Arguably the first time the complete Beethoven Symphonies have been conducted by a female conductor in one set.

Most of Beethoven's ten violin sonatas were composed within a time span of no more than 6 years (1797-1803), with the exception of the last one, op. 96, which he began in 1812, taking probably a further 3 years to revise to his satisfaction. This means the set as a whole represents a relatively young Beethoven, though his development from the early Op. 12 sonatas to the "Kreutzer" Op. 47 clearly demonstrates a formidable inner creative force. His cello sonatas, string quartets and symphonies are more evenly spaced throughout his life, but the violin sonatas lack nothing in invention, range of expression and feeling. As so often in Beethoven's early works the intensity of the slow movements stands out.

The settings heard on this disc meld together the talents of two outstanding creative artists, the composer Paul Honey and the poet Gregory Warren Wilson, producing a collection in which the inner life of the listener is both confronted and empowered. Warren Wilson's metaphysically-infused set of haiku, Earth's Imagined Corners, derives it's title from the seventh of John Donne's Divine Meditations, in an evocative setting for sixteen unaccompanied voices and solo cello. It was conceived as a sequence of four individual movements (Willows, Leatherback, Fireflies, Pomegranates), three of which invoke the fundamental elemental forces at work on our planet - water, earth, and fire. The final constant explored here is time, that boundless exponential continuum within which the human experience itself unfolds.

The album's musical material based on the use of chorale and hymn themes as a significant and fundamental element of world musical culture over the past few centuries, especially within the European musical tradition. The solo piano compositions are improvisational; with only the themes are approximate form prepared. In contrast, the pieces for the cello and piano strictly notated and require the most precise adherence to the written text.

This unique programme of four works for cello and piano by significant twentieth-century composers is a reflection of the greater interest in writing for the cello that the inspiration of two highly gifted instrumentalists was to have during that period. Thereby raising the importance of the instrument to a higher level in public appreciation than was previously the case, and bringing to attention music that would otherwise have remained largely unknown.

Not that every item here can be said to be fully familiar, even to the regular concert-goer, but taken as a whole this programme affords a conspectus of Liszt in various guises: the master of original large-scale form alongside smaller, transcribed gems; the arch-Romantic who understood the music of his great predecessors better than any of his contemporaries, one whose own original music - for all it's powerful empfindsamkeit - was initially firmly rooted in the precepts of the classical masters.

On 16 December 1932, Triton, a Parisian society devoted to the performance of new chamber music, was officially launched. Triton's members included Honegger, Milhaud, Poulenc and Prokofiev, whose Sonata for Two Violins, Op. 56 was given it's Western premiere at the society's inaugural concert.

The debut album by two of the most critically acclaimed young Russian musicians working today. 'This is one of those delightful surprises that one can instantly love. It also underscores yet again the fact that fame is no prerequisite for (or guarantee of) top-notch performances. Andrianov and Urasin are as one in these sonatas, playing with immense skill, delicacy of touch and, especially in the Rachmaninov, plenty of heart.' EDITOR'S CHOICE, Gramophone Magazine

FUCHS Piano Trios: No. 1; No. 2 • Gould Pn Trio • QUARTZ 2028 (58:06)


So popular in his lifetime were his serenades that Robert Fuchs (1847–1927) was affectionately nicknamed “Serenaden-Fuchs” (Serenading Fox). Listening to these two piano trios, it’s easy to understand why. This is some of the prettiest music you will ever hear, and I don’t use the term pejoratively. When composers lined up to receive the gift of melody, Fuchs must have been very near the head of the queue, for his endowment was one of the most generous to be bestowed.


Given his dates and cultural milieu—he was born in Austria and spent most of his life in Vienna, first as a student and then as a professor at the conservatory there teaching such future luminaries as Mahler, Zemlinsky, Sibelius, Enescu, and Korngold—one might reasonably expect Fuchs to have been one of the many composers who emulated Brahms. In fact, Brahms was one of Fuchs’s great admirers, writing, “Fuchs is a splendid musician; everything is so fine and so skillful, so charmingly invented, that one is always pleased.”


But Fuchs was not a Brahms imitator, and the elder composer’s praise of him may have come as much from relief that Fuchs was not another Herzogenberg as it did from genuine appreciation of his music. In truth, much of what Fuchs composed—and that includes, in addition to his popular serenades, three symphonies, a couple of operas, three masses, and a considerable volume of chamber works—might be described as a storybook that begins, “Once upon a time, before Brahms and before Schumann, there was Mendelssohn.”


But from there the tale takes a very strange turn, for in the Scherzo movement from the B?-Major Trio, for example, Fuchs introduces the former Mendelssohn to the future Leroy Anderson in a passage beginning at 2:38 that, I swear, could have been the model for the American composer’s The Typewriter . At every turn, there’s a breezy, easygoing, almost jazzy feeling to Fuchs’s music that seems to blend elements of the salon with elements of the dance hall. In this regard, Fuchs is probably more closely allied in style and intent with composers like Johann Strauss Jr. and Franz Lehár as opposed to the “deep and serious thinkers” among the Austro-German composers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Fuchs’s influence on those deep and serious thinkers, however, is not to be dismissed, for some of those very salon and dance-hall elements, contorted and twisted, turn up in the music of Mahler, one critic of the time noting the “Fuchsisms” in Mahler’s Second Symphony.


