In the course of their research for the five-part recording production "Beethoven's World 1799-1851" (2020), the casalQuartett came across not only Carl Czerny, one of Beethoven's two pupils, represented by his 28th String Quartet in A flat major, but also the Viennese composer Anton Eberl (1765-1807), who was Mozart's friend and pupil. As an outstanding pianist and composer, he achieved great popularity and, after returning to Vienna from St. Petersburg, had even more prominent supporters than Beethoven. His life ended unexpectedly at the zenith of his success in 1807. His music, as can be seen in the excellent recordings of the symphonies by Concerto Köln and the piano sonatas by Luca Quintavalle, is often surprisingly modern for its time. Like Mozart's late works and those of the new Beethoven, they augur the revolutionary dawn of Romanticism. The casalQuartett has received numerous awards, including the ECHO KLASSIK 2010, 2015, 2017, the Pizzicato Award Luxembourg, the DIAPASON Decouverte, the DIAPASON d'Or, the German Record Critics' Award and has been nominated three times for the ICMA Award and the American Grammy.

Sandro Fuga became a leading figure in Turin’s musical life in the mid-20th century. His passion for art and music was inherited from his eminent Venetian family which included grandfather Luigi Nono among its members. Few Italian composers of Fuga’s generation broached the sonata genre, but these three works represent the summit of his piano music, together forming a triptych of considerable significance. Fuga considered himself a ‘Romantic survivor’, believing music to represent the expression of emotions. Thanks to his rejection of avant-garde ephemera and a profound faith in humanity, his piano sonatas are expressive, eloquent and emotionally compelling.

Composer Phillip Wilby has built his reputation on writing for brass band and music for the Christian liturgy, for which he composes extensively. The three works presented on this album were all composed between 2014 and 2019, the earliest of which is the Knaresborough Service, commissioned by the Parish Church of St John the Baptist in Knaresborough, North Yorkshire. The anthem God’s Grandeur was written in 2017 and is a setting of Gerard Manley Hopkins’s poem of the same name. Wilby’s An English Passion According to Saint Matthew was written in 2018, for Matthew Owens and the choir of Wells Cathedral. One important characteristic of the work is the congregational hymns are taken from the collection of English tunes, published by Vaughan Williams in his English Hymnal of 1906. These hymns, with their timeless melodies, anchor the Passion in a very English setting.

Fifteen years after his Nouvelles Suites de Pièces de Clavecin, Rameau once again turns his attention to an instrumental work, for what will be the last time, inspired by the new potential for chamber music glimpsed in the use of the concertante keyboard. The 1741 collection is the only new work he produced between 1740 and 1744, before returning to the musical theatre – to which he will dedicate the rest of his life. The most attractive aspect of the Pièces de Clavecin en Concerts, and the one which provides the most authentic reading of the work, is the multiplicity of possible combinations in performance between the instruments indicated in the score (harpsichord, violin/flute, viola da gamba/2nd violin ), following the detailed instructions that Rameau provides for each of them in the various Avis in the preface of the printed edition. The author’s intention was undoubtedly for the harpsichord and its virtuosic protagonism to be the backbone of the Pièces; however, the possibilities of alternative timbric arrangements are specifically contemplated by Rameau for this work. What was a widespread ad libitum performance practice, today becomes an extremely inviting challenge for modern performers in terms of tonal reinvention of the pieces. Thus, with each new reading the music may be reinvented, making in turn every new listening experience a rediscovery and a revelation.

Grammy-winner Jason Vieaux, “among the elite of today’s classical guitarists” (Gramophone), is described by NPR as “perhaps the most precise and soulful classical guitarist of his generation”.  Among his extensive discography is the 2015 Grammy-winning album for Best Classical Instrumental Solo, Play. Vieaux’s multiple appearances over the years with Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Music@Menlo, Strings Music Festival, Eastern Music Festival, Caramoor Festival, etc., have forged his reputation as a top-drawer chamber musician. Regular collaborators include the Escher String Quartet, Grammy-winning mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke, violinist Anne Akiko Meyers, harpist Yolanda Kondonassis, and accordion/bandoneon virtuoso Julien Labro. Now, Vieaux releases "Bach Volume 2", a follow-up to highly acclaimed Volume 1.  This is Jason's first release since the 2015 release of Grammy Award winning "Play."

Composer Elena Ruehr adds to her extensive discography with Icarus, an album of chamber music infused with hints of history, legendary literature and close collaborations with a multitude of musical colleagues. The repertoire revolves around the string quartet, a genre that generated great acclaim for Elena’s Six String Quartets (AV2379). Elena’s String Quartet No. 7, “A Thousand Cranes”, evokes experiences and resilience of children in wartime, including the internment of Japanese in American camps, and her own father’s escape from Nazi Germany. Her playful String Quartet No. 8, “Insect Dances” – “written for listeners of all ages” – finds a diverse family of bugs engaged in an impish dinner party. Inspired by T. S. Eliot, The Worlds Revolve, for piano and string quartet, conjures elements both ancient and prescient. The title track, for clarinet and string quartet, centres on the Greek mythological character’s excitement as he builds his wings of wax and dares to fly, rather than his dark demise as he flies too close to the sun.

