Like the paintings of the Flemish Baroque painters, the ‘vanities’ presented here can be approached in two ways: on the one hand, as manifestations of doubts and anxieties at the fragility of human life; on the other, as delights to be savored without moderation, celebrating earthly life through the senses and the pleasure that human beings can derive from them. After two critically acclaimed recordings each for alpha, the baritone Georg Nigl and the pianist Olga Pashchenko explore the tortuous meanders of the human soul with vocal works by Schubert (an ‘existentialist’ composer if ever there was one), Beethoven (whose torments hardly need stressing) and the contemporary composer Wolfgang Rihm, whose highly expressionistic Jakob Lenz Nigl performed on stage in 2019. His piece Vermischter Traum, here given its world premiere, is dedicated to the Austrian singer.

Behzod Abduraimov joins Alpha for several recordings, starting with this ‘kaleidoscope of miniatures’ – miniatures that are in fact fairly gigantic, and showcase the Uzbek pianist’s extreme virtuosity and sensitivity. ‘Each movement is in itself a miniature, and taken together they form a kaleidoscope of human emotions and images of all kinds,’ says Behzod Abduraimov. In his view, the pieces in Debussy’s Children’s Corner are not intended for young piano students, but ‘for adults, so that they can immerse themselves in the world of children with a little nostalgia and a lot of humor.’ When it comes to Chopin, ‘each prelude has a different musical essence, creates its own atmosphere. Together they form an arc spanning the distance from the first prelude to the last. So I tried to consider them as a whole.’ Finally, Mussorgsky evokes in ten highly expressive movements the paintings at an exhibition held in posthumous tribute to his friend Viktor Hartmann. A ‘Promenade’ heard several times suggests Mussorgsky himself strolling through the exhibition. For Behzod Abduraimov, the “Promenades” play a key role in this cycle: they create the atmosphere before each painting.

REVIEW:

Each of the three works that Behzod Abduraimov presents in this program consists of small, strongly individual pieces that ultimately add up to more than the sum of their parts. Abduraimov’s impressive interpretations bear this out; he manages to tap into each piece’s character, while unifying them by way of timing and carefully thought out tempo relationships.

In Debussy’s Children’s Corner, for example, the pianist’s measured pace allows breathing room to his distinctions between legato and detached articulation. The foreground and background components emerge in clear and consistent perspective throughout Jimbo’s Lullaby and Serenade for the Doll, while the clipped phrasing of Golliwog’s Cakewalk conveys more bite and rhythmic spring than usual.

Even in a catalog awash with distinctive Chopin Preludes cycles, Abduraimov’s stellar technique, intelligent musicianship, and feeling for nuance stand out. Note No. 3’s alluringly shaded left-hand runs, No. 5’s cross-rhythmic definition, and the crystalline shimmer of No. 8’s busy textures. Abduraimov’s fleet poise in virtuoso showpieces like Nos. 16, 19, 22, and 24 veer closer to the classicism of Pollini’s 1974 traversal than to the improvisatory Argerich or Arrau’s epic dynamism.

A few textual observations: Unlike Pollini, who executes No. 9’s controversial dotted eighth- and 16th-note pattern to conform to the accompanying triplet, Abduraimov plays it as written. However, like Pollini (as well as Alfred Cortot and Ivan Moravec), Abduraimov favors the “traditional” E-natural on the final beat of No. 20’s third measure, rather than the “controversial” Urtext E-flat that Arrau, Rudolf Serkin, and Alexandre Tharaud prefer.

If anything, Abduraimov opens himself more to the inherent drama in Mussorgsky’s Pictures, yet without doing violence to the music. It’s true that the pianist reinforces octaves here and there, and adds effective right-hand tremolos to Gnomus, yet such emendations enhance rather than distract from Mussorgsky’s intentions. Abduraimov’s steady tread in the Promenades allows the music’s asymmetry to speak for itself. He takes his time over Bydlo’s oxcart ostinatos, yet never drags, and eschews the capricious and cutesy tempo changes that younger pianists deem necessary in the Unhatched Chicks Ballet.

