Portuguese orchestral music was scarce until the 20th century, when composers were able to build on the great legacy of Luís de Freitas Branco (see digital single Two Melodies, 9.70326). António Fragoso died young, and the Concerto românticois a new adaptation of his Suite romantique, orchestrated to reflect influences from Fauré and early Debussy. Joly Braga Santos’s Concerto in D minor is one of his best-loved early works, blending Alentejo folk songs with the sophistication of Vaughan Williams and Walton. Sérgio Azevedo is renowned for his neo-Classical style, shaping a narrative of darkness to light in the Sinfonietta, and reviving the concerto grosso in his homage to Bartók, the Music for Strings.

Born in Prague in 1979, the composer, conductor and chorus master Ondrej Adámek, who studied in his Czech hometown and in Paris, has already won numerous prestigious awards for his orchestral, chamber, vocal and electro-acoustic music. In his musical language, which also repeatedly incorporates elements of distant cultures, he creates unusual musical narratives. He seeks the authenticity of his interpretations by combining voices and movements, gestures and theatricality, phonetic and semantic aspects, and his own specially developed musical instruments. The premieres of Ondrej Adámek's "Where are You?" and "Follow me" were distinctive for their excellent casts, featuring stars such as Magdalena Kožená, Isabelle Faust and Simon Rattle. In Adámek’s "Follow me", a three-movement concerto for violin and orchestra, the melodies are divided between the soloist and the orchestra along the lines of the late medieval hocket technique, whereby the composer seeks to connect a single individual with a (human) crowd. The first performance of Adámek’s "Where are You?" for mezzo-soprano and orchestra was an outstanding event in Munich's concert programme this year. In the eleven-part, approximately 35-minute-long kaleidoscope of sound, dominated by constant motoric movement – ranging from everyday sounds such as the monotonous ticking of a clock to the sweeping, electrifyingly rhythmic pounding of the orchestra tutti – the composer embarks on a search for the human ("Where do we come from and where are we going?") and the divine.

Review

This is music that grabs the listener by the ears and doesn’t let go. I found it completely exhilarating.

Nothing about either score included on this recording is remotely derivative or even predictable. If I were to say that it is as if Adámek had smashed up all previous music into tiny pieces and then reconstructed them into something marvellous and new, that might give the impression that he is some kind of arch post modernist. He is nothing of the sort. Almost miraculously he manages to be both uncompromisingly modernist and yet intensely communicative. Try his setting of what, in effect amounts to St Theresa’s ecstatic, religious orgasm in the seventh song of Where Are You? and what you’ll get is music that verges on the demented but which manages to be deeply spiritual and very sexy! Both scores are full of such wild, rude, exultant moments.

Follow Me is simultaneously a violin concerto and someone having a lot of fun with what a violin concerto might mean. I am not aware of another concerto that concludes with what amounts to a musical lynching of the soloist by the orchestra. One of the characteristics of Adámek’s writing is his absolute command of even the most outré material. Every note delivers an aural punch. He is of course capable of writing music of great delicacy, as in the concerto’s Bach derived slow movement but even here every note makes its point.

The opening movement features orchestral soloists echoing the opening phrases by the solo violin (the ‘follow me’ of the work’s title), phrases the composer explains in his joyous, quixotic note that were inspired by the exaggerated vibrato of a singer in Japanese Noh theatre. The orchestra, in a sense, gathers round the soloist, repeating her phrases. Isabelle Faust is at her imperious best here. This then subsides into silence before the soloist starts again with more seductive phrases. As Adámek puts it, these phrases provoke the orchestra “eventually driving them mad”. This builds and builds as the various motifs combine and recombine. The tension generated by the gradually gathering of tempo and volume is quite ferocious before Adámek pulls the rug from under the expected eruption and the movement ends with weird whistlings and scrapings out of which the slow movement evolves. A great strength of Adámek’s music is to unsettle the listener whilst keeping them on the edge of their seat.

