ways: a city attracting artists from the entire Austro-Hungarian Empire where bohemian writers and musicians rubbed shoulders with aristocrats and establishment figures, and where late-Romanticism co-existed uneasily with the Wiener Moderne aesthetic of the fin-de-siècle. In the visual arts, Jugendstil (or Wiener Secession) was all the rage: its curlicues, floral patterns and fluid lines were seen everywhere – in architecture, interior design and graphic arts. In music, the term is usually associated with composers such as Mahler, Zemlinsky and Korngold, but also early works by Alban Berg and Arnold Schoenberg. Following on three previous acclaimed recital albums on BIS, Camilla Tilling and Paul Rivinius have devised a programme with songs by these very composers, written between 1898 and 1916. The songs range from the Einfache Lieder by a teenaged Korngold to Zemlinsky’s set of Walzer-Gesänge based on Tuscan folk poems and the much-loved Rückert-Lieder by Mahler. Schoenberg is represented by his Op. 2 collection 4 Lieder and his student Berg by the set of Sieben frühe Lieder, from 1905–08.

It was in 1842, his ‘year of chamber music’ that Robert Schumann took on the combination of violin, cello and piano for the first time. He seems to have decided against releasing the resulting Fantasiestücke as a fully-fledged piano trio, however, but later returned to the work, revising it for publication in 1850. The model here is not the large-scale, quasi-symphonic trios of Beethoven or Schubert – instead Haydn’s characteristic trio textures spring to mind, especially in the first two movements where the cello largely follows the piano’s left-hand bass line. By the time the Fantasiestücke was published, Schumann had already written two ‘proper’ piano trios, No. 1 in D minor and No. 2 in F major. According to the composer the second of these ‘makes a friendlier and more immediate impression’ but it is in fact the D minor trio that has long been the more popular: passionate, mainly extrovert and bursting with fine thematic material it is the easiest to grasp on one hearing. Both works are filled to capacity with imitative writing, sometimes conspicuously so but often subtly as if on a subconscious level – an aspect that the members of the Kungsbacka Piano Trio, with more than 20 years of playing together, are able to make the most of.

Featuring sensitive interpretations and a dazzling orchestral accompaniment, this release includes Four Mozart piano concertos punctuated by smaller Mozart tunes. Award-winning pianist Jean-Efflam Bavouzet enjoys a prolific recording and international concert career. He regularly works with orchestras such as The Cleveland Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, London Philharmonic, BBC Symphony and NHK Symphony orchestras, and collaborates with conductors including Vladimir Ashkenazy, Vladimir Jurowski, Gianandrea Noseda, François- Xavier Roth, Nicholas Collon, Gábor Takács-Nagy and Sir Andrew Davis amongst others. Bavouzet records exclusively for Chandos and his recording of Grieg’s Piano Concerto with Bergen Philharmonic under Edward Gardner has been nominated for the Concerto category of the 2018 Gramophone Awards. Together with Manchester Camerata and Gábor Takács-Nagy, Bavouzet has recorded several of Haydn’s Piano Concertos and embarked on the present series of Mozart concertos, which have been critically acclaimed.

For his new recital disc, the acclaimed Finnish guitarist Ismo Eskelinen had the aim of creating a programme that works like a story: ‘a modern guitar album that lends itself to continuous listening from beginning to end’. The pieces that he has selected are united by the fact that, with the exception of Tan Dun, Eskelinen has collaborated closely with all the composers. In the liner notes to the album he expresses his admiration for how intuitively they all understood the essence of the guitar, even though none of them is a guitarist. ‘Everyone has found a unique way to bring his own musical style to the guitar, and each of the composers is clearly recognizable.’ Opening the album are Kromos by Sebastian Fagerlund and Solo XI by Kalevi Aho, two pieces that in technical terms come close to the limits of what is possible on the guitar, but with a completely convincing musical logic. Olli Mustonen’s Sonata No. 2 contains drama but also lyricism, qualities which are emphasized in Tan Dun’s multi-movement collage Seven Desires with inspiration from the different traditions and characteristics of Spain’s flamenco guitar and China’s pipa (lute). Jukka Tiensuu is among the pioneers of modern Finnish guitar music and wrote his first work for the instrument as early as 1974. His Daydreams from 2016 is composed for guitar and electronics, but the sound world is strongly guitaristic, as the electronic part is modified from fragments played by Eskelinen on the guitar. Sometimes the use of electronics produces echo effects alongside the live guitar, and sometimes the sound image expands into that of a guitar trio. The very brief closing number is an arrangement, by Eskelinen himself, of Timo Alakotila’s calm and soothing Psalm.