The repeated notes of Samuel Goldenberg and Schmuÿle are as perfectly aligned and voiced as the rapid alternating chords of the Limoges Marketplace coda. And to hear how one can produce massively resonating sonorities without banging, check out The Great Gate at Kiev’s climactic pages. Debussy, Chopin, and Mussorgsky add up to a triumphant triumvirate in Abduraimov’s hands, together with Alpha’s first-class engineering.

– ClassicsToday.com (10/10; Jed Distler)

This recording presents the double concerto for violin, cello and orchestra of the Spanish composer Francisco Coll, born in 1985. Les Plaisirs Illuminés, a title inspired by Dalí’s painting of the same name, is rooted in Spanish traditions, including flamenco, yet is resolutely modern: ‘Its music is very lively rhythmically, it dances and sings- but at the same time it is very abrupt, always in search of extremes,’ says Patricia Kopatchinskaja. For this world premiere conducted by the composer, she is reunited with a longstanding partner who pursues an equally brilliant international career, the cellist Sol Gabetta. The program also features Stravinsky’s Concerto in D for string orchestra, composed in 1946 at the request of Paul Sacher for the twentieth anniversary of the Basler Kammerorchester and the Musica concertante for twelve strings by the Hungarian-born Swiss composer Sandor Veress, premiered by the Camerata Bern in 1966. A year earlier, the Argentinian composer Alberto Ginastera wrote his fascinating Concerto for Strings. A kaleidoscope of colors and sounds from all over the world.

REVIEWS:

Musica concertante and Ginastera’s Concerto are both concerti grossi, which allows Kopatchinskaja to take on the roles of concertante soloist, section leader and indeed director, as both works, following Camerata Bern tradition, are given without a conductor. As such, she is very much part of an ensemble of equals, and the playing throughout is superb in its focus, precision and concentration.

– Gramophone (Editor's Choice; January 2021)

Two threads run through this adventurous disc – the spirit of Béla Bartók and the Camerata Bern’s prowess – but the force of personality at the centre of it all comes from the violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja. It opens with Sándor Veress’s Musica concertante per 12 archi, written in 1965-6 for the then newly formed Camerata Bern, and which in this performance comes across with fiery, searing spirit.

– BBC Music Magazine

Born in Lower Saxony just three years before Beethoven, the violinist Andreas Romberg (1767-1821) was, like him, a virtuoso instrumentalist of precocious gifts. His career too was radically affected by the Napoleonic Wars and a formative encounter with Haydn. And, as with Beethoven, his most popular work was a choral setting of a poem by Schiller: Das Lied von der Glocke, premiered in 1809. Romberg wrote an enormous number of violin concertos, but only sixteen manuscript scores of his entire oeuvre have survived, all of them in Hamburg. Chouchane Siranossian has decided to revive and make the world premiere recording of three concertos, thus revealing an interesting composer and a trio of highly virtuosic works.

This ninth volume of the Haydn2032 series focuses on the composer’s psychological subtlety in its focus on a central work: his Symphony no.45, known as the ‘Abschieds-Symphonie’ (‘Farewell’ Symphony), composed in 1772. It is said to have got its nickname from a symbolic message Haydn conveyed to Prince Esterházy when he and his orchestra were required to stay longer than planned in the Prince’s summer residence. On the occasion of the symphony’s first performance, Haydn had arranged for the musicians to leave their places one by one during the final Adagio. The day after the concert, all the musicians were able to return to their families and bid farewell to the Prince, who had obviously taken the point of this poetic request for ‘liberation’ expressed in music. The programme is completed by Symphonies nos. 15 and 35 and a cantata sung by Sandrine Piau, the heart-rending ‘Berenice, che fai?’ on a text by Metastasio that was a real ‘hit’ of the eighteenth century, set by some forty composers.

