Ondine celebrates Beethoven’s 250th anniversary of birth by re-issuing Olli Mustonen’s Beethoven cycle with the Tapiola Sinfonietta. The three volumes were originally released in three separate volumes from 2007-2009. Mustonen, described by The Sunday Times as “living dream of pianism”, is known for delivering fresh and visionary approach to standard works – this is evident in these masterful recordings of Beethoven’s concertos. Mustonen is a particularly fitting exponent for Beethoven’s music as the composer himself was also both visionary and revolutionary in his approach to tradition. The recording of Piano Concerto No. 1 includes Mustonen’s own cadenzas. Beethoven’s own Piano Concerto arrangement of his Violin Concerto is also featured – one of Mustonen’s signature pieces.

REVIEW:

Mustonen plays the five concertos of a piece, not starting out with Mozartean elegance in the first two and building up to mature Beethoven somewhere in Concerto No. 3. He attacks every bar vigorously and with decisive intent. In my experience, no one since Mikhail Pletnev’s highly original and at times eccentric cycle on DG has sounded so personal in music that too often trips off the fingers with glib sameness.

My overall defense of a cycle that will strike other listeners as totally arbitrary comes down to Mustonen being a composer, not a touring pianist playing subscription concerts. These are a composer’s responses to Beethoven, and Mustonen has the fingers to express them with confident assurance and at times with dazzling flourishes. In my corner this release is one of the most refreshing of the Beethoven year.

– Fanfare

On two previous albums, Yevgeny Sudbin and Osmo Vänskä have released Beethoven’s three last piano concertos to critical acclaim. Distinctions include Editor’s Choice in Gramophone and top marks from the Italian magazine Musica and the German website Klassik-Heute.de, and performances have been described as ‘electrifying’ (classicfm.com), ‘absolutely stunning’ (Fanfare) and ‘a Beethoven experience you will not want to miss’ (ClassicsToday.com). For the final release in their cycle, Sudbin and Vänskä have travelled to Helsinki to team up with Tapiola Sinfonietta, one of the top Nordic ensembles, and well suited for these earlier and more classical of Beethoven’s concertos. Of the two, the one we now know as the Second was actually begun several years before Concerto No. 1, and indeed even before Beethoven left Bonn for Vienna. During the following decade, Beethoven returned to the score repeatedly and made substantial revisions – including composing a new final movement – and ultimately the C major concerto reached publication first. Both concertos were conceived long before Beethoven's involvement with the symphonic genre, and the influence of Mozart and Haydn is evident in the interaction between the orchestra and the soloist – but Beethoven's individual spirit is nevertheless unmistakeable.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

This is a hybrid Super Audio CD playable on both regular and Super Audio CD players.


This is an absolutely wonderful disc in every way. Weber's clarinet music is delightful, and it's hard to imagine it being better played or recorded. Martin Fröst has such a supple, liquid timbre that at times you could almost swear there were words behind the notes, especially in the slow movements of all four works. And few soloists manage to bring such an irrepressible feeling of joy to the virtuoso passages that you can hear, say, in the finale of the Second concerto.

Kantorow and the Tapiola Sinfonietta also offer perfect accompaniments: swift, sensitive, texturally transparent, and rhythmically snappy. The F minor concerto in particular has plenty of passion and drama. The conductor's own transcription of the Clarinet Quintet for string orchestra works beautifully and fills out the disc generously, while the engineering in all formats couldn't be better balanced or fall more easily on the ear. There's no need to go on at length: this is now the reference recording for this music. It defines "state of the art."

