The established Salzburg violinist Thomas Albertus Irnberger has already played with the greatest musical personalities and leading ensembles of our time such as the Royal Philhamonic Orchestra (violin concertos by Beethoven and Elgar). For his most recent recording featuring the Violin Concerto in D by Igor Stravinsky, the versatile virtuoso Irnberger can refer to the collaboration with another world-class orchestra: the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Doron Salomon. In addition to this work from 1931, the Concert Fantasy on Russian themes in B minor Op. 33 by Stravinsky’s teacher Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov is included on this album. Together with Paul Kaspar, piano, with whom he shares a long artistic collaboration, Irnberger also interprets Stravinsky's Suite Italienne, the Duo concertant for violin and piano as well as the Danse russe (Petrushka) and Chanson russe (Mavra), borrowed from stage works.

The Ragazze Quartet contribute not only the sonority of four string instruments, but also the energy of four musicians, who at the same time, connect with the music and the singer. The challenge, was to remain faithful to Schubert while fully exploiting the extra possibilities offered by this instrumentation. The four members of the quartet have immersed themselves in the texts, and in collaboration with arranger Wim ten Have, have taken care to create a score perfectly suited to the baritone Martijn Cornet and themselves.

This programme portrays the ‘birth’ of the flute in France in the late 17th century and the following 40 years of its life as a new and fashionable instrument. A famous patron of the arts, King Louis XIV gathered elite composers and musicians to create the refinement, elegance and good taste that was demanded at his Paris Court. From the early petites pièces to more virtuoso suites and sonatas with their ornamented lyricism and grand dance rhythms, the mellow, robust and almost husky sounds of flutes from this period blend and weave around each other like the voices of two singers.

Camille Saint-Saens was involved in every aspect of French music during his long lifetime, and his frequent travels led to a fascinating mixture of Western music with Moorish and African elements in works such as Orient et Occident and the Suite algérienne. Saint-Saëns wrote few works for winds, but the grand biblical themes of Samson et Dalila, patriotic military traditions and the dignity of a British coronation all lend themselves perfectly to arrangement. In The Carnival of the Animals, the roaring lions are superbly evocative; while his perspectives on English and Scottish dances in ballet movements from Henry VIII are brilliantly imaginative.

SOMM RECORDINGS announces the first release of never before available performances by one of the defining partnerships of modern American music in the specially priced two-album set George Szell and the Cleveland Orchestra: The Forgotten Recordings. Long considered one of America’s “Big Five” orchestras, the Cleveland Orchestra entered its second century in 2018 and earlier this year was hailed by The New York Times as “America’s finest [orchestra] still”.

The Forgotten Recordings features eight historic performances made for the Book-of-the-Month Club in 1954 and 1955 – seven of which are first releases – that have been restored and remastered by the multi-award-winning audio restoration engineer Lani Spahr, who also provides extensive and informative booklet notes. Three works – Bach’s Third Orchestral Suite (BWV 1068), a revealing engagement by Szell with a composer he is not usually associated with, Smetana’s The Moldau and Strauss’s Till Eulenspiegel (with an early spotlight on legendary horn player Myron Bloom) were recorded in mono in a remarkably productive session on Christmas Eve, 1954.From October 1955 in stereo recordings are two works by Brahms – his Haydn Variations and the Academic Festival Overture, two symphonies – Mozart’s No.39 and Schumann’s Fourth – and a Stravinsky Firebird Suite that “crackles with energy”. “Here”, says Spahr, “we can appreciate that the orchestra was well on its way to becoming, in Szell’s words, ‘this glorious instrument... that perfectly reflects my musical ideals’.”

REVIEW:

George Szell’s tenure as music director of the Cleveland Orchestra began in 1946 and ended with his death in 1970. He can be credited for transforming the orchestra into a first class ensemble, with its own characteristic sound and style. When he first accepted the position, he vowed to "dedicate all [his] efforts…to make The Cleveland Orchestra second to none in quality of performance." Musicians were hired and fired in an effort to achieve this goal – a warm, refined sound, clarity and technical perfection, demanding total commitment from the players. His lofty goal was eventually achieved.

These ‘Forgotten’ recordings were made for the Book-of-the-Month Club (BOMC), a mail order outfit that dealt with popular books sold by subscription. In 1954 it made the decision to branch out into classical LPs, with accompanying analysis of the works by such noted writers as Thomas Scherman and Deems Taylor. Many of the issues were licensed from labels such as Vanguard, Vox and Decca, conducted by some notable names - Max Rudolf, Alfred Wallenstein, Fritz Stiedry and Leonard Bernstein. George Szell was also approached by the company and was happy to accept, considering it a means of supplementing his musician’s income.