‘Why has this intense, brilliantly orchestrated, claustrophobically gripping masterpiece been so neglected since its 1977 premiere?’ asked Richard Morrison in The Times of the concert performance in the Barbican that preceded this recording.

Miss Julie is Alwyn’s last large-scale work, written in 1973-76. Alwyn set his own libretto, based on Strindberg’s 1888 play of the same title. The naturalistic drama and lifelike characters of that play appealed to Alwyn from an early age – in fact, he previously attempted to compose an opera on Miss Julie in the 1950s. That attempt failed because of differences with his then-librettist, Christopher Hassall. Alwyn believed that in opera, the action should be self-explanatory, arias should serve a dramatic purpose (as opposed to sheer vocal display), characters should sing to each other and not to the audience, ensembles should be minimized and the text should be set to vocal lines that reflect natural speech patterns. These views were distilled over his extensive career as a film composer, which taught him that music could do more than establish characterization, suggest mood, and heighten atmosphere: in some cases it could also communicate the unspoken thoughts of an onscreen character even when these were at odds with what he or she was presenting visually.

Sakari Oramo and the BBC Symphony Orchestra support an outstanding cast featuring Anna Patalong in the title role in this acclaimed revival of Alwyn’s neglected masterpiece.

REVIEW:

Alwyn’s orchestral writing is always characterful, his vocal lines are unfailingly singable. Though his richly coloured writing reveals a whole range of 20th-century influences – Strauss, Janácek, and Ravel especially – it’s the world of Puccini that’s most strongly evoked at the work’s dramatic flashpoints. Anna Patalong as Julie nailed her character’s dangerously unhinged brittleness from the start. Benedict Nelson as Jean, the valet with whom she is so desperate to run away, sings the role with tremendous verve.

– The Guardian (UK)

The 2020 GRAMMY Award winner for Best Classical Solo Vocal Performance, honoring Sarah Brailey and Dashon Burton!

August 18th marks the 100th anniversary of the 19th Constitutional Amendment, granting women in the US the right to vote. A fitting time then for our release of the World Premier Recording of Ethel Smyth’s late masterpiece The Prison. Smyth left home at nineteen to study composition in Leipzig. In the company of Clara Schumann and her teacher Heinrich von Herzogenberg, she met and won the admiration of composers such as Tchaikovsky, Brahms, Dvorák, and Grieg. Smyth was the first woman to have an opera performed at the Met, in 1903. (The second was Kaija Saariaho, whose L'Amour de loin appeared there in 2016!) Smyth later became central to the Suffragette movement in England, writing the March of the Women. Her gender politics and sexuality were cause for attacks by critics, and she famously went to prison herself for throwing a stone through an MP’s window. Composed in 1930 and premiered in 1931 in Edinburgh’s Usher Hall, The Prison is a Symphony in two parts, ‘Close on Freedom’ and ‘The Deliverance’, set for soprano and bass-baritone soloists, chorus, and full orchestra. The text is taken from a philosophical work by Henry Bennet Brewster and concerns the writings of a prisoner in solitary confinement, his reflections on life and his preparations for death.

REVIEWS:

Ethyl Smyh's late work, The Prison (1929-30), is uncategorizable. The 64-minute “vocal symphony” for bass-baritone (The Prisoner) and soprano (his Soul), with chorus (philosophical commentary) is in two parts: Close To Freedom and The Deliverance. The heavy-ish text, by Smyth’s dear friend (and perhaps lover, though her relationships tended otherwise to be lesbian) Henry Bennet Brewster centers on the gloomy ruminations of a prisoner considering the end of his life, and his soul, which is guiding him toward peace. In Part 1, He, for instance speaks of his anxiety and inability to sleep, and wonders about immortality and if he will be emancipated; in Part 2, the Soul tells him the end of his struggle is near and he learns to “disband his ego”. The chorus has a further calming effect: immortality is everywhere, human passions remain. He finally finds peace. As you can see, a regular Offenbachian satire–not.

