VILLA-LOBOS Complete Solo Piano Works, Vol. 1: Caixinha de Música Quebrada. Cirandinhas. Cirandas • Marcelo Bratke (pn) • QUARTZ 2074 (77:28)


Though he had none of his own, Heitor Villa-Lobos was fascinated by children. Indeed, he appeared to venerate them. I suspect it was because, all his life, he remained one at heart. Pianist, composer, and conductor Alfred Heller (who served as Villa-Lobos’s amanuensis during his last years in New York City, and later became the president of the Villa-Lobos Music Society) once confided to me that Villa-Lobos simply never grew up. According to Heller, Villa-Lobos, who reigned supreme in his personal musical universe, had a devil of a time dealing with the normal demands and contingencies of adult life.


Villa-Lobos’s collections of Cirandas (children’s rounds) and Cirandinhas (little children’s rounds) are based on Brazilian folk tunes. Though never directly quoted, in these two collections they are transformed into miniatures of surpassing sophistication, both harmonically and rhythmically. In them the point of view is always that of a child—with all his or her hopes, fears, expectations, and delights writ large—communicated by sometimes the simplest, and others the most pianistically virtuosic, of means. The emotional range of this music is huge, and demands a great deal of probing insight (and hindsight) on the part of the pianist. In the right hands, these pieces become truly magical and self-revealing.


In the interest of full disclosure, it has been about 20 years since I last listened to and wrote about this music. Being by choice a general practitioner rather than a specialist, I have been preoccupied with other, far removed musical realms for some time. As such, I approached this assignment with trepidation. Digging back into my library (an exercise in excavation), I unearthed one of Alfred Heller’s Villa-Lobos discs (Et’Cetera KTC 1159, recorded in 1993), which I favorably reviewed in the days that are currently before the cutoff point of Fanfare’s website. I also found Roberto Szidon’s later recording of 16 Cirandas and 12 Cirandinhas (on Le Chant du Monde LDC 2781048, likewise favorably reviewed apparently before that same cutoff point). Revisiting that Heller disc, I was taken by his simple, self-effacing grace. Szidon, by comparison, plays up the more virtuosic elements of the collections, taking larger liberties in tempo and rubato than Heller. Both work for me. Whether I would choose to listen to one or the other would be dictated by my mood of the moment.


This release opens with the telling choice of Caixinha de Música Quebrada (Broken Music Box), a stage-setter that tells the listener that he or she is going to go back into personal reflections of childhood, and that those might, or might not, be distorted or “broken” by our defectively adult memories. That said, Brazilian pianist Marcelo Bratke beguiles the ear with his sensitively understated traversal of these childlike pieces. Unlike Szidon, he projects the music, not himself, and thus is closer to Heller in his approach. Bratke revels in their seeming simplicity, inviting, indeed cajoling, the listener to live fully in the moment, and thus nullifies the inexorable progress of both time and mortality. Here one encounters the purist distillate to date of the music.


The sound of this CD is as lucid as Bratke’s pianism.


FANFARE: William Zagorski

This disc of works by Brahms was recorded during the height of COVID restrictions whereby social distancing in studios was a requirement for British orchestras, representing huge challenges for both performers and recording engineers alike. The recording is a tribute to the indefatigable efforts of our conductor, musicians, producer Michael Ponder and sound engineer Adaq Khan and the supportive staff at Henry Wood Hall, all who managed to keep the candle burning for music and musicians when almost all artistic activity fell silent.

This collection of three Sonatas for cello and piano comprises works that appeared between 1865-6 and 1886 by composers who were colleagues. If their personal association varied between genuine friendship and mere acquaintance, each became a significant figure in the era approaching the zenith of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Praised as “one of the most important young pianists of today” by International Piano, Sabine Weyer showed an exceptional musical talent since her earliest childhood. Following her initial training at the Conservatoire of Esch-Alzette in Luxembourg, she studied at pianistic schools in France, Belgium, United Kingdom under the guidance of, amongst others, Bernard Lerouge (CRR Metz, France), Vassil Guenov (Belgium), Aleksandar Madzar (Koninklijk Conservatorium Brussel, Belgium), Rustem Hayroudinoff (Royal Academy of Music, London, UK). Since 2015 Sabine Weyer has been professor for piano at the Conservatoire de la Ville de Luxembourg, fulfilling her desire to pass on musical knowledge to younger generations. As a pedagogue, she has been invited to teach at masterclasses abroad including at the Scriabine Summer Academy in Italy, the Beijing Normal University in China and the European Summer Music Academy in Djakova/Kosovo.

