Beethoven wrote sympathetically for the cello throughout his career, from the ardent, lyrical voice of the Op.1 piano trios onwards, and he rarely subjugated the instrument to its basso continuo role still prevalent in the works of Mozart and Haydn. He never contemplated a cello concerto, but his five sonatas, plus sets of crowd-pleasing variations on popular themes by Handel and Mozart, have attracted the great cellists of every era. However, the record catalogue boasts comparatively few period-instrument accounts, made according to the performing principles and bowing of Beethoven’s day, and so this new Brilliant Classics set promises a new and refreshing perspective on some perennially audacious masterpieces. The Op.5 Sonatas are intended to astound as well as to innovate. For the first time in the history of the cello repertoire, both instruments were invested with equal importance. The piano writing is scarcely less bold and quick-thinking, requiring both musicians to turn on a sixpence from soloist to accompanist and back again, emulating the more equal dialogue of a string quartet. Formal novelty is also in evidence, in the expanded slow introductions and then in the four-movement structures of Op.69 and Op.102 No.1. In every way the last sonatas belong to Beethoven’s late period: posing questions to listeners as well as performers with every bar, transcending the limits of the instruments to sing and shout, contemplate and argue. The partnership of Mario Testori and Costantino Mastroprimiano is an experienced one, with a well-received Brilliant Classics album (95023) of late-Classical sonatas by Hummel, Moscheles and Ries to its credit. The pianist also contributes an enlightening booklet essay to this valuable contribution to the Beethoven anniversary year.

At the time of his death in 1870, Saverio Mercadante was known as a director and administrator first and foremost, who had steered opera houses and then conservatoires through choppy waters at an especially eventful time in Italian political history, rising to become the dominant figure in the musical culture of mid-19th century Naples. Secondly, he was acknowledged as an opera composer of distinction and fluency, if not ranked on the level of lyric geniuses such as Rossini and Bellini. A stroke in 1862 left Mercadante blind, and he began to concentrate his remaining energies on the field of instrumental music which had launched his career in the 1810s. Almost immediately after his death, however, Mercadante’s name became obscured, and only in the last couple of decades have his operas and other works been revived outside his native Italy. Most of the works on this album were composed at either end of his long career, but they are unified by the vocal style of writing for his chosen solo instrument. Perhaps because he valued it as a soprano without words, so to speak, Mercadante wrote much for the flute – concertos, trios, quartets and more – and it takes on the character of a bel canto heroine in his hands, exploiting the resources of the most accomplished performers with coloratura agility and elegant phrasing. Gian-Luca Petrucci’s choice of repertoire opens with a work specifically indebted to the lyric stage, a set of variations composed in 1759 and based on ‘La ci darem la mano’ from Mozart’s Don Giovanni. He continues with two more attractive variation sets and then a striking scena for piano, cello and voice, Il sogno, to a text by Guacci, with the obbligato cello part transcribed here for flute.

Taken from the 2012 Japan tour that performed the complete Beethoven cycle in various cities across Japan garnering much acclaim for the Chor and Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks and now available in single editions, this live recording of Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 from Tokyo's Suntory Hall also includes noted vocal soloists, Christiane Karg, Mihoko Fujimura, Michael Schade and Michael Volle, all frequent collaborators with the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks.

This Blu-ray Disc is only playable on Blu-ray Disc players and not compatible with standard DVD players.

Also available on standard DVD

Pietro il Grande, kzar delle Russie – composed when Donizetti was 22 years old – was the first of the composer’s operas to receive more than one production. To celebrate the 200th anniversary of the work’s première in 2019, the Fondazione Teatro Donizetti di Bergamo staged this rare melodramma burlesco in a new critical edition. The influence of Rossini and Mozart is clear, but the young Donizetti still managed to create a fresh and lively work that displayed early evidence of his mature style. This Donizetti Festival performance received widespread international acclaim, with a cast of excellent singers and a unique staging by Ondadurto Teatro (Marco Paciotti and Lorenzo Pasquali), influenced by Russian avant-garde art of the early 20th century.