On December 24 1954, the first recording session took place at the Masonic Auditorium, Cleveland, with the Bach, Smetana and Richard Strauss works, music that had recently featured in subscription concerts. The session was recorded in mono. The rest of the works featured in the set date from 1955 and are in stereo.

Bach is not a composer one usually associates with Szell. Though HIP had a long way to go, Szell pares his orchestra down, and employs a harpsichord continuo. Tempi throughout don’t drag, with the dance movements being quite animated. The ubiquitous Air is nicely paced. There’s some wonderfully refined woodwind playing in Smetana’s Moldau (Vitava), and the recording balance enables the river’s rippling undercurrents to form a vivid backdrop. Szell never overdoes it with the brass, which lets down some performances, but steers everything along maintaining balance and proportion. The quieter moments are quite magical. Strauss’ Till Eulenspiegel features the renowned horn player Myron Bloom in one of his first appearances on record. A year later he became the orchestra’s principal horn. The performance captures the very essence of the witty, light hearted, mischievous prankster, and reveals the discipline and virtuosity of the Cleveland players, especially in the brass and woodwind sections.

Over three days in October 1955, five more works were recorded for BOMC, this time in the new stereophonic sound. Szell takes a rather more relaxed view of Mozart’s Symphony No.39, which is free-flowing, refined and eloquently phrased. The Menuetto is lively with a distinct spring in its step, and the finale is truly exhilarating. There’s a bracing account of Brahms’ Academic Festival overture, infused with spirit and celebration. Szell’s approach is warm-hearted in the composer’s Variations on a Theme by Haydn. The performance is well-paced and the variations are deftly-characterized.

There’s a purposeful reading of Schumann’s Fourth Symphony, soused throughout with drama and tension. The Romanze excels for its tender moments. Szell injects plenty of energy into the fourth movement, and the orchestra respond with gusto and panache. Stravinsky’s Firebird is heard in the 1919 version. It’s an atmospheric account of many moods. There’s the captivating lyricism of the Round of the Princess, which contrasts strikingly with the Infernal Dance of King Kastchei, where Szell invests the music with an extra ounce of punch and sizzle. I certainly concur with Lani Spahr that this is the highlight of the set.

Comparing the three mono recordings with those taped in stereo, the latter have a degree more bloom to the sound and register more presence. All the works featured are making a first appearance on CD, with the exception of Brahms’ Variations on a Theme by Haydn. These compelling aural documents have been expertly restored by Lani Spahr, who has also contributed the booklet notes, running to 19 pages. All in all, the entire project is an unmitigated success.

– MusicWeb International (Stephen Greenbank)

In November 1949, at the age of eight, Idil Biret entered the studios of ORTF (Radiodiffusion Television Francaise) in Paris and made her first recordings; these were works by Couperin, Bach, Beethoven and Debussy. In the following decades she made nearly 100 LPs and CDs, released on ten record labels (Pretoria, Vega, Decca, Atlantic/Finnadar, Pantheon, EMI, Naxos, Marco Polo, Alpha, BMP) and many recordings for radio and television stations around the world. These included the complete piano works of Brahms, Chopin and Rachmaninov as well as the Sonatas of Boulez and the Etudes of Ligeti. The Idil Biret Archive (IBA) is now bringing together her past and present recording; as the copyrights are obtained, old recordings no longer available commercially are being released together with her new recordings.

The transcriptions by Liszt of Beethoven's Symphonies, originally recorded for EMI, and the newly recorded 32 Sonatas and all the Piano Concertos of Beethoven were released by IBA and also made available in a box set. All the Piano Concertos of Liszt, Tchaikovsky, Schumann and Grieg and the nine LPs recorded for Atlantic/Finnadar in New York which include works by Boulez, Webern, Berg, Ravel and Stravinsky were also released. Among the recent new releases are Liszt's Etudes and the piano transcription of Berlioz's Harold en Italie, Schumann's Carnaval, Fantasie and other works, all five Piano Concertos of Hindemith and, in the Archive Edition, the early LPs made in France for Pretoria (Schumann, Brahms), Vega (Bartok, Prokofiev, Brahms, Beethoven) and Decca (Rachmaninov). IBA is distributed worldwide by Naxos.

This release features three distinct, scintillating performances of Ravel's Gaspard de la nuit, plus his early Sérénade grotesque.