Dimitri Maslennikov began his musical studies at the age of five. At 11 years old, he won the International Soloists Competition in Moscow and the Czech International Competition in Prague. He was a winner of the Tchaikovsky Competition and the Rostropovitch Competition. At the age of 14, he received a three-year scholarship from the French government to study at the Paris Conservatory where he attained First Prize. He has been championed by maestro Christoph Eschenbach and has performed with the NDR Hamburg Orchestra, the Bamberger Symphoniker, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Philadelphia Orchestra, with whom he has made a ‘live’ recording.

The years 1898-1900 for Elgar saw the composition of The Dream of Gerontius which represented a new style of oratorio in which a continuous musical flow replaced the customary division into separate arias and choruses. He embarked seriously on The Apostles in 1902 and the first performance took place in October of the following year at the Birmingham Festival conducted by Hans Richter. Elgar himself conducted performances in 1914 and again in 1922 in Canterbury Cathedral where this performance was given. As with Handel's Messiah Elgar's work was to have been in three parts, though it soon became apparent that it was going to be far too long for one oratorio, and the third part became the starting point for The Kingdom. This piece grew in its turn and the project became one for three oratorios; the first The Apostles, concerned with the apostles' relationship with the earthly Jesus, the second, The Kingdom, with the period after the crucifixion and the coming of the Holy Ghost, and the third, which never came to be written, on Judgment and the Life Everlasting. Another influence is to be found in Wagner who built up his scores from a pattern of leit-motifs. In his analysis of The Apostles, Jaeger identified and named about sixty such themes, though he came under criticism from Ernest Newman (a leading Wagner authority) for being too obsessional in this respect, and even Elgar himself felt that Jaeger had taken this aspect of the work further than was really justified, since the themes, while being a strong structural element in the music, lacked the immediately identifiable symbolism of Wagner's motifs. The two composers' compositional methods were very different: Wagner completed his libretto first, allocating fragments of melody to particular ideas and incorporating them into the score at significant moments, for Elgar the musical development was pre-eminent he was by nature a symphonic, rather than an operatic composer.

Includes song(s) by George Gershwin. Soloist: Elizabeth Hayes.

Chopin: Études

“Melody and harmony are paramount for me. I’ve always stuck to that as my core belief in music. It’s overwhelmingly important to move the listener. Audiences like to feel their emotions being expressed through music in a way they can relate to.” - Grant Foster, Gramophone, March 2008.

“This is amazing! Where has Grant Foster been all these years? The Celebration Overture simply blew me away! I really haven’t heard anything as striking as this for a long while." - Andrew Lamb, Gramophone, March 2008.

Music for the keyboard has dominated much of Western music history, with works for the harpsichord and its relatives forming a hugely significant portion of Baroque repertoire. Yet alongside the development of keyboard music, the guitar enjoyed a rich and varied evolution of its own. The Baroque guitar was particularly prominent in Spain, France and Italy, while romantic depictions of guitarists appeared in paintings by the likes of Dutch Baroque painter Johannes Vermeer. This programme brings together music by two great Baroque composers, one French, one Italian, whose harpsichord music lends itself superbly to these transcriptions for the guitar. Whereas the strings of the piano are struck, harpsichord strings are plucked with a plectrum-like device, creating a technical and audible relationship with the guitar. Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683-1764) was influenced by Couperin, who pioneered the style luthé or ‘lute style’ of harpsichord playing, and Domenico Scarlatti (1685-1757) lived in Spain for much of his life; he was greatly influenced by the Spanish guitar, and his use of repeated notes in his sonatas was intended to emulate the instrument.

EVIOLUTION : Music for Vihuela de Arco, Lyra-Viol, and Viola da Gamba • Fernando Marín • QUARTZ QTZ 2075 (52:31).