Louis Lortie’s second volume of Fauré features Nocturnes, Barcarolles, and the Theme and Variations in C sharp minor, along with transcriptions of the ‘Pie Jesu’ and ‘In paradisum’ from the Requiem.

For over three decades, French-Canadian pianist Louis Lortie has performed world-wide, building a reputation as one of the world’s most versatile pianists. He extends his interpretative voice across a broad spectrum of repertoire, and his performances and award-winning recordings attest to his remarkable musical range. In demand on five continents, Lortie has established long-term partnerships with orchestras such as the BBC Symphony Orchestra, BBC Philharmonic, Orchestre National de France and Dresden Philharmonic in Europe, and the Philadelphia Orchestra, Dallas Symphony, San Diego Symphony and St Louis Symphony in the US. In his native Canada he regularly performs with the major orchestras in Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, Ottawa and Calgary. Further afield, collaborations include the Shanghai Symphony, the Hong Kong Philharmonic and the National Symphony Orchestra of Taiwan, and the Adelaide and Sydney Symphony Orchestras. Regular partnerships with conductors include, among others, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Edward Gardner, Sir Andrew Davis, Jaap Van Zweden, Simone Young, Antoni Wit and Thierry Fischer.

REVIEWS:

Louis Lortie plays every work on the album with detailed tonal color and a fine sense of appropriate rubato. The use of rubato is one of the most difficult aspects of Fauréan performance; Claire Croiza, a singer who performed with composer in concert, once said that Fauré had a metronome in place of his heart. Interpreters who lavish Chopinesque rubato on Faure’s phrases can make the music seem cheap and sentimental, a trap into which Lortie never falls. I should note that Lortie’s Fauré is not the weak, sickly Fauré of the drawing room; these are very much concert performances, with significant core to the sound and a wide range of dynamics. Although the entire album features beautiful playing, I will single out two pieces: the Ballade and the Thème and Variations.

The performance of the Ballade is particularly striking. Although a successful rendition can make it come off as a gorgeous yet fairly relaxed piece, the Ballade is in fact satanically difficult. The work’s prickly technical nature stems in part from its key signature (F# Major – six sharps!), but also from Fauré’s multi-layered texture that demands careful voicing of a melodic line that is often combined with myriad scales and arpeggios in the accompaniment. Liszt himself threw up his hands after attempting to sightread it, and Fauré later transcribed it for piano and orchestra, lessening the difficulty of the piano part to some extent. In Lortie’s hands, the solo version is enchanting, a veritable fairyland full of half-tints and sparkle.

Also remarkable is Lortie’s reading of the Thème et variations. This piece is a Gallic version of the Schumann Études symphoniques; it is elegant and moving at times, but lacks the obvious virtuosity of the older piece. As a result, few pianists tackle the Fauré, given the apathy it provokes in most audiences. Lortie is fearless in the thornier variations, playing at a breathless pace with much shape and detailed articulation. In the introspective variations, he plays with sensitivity and warmth.

– MusicWeb International

Lortie more than meets the pianistic and musical challenge of Fauré’s unshowy virtuosity, his riding of each dappled ebb and flow of the Barcarolles reflecting a mature mastery. Nor is there just the rarefied Fauré on show, his insouciant charm and playfulness being to the fore and captured perfectly in the Theme and Variations. Lortie provides an object lesson in pacing of the Nocturnes.

– BBC Music Magazine

The second volume of Louis Lortie’s series of Fauré recitals offers the kind of solace that repays repeated hearings, with the prospect of enjoyment increasing with each one. It is Lortie’s sincerity and naturalness, infused with the utmost sensitivity and a wide colouristic palette, that makes him a star shining only a fraction less brightly than the uneclipsed Thyssens-Valentin.

– Gramophone

Classical Music

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 (Végh 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.