From the very opening moments – “I awoke in the middle of the night” – the mood is weighty with disquiet. The bass-baritone voice of Dashon Burton has both substance and gentleness, his attention to the text that of a Lieder singer. Violin and harp circle his words. Sarah Brailey’s Soul, from the start, sings with subtlety and a type of fleeting loveliness. She opens the second part with a solo on the words “the struggle is over”, intoning much of her words on one note while first a trio of winds, then a solo violin, then the full body of strings and chorus–all pianissimo–join her above and below. Chant? Hymn? Both, really. Smyth layers the orchestra; a brass choir during a passage about immortality makes a grand effect. Later, a painfully beautiful pastoral section precedes the Prisoner’s feeling of metaphysical freedom.

While much of it is gripping, its slow pacing and didacticism can dehumanize the story that the Prisoner and Soul are stuck in. The Prisoner’s “prison”, both metaphorical and real, is presented with such humanity and openness by Burton that his eventual spiritual freedom makes a glorious sound, despite–rather than due to–the orchestrally and chorally weighted underpinnings. Some Elgar shows up, and is not very welcome.

The performance, I suspect, could not be bettered. The New York City-based Experiential Orchestra and Chorus both perform with luscious tone and poise. James Blachly’s leadership brings the work’s lyricism to the forefront; it would be easy to over-emphasize passages but he works best within the dramatic arc of the narrative. Much of The Prison is gorgeous and unexpected – who does Smyth sound like? And while some moments seem inert, they are few and far between.

– ClassicsToday.com (10/10; Robert Levine)

Smyth’s haunting music, given here in conductor James Blachly’s new edition, is beautifully constructed and highly evocative (with quotes or allusions to earlier Smyth scores). Her orchestration is limpid and masterly, rendered lovingly here by Blachly with the Experiential Orchestra. The choral contribution is relatively minor, the focus rightly on the two soloists, but again superbly performed. The only miscalculation is Smyth’s use of ‘The Last Post’ in the concluding pages, adding a martial resonance that may jar to modern ears; to Smyth, a major-general’s daughter, it may just have been an echo of (her) youth which she wanted at this point. Magnificent sound from Chandos, too. Very strongly recommended.

– Gramophone

Born in Albania in 1958, Thomas Simaku studied composition at the State Conservatory of Music in Tirana. He moved to England in 1991, where he was able to immerse himself in the music that had been banned in his native country, and especially that of Ligeti and Kurtág. This, as well as his earlier experience of working with Albanian folk musicians, had a lasting effect on his own music – but as Simaku himself puts it: ‘when it comes to creativity, one should at least try to speak with one’s voice, however small that might be.’ He often composes for specific performers and the present album highlights his collaborations with Quatuor Diotima and with the pianist Joseph Houston. Catena I, the opening work as well as the most recent one on the programme, was written for Houston, while the String Quartets Nos. 4 and 5 were destined for Diotima, of which Simaku has said that ‘one cannot fail to notice their individual and sensitive approach to sound and color, and their huge range of expression. I have tried to embody these idiosyncratic qualities in both quartets.’ Houston also plays two works written by Simaku as tokens of his respect for two composer colleagues: L’image oubliée d’après Debussy and Hommage à Kurtág. These frame the piano quintet con-ri-sonanza which has also given its name to the entire album, after the sonic qualities it embodies: consonanza, risonanza, con risonanza …

The extant music for violin by Franz Schubert fits comfortably on two discs, and Ariadne Daskalakis released the first disc of her survey in 2019, to critical acclaim. The disc included works for violin and piano as well as three pieces with orchestral accompaniment, in performances described in The Strad as having ‘a litheness and shimmering delight that capture the music’s innate charm and dance-like vivacity with a beguiling sureness of touch.’ The second installment focuses on the chamber music with piano, and once again Daskalakis is joined by Paolo Giacometti, playing a fortepiano by Salvatore Lagrassa. The instrument, of the Viennese school, was built around 1815 and is thus almost exactly contemporary with the sonatas recorded here, the ones in D major and A minor dating from 1816 and the Sonata in A major from the following year. Schubert, who was around 20 years old at the time, had learned the violin from an early age, but the sonatas were probably intended for his older brother Ferdinand, who led the family string quartet in which Franz played the viola. The disc opens with a later work, however – the so-called Rondeau brilliant, from 1826. As the nickname indicates, the B minor Rondo is virtuosic, composed for Josef Slavík who before his early death was hailed as Paganini’s successor by the Viennese critics. In her liner notes, Ariadne Daskalakis describes the piece as ‘in turn dramatic, playful, gentle, seductive and wild’ and together with Paolo Giacometti she brings out each of these aspects.