ORTIZ Tratado de Glossas. CABEZÓN Faberdon. FERRABOSCO Fantasia a 3; Lessons for the Lyra-Viol. SAINT-COLOMBE Pièces de Viole. DE MACHY Pièces de Viole. TELEMANN Der Getreue Musikmeister: Excerpts. ABEL Pièces de Viole


The section of Matthias Grünewald’s stunning Isenheim Altarpiece known as the Concert of the Angels features a group of cheerful angels playing three mysterious instruments. The instrument that appears in the forefront is most likely a viola da gamba, but I have always wondered what the other two were. I think I now know the answer: they are a vihuela de arco, a guitar-like instrument that also can be played with a bow, and a lyra-viol, an instrument that appears to be a cross between a viola da gamba and a lira de arco. If you wonder what these instruments must have sounded like—albeit when placed in the hands of men—this concept recording, which features Spanish musician Fernando Marín and is cleverly titled eVIOLution , is your chance to find out.


Marín has made a career out of researching the origins, methods of playing, and repertoire of various rediscovered instruments. On this recording, he plays modern reproductions of a vihuela de arco (tuned at 440 Hz), a lyra-viol (tuned at 415 Hz), and a viola da gamba (tuned at 390 Hz and 415 Hz). Keeping with tradition, Marín’s instruments also feature sheep-gut strings, Venice catline gut-roped bass strings, and black horsehair for the bows. The repertoire chosen by Marín to showcase these arcane instruments is, for the most part, equally obscure, but it too seems to attempt to illustrate an evolution of sorts, from the early essays of Spanish Renaissance composers Diego Ortíz and Antonio de Cabezón to the Baroque works of Georg Philipp Telemann and Carl Friedrich Abel. While I frankly do not know what a vihuela de arco and a lyra-viol are supposed to sound like, I have no doubt that Marín presents these buzzy instruments in the best light. As for the music itself, this recording is certain to invite debate: Can one really explain Bach (a contemporary of Telemann) and Mozart (a contemporary of Abel) using the theory of musical, rather than instrumental, evolution ? Perhaps the naysayers are on to something.


The quality of the recorded sound is very good. There is a lot of reverb, but that is suitable to this music. A worthwhile release.


FANFARE: Radu A. Lelutiu

Following her debut album last year on Quartz, Ksenia Bashmet's beautiful new album features some of the best-loved works for piano by acclaimed British composer Michael Nyman. It includes pieces from several of his most famous films including Wonderland, The Piano, The Diary of Anne Frank and The End of the Affair. Classic FM 'CD of The Week'

The Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind "The movements of this work sound to me as if written in three of the different languages spoken by the Jewish people throughout our history. This somehow reflects the composition's epic nature. I hear the Prelude and the first movement, the most ancient, in Aramaic; the second movement is in Yiddish, the rich and fragile language of a long exile: the third movement and Postlude are in sacred Hebrew". (Osvaldo GOLIJOV) Soundshapes II It is in four short movements. Beginning with open strings, harmonics and gradual shifts between notes with vibrato and those without, the listener is led through a variety of soundshapes. Musical gestures emerge from a spacious and fluid background. The clarinet is both contrasted with and blended with the string sounds in a search for echoes and resonances between the two instrumental timbres. Quintet The Quintet is written in the form of a theme and variations, where the theme of the work is the character of the Jewish people. Some sections of the piece are in themselves a micro-variation on this theme, whilst others in transmuting the source material more dramatically reach towards a universality that alleviates the music from the role of mere stone setting and aspire to effect an alchemical reaction. Correspondingly, the piece moves rapidly between movements; sometimes barely giving an idea a chance to develop, whilst at other times allowing it to grow towards a natural conclusion.

This is the sparkling debut CD from the accalaimed winner of the 2004 Uralsk International Violin Competition. This colourful and varied recital includes sensational virtuoso masterpieces by Wieniawski and Ysaye as well as the delicately beautiful To The Air of Time by contemporary Japanese composer Isao Matsushita. The recital opens with Dvorak's tender and intimate, folk-influenced Sonatina. Atsuko Sahara appears here with the celebrated pianist, John Lenehan.

Released to mark the First Anniversary of the wedding of TRH The Prince of Wales and The Duchess of Cornwall, this CD is a record of an extraordinary musical occasion featuring a glittering array of international star, including the Russian mezzo-soprano Ekaterina Semenchuk whose appearance was a 'gift' to the Royal couple from the Mariinsky Theatre in St Petersburg.

Nocturnes