The recording at hand is not new; in fact, a copy of it has been sitting on my shelf for a number of years. It was taped in 2004 (Trio No. 1) and 2005 (Trio No. 2) at Champs Hill in Sussex. I’m always a bit amused to see a CD advertised by ArkivMusic or some other mail-order website as an “advance order” with a future release date, when the disc actually appeared seven years ago and has been available, at least in England, since then. Perhaps it’s only now being distributed in the U.S. In any case, I find no other versions of Fuchs’s piano trios listed—he wrote three of them—though I can’t bring myself to believe that they’ve never been recorded before. It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that a Fanfare reader has them on LP.


These are enjoyable, engaging works that offer a counterweight to the heavier, meatier trios by Brahms and other composers active around the same time that Fuchs made his first two contributions to the medium (1878–1903); his last in the genre, the Piano Trio in F?-Minor, op. 115, didn’t come until 1925. For now, it seems that the Gould Piano Trio is your only choice for recorded performances of this repertoire. Happily, the choice is a good one and can be strongly recommended for solid ensemble playing that brings out the best qualities in Fuchs’s music.


FANFARE: Jerry Dubins

This newly commissioned score has been composed by Tim A Duncan and Edward Barnwell, both highly regarded contemporary composers, and recorded by the 72-piece Moscow State Cinematic Orchestra and 10 soloists from the Manchester Symphony Orchestra.

Heath, D.: Song for Daniel Pearl (A) / Moroccan Fantasy / Th

As with the first album which Tong recorded, the choice of repertoire has evolved not only from his exploration of the composer's sizeable body of piano works but also from a desire to select an attractive and varied combination of pieces representing all the main periods of Sibelius's creative life from the early 1890's through to th emid-1920's. At the same time, he wanted to continue the natural process of combining large-scale works with shorter pieces (or sets of pieces) in a way which migh tmirror a concert programme. Therefore he has chosen one of Sibelius's most important large-scale piano works, the Sonata in F major, Op. 12, as well as one of his best-loved orchestral transcriptions, Valse triste. He always admired the three strikingly original Sonatinas, Op. 67 and likewise the evocative Characteristic Impressions, Op. 103. The captivating Bagatelles, Op. 97 and by comparison, teh more serene Lyric Pieces, Op. 74 complete the selection for this album, confirming that Sibelius was also a masterful miniaturist.

Bach’s Goldberg Variations consists of an aria and 30 dazzling variations. The opening aria is a highly ornamented Sarabande. Melodic contour is wonderfully crafted as Bach explores a descending five-note pattern in a typically French style. However, from the first variation it becomes clear that melody is not the theme. Instead Bach produces variations on the bass line and its chord progression. In other words, it is a harmonic universe that Bach explores. The thirty variations are generally divided into three groups: dance, canon and arabesque. Every third variation in the set is a canon that increases by its intervallic answer, beginning at the unison until Variation 27 which is a canon at the ninth. Such a feat is in itself a contrapuntal exercise in genius; more so as these variations are not heavy with cerebral skill, but instead, dance with sparkling lightness. Toru Takemitsu composed his Rain Tree Sketch II in 1992, in memory of Olivier Messiaen, the French composer who was a strong influence on Takemitsu. The title of the work was probably inspired by a quotation from a novel by Kenzaburo Oe, Atama no ii, Ame no Ki: “it was named the ‘rain tree’, for its abundant foliage continued to let fall rain drops from the previous night’s shower until the following midday. Its hundreds of thousands of tiny, finger-like leaves store up moisture, whereas other trees dry out at once.” The work is a dreamy meditation on the flow of life, and was Takemitsu’s last piano piece.

sCORDAtura is an Italian concept that implies the tuning of strings in different combinations through which the instrument receives a special sound, rich in colours and resonant in certain tones. CORDA, means "string" and comes from the Latin word CHORDA, which according to Aegidius of Zamora, a theorist from the 13th century, comes from CORS, meaning "heart". The action of the string on the instrument symbolizes the beating or the pulse of the CORS, being the motor that gives it life. Originally from Alicante, the viola da gambist and cellist, Fernando Marín has specialized in bowed instruments of the Renaissance and Baroque periods, historical interpretation and chamber music. He studied at the Conservatory of Oviedo, the International School of Music and Fine Arts in Prague, the Conservatory of Music in Cologne and at the Royal Conservatory of Brussels. Quartz released his first solo CD, eVIOLution, which traces the origins of the viola da gamba. He has also written articles on musical rhetoric and gut strings, which have been published by Nassarre, a journal for musicology, and an article on ornamentation and improvisation for the magazine Quodlibet. As a result of his research he has invented his own historical gut strings, which he has patented.

That there is indeed something of the ethereal, of the timeless, and of the indefinable pervading all of the music heard on this CD instantly calls into question our shared notions of what the term Elegy actually signifies. Here the listener will encounter none of the unutterable despair of, for example, Samuel Barber's great Adagio for Strings, or the tortured valediction of Richard Strauss' Metamorphosen, but rather an introspection and wistfulness of an altogether gentler sort. As the poet Thomas Gray expressed it in his Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard (1751), "Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid some heart once pregnant with celestial fire; Hands that the rod of empire might have swayed, or waked to ecstasy the living lyre