– David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

Although celebrated as the father of German Romantic opera, Carl Maria von Weber is today generally known for one opera alone: Der Freischütz. Most of his other works for the stage - including the incidental music for several plays - are nowadays rarely performed. But their overtures have survived the test of time and are popular fillers at orchestral concerts, imbued as they are with Weber's particular mix of Romantic drama and lyricism and Classical lightness of touch. Striking is also the inimitable, colourful instrumentation, which is given free reins in these scores for librettos and plays that are set in China and Arabia, and among Spanish gypsies and knights in 12th-century France. The present disc includes ten of these gems, from the overture to Weber's first surviving opera Peter Schmoll und seine Nachbarn - composed at the age of fifteen - to that of Oberon, written in London for Covent Garden less than two months before his death from tuberculosis, aged 39. The team of Jean-Jacques Kantorow and the Tapiola Sinfonietta have recorded numerous discs for BIS, by composers as diverse as Saint-Saëns, Mozart, Shostakovich and Rautavaara. Acclaimed releases have also been dedicated to the music of Weber, most recently his symphonies on a disc which was described as 'without doubt among the finest additions to the Weber discography in recent years' by the reviewer of the German magazine Fono Forum. His French colleague in Diapason was equally enthusiastic, remarking upon the dramatic qualities of the recording: 'Kantorow stages a theatre of sounds in which each instrument is an actor...'

Classical Music

A leading authority on Bach, conductor Masaaki Suzuki now tackles his first album by a twentieth century composer. Collaborating with the acclaimed ensemble Tapiola Sinfonietta, Suzuki has chosen the works of Stravinsky for this release. Tracks include Pulcinella Suite, Apollon Musagete, and Concerto in D for Strings.

'A disc without flaws, a true marvel' is how Jean-Jacques Kantorow's previous recording of music by Édouard Lalo was described in the Spanish magazine Scherzo. The disc in question included three works composed for the great violin virtuoso Pablo de Sarasate: the violin concerto, Fantaisie norvégienne and the perennial favourite Symphonie espagnole. In a review in Gramophone, the soloist was compared to his great predecessor: 'Kantorow, one of today's most individual players, has the measure of Lalo's Sarasate-inspired violin-writing - he's able to toss off the virtuoso passagework in a seemingly effortless manner and his distinctive tone lends a sensuous allure to Lalo's melodies.' On the present disc, Kantorow plays two other works intended for Sarasate, the brief Fantaisie-ballet on themes from Lalo's ballet Namouna, and the large-scale Concerto russe. The latter piece, in four movements, borrows themes from two wedding songs included by Rimsky-Korsakov in his collection 100 Russian Folk Songs. A typically expressive and virtuosic composition, it is also one of the first important French works to draw upon Russian music - many others were to follow. Two shorter violin works are included here, but the disc closes with another concerto, the Piano Concerto from 1888. It was the composer's final major work, and in it he seems to depart from the pattern of his violin concertos, with their prominent solo parts. Lalo rather chooses to integrate the piano into the orchestral texture, and although the writing is redolent of the great Romantic concertos, it offers few opportunities for the soloist to show off - a possible reason for the work's absence from modern concert programmes and its rarity on disc. Championing this solo part is Pierre-Alain Volondat, and as in the other works orchestral support is provided by the eminent Tapiola Sinfonietta, conducted by Kees Bakels.

Classical Music

Venzago typically employs brisk tempos, transparent textures, distinctive brass and woodwind sonorities, and strings played with minimal vibrato. This is a fresh take on Bruckner's music, and Venzago avoids the excessive heaviness and reverence that many 20th century conductors imposed on his works. These streamlined readings may not persuade traditionalists, but the startling performances in this CPO box set may well change the way we think of these symphonies in the future. This ten-CD collection also includes a bonus DVD of Laurent Jaquet's film Venzago's Bruckner.

– All Music Guide

Recently Composer-in-Residence with the New York Philharmonic, Magnus Lindberg has created works that deeply impress listeners. Acclaimed violinist Pekka Kuusisto performs the Violin Concerto as the composer conducts.

Classical Music

This is a hybrid Super Audio CD playable on both regular and Super Audio CD players.

