The music of Estonian organist-composer Süda (1883–1920) combines contrapuntal mastery with virtuosic command of the Romantic organ. Süda’s brief life and his perfectionism meant that his output – exclusively for the organ – remained small, but it is beautifully crafted and highly expressive.

This second volume of the orchestral music of the Austro-American composer Richard Stöhr (1874–1967) reveals further marvels: the first of his two suites for string orchestra encases a moving slow movement between a charming prelude and an elegant fugue; and the four imposing spans of the expansive First Symphony offer grandeur and heartfelt profundity – as well as irresistibly catchy tunes that will set the foot tapping. Stöhr writes in a musical language somewhere between Bruckner, Mahler and his exact Viennese contemporary Franz Schmidt – but it is a voice increasingly readily recognised as his own.

John Storgårds and the BBC Philharmonic continue their survey of Shostakovich’s late symphonies with this recoding of the 14th, with Elizabeth Atherton and Peter Rose as soloists. Completed in the spring of 1969, and premiered later that year, the symphony is written for soprano, bass and small string orchestra with percussion, setting eleven linked setting of poems by four authors. Most of the poems deal with the theme of death, particularly that of unjust or early death, and indeed all four of the poets had died prematurely and / or in unnatural circumstances – Wilhelm Küchelbecker in Siberian exile for his part in the 1825 Decembrist uprising, Federico García Lorca assassinated during the Spanish Civil War, in 1936, Rainer Maria Rilke of blood poisoning following an accident in 1926 and Guillaume Apollinaire in 1918 during the Spanish influenza pandemic. The Six Verses of Marina Tsvetayeva were composed in 1973, originally for contralto and piano, and subsequently arranged for chamber orchestra (the version we hear here, with Jess Dandy as soloist). The recording was made at Media City in Salford, Manchester, in Surround Sound, and is available as a hybrid SACD and in Spatial Audio.

Recorded during the 2020 lockdown, Richard Boothby explores the solo and duo Viol music of Alfonso Ferrabosco the younger. The lyra viol and its music is one of the last undiscovered gems of music, and Alfonso Ferrabosco is its greatest exponent. It is in the category of ‘hard to define, easy to recognise’: it is at once an instrument, a style of playing and a genre of instrumental music, and, while not exclusively English, by far the largest part of its repertory is from these isles. A composer favoured by Queen Elizabeth I and James I, Ferrabosco also wrote music for stage works by playwright Ben Jonson, some of which would by heard in performance at Shakespeare's Globe. Added to this he was a renowned player of the viol – a visiting court musician declaring that there was no player of ‘La lyre’ in Italy: “who was fit to be compared with the great ‘Farabosco d’Angleterre'."

Richard Boothby has been playing the viol ever since David Fallows handed him a tenor viol in 1977. After further study with Nikolaus Harnoncourt in Salzburg, he helped to found The Purcell Quartet in 1984 and Fretwork in 1985. He has endeavoured to enrich the viol-consort repertory with new music from today’s finest composers, from Elvis Costello to George Benjamin, from Alexander Goehr to Nico Muhly. With the Purcell Quartet, he recorded nearly 50 albums for Hyperion and Chandos; and with Fretwork over 40 albums for Virgin Classics, Harmonia Mundi USA and most recently, Signum Classics.

REVIEW:

These are intimate performances of intimate music, yes; but the writing and the playing are such that chordal and contrapuntal textures, beefy bass lines and flute-like cantabiles just about do the job of an entire consort of viols.

-- BBC Music Magazine

From country music to rhythm and blues, Robin McKelle has made an entire career exploring the rich vastness of American music. With Impressions of Ella, McKelle returns to her traditional jazz roots and finds herself right at home. McKelle wisely eschews Ella’s scatting and note-bending style in favor of thoughtful arrangements and keen musicianship that revivify these timeless standards.

“For me, “Impressions of Ella” feels like a homecoming of sorts. Like a family reunion after years of separation. A reconnection with the music that fueled my most formative musical years and it was Ella Fitzgerald that left quite an impression. I admired the effortless way she made herself a part of the band, even though she was the star. Her powerful voice and explosive scat to the most delicate tones had me hooked. I wanted to celebrate her and the style of her sound but in doing so, keeping my own individuality.

To help bring her concept to life, McKelle enlists a brand new trio of venerated jazz players: Kenny Washington on drums, bassist Peter Washington, and NEA Jazz Master Kenny Barron on piano. “I wasn’t intimidated to make music with them, but [their] résumés were like, ‘Wow!’ [Am I] going to be good enough? Are we going to connect? The exciting thing was having the opportunity to sing over them as a trio; that was such a huge joy.” The bond between a vocalist and an accompanist is perhaps one of music’s most profound and extraordinary unions.

With Impressions of Ella, she doesn’t attempt to reinvent the wheel or limit her potential for creative expression. While it lauds our “First Lady of Song,” the album also marks an inevitable coming of age for McKelle’s career in jazz, as the fruits of her hard work and years of training finally ripen and bear fruit.

