Acclaimed for their life-affirming virtuosity and irresistible charm, The King’s Singers are in global demand. Their work – synonymous with the best in vocal ensemble performance – appeals to a vast international audience. “The Library is the name of a series of EP releases that celebrates our ‘close-harmony’ library, both historically and as it grows each year. Close-harmony is the phrase we have always used to describe its lighter repertoire, and we see The Library as our chance to make sure this rich vein of great songwriting and arranging gets the place of prominence it deserves. The Library recording series will involve regular releases which will come out alongside other touring and recording projects, giving us an output for revisiting some of these old favorites and commissioning brand new ‘close-harmony’ from recent releases. Every volume in The Library series will capture a variety of songs, celebrating the wonderful diversity of music in our world today.”

Nigel Clarke has always been fascinated by virtuosity and timbre- it is the brass band genre that has lent itself most to his passion for musical athleticism. ‘Dial ‘H’ for Hitchcock’ is an imaginary film score in the film noir vein, complete with classic and chilling sound effects, while the heroic, brooding and violent ‘Swift Severn’s Flood’ was inspired by a line from Shakespeare. Cornet concerto ‘Mysteries of the Horizon’ examines the atmosphere of paintings by Rene Magritte, and ‘Earthrise’ celebrates one of the most iconic photographs in history and the drama of the Apollo 8 mission.

A 2020 Grammy nominee for best opera recording!

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Also available on standard DVD
Based on Oscar Wilde’s story The Birthday of the Infanta, Zemlinsky’s single-act opera Der Zwerg is the tragic tale of a dwarf who is presented at court, falls in love with the beautiful Donna Clara, but is ultimately forced to see himself as others see him and to die of a broken heart. Preceded by Schoenberg’s Accompaniment to a Cinematographic Scene, Op. 34 (1930), Zemlinsky’s Romantic score is full of psychological intrigue. Is Der Zwerg a critique of society’s superficiality? Is it the composer’s self-portrait in his doomed affair with Alma Schindler? Director Tobias Kratzer’s stunning, transparent production creates a space in which each character is thrown into sharp relief in this ‘fine, noble and melancholy work’. (Bachtrack.com)

‘Why has this intense, brilliantly orchestrated, claustrophobically gripping masterpiece been so neglected since its 1977 premiere?’ asked Richard Morrison in The Times of the concert performance in the Barbican that preceded this recording.

Miss Julie is Alwyn’s last large-scale work, written in 1973-76. Alwyn set his own libretto, based on Strindberg’s 1888 play of the same title. The naturalistic drama and lifelike characters of that play appealed to Alwyn from an early age – in fact, he previously attempted to compose an opera on Miss Julie in the 1950s. That attempt failed because of differences with his then-librettist, Christopher Hassall. Alwyn believed that in opera, the action should be self-explanatory, arias should serve a dramatic purpose (as opposed to sheer vocal display), characters should sing to each other and not to the audience, ensembles should be minimized and the text should be set to vocal lines that reflect natural speech patterns. These views were distilled over his extensive career as a film composer, which taught him that music could do more than establish characterization, suggest mood, and heighten atmosphere: in some cases it could also communicate the unspoken thoughts of an onscreen character even when these were at odds with what he or she was presenting visually.

Sakari Oramo and the BBC Symphony Orchestra support an outstanding cast featuring Anna Patalong in the title role in this acclaimed revival of Alwyn’s neglected masterpiece.

REVIEW:

Alwyn’s orchestral writing is always characterful, his vocal lines are unfailingly singable. Though his richly coloured writing reveals a whole range of 20th-century influences – Strauss, Janácek, and Ravel especially – it’s the world of Puccini that’s most strongly evoked at the work’s dramatic flashpoints. Anna Patalong as Julie nailed her character’s dangerously unhinged brittleness from the start. Benedict Nelson as Jean, the valet with whom she is so desperate to run away, sings the role with tremendous verve.