As a teenager, Franz Liszt created at least two virtuosic concertos for piano and orchestra, scores which now are lost. The three works gathered here first saw the light of day only a few years later, however, during the 1830's when Liszt’s career as a young, travelling virtuoso was at its height. The two numbered concertos, which Liszt revised extensively before letting them be published some 25 years after their conception, frame the single-movement Malédiction for piano and strings which Liszt composed in 1833 and revised in 1840, but which was never published in his lifetime. Stepping into Liszt's shoes for the present recording is Alexandre Kantorow, another very young man. Born in 1997, Alexandre is here supported by his father Jean-Jacques Kantorow conducting the Tapiola Sinfonietta, a team with a number of highly acclaimed recordings to their credit. The recording is Alexandre’s first for BIS, as well as being his début concerto disc, and represents a remarkable achievement by a hugely promising talent, as well as being a vibrant and exciting account of three impassioned scores.

Composer, piano virtuoso, conductor, teacher – Camille Saint-Saëns was all of these things, but also a keen archaeologist, astronomer, botanist, historian, illustrator, poet, playwright… A seasoned traveller, he was the most famous French musician in his own lifetime, acclaimed in North and South America, the Middle East and across Europe. It is ironic, then, that his extensive and varied output isn’t better known today – except for a few works of which the most famous, Carnival of the Animals, is one Saint-Saëns himself had little affection for. Now often regarded as old-fashioned or even reactionary, we tend to forget that Saint-Saëns during his lifetime was sometimes heckled for the boldness of his works. Furthermore, he defended the music of the revolutionaries Wagner and Liszt, earned the admiration of figures as Berlioz, Debussy and Ravel and – in 1908 – composed one of the first original scores for a film!

Jean-Jacques Kantorow and the Tapiola Sinfonietta have championed the music of Saint-Saëns on a series of acclaimed albums, and are now joined by the young Alexandre Kantorow – son of the conductor – for a survey of his works for piano and orchestra. In 1858, Saint-Saëns became the first major French composer to write a piano concerto, but on this first release of two the Kantorows present the three last concertos. Composed over a period of almost 30 years (1868 – 1896), these are highly individual works: Piano Concerto No. 3 is a bold attempt to reconcile Classical form with a Lisztian pianistic brio, No. 4 employs an unusual formal scheme in which themes are reused in a cyclic manner and, finally, the ‘Egyptian’ (No. 5), named after the second movement, which in the composer’s own words describes ‘a sort of Eastern journey that goes all the way to the Far East’.

REVIEWS:

It is no hardship to review yet another Saint-Saëns piano concerto recording when it is as good as this. Believe me, Kantorow is the real deal – a firebreathing virtuoso with a poetic charm and innate stylistic mastery. I had forgotten just how demanding is some of the piano writing in No. 4 is but I have rarely heard it delivered with such commanding ease and infectious delight.

– Gramophone

We seem to be undergoing a Saint-Saëns piano concerto bonanza, and this excellent disc could well take pride of place had it not been for Louis Lortie’s Chandos recordings, which are just that much finer still. The outstanding performances here are the Fourth and Fifth Concertos, the former cogently shaped and urgently projected, especially in the work’s latter stages. Alexandre Kantorow respects the music’s basic sobriety but still endows the outbursts of virtuosity with appropriate élan and sparkle. I can’t think of many performances of the second movement that make the music sound more purposeful.

– ClassicsToday (10/10; Robert Hurwitz)

Erkki-Sven Tüür (b. 1959) is one of the most outstanding voices in contemporary music today and regarded by many as one of the foremost living symphonists. This new album by Tapiola Sinfonietta and conductor Olari Elts includes world première recordings of two concertante works featuring violist Lawrence Power and recorder soloist Genevieve Lacey together with a late masterpiece, Symphony No. 8. Tüür describes his viola concerto Illuminatio (2008) is “a pilgrimage towards eternal light”. The work opens with a mysterious soundscape. As the work progresses, the music develops and grows, and the relationships between the soloist and the orchestra is in a constant change. Whistles and Whispers from Uluru (2007) for recorder and chamber orchestra was written to a commission from the Australian Chamber Orchestra for recorder virtuoso Genevieve Lacey. When the composer was writing the work at his summer residence in the island of Hiiumaa in Estonia, it was spring and the air was full of birdsong. In his mind, he connected Uluru, the sacred mountain of the Australian Aborigines, to his northern surroundings, and the two impulses fused. The soloist goes through multiple members of the recorder family, from sopranino down through treble, alto and tenor to bass, and then back to the heights of the sopranino. An electronic soundtrack augments the texture at times. Symphony No. 8 was commissioned by the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and was completed in 2010. Tüür scored the work for a sinfonietta-type ensemble instead of a large symphony orchestra, and as a result the music has at times a chamber music feel.