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.

Tanya Ekanayaka presents a stunning array of 43 works for solo piano composed between 2021 and 2022, drawing inspiration from 40 languages ranging from rare and critically endangered languages spread across Earth’s six continents, home to permanent human habitation, to some of the most famous and unusual languages of South Asia. Mystical, vibrant, contemplative and poetic, the sutras and pianisms traverse a broad spectrum of moods and thought. Throughout, the prolific composer-pianist’s fearless musical authenticity glistens within the beautiful originality of this remarkable double album.

This is one volume in a multi-volume set. Find the complete box set here.

On the occasion of the Bruckner bicentenary, the Wiener Philharmoniker recorded its first ever complete Bruckner cycle under the baton of Christian Thielemann. In addition to the well-known canon of nine symphonies, the two earliest Bruckner symphonies in F minor and D minor, which are a world premiere on DVD and Blu-ray, were also recorded for the first time in the orchestra's history. This uniquely complete edition from the Musikverein and Salzburg Festival, featuring 11symphonies, also includes extensive conversations with Christian Thielemann about each symphony and insights into his rehearsal work.

The lasting fame of conductor Karl Böhm is based on qualities that were praised by listeners, musicians and critics throughout his long career: his discipline and meticulousness when rehearsing compositions as well as his modesty, his willingness to take second place to work and composer. After many years serving as principal conductor in several opera houses he left his administrative duties behind and embarked on an international career as an acclaimed guest, concert and opera conductor. He was regularly invited by the New York Met and the Deutsche Oper Berlin, to the festivals in Salzburg (as of 1938) and Bayreuth (as of 1962), he gave guest performances from Tokyo to Moscow, from Milan to Buenos Aires, and at the broadcasting corporations in Berlin, Munich, Cologne, Frankfurt and Stuttgart where he was invited whenever there was something important to celebrate.

The Radio Sinfonieorchester Stuttgart (formerly known under a few different names and since 2016 merged with its sister from Baden-Baden and Freiburg to form the SWR Symphonieorchester) not only played in its home region, the Southwest of Germany, but toured extensively all over Europe. It has a catalogue of several hundreds of recordings and accompanied during its history many famous soloists. Branka Musulin was an extraordinary pianist who worked with some of the most important conductors of her time, among them Willem Mengelberg, Hermann Abendroth, Franz Konwitschny, Georg Solti and Sergiu Celibidache.

Finnish composer Lotta Wennäkoski (b. 1970) is one of Finland’s most distinguished composers of the last two decades. The most consistent feature in Wennäkoski’s music is its rich palette of tonal colour, not restricted to musical pitches but also incorporating noise as required. Her expression ranges from sensitive lyricism to forceful outbursts. Her output is wideranging, including orchestral music, vocal works, chamber music and solo pieces. This second album of her music on Ondine includes Wennäkoski’s international breakthrough work, Flounce (2017) from the BBC Last Night of the Proms performed by the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra and its new chief conductor Nicholas Collon. Premiered in 2022, Wennäkoski’s Harp Concerto Sigla was written for harpist Sivan Magen.

REVIEWS:

Lotta Wennäkoski (b. 1970) is one of Finland’s most distinguished composers of the last two decades. The most consistent feature in Wennäkoski’s music is its rich palette of tonal colour, not restricted to musical pitches but also incorporating noise as required. Her expression ranges from sensitive lyricism to forceful outbursts. Her output is wide-ranging, including orchestral music, vocal works, chamber music and solo pieces. This second album of her music on Ondine includes Wennäkoski’s international breakthrough work, Flounce (2017) from the BBC Last Night of the Proms performed by the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra and its new chief conductor Nicholas Collon. Premiered in 2022, Wennäkoski’s Harp Concerto Sigla was written for harpist Sivan Magen.

-- Records International

Jan Ladislav Dussek (1760-1812) was a cosmopolitan piano virtuoso who studied with C.P.E. Bach, lived and performed in one European capital after another in a tumultuous progress across the continent, and wrote huge quantities of eclectic music which has largely been forgotten. Dussek’s music for his own instrument may now be much better known than half a century ago – not least thanks to the first period-instrument edition of his piano sonatas, produced by Brilliant Classics – but he wrote almost 80 violin sonatas which also deserve revival as the product of a fluent and always inventive mind working on the cusp of eras we now identify as Classicism and Romanticism.