– The Guardian (UK)

The 2020 GRAMMY Award winner for Best Classical Solo Vocal Performance, honoring Sarah Brailey and Dashon Burton!

August 18th marks the 100th anniversary of the 19th Constitutional Amendment, granting women in the US the right to vote. A fitting time then for our release of the World Premier Recording of Ethel Smyth’s late masterpiece The Prison. Smyth left home at nineteen to study composition in Leipzig. In the company of Clara Schumann and her teacher Heinrich von Herzogenberg, she met and won the admiration of composers such as Tchaikovsky, Brahms, Dvorák, and Grieg. Smyth was the first woman to have an opera performed at the Met, in 1903. (The second was Kaija Saariaho, whose L'Amour de loin appeared there in 2016!) Smyth later became central to the Suffragette movement in England, writing the March of the Women. Her gender politics and sexuality were cause for attacks by critics, and she famously went to prison herself for throwing a stone through an MP’s window. Composed in 1930 and premiered in 1931 in Edinburgh’s Usher Hall, The Prison is a Symphony in two parts, ‘Close on Freedom’ and ‘The Deliverance’, set for soprano and bass-baritone soloists, chorus, and full orchestra. The text is taken from a philosophical work by Henry Bennet Brewster and concerns the writings of a prisoner in solitary confinement, his reflections on life and his preparations for death.

REVIEWS:

Ethyl Smyh's late work, The Prison (1929-30), is uncategorizable. The 64-minute “vocal symphony” for bass-baritone (The Prisoner) and soprano (his Soul), with chorus (philosophical commentary) is in two parts: Close To Freedom and The Deliverance. The heavy-ish text, by Smyth’s dear friend (and perhaps lover, though her relationships tended otherwise to be lesbian) Henry Bennet Brewster centers on the gloomy ruminations of a prisoner considering the end of his life, and his soul, which is guiding him toward peace. In Part 1, He, for instance speaks of his anxiety and inability to sleep, and wonders about immortality and if he will be emancipated; in Part 2, the Soul tells him the end of his struggle is near and he learns to “disband his ego”. The chorus has a further calming effect: immortality is everywhere, human passions remain. He finally finds peace. As you can see, a regular Offenbachian satire–not.

From the very opening moments – “I awoke in the middle of the night” – the mood is weighty with disquiet. The bass-baritone voice of Dashon Burton has both substance and gentleness, his attention to the text that of a Lieder singer. Violin and harp circle his words. Sarah Brailey’s Soul, from the start, sings with subtlety and a type of fleeting loveliness. She opens the second part with a solo on the words “the struggle is over”, intoning much of her words on one note while first a trio of winds, then a solo violin, then the full body of strings and chorus–all pianissimo–join her above and below. Chant? Hymn? Both, really. Smyth layers the orchestra; a brass choir during a passage about immortality makes a grand effect. Later, a painfully beautiful pastoral section precedes the Prisoner’s feeling of metaphysical freedom.

While much of it is gripping, its slow pacing and didacticism can dehumanize the story that the Prisoner and Soul are stuck in. The Prisoner’s “prison”, both metaphorical and real, is presented with such humanity and openness by Burton that his eventual spiritual freedom makes a glorious sound, despite–rather than due to–the orchestrally and chorally weighted underpinnings. Some Elgar shows up, and is not very welcome.

The performance, I suspect, could not be bettered. The New York City-based Experiential Orchestra and Chorus both perform with luscious tone and poise. James Blachly’s leadership brings the work’s lyricism to the forefront; it would be easy to over-emphasize passages but he works best within the dramatic arc of the narrative. Much of The Prison is gorgeous and unexpected – who does Smyth sound like? And while some moments seem inert, they are few and far between.