Considered by some to be the ‘Cinderella’ of his symphonies, the Sixth Symphony of Anton Bruckner was composed in 1879 – 81. It may well demonstrate a reaction to the severe criticism of the first Viennese performance, in 1877, of his Third Symphony, which Eduard Hanslick described as a vision of how Beethoven’s Ninth befriends Wagner’s Walküre and ends up being trampled under her horses’ hoofs’. Much the shortest of his mature symphonies, the Sixth also reverts to a more classical form than its predecessors. This recording was made in 2012, during the first season of Juanjo Mena as Chief Conductor of the BBC Philharmonic, and just a month before their acclaimed performance of the work at the BBC Proms. Classical Source commented: ‘Mena didn’t miss a trick and the result for the whole symphony was a revelation, and you don’t get many of those. This was a thrilling, delightful performance.’

Chopin: Etudes

Rossini had a truly explosive effect when, at the age of eighteen, his comic one-act farce La cambiale di matrimonio was staged at the San Moisé theatre in Venice, on the evening of November 3rd, 1810. From that moment, Rossini’s career would be a series of masterpieces, with triumphs and flops. It was in the comic genre that he achieved his greatest successes, with works such as L’Italiana in Algeri (1813), Il Turco in Italia (1814), Il barbiere di Siviglia (1816), and Cenerentola in 1817, which was Rossini’s last great comic work in the traditional sense. Between 1817 and 1819, year of that Guillaume Tell that prematurely cut short his operatic career, Rossini composed fifteen serious operas and only three comic ones; but he had already given his best in his incomparable youth, with the four incredible masterpieces that are in this box set. In this release DYNAMIC assembles some of the most famous opera buffa by Rossini, played by great performers, conductors and directors, including some rarely performed works such La Gazzetta, L’Equivoco stravagante, La Cambiale di matrimonio.

Schubert: Piano Quintet In A Major, "Trout" / Notturno

In recording these, the earliest revelations of Schubert’s boundless lyricism in his early romantic compositional voice as applied to instrumental chamber music, we sought to pay homage to the original intent as well as the authentic sounds.

The Sonatinas, (a posthumous title), were written for music of the chamber, a time of gathering, sharing, and delighting in the discoveries, creations, and talents of others. The Sonatinas are a revealing view into the birth of Schubert’s romantic voice. Whether the sturm und drang of the G Minor and its Haydn-esque representation of drama, the early Beethovenian poise, manner, and delight in the D Major, or the unabashed dramatic and unapologetic severity in the A Minor, (Lord Byron’s Manfred was written the same year!), these works show us young Schubert’s boundless expressive spirit.

The piano is an Érard concert grand, built in Paris circa 1835. It is in immaculate condition, superbly conditioned by Frits Janmaat at Maison Érard in Amsterdam. Parallel-strung, and with dampers beneath the strings, the registers have clear distinction; the action is agile; the rich tonal depth is special. The violin is a rare find, built by Franz Kinberg after the Second World War and set up for late Classical and early Romantic historical instrument performance. The gut-strung violin is paired with an extraordinary bow made by John Dodd, London, circa 1800. This pre-modern, transitional bow is a perfect example of the bows still in favor in Vienna at the time the Sonatinas were composed.

REVIEW:

 These are wonderful works whose considerable depths certainly belie the “sonatina” designation and whose structure and emotional heft Gajić and Carrettin explore with remarkable sensitivity and thoroughness—and with instrumental sound that is, in and of itself, a real joy to hear.

– Infodad.com

Following an exceptional critical reception for their first volume of Mendelssohn Quartets, the Doric String quartet now complete the project with volume two. As with the previous volume, they juxtapose one of the early quartets (no.2) with two of the later compositions (nos. 3 and 4), composed a decade or so later. Composed in 1827, the Second Quartet pays homage to Beethoven’s outstanding contribution to the genre (he died in March of that year), but this is no simple pastiche. Mendelssohn’s individual voice is already clearly present in this confident work. The later quartets are perhaps less overtly revolutionary – Mendelssohn was now an established figure and now a recipient of Royal commissions - but nevertheless remain clear milestones in the development of the genre.