REVIEWS:

...the inclusion of three decades’ versions of Gaspard de la nuit allows for some fascinating listening. The third piece in the suite, Scarbo, sounds largely the same in all the recordings and runs about the same amount of time, from 9:11 to 9:25. The nightmarish characteristics of the devilish dwarf are made clear throughout but are never overstated: there is a subtlety to Ravel’s portrayal that Biret captures very well.

-- Infodad

Though born in Turkey, Biret’s musical education was in France, where, as a child prodigy, she became the favourite pupil of the legendary mentor, Nadia Boulenger, her Ravel performances in the concert hall becoming a benchmark of good taste. If we turn the clock back to 1965, when she was twenty-four, and living in Paris, we find Decca, having bought out the French label, Vega—with whom Biret had a contract—offering her studio time to make two discs. The sessions were to include, Gaspard de la nuit, one of the first works she placed in her concert repertoire, and was intended for release on one LP. Sadly the test pressing showed the quality of the sound had fallen short of her expectations, and it was agreed not to publish it, the acetate masters being left with Biret. In recent times, those working in the new technological world expressed the possibility of restoring it to a quality that could prove acceptable to her. That included Mark-Obert Thorn, who has been responsible for a whole raft of restored discs from the 1960’s, many appearing on the Naxos Historic Label. It had to be as a ‘best endeavour’ release, though it does allow us to hear her youthful picture of water in the opening Ondine, where she closely follows the indications in the printed score. Ten years later, and now in New York, it seems to flow more naturally from her fingers, but it is the second, and pivotal picture of Le gibet, the difference is most noticeable. It is the picture of the dead body swinging from the gallows, that her first account has it metronomic evenness, while much slower in 1975, Biret is more intent on capturing the gruesome scene, which she chillingly achieved. Now we reach the beautiful sound of 1984, and in this final instalment we can add together all of the many virtues she has brought to the work in sound worthy of her performance.

-- David's Review Corner

As the probably apocryphal recipient of a kiss from the ailing and elderly Beethoven, Franz Liszt was celebrated by his contemporaries as ‘the’ successor, the keeper of the flame, no less than several other composers equally deserving of that accolade from Schubert and Schumann to Brahms and Wagner. The connection between Liszt and Beethoven, however, is particularly strong in the medium of the piano, through which they spoke to the audiences of their time with a voice of untrammelled authority and vigor. Liszt’s project to transcribe the nine symphonies of Beethoven occupied him, on and off, for almost three decades. His aim was not merely to compress all the crucial instrumental voices within the compass of a single keyboard and ten fingers. More ambitiously, his transcriptions strive to ‘grasp the spirit of the work as well as the letter’, as he indicated in a preface to the collection. The Liszt/Beethoven Fifth is certainly no less bold, striking or relentless a path-breaking piece than the original, perhaps especially suited to the piano medium by virtue of its first movement’s defining and intrinsically percussive nature, which has attracted interpreters of the calibre of Glenn Gould and Paul Badura-Skoda. Now the marvelously gifted Leonardo Pierdomenico joins their ranks, with a critically acclaimed Piano Classics debut of.’ little-known Liszt already under his belt: ‘a stunning debut’ according to Gramophone. ‘Would that half the seasoned Lisztians I know had Pierdomenico’s keen ear for stylistic differentiation within this half-century of repertory. His highly developed technique and cultivated sound, both adaptable to a variety of affects, are wedded to those twin essentials for artistic Liszt-playing: imagination combined with thoroughgoing, scrupulous musicality.

FANFARE SUITE, the latest from composer Mark John McEncroe and Navona Records, features six pieces originally scored for full orchestra on McEncroe’s 2015 album Affirmations & Aspirations. Now, with the help of the Sydney Scoring Orchestra, these sweeping and provocative pieces have been reimagined and rearranged for concert band. Evoking the promise of big horizons and wide open spaces, McEncroe’s compositions are reminiscent of Aaron Copland and Western films from the golden age of Hollywood. Still, the music of FANFARE SUITE is not rooted in a single geographic location; rather, the hopeful vitality of this music universally appeals to the human spirit.