– ClassicsToday.com (10/10; Robert Levine)

Smyth’s haunting music, given here in conductor James Blachly’s new edition, is beautifully constructed and highly evocative (with quotes or allusions to earlier Smyth scores). Her orchestration is limpid and masterly, rendered lovingly here by Blachly with the Experiential Orchestra. The choral contribution is relatively minor, the focus rightly on the two soloists, but again superbly performed. The only miscalculation is Smyth’s use of ‘The Last Post’ in the concluding pages, adding a martial resonance that may jar to modern ears; to Smyth, a major-general’s daughter, it may just have been an echo of (her) youth which she wanted at this point. Magnificent sound from Chandos, too. Very strongly recommended.

– Gramophone

This is the second volume in the EP series ‘The Library’. The idea behind this series is to explore both the history, and the new horizons, of The King’s Singers close-harmony repertoire. Close-harmony is the part of their work for which they are best known, and their library of thousands of arrangements is one they’re determined to explore, maintain and develop. The track -listing is designed to celebrate some old favorites from the library alongside brand new arrangements and adaptations, created especially for these recordings, which may perhaps become ‘old favorites’ of the future. Volume 2 was recorded in the beautiful surroundings of Snape Maltings, Suffolk (UK) - a place most famous for its association with Benjamin Britten - and it proved to be a relaxing and inspiring place to work for two beautiful wintry days. The King’s Singers were founded on 1 May 1968 by six choral scholars who had recently graduated from King’s College Cambridge. Their vocal line-up was (by chance) two countertenors, a tenor, two baritones and a bass, and the group has never wavered from this formation since.

Percy Grainger was one of the great “originals” of 20th century music. Australian-born, he studied with his mother while a boy and later went to Germany where his career as a virtuoso pianist began. As a composer he was largely self-taught and strongly influenced by the folk music of Great Britain and Ireland, Many of his “miniatures”-such titles as Country Gardens, Handel in the Strand and Molly on the Shore-established his composing credentials very early on. But Grainger was also an inveterate innovator and experimenter in music, and the kaleidoscopic aspects of his compositional creativity-evident in highly imaginative works often with unprecedented rhythms, harmonies and scoring-are fully represented in the programme heard on this recording. The music was digitally recorded with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra in February 1989, at the acoustically excellent South Melbourne Town Hall.

Gluck Opera Gala is a 2-album compilation of highlights from seven previously released albums on the ORFEO label. It contains excerpts from Gluck's semi seria opera Alceste (album 1, tracks 1-7); his reformist operas Iphigénie en Tauride (album 1, tracks 8-14), Orfeo ed Euridice (album 2, tracks 1-9) and Paride ed Elena (album 2, tracks 10-16); and two works in a more light-hearted vein, Le Cinesi (album 1, tracks 15-16) and Les Pélegrins de la Mecque (album 2, tracks 17-23). All of the recordings are star-studded, featuring performances by legendary artists such as Jessye Norman, Nicolai Gedda, Thomas Moser, Ileana Cotrubas, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Franco Bonisolli and Julia Kaufmann.

The collaboration between composer Philippe Leroux and the husband-and-wife team of Claude and Odile Delangle began in the early 1990s and has grown ever closer over the years. In October 2019 the three met up again for a few intense days, in order to record Noûs, a programme of works for soprano saxophone and for solo piano. The album is bookended by two duos for the instruments – the opening SPP a reworking by the composer of an earlier score, and the closing Noûs that Leroux wrote for the Delangles only a few months before the recording. In both of these – albeit in different ways – the composer explores a couple of his favorite principles, namely those of continuity and transformation. Between them we hear works from the past decade, beginning with AMA for solo piano, from 2009. The other two piano works, Répéter… Opposer and Dense… Englouti are both tributes to Claude Debussy, a composer who occupies an important place in the musical universe of Philippe Leroux. At the centre of the disc, finally, is the highly virtuosic Conca Reatina for soprano saxophone. Loosely inspired by the contours of the mountains surrounding the Rieti Valley (Conca reatina), the piece is a dizzying sonic Möbius strip which keeps returning the listener to his point of departure.