For its eighth volume, Haydn2032 invites us on a musical journey that takes the Balkan route. Of all the ‘Viennese Classical School’, Joseph Haydn is certainly the composer closest to folk music, first because he spent his early years in the countryside and also because, unlike his colleagues who worked in the urban centers of the Habsburg monarchy, Haydn was in contact with Croats, Roma and Hungarians throughout his life. These influences were omnipresent in his music, to the delight of Prince Nikolaus I Esterházy and his guests, but by some accounts were not to the taste of many music theorists in Germany. Haydn gave his Symphony no.63 in C major the title of ‘La Roxolana’, from the famous sixteenth-century sultana who was the wife of Suleiman the Magnificent after having been his slave. As usual, Giovanni Antonini, who is reunited here with Il Giardino Armonico, juxtaposes Haydn’s music with that of another composer. The natural choice here was Béla Bartók, who is represented by his Romanian Folk Dances, composed in 1917.

The pianist Anna Vinnitskaya has built up an impressive discography since her victory at the Queen Elisabeth Competition in 2007: Bach, Brahms, Ravel, and of course the Russian composers with whom she has been familiar since her childhood in Novorossiysk, then her studies with Evgeni Koroliov. She has now made her first Chopin recording, coupling the four Ballades, a cross between the miniature and the sonata, with the four Impromptus he composed at different periods of his life, between 1835 and 1842. Anna Vinnitskaya was born in the Russian city of Novorossijsk. She was a student of Sergei Ossipienko in Rostov and Evgenyi Koroliov at the Hamburg conservatoire. Since 2009 she has been a professor there herself - that is, when she is not touring the stages of the wide musical world.

“The French horn is notoriously difficult to play. You can practise all you like but there is no guarantee that the note you blow into the mouthpiece is the same one which will come out of the bell once it has travelled through all the twists and turns of the tubing. However, when all goes well, the horn is glorious and I absolutely love being a horn player, even with all risks – and maybe even because of them.” (Sarah Willis) After the enormous success of Mozart y Mambo (ALPHA578) which went straight to Number 1 in Germany on release in 2020, Alpha has decided to reissue one of the first albums recorded by this multi-talented and tireless ambassador of the French horn. In this re-release of the 2014 album, Horn Discoveries, Sarah Willis demonstrates all the rich potential of her instrument with exciting original compositions and beautiful arrangements of well-loved repertoire pieces such as Tchaikovsky’s Souvenir d’un lieu cher, Dvorak’s Humoresque, Bizet’s Les Pêcheurs de Perles and Debussy’s Clair de Lune.

‘The dreamer! That double of our existence, that chiaroscuro of the thinking being’, wrote Gaston Bachelard in 1961. ‘The old is dying, the new cannot be born, and in that chiaroscuro, monsters appear’, adds Antonio Gramsci. Sandrine Piau has chosen to use these two quotations as an epigraph to her new recording: ‘My family and friends know about this obsession that never leaves me completely. The antagonism between light and darkness. The chiaroscuro, the space in between . . .’ This program, recorded with the Orchestre Victor Hugo under its conductor Jean-François Verdier, who is also principal clarinettist of the Paris Opéra, travels between the chilly Rhenish forest of Waldgespräch, a ballad by Zemlinsky composed for soprano and small ensemble in 1895, the night of the first of Berg’s Seven Early Songs (1905-08), and the sunlight of Richard Strauss’s Morgen, which are followed by the Four Last Songs, composed in 1948, the first two of which, Frühling and September (evoking spring and autumn respectively) are also, as Sandrine Piau concludes, ‘the seasons of life’.