One of the unifying techniques across all three movements of this concerto is what Adámek likens to a kind of musical ping pong where melodies are split, in alternate notes, between soloist and members of the orchestra. This effect plus an extreme elongation of material taken from Bach is most noticeable in this slow movement. It is a strange and mysterious movement that subsides into the uneasy calm from it emerged.

On a purely technical level, the finale combines all the elements of the previous two movements but that scarcely does justice to the effect it has on the listener. The shadowing of the soloist which gives the work its title is allowed finally to work its way from a hushed, fugitive opening all the way to the mighty climax that the opening movement was robbed of. As in that movement, the following of the soloist by the orchestra becomes more combative- a wry nod I think to the lion taming tradition of the 19^th century virtuoso concerto – and the music, dominated by a rogue trombone, constantly threatens to swamp the soloist whose final phrases are delivered off stage before a final thrilling orchestral stampede rounds things off. Is that a tongue in cheek reference to the final sacrificial dance of the Rite of Spring I hear in this final passage? What this description may not capture is that this is all immensely diverting and colossal fun. The world of Adámek’s music may be capable of great seriousness but it never takes itself too seriously.

Follow Me is, in many ways, the curtain raiser for the even more remarkable Where Are You? My earlier comments have probably already given some indication of what it is like. Written for mezzo soprano and orchestra, it is a song cycle on spiritual themes with texts from the Bible, the Gita and the autobiography of St Theresa. None of this is handled in a conventional manner. The opening section revels in the vowel sounds of the opening line of the Lord’s Prayer in Aramaic. A later movement sets possible Czech translations of those Aramaic words. It’s that sort of piece! The theme that unites these disparate elements is the way in which the spiritual quest for the divine however how high it can raise us comes down to earth with the question ‘Where are you?’ left unanswered. It has to be said that the piece celebrates the quest as much as it illustrates its ultimate failure and it does so with affection and good humour as well as profundity and anguish.

The vocalist is required to adopt a huge range of singing styles from breaths and rolled r’s to folk singing to outrageous coloratura. As in most of his other scores that I’ve heard, Adámek can find music in almost anything and make no mistake – this is a musical event above all else. The composer isn’t advancing some obscure musicological idea but making maddening, frenzied, bewildering, exuberant music. Ultimately, like the spiritual quest it describes, words fail to do justice to this piece. You are just going to have to listen to it.

--MusicWeb International (David McDade)

The beautiful, lyrical music of prolific 19th-century Swiss composer Joachim Raff was widely performed during his lifetime but is relatively under-represented today. Who better than Christoph Croisé, Raff’s modern day compatriot, to breathe new life into the composer’s complete works for cello and piano. Raff’s chamber music, and especially his works for cello, were among his most notable achievements. Having established a career in Germany in the mid-1850’s, Raff encountered the eminent cellist Bernhard Cossman whose mastery of the instrument inspired the composer’s rich Romantic oeuvre. Christoph, who has “got it all – technical chops, impeccable musicianship” (Gramophone), puts a fresh, 21st-century spin on Raff’s memorable music resulting in this benchmark recording.

REVIEW:

The beautiful, lyrical music of prolific 19th-century Swiss composer Joachim Raff was widely performed during his lifetime but is relatively under-represented today. Who better than Christoph Croisé, Raff’s modern day compatriot, to breathe new life into the composer’s complete works for cello and piano. Raff’s chamber music, and especially his works for cello, were among his most notable achievements. Having established a career in Germany in the mid-1850’s, Raff encountered the eminent cellist Bernhard Cossman, whose mastery of the instrument inspired the composer. Croisé, joined by pianist Oxana Shevchenko, puts a fresh, 21st-century spin on Raff’s memorable music resulting in this benchmark recording.

-- WMFT, 98.7 FM (Chicago, IL)

This album contains the symphonic suite "Scheherazade" by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and the short composition "The Enchanted Lake" by his student Anatoly Lyadov.