The three sonatas gathered here as Dussek’s Opus 1 were published around 1780. Each of them is cast in two movements: a lively Allegro in sonata form, followed by a Rondo or (in No.1) a set of variations, gentle and even meditative in character, in which Dussek’s originality shines through the occasional, recitative-like episodes. The six sonatas of Op.28 belong to the genre of ‘accompanied piano sonatas’ in which the musical substance is conceived principally for the keyboard instrument, with an obbligato melody instrument (such as the violin or flute) adding or doubling a top line if convenient. By the time he wrote them in 1795, Dussek had been a celebrity of London musical life for six years, having fled revolutionary Paris in a hurry. The dedication to ‘Miss Shaw’ refers to one of the daughters of the composer Thomas Shaw, and one may imagine the father on the violin accompanying and encouraging his daughter on the piano in Dussek’s vivid evocations of rural life and the lively march of a tin-soldier regiment.

Dussek’s sonatas are played here in new recordings by the German duo of Julia Huber and Miriam Altmann in polished and historically informed performances, using an authentic 1780 fortepiano. Huber has worked with German period-instrument ensembles such as L'Orfeo Baroque Orchestra, La Stagione Frankfurt and the Collegium Cartusianum in Cologne.

The fifth and final installment of the Géza Anda's SWR recordings, and the first performance (and first recording) by Anda of Bartok’s Second Piano Concerto, which he later helped to receive worldwide recognition. Géza Anda is a representative of artistic honesty, a pianist with deep insight into the works he performed. These are the first and last concert recordings Anda recorded with the SWR - from 1950 and 1973 – available for the first time on a single CD!

REVIEWS:

Géza Anda gave these concerto performances with the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra, almost a quarter of a century apart. The disc thus documents a musician who had developed and matured over a period of a generation, playing two works strongly associated with him. But one concerto was as yet not solidly part of his repertoire—it had yet to be stabilised interpretatively. It is thus fascinating to hear his performance of his compatriot Bartók’s Second Concerto, here given with conductor Hans Müller-Kray in November 1950.

This 1950 visit was Anda’s first to the SWR orchestra but he was to return several more times. In 1973 he and Ferdinand Leitner performed the Tchaikovsky First—the same year the BBC taped him in Bartók’s Second [BBCL 4247-2]. As ever in this work—witness, say, another of his German broadcasts in his earlier collaboration with Solti and the Cologne Radio Symphony in 1958 [ICA Classics ICAC5092]—he marries poetic finesse and triumphant virtuosity. There are moments of spellbinding lyricism, as well as dramatic flourishes, none of which are marred by thumping. He was ever a natural poet of the keyboard, but one who could roar with the best of them. Fortunately the recorded sound here is excellent, and whilst some orchestral detail is smudged and there are some passing ensemble incidents this is a galvanizing reading through and through.

For Anda admirers here is an opportunity to hear his Bartók concerto in embryo, and to take pleasure in his Tchaikovsky.

-- MusicWeb International

Ravel's status as one of the most popular composers of all time rests to a large extent on the phenomenal success of Bolero. Yet there is much more to this endlessly intriguing man's work than the "seventeen minutes of orchestral tissue without music": childhood fantasy, Spain, the Orient, American jazz, the theater, clockwork toys and all the things mechanical, preoccupied Maurice Ravel throughout his life, and echoes of each can be found in all corners of his music.

Vieuxtemps transformed the technique and aesthetic of violin playing in the 19th century, and as a virtuoso exponent and composer he was considered a worthy successor to Paganini. His works for violin and orchestra illustrate two notable features – a liking for variation form and the fusion of emotional density with virtuosic flair. These can be heard in the impressive Variations on a Theme from Beethoven’s Romance No. 1 and his Fantasie in E major ‘La Sentimentale’, one of his very greatest concert fantasies, where the music is influenced by bel canto. All of the works on this album were discovered after the composer’s death apart from the the unfinished Violin Concerto No. 8 – one of Vieuxtemps’ last compositions and dedicated to his most illustrious pupil, Eugène Ysaÿe. Alexander Markov has been hailed as one of the world’s most captivating and versatile musicians, and has been highly praised by Yehudi Menuhin. He is particularly known for his interpretations of 19th-century Romantic virtuoso repertoire, with his performances of Paganini’s 24 Caprices reaching over 11 million views on YouTube. Markov is also featured in the internationally acclaimed documentary The Art of Violin directed by Bruno Monsaingeon. Markov made his solo debut at Carnegie Hall at the age of 16 and has appeared with renowned orchestras and conductors around the world, including Lorin Maazel and Charles Dutoit.

This release features one of the greatest discoveries of the 21st century for the early music world. Telemann’s 12 Fantasias for Viola da Gamba were considered lost until the discovery of an original print in a private collection in Germany in 2015. Perhaps some of the composer’s finest work for solo instrument, they are described by soloist Richard Boothby as being “... by turns virtuosic and expressive, Telemann uses all the techniques of the instrument to create satisfyingly complete Fantasias that are full of diversity.” One of the UK’s leading exponents of early music, Richard Boothby founded the Purcell Quartet in 1984 was a founder member of Fretwork in 1985. Since then his career has been bound up with these two groups with whom he records and tours; and through whom he plays the broadest range of repertory for the instrument from the earliest music to the latest contemporary music commissioned for viols.