This is a hybrid Super Audio CD playable on both regular and Super Audio CD players.



WEBER Symphonies: No. 1; No. 2. Andante e Rondo ungarese. 1 Bassoon Concerto in F 1 • Jean-Jacques Kantorow, cond; Jaakko Luoma (bn); 1 Tapiola Sinfonietta • BIS 1620 (Hybrid multichannel SACD: 67:42)


There is little that can be done for Weber’s gauche, mindless early symphonies, written when he was 21. They are all sparks and bombast, with colorful surfaces but virtually no content. Single woodwinds (there are no clarinets) generally carry the tunes, passing them around the section, while strings offer some relief; brass join in for consistently loud, fanfare-like tutti. The general consensus has been to play the symphonies as fast as possible (to get them over with?). Kantorow does that too, and his 40-piece orchestra, playing modern instruments with all the snap, sparkle, and tonal panache of period practice—more so than Roy Goodman’s period-instrument Hanover Band—makes the most of the symphonies, aided by BIS ’s usual sensational recorded sound. Luoma’s bassoon stands out among the winds; Roger Norrington’s London Classical Players have better-balanced wind soloists, but the overall performances are not as precise. The Second Symphony opens this disc, beginning with a stunning two-bar fanfare; unfortunately, it never does anything with it, making the 10-minute Allegro seem endless. As if the composer immediately recognized the problem, the following three movements whiz by in a mere eight minutes. After the “final” coda and a pause, two brief pp notes from bassoon and low strings bring the proceedings to a close. Haydn did everything better, including jokes and false endings.


Concerted pieces always inspired the best from Weber: three for clarinet, three more for piano, one each for oboe and French horn. These two for bassoon are the cream of that instrument’s repertoire (there also was a kid named Mozart). Playing a bassoon built in 2000 by Wilhelm Heckel—I don’t know if he is related to the creator of the heckelphone—Luoma sails through both works with the greatest of ease, producing consistently lovely tones. Whatever happened to that grumpy old instrument that was so difficult to play?


The First Symphony comes last, probably so that its Presto finale, the most successful movement of the eight, can wind up the disc with a bang. As fine as the CD is, SACD opens up the sound, giving it more life. Trumpets and strings gain clarity and presence, which makes the winds recede slightly from the spotlight. Surround sound adds an airy feeling, but doesn’t alter the basic sound. If you must have Weber’s symphonies, this is certainly the disc to get, especially so given the bonus bassoon works. But the others mentioned also include marvelous bonuses: Melvyn Tan plays the fortepiano Konzertstück with Norrington, and Anthony Halstead plays a natural horn in the Horn Concertino with Goodman.


FANFARE: James H. North


Finely honed performances of charming music played with relish.

These works were all written between 1807 and 1811, so pre-date Weber’s fame as an opera composer. He had just left Breslau, having survived a dreadful accident when his father, a printer, left a nitric acid solution in a wine glass which his son absent-mindedly then drank. His next post was a temporary one, when he went to Bad Carlsruhe and the court of Count Eugen Friedrich of Württemberg-?ls, who, being himself a fair oboist, encouraged Weber to compose. Both symphonies were written there during these idyllic few months, the first in C major in December 1807 and January 1808, the second (also in C major) later the same month. Reflecting the resources he found there, the scoring lacks one flute and most surprisingly there are no clarinets. Solos for the rest abound however, some of them very demanding, so standards must have been high. Obviously the oboe has his plate full, but the remaining winds, particularly the bassoon, are active, so too the French horn and some solo strings; in fact pretty well everyone has their fifteen seconds of fame. Written when Beethoven’s first three symphonies were already known, it is important to regard Weber’s more in Haydn’s style, with the crossing of the cusp between Classic and Romantic reflected more by orchestral colour than any disturbance of formal structure. Even so, these are not predictable works, in particular the finale of the Second, which stops and starts for individual solos before scampering on to the next pause like an American football game. This is Haydn’s wit at work. Much the same can be said of the First Symphony, which highlights individual wind players once again. It is full of confident orchestral outbursts on the one hand - the opera conductor here - and charming melodies of an almost rustic hue. At a minute and a half, the Minuet and Trio of the Second Symphony must be the shortest ever. Note that this recording inexplicably starts with the Second Symphony and ends with the First, easy to miss that as both are in the same key.