The extant music for violin by Franz Schubert fits comfortably on two discs, and Ariadne Daskalakis released the first disc of her survey in 2019, to critical acclaim. The disc included works for violin and piano as well as three pieces with orchestral accompaniment, in performances described in The Strad as having ‘a litheness and shimmering delight that capture the music’s innate charm and dance-like vivacity with a beguiling sureness of touch.’ The second installment focuses on the chamber music with piano, and once again Daskalakis is joined by Paolo Giacometti, playing a fortepiano by Salvatore Lagrassa. The instrument, of the Viennese school, was built around 1815 and is thus almost exactly contemporary with the sonatas recorded here, the ones in D major and A minor dating from 1816 and the Sonata in A major from the following year. Schubert, who was around 20 years old at the time, had learned the violin from an early age, but the sonatas were probably intended for his older brother Ferdinand, who led the family string quartet in which Franz played the viola. The disc opens with a later work, however – the so-called Rondeau brilliant, from 1826. As the nickname indicates, the B minor Rondo is virtuosic, composed for Josef Slavík who before his early death was hailed as Paganini’s successor by the Viennese critics. In her liner notes, Ariadne Daskalakis describes the piece as ‘in turn dramatic, playful, gentle, seductive and wild’ and together with Paolo Giacometti she brings out each of these aspects.

Alvin Lucier is one of America’s foremost experimentalists, challenging the fundamental principles of music and focusing on acoustic phenomena and how listeners perceive them. Music for Piano with Slow Sweep Pure Wave Oscillators explores the acoustic ‘beating’ effects and tuning phenomena of sine waves against piano tones. This new XL version expands the extraordinary listening experience in a work described by Nicolas Horvath as ‘immersive, intense and enigmatic’. Nicolas Horvath is an unusual artist with an unconventional résumé. He began his music studies at the Académie de Musique Prince Rainier III de Monaco, and at the age of 16, caught the attention of the American conductor Lawrence Foster who helped him to secure a three-year scholarship from the Princess Grace Foundation in order to further his studies. His mentors include a number of distinguished international pianists, including Bruno Leonardo Gelber, Gérard Frémy, Eric Heidsieck, Gabriel Tacchino, Nelson Delle-Vigne, Philippe Entremont, Oxana Yablonskaya and Liszt specialist Leslie Howard who helped to lay the foundations for Horvath’s current recognition as a leading interpreter of Liszt’s music. He is the holder of a number of awards, including First Prize of the Scriabin and the Luigi Nono International Competitions.

REVIEW:

This performance by Nicolas Horvath is disciplined and precise, providing just the right touch for the piano notes under each acoustic condition. Music for Piano with Slow Sweep Pure Wave Oscillator XL will surely add to Horvath’s reputation as a leading interpreter of the most unusual experimental forms in contemporary music.

– Sequenza21.com

The music of Michael Jarrell has been said to “examine states of dream and unreality, searching for a moment of truth” – a truth which is often found in the lowest sonorities and slowest tempi, a place where time stands still. His works are often interrelated, not only by a certain sensitivity or a distinctive tone, but also by the recurrence of particular features that he reworks in different contexts. The present disc combines two recent concertos, each of them performed by its dedicatee. In July 2019, three years after they gave the first performance of Émergences-Résurgences, Tabea Zimmermann rejoined l’Orchestre National des Pays de la Loire and Pascal Rophé in order to record the work. In the liner notes Jarrell describes his method in the concerto in visual terms: ‘Curves, colors, chiaroscuro or strong lines; I tried to integrate a pictorial dimension into the scheme of this piece…’ Jarrell’s fourth violin concerto, 4 Eindrücke, is even more recent, and was first performed in 2019 in Tokyo’s Suntory Hall by Renaud Capuçon and Pascal Rophé conducting. As suggested by its title, the work is in four contrasting movements, of which the second stands out in that the soloist plays only pizzicato throughout. Framed by the two concertos is an orchestral work from 2009 which takes its title from Lucretius: ‘the sky, recently so clear, suddenly becomes horribly murky’. Although the work lacks a programme as such, the title paints in words the abrupt contrast between what the composer describes as ‘great expressive violence’ and an atmosphere that is ‘gentle, calm and full of inwardness’.