The Finnish-American composer Alex Freeman has been described as being ‘as comfortable in the realm of the pop ballad as in that of the concert hall’ and yet his songs ‘are imbued with the craftsmanship and care one would expect of a composer of his formidable academic training, just as his concert works carry the emotional immediacy of popular music.’ Himself a choral singer, Alex Freeman has written a number of works for choir: music that aims to be sonorous and melodic, but is carefully crafted to avoid the clichés that can burden conventional tonality. Freeman’s requiem Under the arching heavens was commissioned by Nils Schweckendiek and the Helsinki Chamber Choir to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the 1918 Finnish civil war. The work incorporates poems in Finnish, Swedish and English, reflecting both the specific reason for the commission and the universality of human suffering caused by war. In the non-liturgical texts chosen by Freeman, birds are a recurring image, as is that of a mother and child. The work ends with lines by Walt Whitman from a poem written in the aftermath of the American Civil War. Also included on the album is A Wilderness of Sea, another recent choral piece which draws on works by Shakespeare, and the poet’s images of the sea, and of mankind’s relationship with it.

The c/o chamber orchestra is a collective of thirty young musicians from a dozen different countries. Playing without a conductor, the orchestra is dedicated to that particular collaborative process which is the essence of chamber music. For their first album, the members have chosen to highlight a genre more difficult to pin-point than one might think. Its very name, divertimento, implies that it is simply a diversion, light music for entertainment – but many of the best-known examples of the form transcend that definition. And as many composers have learned, even light-hearted music should be taken seriously: humor requires a master’s touch. The four works recorded here offer different perspectives on the genre, starting with Ibert’s seven-movement suite in which the composer constantly plays with the listener’s expectations. Some forty years before Ibert, his compatriot Émile Bernard composed a very different Divertissement. It is scored for double wind quintet, reminiscent of Mozart’s divertimenti and serenades for winds. But even though the music is melodious and carefree, the debt owed by Bernard to the German romantic composers is never far from the surface. A very special case is Bartók’s Divertimento for strings, composed just before the outbreak of World War II. The closing work on the album reunites the winds and strings of the c/o orchestra in a work written especially for this project by the American composer Michael Ippolito, who in his Divertimento pays full tribute to the contrast-rich nature of the genre.

Grammy Award-winning baroque orchestra Apollo’s Fire and its founder-director Jeannette Sorrell have blazed trails in the world of historically informed performance with pioneering programming, presentational flair and an entrepreneurial spirit, qualities that have earned them eight Billboard chart-topping albums and more than 7 million views on YouTube. Their latest release, which launches the ensemble’s 30th anniversary season, is destined to soar to similar heights: the ensemble’s first recording of the perennial audience favourite, Antonio Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons, featuring the phenomenal Spanish-born fiddler Francisco Fullana. Frequently performed at Apollo’s Fire home base in Cleveland, Ohio and on their international tours, “Sorrell’s vivid approach to the pictorial elements make these familiar works seem freshly minted, full of astonishing incident”, according to Seen & Heard International. Fullana, winner of the 2018 Avery Fisher Career Grant, has been dubbed a “rising star” by BBC Music Magazine, and an “amazing talent” by conductor Gustavo Dudamel. The Four Seasons is the first of five releases spread throughout the season celebrating Apollo’s Fire’s milestone 30th anniversary.

Since 2004, Andreas Haefliger has been presenting Perspectives, a series of recital programs, in concert and on recordings. Each program focusses on one or two Beethoven sonatas, juxtaposed with works by other composers which in some way interact with Beethoven’s music and with each other. Now, for his latest release on BIS, Haefliger has instead opted for an all-Beethoven recital, choosing to present the composer’s three sonatas Op. 31 as a group. In his introduction to the disc, Haefliger describes the set as occupying ‘a very special place in the Beethoven sonata cycle: It preserves a link to the past but gives us also a vision of the works to come, exploring humour and tenderness, nature and the psychology of the human mind.’ The recording took place in the Salle de Musique in La Chaux-de-Fonds, celebrated for its superb acoustics, on a Bechstein concert grand which Haefliger describes as ‘a piano which, while a modern instrument, retains a nostalgic quality in its sound world and was a constant source of inspiration during the sessions.’