The rest of the fare is devoted to two concerted works for bassoon and orchestra. The brief Andante and Hungarian Rondo was originally composed in 1809 for Weber’s violist brother Fritz, while the bassoon transcription was made for the virtuoso player Georg Friedrich Brandt with some inevitably consequent changes. The Rondo’s rhythms emphasise the Hungarian flavour of the music. Weber’s writing exploits fully the facility of the instrument, its agility over a wide range of notes, tonal quality, and its lyrical as well as comical element. It was in March 1810 that he found himself conducting a concert with the Munich Court Orchestra, its programme including a clarinet concertino he had written for Heinrich Bärmann. Its success encouraged the orchestra’s principal players to ask for solo works, so two concertos for clarinet followed in 1811 and, on 28 December, a bassoon concerto for Brandt. He made some revisions in 1822, expression and dynamic indications expanded and some string accompaniments rewritten, and this is the version heard on this CD.

The performances by Jaako Luoma are finely honed in both works. His instrument paints a wide palette of colour, his phrasing is stylish. The Tapiola Sinfonietta under its former (1993-2000) director Jean-Jacques Kantorow match him in detail in a cleanly balanced recording. Both symphonies are played with relish, all solo opportunities exploited to the full. The music is charming, but Weber is surely still going to be remembered best for his operas and their overtures, but at least it gives clarinettists and, in this instance, bassoonists a chance to shine. 

-- Christopher Fifield, MusicWeb International 

Includes work(s) by Alfred Schnittke. Ensemble: Tapiola Sinfonietta. Conductor: Ralf Gothóni. Soloists: Ralf Gothóni, Tero Latvala, Ulf Wallin.

REVIEW:

Jean-Jacques Kantorow has recorded Saint-Saëns’s two other violin concertos on BIS 860, which I reviewed in 21:6 and on BIS 1060, which I also reviewed, in 25:5. In the first case, it seemed to me that Kantorow exaggerated rhythms “until they become irritating,” and, in the second, that he provided an attractive alternative to either Ruggiero Ricci or Philippe Graffin in this least initially ingratiating of Saint-Saëns’s violin concertos. Kantorow is aggressively piquant in the Third Concerto as well, but the competition’s stiffer, with Arthur Grumiaux having made two recordings of it and Nathan Milstein, one—in addition to Zino Francescatti’s legendary account, which the work’s admirers should find in equal parts more noble and less racy. While Kantorow slashes with abandon in the first movement and wheedles intimately in the second, he comes into his own in the third, exhibiting greater accentual restraint yet stunning technical aplomb in passagework that defies the notes’ assessment that those seeking traditional virtuosity in this work will be disappointed. As in the slow movement, he reveals the rich lyricism of the finale’s reflective interludes. Center stage, Graffin creates an impression of cogency in this last movement for which mannerisms in the headlong first movement and the occasionally languorous slow movement hardly prepare. The orchestral support, represented in resonant and wide-ranging recorded sound, buoys the soloist throughout, providing both moments of sensitive repose and sonorous bustle.