Still in his twenties, Pétur Sakari studied in his native Finland and in Paris and made his recording début at the age of 18. On his previous disc for BIS, he performed works by five French composers, receiving international acclaim with top marks in Diapason as well as on the Klassik-Heute website. For the present disc, Pétur has chosen to focus on César Franck, performing the composer’s Three Pieces and Three Chorales ‘pour grand orgue’ on an instrument perfectly suited to the repertoire. Completed in 1880, the great organ in the Sainte-Croix cathedral of Orléans is a major – and well-preserved – example of the art of Aristide Cavaillé-Coll, the same maker who had previously built Franck’s beloved organ in Sainte-Clotilde in Paris. (‘My new organ? It’s an orchestra!’ was Franck’s verdict.) Together the two gave the French organ tradition a new impetus with Franck laying the groundwork for a French symphonic organ style while Cavaillé-Coll constructed hundreds of organs capable of producing a sound that was full, homogeneous and modern. The Trois Pièces, which closes with the famous Pièce héroïque, were written for a Cavaillé-Coll instrument built for the 1878 World Fair in Paris. Twelve years later, and only weeks before his untimely death, Franck completed the Trois Chorals. The idea of writing organ chorales was inspired by Bach, but Franck composed them ‘with quite a different plan’: instead of traditional hymns they use an original, freely composed melody which is gradually revealed ‘with great imagination’, as Franck himself put it in a letter to his publisher. Both the Pieces and especially the Chorales have become central works in the repertoire of concert organists.

In 1610, the lutenist Robert Dowland, who had just turned 19, published two anthologies in quick succession that are today considered vital for our understanding of both the lute and Elizabethan vocal music. The first, A Varietie of Lute Lessons, which as the title suggests features lessons but also a long essay on European lute production, contains important information on lute performance, in part originating from his esteemed father, John Dowland. It is not far-fetched to imagine that Robert’s father also had a part to play in the second book, A Musicall Banquet – John had returned from the Danish court some time previously and is represented by several pieces in the anthology. Adhering to the culinary metaphor of the collection’s title, this Banquet comprises ‘recipes’ from different countries with different levels of technical difficulty, and is made up of ‘dishes’ already taste-tested so as not to poison ‘diners’, in other words, established pieces that were nonetheless as yet unknown to the English public. Robert opens his anthology with a large selection of English songs, taken from what was by that point a well-established repertoire: at the time Banquet was published, an impressive 24 books of songs had already been printed, beginning with John Dowland’s First Booke of Songes or Ayres, published in 1797. The next group of pieces in the collection belong to a genre that could be considered the most similar to the English song, the French air de cour, in the sense that the latter, at least in its most ancient form, influenced the development of the former. The air de cour for voice and lute was enjoying enormous success thanks to the scores Robert Ballard began publishing in 1608. The selection of Italian pieces is the most significant part of the collection.

Society currently finds itself at an intersection of technology and humanity: as physical forms embedded with Artificial Intelligence systems may one day reach a level of sophistication that approaches human level artificial general intelligence, human engineering of the ‘inanimate’ may produce previously unimaginable companions. It is precisely this concept of an inanimate-human companionship that pioneer surgeon Dr Susan Lim, together with her project Co-Creative Director, Dr Christina Teenz Tan explore in the Fantasy of Companionship for Piano & Orchestra, composed by Manu Martin. Recorded at Abbey Rd Studios, the Fantasy draws inspiration from ‘ALAN the Musical, and follows the story of Alan the inanimate – his journey to inanimate form, through companionship with a human and his ultimate transition to a higher form through quantum entanglement – brought to life through performances from acclaimed pianist, Tedd Joselson alongside the London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Arthur Fagen, together with solo voices and choral ensemble, London Voices. The iconic Belgian-American pianist Tedd Joselson describes the work as “a truly magnificent addition to the realm of piano concerto repertoire … a masterstroke of creative ingenuity, which I am truly delighted and honoured to lead as solo pianist.”