REVIEWS:

This is a superb release on all counts, and anyone who cares about these sonatas ought to give it a listen. In addition to Beethoven and Haefliger, the third star of this SACD is the C. Bechstein Concert Grand D 282 that the pianist plays, in a recital hall in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland.

-- Fanfare

The performances are crisp and meticulous. Everything is worked out precisely, and one can feel the artist’s serious purpose. There is little humor or relaxation; perfection is the goal, and Haefliger gets close. There is little to criticize. These are really very fine performances, and the Bechstein piano with its relatively light bass serves the music well.

-- American Record Guide

In Voyages, prolific American composer James Lee III takes the listener on a colorful journey through his endlessly creative orchestral music; painting biblical imagery in Beyond Rivers of Vision and celebrating the joyous Feast of Tabernacles in Sukkot Through Orion's Nebula, using well-known spirituals to celebrate the life of abolitionist Harriet Tubman (Chuphshah! Harriet's Drive to Canaan) and reflecting on the ongoing fight for freedom through his grandfather’s personal experiences in WWII (A Different Soldier’s Tale). His music is played here by the renowned ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Marin Alsop.

REVIEW:

Although there may be some in the audience who may be skeptical of music by composers who are pretty much unknown to them, especially contemporary composers, they are in for a treat, for Chuphshah! is an entertaining, very listenable piece, as are all the compositions on this remarkable AVIE recording. From the opening measures of Sukkot Through Orion’s Nebula, with their snare, bass drum, brass, and percussion excitement, you know right away that this is going to be a fun recording for both musical and audio reasons. In his liner note essay, Lee describes Sukkot as “a festive work for orchestra,” and it is certainly that. Next up is the longest composition on the program, the four-movement A Different Soldier’s Tale, based on stories that Lee’s grandfather told him about his experiences in World War II. As you might expect from such a description, it contains some passages of drama and turmoil, as well as passages of pathos and reflection. Beyond Rivers of Vision is in three movements, of which Lee observes “for the most part the form in these pieces is fantasia-like or rhapsodic.” The music has an otherworldly characteristic to it at times that stands in contrast to the drama of the Soldier’s Tale. The CD closes with the afore-mentioned Chuphshah! Harriet's Drive to Canaan, which is based on aspects of the life of Harriet Tubman. His liner note essay is insightful and helpful in understanding what he is attempting to do in all four compositions, but especially so for this one.

As I indicated at the outset, this release is a treat both musically and sonically. The music is energetic and assertive, with plenty of orchestral effects that will show off a good audio system. The engineering team has done a good job, Alsop and the orchestra sound as though they are having a good time playing this mostly extroverted music, and the end result is a highly recommendable release from an exciting young composer.

-- Classical Candor (Karl W. Nehring)

Towards the end of the 19th century, ´several composers were taking a new interest in folk music. Folk tunes, or imitations of them, had previously mainly been used in order to provide ‘local colour’ or as a way of catering to nationalist sentiments, but it was now seen as a means to revitalize art music itself, opening up for new possibilities in terms of rhythm and harmony as well as melody. At the forefront of this development was Béla Bartók, who also considered the use of folk elements as a tool to transcend boundaries – to achieve a ‘brotherhood of peoples’. For his new recital disc, Can Çakmur has devised a program which juxtaposes four composers’ different responses to folk music. Bartók’s Piano Sonata is followed by Passacaglia, Intermezzo e Fuga with which Dimitri Mitropoulos made a clean break with earlier works in a more nationalistic vein. Next comes Çakmur’s compatriot, the Turkish composer Ahmed Adnan Saygun, who in 1936 accompanied Bartók on a field trip in Turkey collecting music. His Piano Sonata was composed some fifty years later, however, and refers to folk music primarily on a theoretical level. Closing the disc is George Enescu’s Piano Sonata No.?3 in D major, which Çakmur in his own liner notes describes as ‘radiating a natural affinity for the village, without sacrificing the compositional value of the work.’

If Chopin ‘invented’ the Mazurka, then surely by the same token Grieg ‘invented’ the Lyric Piece. Over his lifetime he published ten volumes of Lyric Pieces, containing 66 individual works.

Born in Bergen, Grieg studied in Leipzig and became established as Norway’s leading composer, successfully synthesizing Norwegian folk music with the forms and conventions of the German tradition. While he was internationally acclaimed for his Piano Concerto and the incidental music to Peer Gynt, the vast majority of his output lies not in large-scale works, but in smaller, more intimate forms, especially songs and, of course, his Lyric Pieces.