Classical Music

Recognized as one of the world’s leading viola players, Philip Dukes has enjoyed a career spanning over thirty years as an accomplished concerto soloist, recitalist, and chamber musician. He joins forces with Peter Donohoe, acclaimed as one of the foremost pianists of our time, for this extraordinary recording of works by Brahms and Schumann. As he writes in his booklet note, Phillip wanted to find a new approach to these works: ‘I wanted it to sound fresh and alive, almost as when I was looking at the scores for the first time all those years ago, but with the secret benefit of all that subsequent experience under my belt. So, I did just that. I purchased a new, excellent, well researched edition, I listened to all manner of different recordings (of the versions both for clarinet and for viola), and I devoted three months to the project, the culmination of which is what you will hear.’

Also available on Blu-ray

Pietro il Grande, kzar delle Russie – composed when Donizetti was 22 years old – was the first of the composer’s operas to receive more than one production. To celebrate the 200th anniversary of the work’s première in 2019, the Fondazione Teatro Donizetti di Bergamo staged this rare melodramma burlesco in a new critical edition. The influence of Rossini and Mozart is clear, but the young Donizetti still managed to create a fresh and lively work that displayed early evidence of his mature style. This Donizetti Festival performance received widespread international acclaim, with a cast of excellent singers and a unique staging by Ondadurto Teatro (Marco Paciotti and Lorenzo Pasquali), influenced by Russian avant-garde art of the early 20th century.

Composed in 1879, the Piano Quintet in F minor by César Franck belongs to the fruitful final period of his creative life. It heralded the start of an impressive sequence of late orchestral and chamber pieces which set the seal upon his career. The Piano Quintet was premiered in Paris on 17 January 1880 by the Marsick Quartet with Saint-Saëns at the piano. During the last quarter of the 19th century and into the 1920s, it was Gabriel Fauré who made the most substantial and lasting contribution to French chamber music. Fauré's Piano Quintet no.1 renews the powerful concentration of his earlier Piano Quartets in it's outer movements, while also looking forward to the composer's later works in the sophisticated phrasing and chromaticism of it's extended Adagio. Vibrant and spirited, it may be counted among the composer's finest creations.

Evoke is the Ferio Saxophone Quartet’s third album, following their previous critically acclaimed releases Flux and Revive. For this recording they are joined by pianist Timothy End for a program of original works and arrangements for piano and saxophone quartet. Shostakovich’s Jazz Suite opens the proceedings, followed by Iain Farrington’s extremely descriptive Animal Parade. This is followed by a virtuosic arrangement of Bizet’s Carmen Suite, before the program closes with the quintet Memorias by Spanish composer Pedro Iturralde Ochoa. All of the arrangements are by Iain Farrington, and are all premier recordings.

Schubert moved to Vienna in early 1817, which was the center of musical activities in Europe at that time. Schubert focused strongly upon composing piano sonatas, and the result was these four superb works. Korean-born pianist Sookkyung Cho brings these sonatas truly to life. Noted for her sensitive and imaginative (New York Concert Review) playing, Sookkyung Cho has been captivating worldwide audiences with her personal, thoughtful expressionist style. She has appeared in venues such as Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center, Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, Chicago Cultural Center, Sarasota Opera House, Baltimore Museum of Art, Montreal Conservatory, Beaux concerts de la releve in Quebec, Château de Fontainebleau in France, and Zijingang Theater at Zhejiang University in China, among others, and was recently heard on Chicagos WFMT.

This interpretation of Die Winterreise is certainly unusual. Here, there is no singer; instead, the text is recited. The music still allows Schubert’s themes and motifs to ring out, but it treats them with complete freedom. The instrumental timbres are also different: tenor saxophone, soprano saxophone and bass clarinet exchange with lute and theorbo. Axel Wolf and Hugo Siegmeth join narrator Stefan Hunstein on an introspective journey that is finely connected, both musically and interpretively. Die Winterreise is about human existence, about a redefinition of one’s position after a setback, when someone who has been rejected reflects on his life, surrounded by cold and darkness. This recording reflects an interplay between faithfulness to the original and freedom of expression, creating a personal world of winter travel that resembles a musical-text radio play.