I’ve most frequently heard Eugène Ysaÿe’s transcription for violin and orchestra of Saint-Saëns’s solo piano étude in an arrangement for violin and piano. In orchestral garb, the work bears greater affinity to Saint-Saëns’s violin concertos; and although Kantorow’s reading may seem brittle compared with Oistrakh’s breathtaking one with pianist Vladimir Yampolsky, the orchestral accompaniment virtually transforms the piece, with the violin lighting the stratosphere with pyrotechnics against a colorful orchestral backdrop, all in the grand manner of Henri Vieuxtemps (Ysaÿe’s teacher). The Caprice andalous , which Dong Suk Kang included in his collection on Naxos 8.550752, 18:2 (which also included the Third Concerto—Kang’s performance of the Caprice, and of the Concerto, sounds especially refined and elegant after hearing Kantorow’s more urgent and slightly more mannered ones), seems to be Saint-Saëns’s most overtly Spanish number, although he had embodied Pablo Sarasate’s musical personality with greater or lesser success in the Havanaise and Introduction and rondo capriccioso as well as in the Third Concerto. The work’s ethnicity and its brilliant writing for the soloist, especially at the conclusion, may overcome for listeners any resistance to what they deem less immediately appealing thematic material. And certainly Kantorow makes the most of opportunities for display.

Just as BIS’s volume surrounding the First Concerto included the Sarabande for string orchestra, op. 93/1, and the recording of the Second Concerto included Spartacus and La muse et le poète for violin, cello, and orchestra, this third volume in what appears to be a series includes the more austere Prélude to Le déluge (in which Kantorow extracts from the orchestra a nostalgic sentiment that goes beyond the suggestive violin solo) and a rambustious performance by Heini Kärkkäinen of the Valse caprice , op. 76. As in the works for violin, the engineers have placed the soloist center stage, but the depth and definition of the orchestral sound ensures that the accompaniment never degenerates into a drop cloth merely catching splotches of color the soloist insouciantly sprinkles. The program concludes with the bumptious Allegro appassionato , op. 70, with bubbling high spirits at its center.

Although Kantorow’s reading of the first two movements of the Third Violin Concerto may seem just too headlong and too diffuse, respectively, for some listeners, the bracing third nearly redeems them, and the other two bravura works for violin (Ysaÿe’s in its stirring orchestral setting)—to say nothing of the additional pieces in affecting readings led stylishly by Kantorow and, in the last two, played brightly and energetically by Kärkkäinen—tip the balance in the recording’s favor. Recommended.

-- FANFARE (Robert Maxham)

In 2019, Alexandre and Jean-Jacques Kantorow’s recording of the last three piano concertos by Camille Saint-Saëns earned the highest praise around the world, including a Diapason d’or de l’année, Editor’s Choice in Gramophone and top marks and recommendations from the leading German web sites Klassik Heute and Klassik.com. The Kantorows’ orchestra of choice was the Finnish ensemble Tapiola Sinfonietta, and they have now returned to Helsinki to record not only Saint-Saëns’ first two concertos, but all of the remaining works for piano and orchestra.

Presented on this amply filled disc, the program spans 33 years, the earliest work being Concerto No. 1, regarded as the first significant French piano concerto and written by a 23-year old composer. Ten years later, in 1868, Saint-Saëns composed the Concerto in G minor, a work which at first met with consternation although Liszt – who was present at the first performance – thoroughly approved of it. The work, which begins with the soloist playing what resembles the improvisations of an organist, soon became popular however, and remains one of Saint-Saëns’ best-known works. The shorter pieces which make up the rest of the program were written between 1884 and 1891, and could be said to reveal different aspects of the composer: Wedding Cake was written as a wedding present to a close friend, in Rhapsodie d’Auvergne Saint-Saeëns explored French folk music, while Africa is a piece of pure Orientalism, reflecting his lasting affection for North Africa.

REVIEWS:

What amazed me about young Alexandre Kantorow’s performance was the intensity of the opening cadenza and the subsequent tutti passages where it’s hard to imagine that it’s a chamber orchestra we’re hearing! His treatment of the soloist’s role is always powerful but never lapses into brashness.

All the fill-ups are lovely, but for me the most gorgeous was the Wedding Cake Caprice. The performances have been brilliantly captured and are presented in SACD format.

-- Limelight

The prospect of a recording of any of Saint-Saëns’s works for piano and orchestra is always a delightful one. You know you are in for an hour or more of music that lifts the spirits with its joie de vivre and inexhaustible supply of memorable ideas. The prospect is enhanced, on this occasion, by the same soloist, orchestra and conductor who gave us Concertos Nos 3, 4 and 5 back in the long-ago pre-pandemic days...