‘Why arrange Boccherini concertos? To bring out the colors, rhythms, dances, melodies and countermelodies. To reinvent our roles or to exchange them like a game, from one page to another. To make us feel as if we’re on a tightrope. To take advantage of the space of freedom provided by the cadenza to imagine little musical scenarios, stories within the story. Like dreams that have their own logic, their own timescale. So those dreams suddenly yet imperceptibly plunge us into repetitive music, a procession in Spain, a jazz cadenza, an opera... and then we emerge to be reunited with Boccherini, who seems to be the first to enjoy these escapades.’ – Sonia Wieder-Atherton

Aaron Pilsan is only twenty-five years old, but he already has a busy career to his credit, with a solo album devoted to Beethoven and Schubert - very well received by the critics - and another of duo repertory with the cellist Kian Soltani. A student of Lars Vogt, he has also received guidance from András Schiff - Bach has always been at the center of their work together. The young Austrian pianist has been fascinated since childhood by The Well-Tempered Clavier, ‘that musical journey on which Bach embarks with us in Book One: from the seemingly simple and joyful triad of the famous Prelude in C major to the final fugue, of a complexity almost worthy of Schoenberg, on a subject that already includes the twelve semitones of the chromatic scale . . . Ever since I became interested in Bach’s music, I have never ceased to ask myself how to make the modern grand piano - which has a rich fundamental sound but a reduced volume of harmonics compared to the harpsichord - produce an essentially “well-tempered” impression on the listener... But for me it was not a question of instrumental history, but of interpretation.'

Published in Amsterdam in the mid-seventeenth century, Der Fluyten Lust-Hof (The Garden of Flute Delights) is a collection of variations for solo flute on the ‘hits’ of European music of the time, borrowed from such composers as Caccini, Dowland, Bull and Moulinié. Its Dutch compiler, Jacob van Eyck, was born blind. As carillonist of Utrecht Cathedral, subsequently in charge of all the city’s chimes of bells, he made fundamental advances in acoustics and bell tuning. Despite this busy activity, he also found time to play the recorder as a virtuoso, especially ‘to entertain strollers in the garden of St John’s Church in the evening with the sound of his little flute’. It was probably the repertory built up in this context that he published under the title Der Fluyten Lust-Hof. For this recording, François Lazarevitch uses instruments characteristic of Van Eyck’s time: not only the recorder, but also and above all cylindrical transverse flutes, as well as a seventeenth-century musette.

After a first recital album devoted to Rachmaninoff, Shostakovich and Denisov in the company of the pianist Jonas Vitaud, Victor Julien-Laferrière now presents two cello concertos by Antonín Dvorák (op.104) and Bohuslav Martinu (no.1, H196), accompanied by the Liège Royal Philharmonic Orchestra under the direction of Gergely Madaras.

Accompanied by his ensemble Le Banquet Céleste, the countertenor Damien Guillon places his voice at the service of a programme of vocal pieces by the German Baroque composer Philipp Heinrich Erlebach, a large part of whose output was destroyed in a fire at Rudolstadt Castle in 1735. Among the works that have come down to us are the two collections Harmonische Freude musikalischer Freunde, containing respectively fifty and twenty-five arias for one to four solo voices, instrumental ensemble and basso continuo. Most of the German texts of these pieces depict humankind at the mercy of an unpredictable and volatile destiny. Alongside natural phenomena such as storms, dark clouds and withered leaves, the poet also chooses the expression ‘bloody comets’ as a metaphor for torment and ‘the distress of the heart’. In fact, the biggest comet of the seventeenth century appeared in Europe in 1680: contemporaries feared these celestial bodies, seeing them as bad omens.

The Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France and Mikko Franck continue their collaboration with Alpha and here invite one of the label’s flagship pianists, Nelson Goerner. The programme is devoted to Richard Strauss, coupling several of the German composer’s early works. The Burleske for piano and orchestra, written at the age of twenty, is brimming with lyricism and Romantic ardour; its tone colours herald Strauss’s operas, while the orchestration anticipates his symphonic poems. The piano part is exceptionally virtuosic: Hans von Bülow, for whom Strauss wrote it, called it unplayable! The Serenade for thirteen wind instruments harks back to Mozart’s Gran Partita K361 for similar forces. This brief work in a single movement begins in a nocturnal colouring, as befits a serenade, before growing more animated and finally returning to the contemplative atmosphere of the opening. The symphonic poem for large orchestra Tod und Verklärung depicts the last hour of an artist’s life: the listener is gripped from the very first bars, which evoke the breathing and heartbeats of a dying man. Strauss allows us to experience his final moments and the transfiguration of his soul in one of the most glorious moments in the symphonic repertoire.