Peter Donohoe writes: ‘as a teenager I expanded my knowledge of the music of Grieg to include many solo piano pieces as well as the better-known orchestral works. I was beguiled by his style, and the reason remains somewhat intangible. Although one is able to identify the originality of Grieg as a composer – the Norwegian folk element in his music, his natural gift for memorable melodic lines, his occasional diversions into unique and extraordinarily forward-looking harmonies, and, to some degree, his emotional naïveté – there is a unique, unidentifiable kernel in his output that defies analysis, as is true of the work of all the great composers... All these works are pristine examples of his diverse and original style – Norwegian with a Germanic flavour – and it has been a huge and satisfying pleasure to return to them to create this and future recordings.’

REVIEW:

Donohoe, with a devotion to Grieg’s music dating back to his early years, clearly has the measure of this repertoire. He gets inside the gentler pieces, such as ‘Melancholy’ and ‘Summer Evening’, with beautifully poised playing. Grieg in his more overtly national mood, as in the famous and virtuoso ‘Halling’, is presented with infectious enjoyment and the simpler pieces are never patronized.

-- BBC Music Magazine

As long as you accept the premise of the arrangement style presented here, i.e. Romantic and virtuosic, you will love all seven works.

Sebastian Bohren’s new album La folia is an affectionate homage –to Ida Haendel, one of his heroes; to fiddlers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries; and to the violin itself. The Swiss violinist says, “It is also like a hall of mirrors, as some tracks invoke the spirits of two or three violinists.” From an early age, Sebastian was immersed in a lineage of violinists who favored Romantic transcriptions of Baroque repertoire, studying with a pupil of the great Ukrainian-born violinist Nathan Milstein. Later in life, he fell under the influence of violinist Ida Haendelon YouTube, watching her perform Corelli’s La folia variations. “She played this amazing virtuoso cadenza, and I was captivated. ”So arose the concept of a program reflecting the ethos of La folia, the ear-catching theme which has fascinated composers for centuries, from the Baroque era’s Tomaso Antonio Vitali and Giuseppe Tartini to latter-day Ottorino Respighi and Fritz Kreisler. Sebastian captures the sound world with sincerity, playing on two different violins, the 1710 “King George” Stradivarius, and a Guadagnini made in 1761.

REVIEWS:

A collection of arrangements in the spirit of Corelli’s La Folia sonata, but given a Romantic virtuoso twist for violin and strings. Sebastian Bohren curated the well thought-out selection and is a dazzling soloist. A quite unexpected delight.

-- MusicWeb International

Bohren is a skilled violinist, and his 1761 Guadagnini violin is a lovely instrument. He strikes a comfortable balance between HIP and Romantic styles, applying a tasteful vibrato that never seems excessive or inappropriate. He plays with affection, engages well in dialogue with the two string ensembles that participate, and demonstrates a strong technique. His playing in Tartini’s famous “Devil’s Trill” Sonata is brilliant.

-- Fanfare

In Bohren’s hands Respighi’s 1921 edition of Tartini’s Sonata in A is truly engaging, with gratifying attention to small-scale phrasing and sonorous scordatura timbres.

-- BBC Music Magazine

Internationally acclaimed Swedish pianist Peter Jablonski is known as a fervent champion of Polish music. In this album Jablonski returns to some of his dearest piano music – Chopin’s Mazurkas. For Chopin, the Mazurkas became a deeply personal, intimate statement of his feelings as an émigré Polish composer living in Paris. From some of his very first compositions to his last, it is the only form that Chopin composed regularly throughout his life. Similarly, Chopin’s Mazurkas have followed Peter Jablonski throughout his entire career as a pianist in nearly every solo recital.

REVIEW:

Peter Jablonski is no stranger to Chopin’s Mazurkas, having recorded the Opp 6, 24, 50 and 68 groups in 2008. He’s now setting down the complete Chopin Mazurkas for Ondine.

This first volume reveals an authoritative, idiomatic, and individual stylist. He’s generally an epic, large-scale player who favors a wide range of dynamics and articulations. He can be yieldingly lyrical, yet he’s not afraid to get dirt underneath his fingernails.

He playfully inflects the cross-rhythmic phrases in the central section of the B flat Op 17 No 1. While he takes his time over the A minor Op 17 No 4’s decorative tracery, his grounded tempo is fluid and flexible.