Though there are thousands of languages and countless political differences across the world, people tend to come together through equally endless forms of music and dance. On THE SUITE, the Lowell Chamber Orchestra, under the direction of Orlando Cela, focuses the lens on the Baroque dance suite as a method of expression that’s ripe for international flavor, artistic individualism, and human storytelling. Suites by Georg Philipp Telemann and Johann Sebastian Bach examine the gallant style’s history and set the groundwork for modern interpretations. The Baroque vanguards pass the torch on to two contemporary composers, Anthony R. Green and Jose Elizondo, who shape and mold the style to match their own compositional artistry as they paint musical pictures of civil rights activism, heart-warming moments in the sun, and the passing of time. What results is an alchemical combination of the old and the new that not only celebrates the original Baroque form, but expands upon it with contemporary, cross-cultural flair.

An ‘illuminating’ series (Fanfare) reaches Volume 9, presenting the complete piano sonatas on instruments of the period. The French grand siècle is most often viewed through the gilt-framed mirrors of Versailles, showing the pomp and splendour, the feasts and formality of Louis XIV’s reign. However, the composers of his court took special pains to represent and analyze the human condition in all its moods, not least mourning and sadness. The entire aesthetic imaginary of this era is imbued with the power and charm of tears: the audience – in the words of philosopher Bernard de Fontenelle – wants ‘to be moved, agitated, [...] to shed tears. The pleasure one takes in crying is so curious that I cannot help but think about it.’ The aesthetic of sorrow and grief was so powerful that not even instrumental music could resist its charm. Marais, Hotteterre and their contemporaries wrote eloquent examples of the plainte and the tombeau as well as courantes and allemandes which conveyed a sad and lamenting mood, through slow tempos, minor modes dissonance and chromaticism. It is from this eloquent repertoire that Cordevento, expanded for the occasion to a five-person lineup, has assembled an imaginative programme. The lion’s share is drawn from two collections of suites en trio by Marin Marais and Antoine Dornel, performed by Erik Bosgraaf (recorder) and Robert Smith (treble viola da gamba) with their colleagues Izhar Elias, Israel Golani and Alessandro Pianu (respectively on baroque guitar, theorbo, harpsichord) providing attentive and generous continuo accompaniment. Erik Bosgraaf also takes the spotlight with a selection of pieces for solo recorder and basso continuo by Hotteterre, Philidor and Montéclair, while his Cordevento co-founders Izhar Elias and Alessandro Pianu contribute solo pieces by Campion and d’Anglebert.

REVIEW:

The aesthetics of grief and mourning have had a great influence on the instrumental music of Marin Marais, Pierre Philidor, and Jacques Hotteterre. This is expressed on the CD Le Plaintif, on which the Ensemble Cordevento has put together a program in which the recorders of Erik Bosgraaf in particular achieve special expressiveness.

– Pizzicato

When pianist Carsten Dahl went into the studio with his perennial fellow musicians, the bassist Niels Bo Davidsen and the drummer Stefan Pasborg, it was with a special dogma: Not to say a word throughout the recording. The album was created in a continuous sequence of first takes and everything was improvised without previous agreements or ideas except ’Falling Down’ and ’How I Hear Beauty’ based on some chords Dahl scratched down on a piece of paper in the studio. There is a natural, fluent and electric feeling in the music. The trio creates a series of intense pieces most of them no longer than 3-4 minutes, but together they constitute a suite-like process with stimulating variation in form and expression. ‘To me Mirrors Within is the picture of the collective and the universal’, Dahl says. ‘In the music we mirror ourselves in one another. But the mirror can also break and behind it is black’. Hereby he insinuate the both bright and dark sides of his own artist life. He has spoken in public about trauma, therapy and medicine. Music, painting and poetry are his creative responses. Mirrors Within points in the direction of the inner landscapes of music, those places in the mind where music can become ‘sound that bleeds, infect and flourish’, as written in the Brøndums Encyklopædi. Dahl, Davidsen & Pasborg have developed a special musical dialect together. We are way beyond instrumental skills, which are top class, but it is about much more than that. The best way perhaps to summarize the activities is with the word: empathy. Not as a feeling, but as an ability to participate in a mutual human action which otherwise could not be realized.

REVIEW:

Pianist Carsten Dahl joins together with bassist Bo Davidsen and drummer Stean Pasborg for an intriguing idea of putting together a series of first takes without any discussion or preparation. In this case, these gents turn the event into a rich collection of concise melodic moments.

The team gets a bit frisky on pieces like the frenetic “How I Hear Beautiful” and the Monkish bopper “Palilalia” and they show some quirky moments as Pasborg delivers some nifty brush work on a Spherical take of “Everything Happens to Me”. Dahl’s touch is rich on the pretty “Falling Down Down” and classy on “The Prayer.” Davidson supplies a big sound for “Coma” and the team swings hard on the hip “Turning Left”.  Impressive impressions.