Moritz Moszkowski (1854–1925) wrote a considerable quantity of piano music, but it is generally remembered today only for a single piece, ‘Étincelles’, which Horowitz enjoyed playing. The early works on this first instalment in Ian Hobson’s survey of Moszkowski’s complete music for solo piano reveal a debt to Mendelssohn and Schumann, but the craftsmanship already justifies a later remark of Paderewski’s: ‘After Chopin, Moszkowski best understands how to write for the piano, and his writing embraces the whole gamut of piano technique’.

“When you realize how quickly Mozart developed during the early years of the 1780’s it makes you ask: why did this happen? What was going on? It’s about the momentum of his creativity at this time” says Leif Ove Andsnes

In 1781, aged 25, Mozart made the bold move of going freelance, “Vienna is piano land!” he exclaimed in a letter to his father, Leopold, in an attempt to argue his case for resigning from the employment of the Archbishop of Salzburg. With both public and private concerts taking place on a daily basis, Vienna was the place to be for an ambitious young composer and performer, and Mozart was quick to realize the opportunities on offer. Within a couple of years he had established himself as one of the most famous musicians in Vienna but by 1785 he had competition on his doorstep. As more and more talented composers and musicians arrived in the city, freelancers like Mozart had to become ever more inventive to distinguish themselves and win over the public’s affection. It was in these two years - 1785 and 1786 - that Mozart’s musical imagination flourished like never before.

Mozart wrote a series of masterpieces and revolutionized the nature of the piano concerto. The five piano concertos, no.20-24, are game-changers in the history of the form. Mozart began to re-examine the roles of the soloist and orchestra and created a dialogue between the two entities in a way that had not been heard before. “It changes completely with Mozart’s Piano Concerto No 20 [in D minor K466],” says Andsnes. “He separates the soloist more from the orchestra. The first entrance of the soloist in this piece is very different music from what you have heard the orchestra present. This is the moment, which points to the future and the development of the piano concerto and of the beginning of the Romantic piano concerto, which is so beloved. Everything from Tchaikovsky, Grieg and Rachmaninov, where the soloist has a sort of “heroic” role. It starts here with Mozart.”

In the four works that followed, Mozart tested concerto form to its limits and made extreme emotional demands on his Viennese subscribers. “There was new creative energy in the air,” says Andsnes; “Mozart seems to have gone deeper and deeper into the idiom and its possibilities and tried new techniques. I don’t know any music that offer such emotional diversity.”

Mozart Momentum 1785 is the first of two releases exploring those especially remarkable years. It includes piano concertos Nos 20-22, the Piano Quartet in G minor, Masonic Funeral Music and Fantasia in C minor for solo piano.

“The idea of this project was to explore the diversity of what was going on in Mozart’s creative life at the time – to show that a separation between solo playing, chamber music playing and concerto playing isn’t really relevant,” says Andsnes. “You find that some piano parts in the chamber music are more virtuosic than those in the concertos. It all goes hand in hand.”

Leif Ove Andsnes will embark on this new chapter with a trusted partner: The Mahler Chamber Orchestra. Their previous concerto project – the five piano concertos by Beethoven – produced recordings that won BBC Music Magazine’s Disc of the Year, were nominated for Gramophone Awards and hailed as new benchmarks. “There’s so much more to this partnership than just exceptional playing; there’s a palpable sense of discovery, of living the music”, says Gramophone Magazine. The Guardian raved “You’d be hard-put to find a pianist and orchestra better matched.”