Each of Op 30 No 2’s echoed phrases has its own character and color, words that succinctly describe Jablonski’s edgy way with No 3. The tension and release of No 4’s trills wouldn’t be out of place in Scriabin. Op 33 No 2 is not especially fast yet it still conveys boisterous lilt, and with very little sustain pedal for the most part. Jablonski’s effectively understated Op 33 No 3 sets the stage for a strikingly contrasted and personalised B minor No 4. An angular, questioning take on the short and swift B major Mazurka stands out in the well-played Op 41 group.

Needless to say, I look forward to this excellently engineered and annotated release’s follow-up volume.

-- Gramophone (Jed Distler)

The soulful sounds of the oboe and oboe d’amore infuse the expressive, lyrical new album of solo and chamber works by award-winning Canadian composer Christopher Tyler Nickel. The star of the show is Seattle Symphony principal Mary Lynch VanderKolk, whose artistry plays a vital role in Chris’ compositional process. He explains, “I find ways to incorporate her strengths and personality into expressing the music’s emotions.” The Oboe Sonata, dedicated to Mary, is by turns haunting and pastoral, navigating the full three-octave range of the instrument. The Sonata for Oboe d’amore demonstrates the large timbral and emotional range of the oboe’s lower-pitched cousin, from darkness to light.

Undaunted by the historic canon of iconic solo instrumental works already in existence, Chris – an oboist himself – created a tour de force with his Suite for Unaccompanied Oboe, a work Mary describes as “more cinematic” than his other concert works, not surprising perhaps given his countless award-winning TV, film, and theatrical scores. The album concludes with what is surely the only Oboe d’amore Quintet ever composed. The instrument’s plaintive tone takes center stage against the backdrop of string quartet, as the work moves from serenity, melancholy, and nostalgia, before ending with an invigorating finale that brings the inspiring album to a close.

REVIEWS:

Featuring the talents of oboist Mary Lynch VanderKolk, the new album Christopher Tyler Nickel: Sonatas and Chamber Music for Oboe and Oboe d’amore masterfully explores the full range and lyrical aspects of the oboe while spiritedly challenging its technical capabilities. Opening with the Oboe Sonata specifically composed for VanderKolk, Nickel’s own familiarity with the oboe is clearly demonstrated as he insightfully captures the strengths of the player – creating beautifully sweeping lines that showcase VanderKolk’s colourful and lyrical capabilities as she artfully navigates the dynamic and rhythmic passages in a way that only the most consummate performer could. Imagining the pensive sadness of the lone instrument at twilight is what one may experience as they listen to Nickel’s second piece of this collection, the Oboe d’amore Sonata.

The album concludes with the Quintet for Oboe d’amore for the namesake instrument and string quartet in a uniquely distinctive composition drawing the listener in with the dark, melancholic timbre of the double-reed instrument traditionally only heard in Baroque music, making this piece the first of its kind and a true testament to this Canadian composer’s proclivity for the oboe family and ability to fashion narrowly defined aspects of both music and the instrument into a broader phenomenon.

-- The Whole Note

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

Before a phrase from the Gran vals by Francisco Tárrega unexpectedly shot to international fame as the Nokia ringtone, his most celebrated pieces included the Capricho árabe, composed in 1892. The piece is inspired by the mixture of Muslim Castilian and Christian cultures which had always been a feature of the Valencia region where Tárrega grew up.

Tárrega’s friend and near-contemporary Isaac Albéniz was a virtuoso pianist who also played the guitar. Even though he evoked the guitar brilliantly on the piano, he never composed any music for the instrument. ‘Malagueña’ was first published in the collection España. Published in 1892 as ‘Prélude’, the piece widely known as ‘Asturias’ is also imbued with the spirit of southern Spain.

Federico Mompou’s Suite compostelana was commissioned by Andrés Segovia and was published in 1964, the same year as Segovia’s first recording of the piece.

The Italian guitarist and composer Carlo Domeniconi has drawn on several national traditions for his works, but has a particular interest in Turkish music which he has studied in depth. The Variationen über ein anatolisches Volkslied (Variations on an Anatolian Folksong) were composed in 1982 and are based on the song (türkü) ‘Uzun ince bir yoldayim’. Koyunbaba is a four-movement suite for guitar which started as an improvisation, and was then notated soon afterwards. The composer describes the score as ‘no more than a sketch’ and insists that players improvise in their performance – which Krzysztof Meisinger does to great effect with his additional ‘Invocazione’ at the start of the work.