The German composer Felix Woyrsch was born in 1860 in Troppau (then the capital of Austrian Silesia and now, as Opava, in the Czech Republic) but became prominent in the musical life of Altona, now part of Hamburg, as organist, choirmaster and teacher; he died there in 1944. Woyrsch’s late-Romantic organ music, with distant roots in Bach’s counterpoint, inhabits a harmonic world somewhere between Brahms and Reger, its dark colors reflecting the upheavals in the times through which he lived.

Richard Wagner began composing his Wesendonck Lieder during a stay in Zurich between November and December 1857. Originally conceived for female voice and piano alone, the five songs were later orchestrated, first by the Austrian conductor and composer Felix Mottl in 1893, and then later in 1976 by the German composer Hans Werner Henze, in a chamber setting. In fact Wagner had already orchestrated a version of "Träume” to be performed by chamber orchestra (with violin playing the voice part) on the occasion of his wife Minna’s birthday in 1857. Later, in 1870, for his second wife Cosima’s 33rd birthday, he enacted a similar gesture. Mixing new motifs with themes from his Ring cycle, he composed the Siegfried Idyll and had it performed by a small orchestra as a birthday surprise. Hanz Werner Henze’s orchestration of Wagner’s Wesendonck Lieder highlights the relationship between the words and the sounds. The agile yet intense scoring for ten wind instruments, harp and small string ensemble appears to be Henze’s way of finding an alternative to the original piano without taking the cycle outside the realm of chamber music or altering the lieder’s original image. Siegfried and Brünnhilde sing from the depths of their hearts returns here with the grace of a child’s nursery. Salvatore Sciarrino’s Languire a Palermo (Languishing in Palermo), composed in 2018, is predominantly built around the melody Tempo di Porazzi, a fragment composed by Wagner during a visit to Sicily in late 1881 and early 1882. Sciarrino describes the ‘allure of a distant unaccompanied melody, played by someone for their own benefit and entrusted to the wind’ and hypothesizes that it may correspond ‘to the sounds in Sicily that stimulate and amaze the ears...Mediterranean charm gushes from the throat of every street vendor.’

Rachel Barton Pine’s ‘Testament’ is one of the best of this set of peerless works to have been released since Isabelle Faust’s definitive volumes of 2010 and 2012.

There is in her interpretation a surprisingly striking contrast between its crystalline voicing, clear articulation, and warm tone that makes the listener feel that it is concerned with the plain and simple beauty of the music as much as with the genius of its counterpoint and relationships between movements. All this is further supported by the sensible combination of Baroque bow and metal strings on a period instrument in modern set-up – the tuning is unfailingly accurate and the strength of the bowing means there is never any interference with the musical line by a squeak or break.

These are thoughtful and generous performances amplified by great maturity and depth.

– Gramophone (Editor's Choice; June 2016)

The McGill/McHale Trio, an international all-star ensemble of flute, clarinet, and piano, makes its recording debut with Portraits, featuring world-premiere recordings of new compositions and arrangements for this captivating combination of instruments. Trio flutist Demarre McGill, a Chicago native, has served as principal flute of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and the Dallas, Seattle, and San Diego Symphony Orchestras. His brother, Anthony McGill, is principal clarinet of the New York Philharmonic and former principal of the Met Orchestra. Michael McHale, one of Ireland's leading pianists, has performed as soloist with the Minnesota, Halle, Moscow, and Bournemouth Symphony Orchestras and all five of Ireland's major orchestras. The ''title track'', Valerie Coleman's Portraits of Langston is a six-movement suite inspired by Langston Hughe's poetry. Oscar-winning actor Mahershala Ali reads a Hughes poem before each movement. Chris Rogerson's ''A Fish Will Rise'' evokes rippling water and sparkling sunlight. Pianist McHale's arrangement of Rachmaninov's ''Vocalise'' splits the original vocal line between flute and clarinet, supported by Rachmaninov's original piano accompaniment. Paul Schoenfield's spirited ''Sonatina for Flute, Clarinet and Piano'' springs surprises on the Charleston, rag, and jig dance forms. Philip Hammond's ''The Lamentation of Owen O'Neil'' and McHale's arrangement of ''Parade'' channels the spirit and energy of electronic pop.

REVIEWS:

The Trio has masterfully blended the narrated and purely instrumental tracks of the recording. We also believe the three musicians succeed in unifying a wide array of contemporary compositions into a coherent program which has a great deal to offer the listener.

– AfriClassical

The concert is beautifully performed, from simple folk tunes to wistful Americana and from playful jazz to thunderous modernism. The McGill brothers boast stunningly clear and resonant woodwind timbres, exquisite balance and blend, sensitive phrasing, and expert technique; and McHale matches them with superb touch, voicing, pedal work, and musical instinct, including a good sense of when to go for broke.