REVIEW:

Goerner opens the Burleske with blistering energy. The opening salvos (abetted by some driving timpani interjections) are dispatched with thrilling urgency, but he also brings a lovely wistful gentleness to the more lyrical episodes and delicacy to Strauss’s more playful moments. Mikko Franck and the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France offer dramatic and characterful support.

The early Serenade receives a big and generous performance in the Karajan mould (and clocking in at over 26 minutes) which offers many stirring moments in sound that is pleasingly rounded and blended.

– Gramophone

Corruption? Betrayal? Persecution? Tyranny? These subjects resonate with the current events of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. They also provide the subject matter of many seventeenth-century musical works. Kate Lindsey has chosen to devote this second Baroque recital with the English ensemble Arcangelo directed by Jonathan Cohen (following Arianna in 2020, ALPHA576) to the figure of Nero. Scarlatti, Handel and Monteverdi wrote works focusing on this tragic protagonist and his entourage, including his mother Agrippina and his wives (Poppaea and Octavia). Interpreted with incredible intensity by the American mezzo-soprano, the programme features world premiere recordings of two cantatas: Alessandro Scarlatti’s La morte di Nerone (c.1690) and Bartolomeo Monari’s La Poppea (1685). Tenor Andrew Staples and soprano Nardus Williams join Kate Lindsey for duets from L’incoronazione di Poppea, including the sensual ‘Pur ti miro’

200 years ago, on May 26th 1821, today's Berlin Concert Hall was inaugurated as “Königliches Schauspielhaus”. Destroyed as “Preußisches Staatstheater” during World War II, the building, located in eastern Berlin, was rebuilt during GDR times and reopened as “Konzerthaus” in 1984. The premiere of Carl Maria von Weber's Der Freischütz on June 18th 1821 was a highlight of the opening year. The work became his most popular opera and one of the key works of the 19th century. A few days later, the composer (who died at the age of only 40 in 1826), had another piece premiered at the “Königliches Schauspielhaus”: his brilliant Concert Piece for Piano and Orchestra op.79.

This year the Konzerthausorchester Berlin, with its principal conductor Christoph Eschenbach, will be celebrating these historic events. Weber holds a special place in the life of the great German conductor and pianist, as Der Freischütz was the first opera he saw at the age of ten. Eschenbach is being joined in this program, which combines overtures, arias and the famous concert piece, by two artists who reside at the Konzerthaus Berlin and are also Alpha artists: soprano Anna Prohaska and pianist Martin Helmchen.

REVIEW:

Martin Helmchen gives real substance to the Konzertstück by incorporating the profusion of flashy runs and roulades into long-breathed, expressive phrases, and also in the way he renders details exquisitely yet without exaggeration. Eschenbach and the orchestra deserve credit, too, for they match Helmchen's deft touch and broad colour palette. Note, too, how the strings' spectral tone immediately sets the frightful scene Aennchen paints in her Act 3 Romanze. Soprano Anna Prohaska is a marvellous storyteller, although it's her viscous legato that impresses most.

– Gramophone

After the success of the recent recording of works by Veress and Bartók, which won both a Gramophone Award and a BBC Music Magazine Award in 2020, the Lockenhaus Festival series, curated by its artistic director Nicolas Altstaedt, continues its journey through central Europe with Antonín Dvorák and his famous ‘Dumky’ Trio, named after a genre of Slavonic folksong generally performed by blind wandering minstrels who accompanied themselves on the kobza or bandura (twelve-string lute). Dvorák, whose father played the zither, immersed himself in this music and creatively translated its substance into his own music. The trio was premiered in 1891 and, in response to its ecstatic reception, Dvorák decided to perform it during his grand farewell tour before leaving for the United States. Zoltán Kodály’s Duo for violin and cello (1914), which completes the program, also bears witness to the influence of folk music.