REVIEW:

It’s a pity Mompou didn’t write more for the guitar. His only work for that instrument, the Suite compostelana, is a minor masterpiece, profound in its simplicity. It takes a player of Meisinger’s stature to pull off a successful performance, and here the Preludio, Cuna and Canción are especially well rendered.

-- Gramophone

Composing has always formed an integral part of the artistic life of pianist-conductor Olli Mustonen. Mustonen studied composition under the direction of Einojuhani Rautavaara since the age of 8. His first compositions mainly consisted of chamber works, but in the early 2010s, Mustonen has emerged as a symphonist. This album contains two of his most latest symphonies. Mustonen’s dramatic symphonies are firmly rooted and continuing the tradition of the great classical composers and seek inspiration from multiple sources. The theme of Mustonen’s 2nd Symphony, ‘Johannes Angelos’ (2013), is Byzantium and the ancient city of Constantinople with its mysticism. Mustonen’s 3rd Symphony (2020) is based on the Songs 47-49 in the Finnish national epic Kalevala. This work has been inspired by the cosmic and shamanistic elements in Finnish mythology. In this recording, the solo part is sung by Ian Bostridge who also premiered the work.

Celebrating the sesquicentenary of Charles Ives’ birth, New England-based pianist and Ives scholar nonpareil Donald Berman releases a recording of the composer’s “Concord Sonata” using his own newly prepared edition which reveals fresh insights into the iconic work. Berman’s immersion into Ives’ sound world began under the tutelage of pianist John Kirkpatrick who gave the New York premiere of the “Concord Sonata” in 1939. Throughout many years of study and reflection, Berman discovered numerous notes and alterations that Ives made within the Concord’s manuscript pages, each one “a step toward realising his vision for a three-dimensional auditory experience.” Berman concluded that the first movement of the Concord, as Ives imagined it, is quite different than today’s commonly accepted version; his new edition includes two pages worth of material, masterfully recorded here for the first time.

The album opens with the elegiac “The St. Gaudens (Black March)”, referring to the eponymous sculpture in the Boston Common that depicts the Massachusetts 54th, the first Union army regiment of African American soldiers, that is known widely in its orchestral version as the first movement of Ives’ Three Places in New England.

If you’ve seen the Leonard Bernstein biopic “Maestro”, you’ve seen and heard The Orchestra Now, the exceptional ensemble that appears in the movie’s Tanglewood Music Festival scene. The Orchestra Now (TON), a New York-based graduate-level training orchestra comprised of the most vibrant young musicians from around the globe, was founded by conductor, educator and music historian Leon Botstein, whose insatiable curiosity has resulted in rescuing countless musical works from oblivion. Their first recording for AVIE, “The Lost Generation”, brings together three German-speaking composers who were contemporaries of Arnold Schoenberg and Alban Berg, but whose music became supressed by historical events of the 20th century.

In November 2022, TON gave the US premiere of Hugo Kauder’s Symphony No. 1, a “splendid” work that “made a splash” (New York Classical Review). The largely self-taught Moravian-born composer had a distinguished career in Vienna until he was forced to flee the Nazis and arrived in New York in 1938. The first of Kauder’s five symphonies was dedicated to Alma Mahler. Whilst his musical language is rooted in the tradition of Johannes Brahms and Gustav Mahler, he forged an individual voice with his ease and flexibility of harmonic and metrical shifts.

German-born, Austrian composer Hans Erich Apostel studied with Schoenberg and Berg. His works incorporated his mentors’ expressionism and 12-tone methods in equal measure. The Nazis deemed Apostel’s music “degenerate”, but he lived out his life in Vienna until his death in 1972. His Variations on a theme by Haydn, performed frequently in the mid-20th century, is an homage to the second movement of Haydn’s Symphony No. 103, the “Drum Roll, which itself comprises variations on a theme.

Adolf Busch, one of the most celebrated violinists and chamber musicians of the 20th century, was also a prolific composer. A staunch opponent of Nazism, he left his native Germany, arriving first in Switzerland and eventually the United States in 1939. A late Romantic compositional style imbues his Variations on an Original Theme, originally for piano four hands and presented to his wife as a Christmas present in 1944. Busch’s longtime chamber music partner and son-in-law, the pianist Rudolf Serkin, frequently performed the work with his son Peter, who made this orchestration of his grandfather’s composition, in a familial labor of love.