In 1887-88, after the sudden death of his brilliant friend Borodin, Rimsky-Korsakov composed those three orchestral works which crowned his Russian national period and has made his name a permanent part of the worldwide concert repertoire: the "Capriccio espagno"l, the symphonic suite "Scheherazade", and the concert overture "La Grande Pâque Russe". With Scheherazade Rimsky-Korsakov did not tell a story, he rather set individual, unconnected episodes and images to music.

Anatoly Lyadov has a reputation of being lazy – based solely on Rimsky-Korsakov’s opinion of him – yet his ambition was for every piece of music he created to be flawless. One consequence of this was that his entire œuvre consists entirely of miniatures. The "Enchanted Lake" does not tell a story but is purely impressionistic music about a Russian forest lake, on a level with Ravel and Debussy. Conductor Dmitri Kitayenko conducted various orchestras in Moscow, became chief conductor of the Moscow Philharmonic in 1976, and took over the Symphony Orchestra of the Hessischer Rundfunk in Frankfurt am Main in 1990-96. He went on to hold principal positions with the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra, the Bern Symphony Orchestra, the KBS Symphony Orchestra in Seoul and finally, in addition to his worldwide activities as a guest conductor, was appointed Honorary Conductor of the Gürzenich Orchestra in Cologne.

One has no problem naming famous String Quartet ensembles; however, String Trios simply cannot make the same boast! Even on the repertoire of the side, composers have produced many more significant quartets than they have string trios. Thus, it was something of a minor miracle when three musicians such as violinist Arthur Grumiaux, Georges Janzer (V�gh Quartet violist) and Janzer's wife, the cellist Eve Czako, finally met to perform works of Mozart and Beethoven. The resulting June 8, 1966 Schwetzingen Castle recital is a most memorable concert that will welcome repeated listening.

This second and final volume of Chopin’s Mazurkas by Peter Jablonski includes the composer's Mazurkas Nos. 30-51 alongside six posthumous 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. This album also includes Chopin’s final composition that was written just few weeks before his death, the Mazurka No. 49 in F minor (1849).

Carl Reinecke, a German composer, conductor, pianist and pedagogue was one of the most influentual, many-sided and respected individuals in the musical life of the 19th century. This release contains a set of Reinecke's compositions for clarinet, horn and piano. The works featured here come from different periods of Reinecke's career and enable us to follow the development in his compositional style.

For her 10th anniversary with Berlin Classics, the US pianist Claire Huangci presents herself and her label with a weighty recording project, Schubert's late sonatas D 894, D 958, D 959, and D 960, as well as the Three Piano Pieces D 946 and a selection of songs from Schwanengesang. She accompanies the baritone Thomas E. Bauer in four of the songs and plays two in an arrangement by Franz Liszt. To be heard in a box with three albums under the title META.

META stands for the importance of Schubert's music in Claire Huangci's personal and musical life. Schubert's compositions, which she has played since her earliest youth, "show my development, that reflects unconscious emotions," as she writes in the booklet. Schubert's music is "the music I would like to take with me to a desert island...Schubert has accompanied me through all times", especially the late sonatas, which are at the center of the META box.

As part of his final year as Music Director and following a two-season celebration of the Orchestra’s 125th anniversary, Peter Oundjian and the RSNO here present their second recording of music by John Adams, with the exceptional participation of the Doric String Quartet. Written for a large orchestra including six percussionists, keyboard sampler, and amplified steel-string guitar, Naive and Sentimental Music is a sweepingly symphonic masterpiece, full of contrasts and clashes. It reflects the dichotomy between ‘naive’ and ‘sentimental’ poetry as analyzed by Friedrich Schiller in his 1795 essay Über naive und sentimentalische Dichtung, as well as the ‘bipolar’ musical life of Esa-Pekka Salonen, the dedicatee of this piece, who conducted the first performance with the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 1999. Absolute Jest is a large-scale scherzo for amplified string quartet and orchestra, heavily inspired by the music of Beethoven, which Adams has always deeply admired. The quartet of soloists, a late addition to the score, emphasises the echoes of Beethoven’s music (mainly his string quartets) and facilitates a ‘hyperspace rate’ of virtuosity, which the Doric String Quartet here perfectly demonstrates.