-- Jazz Weekly (George W, Harris)

This new recording of Duo Beautiful Strings (Monika Urbanová - violin and Hedvika Moussa Bacha - harp) presents recordings of varied repertoire, ranging from baroque music to the present. The album opens with Josef Suk's Fairy Tale, thereafter Duo moves to 20th century music with D. Henson-Conant's Baroque Flamenco and Schindler's List of John T. Williams. The next "Žižkov Suite", contemporary composition by O. Urban, was written especially for Duo Beautiful Strings. The last two pieces take us back to 20th century - Fratres by Estonian composer Arvo Pärt and at the very end the artists have chosen Piazzolla's well known work The History of Tango.

TIBOR HARSÁNYI, a student of Zoltán Kodály at the Budapest Conservatory, lived in France from 1923 where he became one of the leading expatriate composers to form the group known as L’École de Paris. As the 4 Morceaux show, his piano music is notable for its variety of character and genre. The Piano Sonata reveals his enthusiasm for dance rhythms and for joyful lyricism as well as quietly sombre elements, while the Burlesques flirt with jazz. The Piano Suite conjures up a vivid series of atmospheres in a work that is songlike, dissonant and ambient. GIORGIO KOUKL is a Czech pianist/harpsichordist and composer. He studied at both the Conservatories of Zürich and Milan, where he took part in the masterclasses of Nikita Magaloff, Jacques Février and Stanislas Neuhaus, and with Rudolf Firkušný, friend and advocate of Czech composer Bohuslav Martin?. It was through Firkušný that Koukl first encountered Martin?‘s music, prompting him to search out his compatriot’s solo piano works. Since then he has developed these into an important part of his concert repertoire and is now considered one of the world’s leading interpreters of Martin?’s piano music. As a logical continuation of this work, Koukl has recorded the complete solo piano works of Paul Le Flem, Alexander Tcherepnin, Arthur Lourié, Vít?zslava Kaprálová, Witold Lutos?awski, and more recently, Alexandre Tansman, Vittorio Rieti and Tibor Harsányi.

The Geneva Chamber Orchestra has always ardently championed renowned Geneva composers such as Ernest Bloch, Frank Martin, Émile Jaques-Dalcroze, Xavier Dayer or Michael Jarrell. Geneva-based cellist Estelle Revaz has been artist-in-residence to the Geneva Chamber Orchestra since 2017-2018. For her second release on Solo Musica, BACH & FRIENDS - a musical dialogue between Bach’s Solo Cello Suites and works by major contemporary composers – she commissioned a new piece from Geneva composer Xavier Dayer. In the context of her residency, the choice of Frank Martin’s works for cello and orchestra was obvious, all the more so as Dutch musical director Arie van Beek provided a link between the composer’s Swiss origins and the Netherlands, his adopted country. Adding an original piece by Xavier Dayer to the programme seemed another obvious choice. Cantus II for solo cello resulted from a most fruitful collaboration between composer and performer and Xavier Dayer’s international profile fully justified this unique programme combination.

Growing up in Vienna, with its great Lied tradition, Hans Gál had written about 100 songs before leaving secondary school. He later destroyed them, along with all his other works composed prior to 1910, but between 1910 and 1921 he wrote many more. Except for the five songs of Op. 33, these were never published, and Gál himself would later refer to them as ‘laid aside’. Many of these songs were publicly performed at the time, however, often with the composer at the piano. Through the initiative of Christian Immler and Helmut Deutsch, 26 of the ‘laid-aside’ songs are now being made available to a modern audience. A labor of love for the performers, the project has had the support of the composer’s family – in fact the recording was produced by Hans Gál’s grandson, Simon Fox-Gál. The songs provide a missing link in Gál’s creative development, and show him engaging with a wide variety of poets, extending back from the twelfth-century (Walther von der Vogelweide) to contemporaries, such as Hermann Hesse and Richard Dehmel, by way of the classics (Heine, Mörike). Reflecting a taste for the exotic which was fashionable at the time, the selection also includes settings of poems by Rabindranath Tagore. The performers close their recital with the Op. 33 set, the only songs that Hans Gál did publish during his long career.

REVIEW:

This is a treasure-trove of songs in the tradition of Richard Strauss, melodically radiant and full of sensitivity to atmosphere. Immler is ideally suited to them, with expansive, radiant tone and splendid diction; Helmut Deutsch sets his peerless pianism at the disposal of composer and singer.

– BBC Music Magazine