The c/o chamber orchestra is a collective of thirty young musicians from a dozen different countries. Playing without a conductor, the orchestra is dedicated to that particular collaborative process which is the essence of chamber music. For their first album, the members have chosen to highlight a genre more difficult to pin-point than one might think. Its very name, divertimento, implies that it is simply a diversion, light music for entertainment – but many of the best-known examples of the form transcend that definition. And as many composers have learned, even light-hearted music should be taken seriously: humor requires a master’s touch. The four works recorded here offer different perspectives on the genre, starting with Ibert’s seven-movement suite in which the composer constantly plays with the listener’s expectations. Some forty years before Ibert, his compatriot Émile Bernard composed a very different Divertissement. It is scored for double wind quintet, reminiscent of Mozart’s divertimenti and serenades for winds. But even though the music is melodious and carefree, the debt owed by Bernard to the German romantic composers is never far from the surface. A very special case is Bartók’s Divertimento for strings, composed just before the outbreak of World War II. The closing work on the album reunites the winds and strings of the c/o orchestra in a work written especially for this project by the American composer Michael Ippolito, who in his Divertimento pays full tribute to the contrast-rich nature of the genre.

Penderecki wrote music for string quartet over a period of 56 years. His StringQuartetNo.1was written in the same year that he achieved international success with Threnody (Naxos8.554491), and includes a wide range of playing techniques reflective of the avant-garde. String Quartet No. 2 reveals the influence of Ligeti, while No.3is a personal, even autobiographical work. In No. 4 there are modal or even folk inflections, in writing that is both limpid and abrasive. The eventful Derunterbrochene Gedanke completes Penderecki’s music for quartet, while the String Trio exemplifies his music’s motoric energy.

REVIEW:

Penderecki's First Quartet pointed to his fascination with hard-edged atonality and 12-note influences, the one movement score expressed in pizzicato and lasting just a little over six minutes. With his Second Quartet he had begun to move away from astringency to a more legato quality but with atonality to signpost things to come. There was to be a gap of twenty years before the more lengthy Third appeared in 2008, and it was period when he ‘took stock’ of the way music was going. At the same time his music was moving to an even more communicative melodic period we experience to a final degree in the Fourth of 2016. Now in a more ‘traditional’ two movements, and with a Vivo finale, its style has a melodic starting point. Integrated into these changes were two further works for strings, an extremely brief String Quartet from 1988 given a title Der unterbrochene Gedanke (The Interrupted Thought), and a String Trio from 1990. Both fit neatly into the changing moods of the quartets that surround them. They are here performed by the much acclaimed British-based Tippett Quartet who encompass these changes with a conviction that would place the performances as my number one choice and in quite superb sound.

– David's Review Corner (David Denton)

Towards the end of his life, short of money and heavily in debt, Mozart had the opportunity to visit King Friedrich Wilhelm II of Prussia – a famous patron of the arts and a keen and above-average musician. Mozart performed for the King and left with some cash and a commission for a set of six string quartets, of which these are the only three he completed. They are ground-breaking in the way in which Mozart utilised the voicing of the instruments. King Friedrich was a viola da gamba player turned cellist, and these works feature extensive melodies for the cello, usually in a high register, thus emancipating the cello from the bass line and introducing a more evenly blended texture. Firmly established as one of the leading quartets of their generation, the Doric String Quartet enjoys a worldwide reputation and has performed at festivals and concert halls around the globe. Exclusive Chandos artists, the Quartet has drawn widespread critical acclaim for its recordings and won a number of prestigious awards.

REVIEW:

Their collective tone is both sweet and sinewy, with vibrato used for expressive effect rather than as a default setting. Contrapuntal textures are ideally lucid.