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The RSNO’s playing captures all the delicacy, grandeur and zing of Adams’s complex score, while the Doric String Quartet brings sumptuous sweetness and laser-like clarity to its solo part. There follows a magnificent reading of Naïve and Sentimental Music, with Oundjian skilfully managing the balance of pace and introspection.

– BBC Music Magazine

Includes work(s) by Gabriel Fauré. Soloists: Christian Poltéra, Kathryn Stott, Priya Mitchell.

It is impossible to imagine today’s opera repertoire without Puccini’s Tosca, but rarely has an opera been so brutal: Murder, torture and love, jealousy and passion – everything is present in abundance. When it was written in 1900, this thriller set to music caused considerable controversy due to the political figureheads involved. Only much later the story about the deeply religious Tosca, the passionate Cavaradossi and the sadistic Scarpia was interpreted as the psychological drama it was meant to be. The drama on stage is accompanied from the orchestra pit by Marc Albrecht conducting the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra by pointed sketches of the characters, but also - as typical for Puccini - by lyrical turns and beautiful melodies that make this opera shocker unique.

“Marc Albrecht, with a fabulously disposed ORF Radio Symphony Orchestra, [...] – a masterly achievement.” (Opernwelt). Next to Kristine Opolais, “a great, highly dramatic singing actress whose interpretation gets under the skin” (Kurier), sings the discovery of the evening, “the young tenor Jonathan Tetelman stems Caravadossi with juvenile power and tenoral beam that almost bursts the dimensions of the house.” (Opernwelt)

For over 100 years the only opera by a woman to have been performed at the Metropolitan Opera, Der Wald is a taut, brooding drama where the simplicity of village life comes under threat from the uncontrollable desires unleashed by the darkness of the forest. Richly orchestrated, harmonically daring, and demanding a huge expressive range from the cast, the narrative drives relentlessly forward from wedding to tragedy in a single act, observed pitilessly by the eternal spirits of the forest. John Andrews conducts the BBC Singers, the BBC Symphony Orchestra and an international cast in the first ever recording of this work, using Smyth’s English version of the libretto.

The Amsterdam-based recorder quintet has done it again: an original concept, featuring several first recordings, and superb performances which confirm them among the top-tier of today’s early-music chamber ensembles. The present album arises from a concert devised in 2018 for a festival in Bruges celebrating notable female figures from history.

Seldom Sene chose to focus on Margaret of Austria (1480–1530), who was governor of the Habsburg Netherlands for almost 20 years. Margaret had grown up with the benefits of a first-class education afforded to very few of her female peers: she was adept in all the humanities, and her library of books was reckoned one of the most extensive and learned at the time, a fit place to welcome distinguished guests such as Albrecht Dürer. From around 1515, one of the volumes in Margaret’s library was her newly commissioned personal songbook: a collection of 55 chansons and motets, richly decorated with high-quality miniatures and initials.

Many of the song texts speak of loss, sorrow and loneliness, perhaps reflecting her status at the time as a noble widow, following the death of her second husband, Philibert II of Savoy, in 1504. Margaret herself seems to have written several of them, and may also have been involved in their musical setting. Marian devotion is another theme of the songbook reflected in this selection made and transcribed and recorded by Seldom Sene. Sacred hymns are balanced out by secular laments, but also lighter and more cheerful numbers such as ‘Brunette m’amiette‘ and ‘La jonne dame’. Many of the composers are now lost to us and effectively anonymous, but the names that survive are worthy of Margaret’s elevated status, including Josquin and Pierre de la Rue.