BERLIOZ: Requiem, Op. 5

The Beethoven Orchestra of Bonn concludes its complete recording of the symphonies of the composer whose name it bears with an absolutely rousing performance. The spirited Seventh Symphony brings together everything that General Music Director Stefan Blunier has demanded of his musicians from the very beginning of this cycle: emotional depth, gripping rhythms, frenetic energy, and powerful tension holding the audience in suspense even after the last chord has faded away. Prior to this work, however, the Bonn musicians show the Fourth Symphony in an entirely new light: no longer a bashful “wallflower,” it shines in its own special way between its two more famous neighbors.

In a word I feel myself the most unhappy and wretched creature in the world. Imagine a man whose health will never be right again, and who in sheer despair over this ever makes things worse and worse instead of better... but I have tried my hand at several instrumental things... in fact, I intend to pave the way towards a grand symphony in this manner. These extracts from a letter of 1824 epitomize the paradox of Schubert, the manic-depressive composer. On the one hand his music has that world-weary element of profound grief - 'the most wretched creature in the world' - and on the other a life-affirming exuberance bordering on the manic that characterizes the Wanderer-Fantasie and parts of the D major sonata D.850. In this final volume Llyr Williams plays a selection of Franz Liszt's evocative Schubert song transcriptions, including works from Die schöne Müllerin, Wintereise and Schwanengesang.

The Lithuanian pianist Ieva Dudaite combines in her recording two composers who have each cultivated an unmistakable personal style that has made them protagonists of their respective times and musical spheres. By confronting Chopin's works with the suggestive minimalist pieces of Yann Tiersen, she makes the connections between the two composers tangible. Ieva Dudaite is one of the most promising Lithuanian pianists of her generation, with a lengthy record of concerts across the globe, including some of the world's most prestigious venues, such as the Concertgebouw Amsterdam, Muziekgebouw Eindhoven, TivoliVredenburg Utrecht, DeSingel Antwerp, and performances in Italy, Germany, Ukraine, Mexico, the UK, and Spain. She played at some of the most renowned music festivals, including Grenoble Music Festival 2008, Trieste Music Festival 2010, Aurora Chamber Music Festival Sweden 2015, and Oxford Piano Festival 2016. Dudaite's concerts have been broadcast by Lithuanian, Russian, and Dutch Radio and Television.

With his extraordinary pianistic talents, Fazil Say has been touching audiences and critics alike for more than twenty-five years, in a way that has become rare in the increasingly materialistic and elaborately organized classical music world. Concerts with this artist are something different. They are more direct, more open, more exciting; in short, they go straight to the heart. On the album now being released by Solo Musica together with the casalQuartett “Ballads & Quintets” there are two works by Fazil Say in addition to the Piano Quintet in E flat major op. 44 by Schumann. The casalQuartett, which has won numerous awards, has developed itself a unique sound and style that sheds new light on the heyday of the string quartet. The 3 Ballads op. 12 for Piano Quintet were originally solo piano ballads, which were rearranged especially for this publication for piano quintet. The piano quintet "The Moving Mansion" breathes new life into stories of the past. The background is a spectacular tale about the founder of the Turkish Republic, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk.

Oleg Kagan and Natalia Gutman's performances of the Brahms Double Concerto were widely acclaimed. They were featured on a 1986 international tour of the USSR State Symphony Orchestra conducted by the famous conductor Yevgeni Svetlanov. On October 12, 1986 they performed it in Roy Thompson Hall, Toronto, Canada. This exciting concert is now presented on this live album. Natalia Gutmam is noted for her superb, authoritative performances of the Shostakovich cello concerto No. 1. She recorded it three times during her career. Presented here is a sparkling live version given in 1980 in Holland.