REVIEWS:

Barnabás Kelemen has the passion, the imagination, the intelligence, the sense of place and ethnicity, the style, and the allfacilitating technique to bring the 'earth and-air' masterpieces of Bartók and Kodály fully to life, the loose-limbed manner of his phrasing as flexible as any folk fiddler, his tonal range and the agility of his bow varying from bar to bar. No player currently treading the boards is quite as exciting and this extraordinary disc finds him in intimate and animated musical conversation with like-minded musicians.

– Gramophone

Every phrase is carefully considered, and each one is communicated with passion. Everywhere there is a wealth of fascinating detail…Some may find the players’ approach a little too intense, but for wholehearted commitment these performances are outstanding.

This programme, performed by Chiara Banchini and Ensemble 415, gives a glimpse of Mozart’s early compositions, written in Salzburg, most of which were intended for performance at social events or in the open air. In pieces such as the Serenata notturna and the Concertone, one perceives a Mozart who was quick to satisfy both the demands of the Salzburg nobility and his own, which led him from adolescence onwards to develop an original language, free of stereotyped formal codes. After the success of the Red, Yellow, Blue, Pink and White collections (a total of sixty reissues) which gave a new lease of life to the pearls of the Baroque catalogues from our house labels, here are fourteen new titles which offer a chance to discover other treasures, whether Baroque or dating from an earlier or later era. Like the most recent series, this sixth instalment opens out onto the Classical repertory (Mozart by Ensemble 415 and Chiara Banchini) and the Renaissance (Févin by Doulce Mémoire and Denis Raisin Dadre); recordings that are an integral part of Alpha’s identity and history. Fourteen reissues performed by the leading musicians in the field, most of which received one or more awards on their original release. Proper booklets accompany the discs, with notes in three languages (French, English, German). Photographers from all over the world have been selected to illustrate the covers, this time with the guiding thread of the color green, a symbol of nature, fertility ... and hope!

The violinist Amandine Beyer interprets Bach’s famous Sonatas and Partitas, veritable bravura pieces that push back the limits of the instrument, at the intersection between the German solo tradition and the Italian concerto. After the success of the Red, Yellow, Blue, Pink and White collections (a total of sixty reissues) which gave a new lease of life to the pearls of the Baroque catalogues from our house labels, here are fourteen new titles which offer a chance to discover other treasures, whether Baroque or dating from an earlier or later era. Like the most recent series, this sixth instalment opens out onto the Classical repertory (Mozart by Ensemble 415 and Chiara Banchini) and the Renaissance (Févin by Doulce Mémoire and Denis Raisin Dadre); recordings that are an integral part of Alpha’s identity and history. Fourteen reissues performed by the leading musicians in the field, most of which received one or more awards on their original release. Proper booklets accompany the discs, with notes in three languages (French, English, German). Photographers from all over the world have been selected to illustrate the covers, this time with the guiding thread of the color green, a symbol of nature, fertility...and hope!

Inspired by the practice of Nuove Musiche advocated by Caccini in 1602, this album takes us to the foundations of modern Italian vocal music: a journey to the heart of the musical innovation that led to opera, presented by the singer Marco Beasley, the organist and harpsichordist Guido Morini and the Ensemble Accordone. After the success of the Red, Yellow, Blue, Pink and White collections (a total of sixty reissues) which gave a new lease of life to the pearls of the Baroque catalogues from our house labels, here are fourteen new titles which offer a chance to discover other treasures, whether Baroque or dating from an earlier or later era. Like the most recent series, this sixth instalment opens out onto the Classical repertory (Mozart by Ensemble 415 and Chiara Banchini) and the Renaissance (Févin by Doulce Mémoire and Denis Raisin Dadre); recordings that are an integral part of Alpha’s identity and history. Fourteen reissues performed by the leading musicians in the field, most of which received one or more awards on their original release. Proper booklets accompany the discs, with notes in three languages (French, English, German). Photographers from all over the world have been selected to illustrate the covers, this time with the guiding thread of the color green, a symbol of nature, fertility... and hope!