‘Like Margaret,’ concludes María Martínez Ayerza in her booklet note, ‘like her courtiers and visitors, we see and hear the music and texts in this songbook and we are moved, stirred. These artworks make us change, as we relate the texts, even the titles, and the rather abstract beauty of the music to ourselves.’ Ayerza and her colleagues in Seldom Sene bring this music and Margaret’s world back to life with intense sympathy. The album is sure to receive the glowing reviews accorded to the group’s discography on Brilliant Classics. ‘Commitment, technical versatility, unanimity of ensemble and near-immaculate tuning on display.’ (Gramophone) ‘An excellent release from an ensemble I hope we’ll hear a lot more from in the future.’ (Fanfare)

An American in Paris is one of Gershwin’s most vivacious works, an orchestral ballet saturated in homesickness and the blues. This recording, however, uses the new 2019 critical edition and offers Gershwin’s original orchestration, unheard for 75 years- leaner, more angular and transparent, it also employs the correct use of the iconic taxi horns, for a new sonic experience. The breezy vitality of Copland’s An Outdoor Overture is balanced by Bernstein’s Songfest- written to celebrate the Bicentennial Year in America, setting the verses of 13 of the country’s poets.

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REVIEW:

Songfest is in many ways a portrait of its composer in that the music is multi-faceted and ranges from the simple and lyrical to the flamboyant. Not every movement works as well for me on a level of subjective taste—I’m not a big fan of the tenor solo, ‘Zizi’s Lament’, for instance—but overall, the work is entertaining and full of life. The present performance is excellent with six fine singers expertly partnered by James Judd and his outstanding orchestra.

This new recording of An American in Paris has a particular allure in that it uses the new (2019) critical edition. The edition has been prepared by Mark Clague, the Editor-in-Chief of the George and Ira Gershwin Critical Edition. In an absorbing note in the booklet, he explains that there are two significant differences between this score and the version to which we’re accustomed. One concerns the use of saxophones. Gershwin specified no less than eight different saxes in his original orchestration, including a trio of soprano saxes. Unfortunately, well-meaning editorial work in the 1940s reduced the eight saxes to three—and even these were designated as optional. Here, the full octet is restored and, boy, do they make a difference at times! (Try the episode beginning at 7:23, where they’re smooching in the background. Even better, listen to them in the exuberant passage from 11:39.) The other changes concern the famous taxi horns. Gershwin was, apparently, very specific as to the pitches of the horns but an editorial misunderstanding after the composer’s death meant that the horns were notated at incorrect pitches. Now we can hear what Gershwin intended.

Copland’s An Outdoor Overture acts as a filler; it receives an alert and entertaining performance.

I’ve encountered the work of the National Orchestral Institute Philharmonic on several previous Naxos CDs of American music. I’ve never been disappointed by their performances and this latest programme evidences the same professionalism, polish and commitment that I’ve heard before. James Judd guides them expertly through the music.

I enjoyed this disc very much. It’s especially recommendable for Songfest, not least because to the best of my knowledge it’s the only single-disc version currently available and it’s a work that is very well worth getting to know, especially in this fine performance.

– MusicWeb International

Rossini’s La donna del lago, premièred in 1819 at the Teatro San Carlo in Naples, is a masterpiece based on the poem The Lady of the Lake by Sir Walter Scott, which is full of passion and romantic frisson. “With characteristic boldness, Michieletto reformulates this glittering music into something otherworldly” (Financial Times) and the performance is “musically brilliant.” (Die Presse.com) “Marko Mimica and Varduhi Abrahamyan produce strong performances as Douglas and Malcom respectively. Flórez is laser like and fresh as ever and thrilling brutish …“ (Financial Times) while the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung writes: “Michele Mariotti and his outstanding orchestra were the stars of the evening.“