FORELLEN QUINTET

HORN TRIOS by Brahms, Kahn, Koechlin and Dubois is an exciting album that brings together three renowned musicians in a splendid trio collaboration. Hornist Howard Wall has been for many years at the forefront of highly-respected horn players, not only as a long-time member of two of the world's preeminent symphony orchestras, but also as an avid chamber music instrumentalist and recording artist, praised for his "legendary low register" and "impeccable intonation and stellar virtuosity" by The Horn Call Magazine, which also noted that "every note is a gem" in recently released recordings of Howard Wall. Violinist Elmira Darvarova has been hailed as "marvelous, in the Heifetz tradition" (American Record Guide) and acclaimed for her "intoxicating tonal beauty and beguilingly sensuous phrasing" and "silky-smooth voluptuous tone" (The Strad, London). Pianist Shoko Inoue was lauded by the Cleveland Plain Dealer as "a pianist who immerses heart, soul and everything into her generous artistry, with supremely sensitive and evocative playing." This album brings thrilling and exhilarating interpretations of four gorgeous works for horn, violin and piano, one of which has been, for over 150 years, among the greatest ever masterpieces in the history of Western music, while two of the other works on this album - the glorious 1912 Trio Cantabile by Théodore Dubois, and the boisterous 1922 Serenade Op. 73 by Robert Kahn are presented on this album as only the second-ever commercially-released recordings of these works. Charles Koechlin's eclectic suite Quatre Petite Pièces is a haunting and poignant quasi-impressionistic collection of four miniatures, that alternate, as in a kaleidoscope, contrasting atmospheric moods and degrees of sorrow and peaceful introspection. This marvelous album is an irresistible addition to the recorded repertoire, both for it's contents as well as for the verve and exultation of the interpretations of these outstanding artists.

The pianist SoRyang, born in Korea and educated in Seoul, in Essen/Germany (as a pupil of the renowned pianist Detlef Kraus) and in Vienna/Austria, emerged far beyond Austria with her idea to popularize Classical piano music on historical places of big European cities. SoRyang performed worldwide with renowned orchestras, among them the Folkwang Chamber Orchestra Essen, the Deutsche Streicherphilharmonie, the Qatar Philharmonic Orchestra and the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra. She has recorded numerous CDs. In 2019 she performed together with the Tonkünstler Orchester Niederösterreich under the baton of it's chief conductor Yutaka Sado (who earlier has been the assistant of Leonard Bernstein and Seiji Ozawa, and later has produced popular television programs for the understanding of Classical Music in Japan) in the impressing grand hall of the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg/Germany. SoRyang played Tchaikovsky's famous piano concerto No. 1 in B-flat minor and as an encore Chopin's barnstorming last etude, Op. 25 No. 12. After the intermission Mahler's fifth symphony was played. The concert has been recorded for the present release.

This new release is the debut album of soprano Maureen Batt, and features a rare recording of Schubert’s “Op. 52 Lady of the Lake” song cycle and a newly commissioned work on the same epic Walter Scott poem by Nova Scotian composer Fiona Ryan. Sir Walter Scott’s Lady of the Lake is set during an uprising of the Highland clans against the Lowland Scots who are loyal to King James V. The story focuses on Ellen Douglas, a young woman who lives in exile with her father, an outlaw who has fallen out of favor with the royal court and fled to an island in Loch Katrine with his daughter. Today, the work is not that widely known but in the nineteenth century it was a bestselling book throughout Europe. It was translated into several languages, including German which Schubert used for his song texts. Fiona Ryan writes about her contributions to this album: “I draw upon Scottish (and Nova Scotian) folk music traditions in my songs. Some movements are very obviously influenced by Scottish folksongs…and others draw inspiration from rhythmic patterns, ornamentation, and droning sounds found in Scottish bagpipe music. In a way, this project is about bringing people and ideas together… Although this is a story of a different and dangerous time, it gives an affirmative answer to the eternal question of whether people who are enemies can eventually reconcile.”