Published in 1694, these sonatas by Johann Paul von Westhoff are among the most fascinating pieces in the repertory. The inspiration and stylistic audacity displayed by their composer are perfectly reflected in this recording by David Plantier and Les Plaisirs du Parnasse. After the success of the Red, Yellow, Blue, Pink and White collections (a total of sixty reissues) which gave a new lease of life to the pearls of the Baroque catalogues from our house labels, here are fourteen new titles which offer a chance to discover other treasures, whether Baroque or dating from an earlier or later era. Like the most recent series, this sixth instalment opens out onto the Classical repertory (Mozart by Ensemble 415 and Chiara Banchini) and the Renaissance (Févin by Doulce Mémoire and Denis Raisin Dadre); recordings that are an integral part of Alpha’s identity and history. Fourteen reissues performed by the leading musicians in the field, most of which received one or more awards on their original release. Proper booklets accompany the discs, with notes in three languages (French, English, German). Photographers from all over the world have been selected to illustrate the covers, this time with the guiding thread of the color green, a symbol of nature, fertility...and hope!

Johann Sebastian Bach’s Trio Sonatas for organ, masterpieces in their intrinsic poetic power, were composed between 1723 and 1725, in his early days as Kantor in Leipzig. They are performed here by Benjamin Alard, First Prize winner in the organ section of the Freiburg Bach Competition. After the success of the Red, Yellow, Blue, Pink and White collections (a total of sixty reissues) which gave a new lease of life to the pearls of the Baroque catalogues from our house labels, here are fourteen new titles which offer a chance to discover other treasures, whether Baroque or dating from an earlier or later era. Like the most recent series, this sixth instalment opens out onto the Classical repertory (Mozart by Ensemble 415 and Chiara Banchini) and the Renaissance (Févin by Doulce Mémoire and Denis Raisin Dadre); recordings that are an integral part of Alpha’s identity and history. Fourteen reissues performed by the leading musicians in the field, most of which received one or more awards on their original release. Proper booklets accompany the discs, with notes in three languages (French, English, German). Photographers from all over the world have been selected to illustrate the covers, this time with the guiding thread of the color green, a symbol of nature, fertility...and hope!

Nino Rota was not only the man who wrote film scores for Fellini (La strada etc), René Clément and King Vidor. He was also a twentieth-century great composer. A child prodigy, he studied in America with Fritz Reiner, crossed paths with Toscanini, Igor Stravinsky and many others. Éric Le Sage, Emmanuel Pahud, Paul Meyer, Daishin Kashimoto, Aurélien Pascal and their partners from the Salon de Provence festival pay tribute to his music with the Piccola Offerta Musicale (Little Musical Offering), composed in 1943 at the age of twenty-two, alongside a Nonet and a Trio for flute, violin and piano, both written in the late 1950s. The Trio for clarinet, cello and piano (1973) comes from Rota’s last creative period and has all the characteristics of his mature works.

REVIEW:

The performances from the talented group of musicians here are impeccable; they respond with vitality and a gratifying sense of interplay. Memorable, too, are the polished playing, impeccable ensemble, and range of tone colours created. I’m unsure why the eleven players have not given themselves a name.

This is an entirely compelling album of Rota chamber works. If you know Rota’s music only from his film scores, this would be an ideal place to start exploring his legacy. Those familiar with Rota’s music, even if there are duplications, will find this a valuable addition for the quality of the playing alone.

– MusicWeb International