– Gramophone (Editor's Choice, Sept. 2021)

Hailed as an “epic traversal of solo violin repertoire” and a “monumental achievement” (Chicago Tribune), American violinist Jennifer Koh’s complete Bach & Beyond recordings, pairing J.S. Bach’s violin sonatas and partitas with 20th- and 21st-century works inspired by Bach’s groundbreaking masterpieces, are now available in a convenient, economical boxed set offering all three albums for the price of two. Bach & Beyond Part 1 features Koh’s “alluring performances” (The New York Times) of Bach’s Partitas Nos. 2 and 3, Eugène Ysaÿe’s Sonata No. 2, Kaija Saariaho’s Nocturne, and the world-premiere recording of Missy Mazzoli’s Dissolve, O My Heart, commissioned for Koh by the Los Angeles Philharmonic. The Newark Star-Ledger cited the violinist’s “distinctive voice over a range of styles.” Toronto’s The Whole Note said of Bach & Beyond Part 2, “Koh, as always, is superb, her intelligence and interpretation always matching her outstanding technique” in Bach’s Sonata No. 1 and Partita No. 1, Bela Bartok’s Sonata for Solo Violin Sz. 117, BB 124, and Saariaho’s Frises. Koh’s Bach & Beyond Part 3 earned BBC Music Magazine’s and ClassicsToday.com’s highest ratings for performance and recording quality. The Strad admired Koh’s “eloquent, artful, yet unadorned playing” in Bach’s Sonatas Nos. 2 and 3, Luciano Berio’s Sequenza VIII, and the world-premiere recording of John Harbison’s For Violin Alone, written for Koh. AllMusic said, “Koh’s series is highly recommended to those in search of an experience that will reward repeated hearings.” Audiophile Audition called it a “remarkable three-disc effort, recommended to all with a good degree of urgency.”

Excerpts of reviews from previously released volumes included in this set:

Bach & Beyond, Part 1

Koh makes short work of the Bach pieces—not in a bad sense: she just nails these works with a confident technique and a free-flowing, un-mannered style that remains true to Bach yet reminds us that a modern violinist is at the helm. Although ostensibly “modern”, the works by Saariaho and Mazzoli still incorporate time-honored traditions of solo-violin writing and don’t stray into what some might call “experimental” territory. These are both very ingratiating and accessible works to anyone who appreciates interesting, involving, intelligently written new violin music.

– ClassicsToday.com (10/10)

Bach & Beyond, Part 2

Koh’s Bach is amazing as usual–so fluid and delivered with such a sensitively nuanced, confident authority. A personality emerges: is it Koh? is it Bach? It’s either or both, but ultimately, who cares? This is exceptional Bach playing. Throughout, Koh is in command, from the dazzling explications of the Bartók Fuga and Presto movements, to the sometimes frighteningly audacious dynamic and timbral assertions of the Saariaho.

– ClassicsToday.com (10/10)

The Kalevala is a compilation of mostly original folk poetry, arranged into fifty extensive runos (‘poems’) by the Finnish physician and folklorist Elias Lönnrot. Beginning with the creation of the world, it develops into a series of separate episodes which nevertheless form a rich whole, introducing epic characters such as Väinämöinen, Lemminkäinen and Kullervo. The collection first appeared in 1835, with a final, extended version being published in 1849, and was soon hailed as Finland’s ‘national epos’ – a sensitive matter given that the country had been subjected to Russian rule since 1809. It came to play a major part in Finland’s national awakening and had a massive influence on Finnish art in the late 19th century, but its role in the national consciousness remains important even today. The present album, from the Lahti Symphony Orchestra and Dima Slobodeniouk, brings together Kalevala-related works spanning the period between 1897 and 1943. No such collection could overlook Sibelius, who composed several works inspired by the epos. Included here is a rarity – the first recording of the 1897 version of Lemminkäinen in Tuonela, from the Lemminkäinen Suite. Finnish composers from later generations all had to find a way out from under Sibelius’s shadow – especially so when composing works based on the Kalevala. The portraits of Kullervo which bookend the disc, by Leevi Madetoja and Tauno Pylkkänen, are both compact works in contrast to Sibelius’s large-scale ‘choral symphony’ on the same theme, and when Uuno Klami used bold and primitive colors in his five-movement Kalevala Suite, he was looking towards Stravinsky rather than his countryman.