– American Record Guide

Jeroen van Veen has won international success with albums of Satie, Part, Glass and Riley. These are only some of the most significant composers whose work he has recorded for Brilliant Classics in building a library on record of minimalist piano music. Simplicity, repetition and appealing melody are the qualities shared by all the composers who subscribe to this aesthetic, and they underlie van Veen’s own compositions. Although subtitled Volume 2, this is the third album to focus exclusively on the pianist as composer. Books 1 and 2 of his Minimal Piano Preludes were reissued in 2016, and won high praise from MusicWeb International. Further preludes feature in a release of his piano music, and this sequel takes us up to Minimal Prelude No.60, a ‘tango for organ’. “All my music is about time and space,” says van Veen. “The duration of music is an essential part of the concept in my music. The concept of music, specifically my minimal oriented music, only can exist in time. The slow progression, building of the material, the motifs and the search for new sounds is audible in this [album].” All the works featured here were composed between 2010 and 2018. Continuum is a concertante work for piano and flute octet. Incanto is another album-length piece, entirely composed in an unusual 11/8 time signature. Ripalmania is written for six pianos, a scoring which creates an entrancing effect. In Velvet Piano van Veen explores the timbral possibilities of pianos prepared with objects after the style of John Cage, though without the American composer’s aim of disconcerting the listener. The final portion of the release is a celebration of minimalist jazz, in which the border between composition and improvisation almost vanishes.

Two highly dramatic short works by Monteverdi, Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda and Ballo delle ingrate are performed by distinguished French soloists with Jean-Claude Malgoire directing La Grande Ecurie et La Chambre du Roy.

In the spring of 2020, the Covid pandemic caused turmoil in the concert diaries of most musicians, including the conductor Andrew Litton and his wife Katharina Kang Litton, principal violist of New York City Ballet. To find an outlet for their musical expression they began to explore the repertoire for viola and piano together. Having played the sonatas by Brahms they came across the music by two other Viennese composers, Brahms’ near-contemporary Robert Fuchs and his student Egon Kornauth. Fuchs – who the less-than-effusive Brahms called ‘a splendid musician’ – had a long and distinguished career at the Vienna Conservatory where his other students included such composers as Mahler, Wolf, Sibelius, Zemlinsky and Korngold. That the sonatas recorded here were composed around the same time as Schoenberg’s Second String Quartet can be hard to believe – as is the fact that Fuchs’s Phantasiestücke (composed in his 80th and final year) was contemporary with Bartók’s Piano Concerto No. 1. But if they are not in any way pioneering, all three works are beautifully achieved: formally both strong and flexible, with a subtle, deeply-felt emotional coloring of their own. The Litton Duo close the recital with a piece that has a personal significance for the two – an arrangement of the Korean folk song Arirang which they received as a wedding present from Stephen Hough.

The Norwegian vocal ensemble Edvard Grieg Kor is the resident a cappella ensemble at Troldhaugen, the home of Edvard Grieg. Displaying versatility across all musical genres, they perform regularly with Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra and also form the core of the Chorus for Bergen National Opera. They have had numerous works and arrangements written specially for them by leading composers including Jonathan Rathbone, and David Lang, both of whom are represented here on this the choir’s debut recording. Greig’s Fire Salmer, (Four Psalms) after Norwegian folk tunes (his final opus) and his shorter Ave Maris Stella (performed here in an a cappella arrangement made by the composer) are two rare examples of religion in Greig’s output. Works by fellow Norwegian composers Ole Bull and Agathe Backer Grøndahl, and a sensational and virtuosic arrangement of Greig’s Holberg Suite complete the programme.

In the 1860s Johannes Brahms composed one of the most beautiful song cycles of the romantic era: Die schöne Magelone. Now baritone Christian Gerhaher, a lied singer of international renown, has joined forces with his longstanding accompanist Gerold Huber to record Brahms’s masterpiece. For Gerhaher, named singer of the year in 2016 by the German trade journal Opernwelt and awarded the coveted Wigmore Medal in England for “outstanding musicianship in opera, oratorio and song”, the project is a dream come true.

The 15 poems that Brahms fashioned into “romances” are taken from Ludwig Tieck’s novella The Wondrous Romance of Magelone the Fair and Peter Count of Provence (1797). Inspired by a medieval legend, it tells of the love of the valiant knight Peter of Provence for Magelone, the daughter of the King of Naples.

In 2011 Christian Gerhaher commissioned the well-known German writer Martin Walser to produce a new version of the text, which he then premièred in Coburg together with Gerold Huber and Walser himself.

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REVIEWS:

It is quite clear that the singer and his longstanding accompanist are absolutely at one—they have been performing together since the beginning. Sound is good and all is clear and well defined. For those seeking a commanding and modern German singer in Brahms—no quibbles, this is for you.

– Fanfare

Gerhaher is more compelling in this music even than Fischer-Dieskau is in his classic recording with Sviatoslav Richter. Gerhaher and Gerold Huber sound more athletic in the vigorous songs, and the baritone is more rapt and spiritual in the famous Ruhe.

– Sunday Times (UK)