There is a palpable exuberance and joy in the way these works come across, none more so in the four concertante works for piano and orchestra, the effervescent Wedding Cake caprice, Rhapsodie d’Auvergne (an early use of French folk song, years ahead of d’Indy and Canteloube), Allegro appassionato (not the better-known work for cello with the same title) and Africa (who else was using North African folk music at this time?).

The album also includes the woefully neglected Piano Concerto No 1, with its opening horn call reminding us of the end of Chopin’s Second Piano Concerto. If the rousing finale doesn’t hook you, then try the haunting slow movement with its prescient passages not only of its successor but of the kind of impressionistic writing that anticipates Ravel by half a century.

It’s a terrific programme – unique for a single disc, so far as I know – clocking in at 85 minutes, and another feather in the cap of the gifted soloist and his partners. The recording offers an exemplary balance between piano and orchestra in a realistic acoustic[.]

-- Gramophone

That Baïlèro, a shepherd’s song from the highlands of Auvergne sung in the Occitan dialect of the area, should become a favorite with singers ranging from Victoria de los Angeles to Sarah Brightman by way of Renée Fleming and Karita Mattila, is all because of Marie-Joseph Canteloube de Malaret. As a budding composer in Paris in the 1900s, Canteloube was unable to interest himself in the various musical cliques and currents. Instead he looked for inspiration in Auvergne in central France where he was born, starting to collect the songs of the farmers and shepherds that lived in the mountainous region. But he did so as a composer rather than a musicologist, and between 1923 and 1954 he published a total of thirty Chants d’Auvergne, arranged, harmonized and sumptuously orchestrated. The result is, one might say, idealized folk music: Canteloube largely respects the melodic line of the originals, but adds instrumental introductions, interludes and postludes, and gives an important role to the woodwind section. For the present disc, Carolyn Sampson and Pascal Rophé have selected 25 of the songs – ranging from love songs and lullabies to working songs and laments. They perform them together with Tapiola Sinfonietta, bringing sparkle to Canteloube's luxurious scores halfway between the impressionism of Debussy and the bucolic lyricism of d'Indy.

“Venzago amazes us with his idiosyncratic and wholly novel performances of Bruckner. The sound of his Bruckner is thrillingly lean...His intelligent conducting focuses our attention on the chamber-music aspect of Bruckner's music.” –Pizzicato. In this Vol.2, Venzago devotes himself to the beginnings of Bruckner's symphonic output, the so-called “No. 0” and the 1st.

Second instalment in the ongoing complete Ferdinand Ries (1784-1838) symphony cycle by Tapiola Sinfonietta and conductor Janne Nisonen includes the composer's Symphonies Nos. 4 and 5. Often remembered in music history as Beethoven's 'right hand', these new recordings by the Tapiola Sinfonietta reveal a major symphonist. The first volume in the series has received oustanding reviews in the German music press.

Sebastian Fagerlund’s orchestral music, which has held a central position in his work, is known for its pounding rhythmic energy and the quiet, gripping intensity of the more static passages. The flute concerto ‘Terral’ was written in close collaboration with Sharon Bezaly. Referring to a land breeze in Spain, ‘Terral’ is like a constant variation in a transparent and airy soundscape reminiscent of the soil taking on a new appearance when blown by the wind.

Strings to the Bone for string orchestra features Fagerlund’s typically intense and virtuosic writing as well as elements of the musical heritage of Ostrobothnia. Finally, the Chamber Symphony came to existence thanks to his collaboration with the Tapiola Sinfonietta and the Ottawa-based National Arts Centre Orchestra, where John Storgårds has been principal guest conductor since 2015. According to the Finnish daily Hufvudstadsbladet, this work shows “a thematically consistent symphonic construction with an authentic symphonic tension integrated into the dramaturgical gesture”.

20TH CENTURY MUSIC FOR FLUTE AND ORCHESTRA

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music