Ferruccio Busoni (Empoli 1866 – Berlin 1924) died the same year as Puccini and was born when Puccini was a child, yet he was way more than an opera composer. While he lived several years in Trieste and some time in Bologna, he mainly lived abroad and spent the second half of his life in Berlin. Way more than a composer, he was a wide-ranging artist and musician, an acclaimed concert pianist and sought-after piano teacher, a learned reviser of piano music, and the author of many and varied pieces. Busoni was also an aesthete, an intellectual, a music reformer, and author of texts on musical topics. A child prodigy, he wrote the Symphonische Suite for orchestra at the age of 17.
Nicola Bignami and Lucija Majstorovic brilliantly face the arduous task of performing the two monumental and demanding sonatas for violin and piano that the composer wrote at twenty-four (first sonata) and at thirty-two (second sonata), in which the equal and dialogical relationship between the two instruments combines with a wealth of invention with respect for the great tradition.

Admiration for the French composer, harpsichordist and organist, Louis Couperin continues to grow steadily today, but it was not so during his lifetime. The first important edition of his work in modern times, in its latest revision by Thurston Dart (used for this set), catalogues 129 pieces as authentic. Collectively, they help to place Couperin among the greatest composers of the 17th century alongside Frescobaldi, Chambonnieres, Froberger, and D’Anglebert.

Though he wrote religious works as well as chamber music, harpsichord music forms the lion’s share of Louis’s nephew François Couperin’s output: 235 pieces in all, most of them published in the four volumes (or Livres) of Pièces de Clavecin, divided into 27 ordres.

Like the better-known Jacques Duphly and Claude Balbastre, Armand-Louis Couperin belongs to the last generation of French harpsichord composers. The modesty and success which profited Armand-Louis handsomely during his lifetime rather dimmed the light of his creative legacy. He published little during his own lifetime. One of only a few opuses, the magnificent volume of Pièces de clavecin deserves consideration alongside the viol fantazias of Purcell and the Lachrymae of Dowland, examples of lateness in music, where the fruit has ripened beyond high summer, yet there is much of interest in these pieces, beyond their historical value at the end of a distinguished family line.

Armand-Louis’s son, Gervais-François Couperin, studied with his father then replaced him at the Sainte-Chapelle organ. His keyboard compositions reveal a profound understanding of the delicate nuances and expressive capabilities of the harpsichord, characterized by elegance, refinement and meticulous attention to ornamentation. Yet Gervais-François was also a virtuoso on the new instrument of his day, the fortepiano, and this set features his music performed on that keyboard of greatly expanded expressivity.

REVIEW:

Brilliant Classics’ Couperin Dynasty collection usefully gathers together François’s four dazzling books of harpsichord pieces (Michael Borgstede), Massimo Berghella playing harpsichord suites by Louis (historically the first important member of the Couperin family), harpsichord pieces by Armand-Louis (cousin of François) played by Yago Mahugo and catchy, vivacious fortepiano music by Gervais-François (a son of Armand-Louis and a contemporary of Beethoven) adeptly performed by Simone Pierini. The range of music on offer stretches from Gervais-François’s feisty variations to François’s majestic Passacaille, one of the finest masterpieces in the genre. It’s a musical feast to relish, more varied than you might expect. Excellent sound, too, and informative notes by Michael Borgstede, Peter Quantrill, Brigida Cristallo and Massimo Berghella.

— Gramophone

These four central-European composers share a history of persecution and emigration but survived the worst excesses of the time. Their works for flute and piano reflect very different aesthetic positions. Schoenberg’s uncompromising Sonata for Flute and Piano is an arrangement of his Wind Quintet, Op. 26 of 1923–24 made a few years later by the Austrian composer Felix Greissle. The Suite by Ernst Krenek is delightfully neo-Classical, whilst the Czech Emil Burian crafted an eloquent, light-hearted work, heard here in its first recording. Paul Dessau’s Guernica was written for piano in 1937 and memorialises the tragedy of that bombed city.

The first volume in an adventurous new series juxtaposing the piano music of Shostakovich with his most talented pupils. All three of the younger composers here demonstrate the individuality of their own voice.

Least known of them now is German Galynin (1922-1966). In 1951, the year in which he paradoxically obtained the Stalin Prize for his Epic Poem on Russian Themes, Galynin began suffering from schizophrenia that he was admitted to an asylum, and continued to received psychiatric care for the rest of his short life. He wrote this five-movement Suite in 1945, while still a student at the Conservatoire, and it alternates somewhat prophetically between moods of mania and melancholy.

Shostakovich himself cited Alemdar Karamanov (1934-2007) as one of the most original composers of his time. Ukrainian born but of Turkish parentage, he studied in Moscow before returning to Crimea, converting to Christianity and thus consigning himself to obscurity at the time, and his later music shares an experimental, visionary quality with contemporary pioneers such as Schnittke, Denisov, and Gubaidulina. The Variations for piano (1962) belong to the last phase of his Moscow period.

The career of Boris Tchaikovsky (1925-1996) proceeded along smoother lines. The single-movement Sonatina from 1946 is again a student work, albeit a highly talented and disciplined one, with the kind of thorough-going understanding of Classical form which Shostakovich evidently instilled in and expected from his students.

Fernanda Damiano juxtaposes these pianistic rarities with several pieces which demonstrate the breadth of style and confidence of artistic personality that made Shostakovich stand out from his contemporaries. Alongside the fleet-fingered brilliance of the Three Fantastic Dances and the Polka from his ballet The Golden Age, she plays a trio of Preludes and Fugues (Nos. 1, 7 & 24) from the collection he wrote for Tatiana Nikolaeva, another pupil, in 1950-51.

Part of the Naxos label's The Music of Brazil series. This album of works for cello and violin by José Antônio de Almeida Prado is performed by violinist Emmanuele Baldini (concertmaster of the Sâo Paolo Symphony Orchestra) and prize-winning cellist Rafael Cesario. Includes four world premiere recordings. Sinfonia dos orixás (8.574411) and the First Piano Concerto (8.574225) are also available.

REVIEW:

In the series of recordings with works by the Brazilian composer Almeida Prado, the current installment is dedicated to his works for violin, cello, or both together.

Le Livre magique de Xangô (Shango’s magic book) was composed in his postmodern phase and is aesthetically characterized by Afro-Brazilian religiosity. In Das Cirandas, he weaves in folk tunes from various regions of Brazil. Almeida Prado dedicated the lively violin sonata to his violinist-daughter. The Four Seasons was a compulsory piece for the second Brazilian music competition in 1984. Each section is conceived as a study. The Capriccio for solo violin has a lyrical nature. For the cello, Praeambulum was inspired by Antonio Meneses as an introduction to Bach’s third cello suite.

The violinist Emmanuele Baldin gives Prado’s works an exciting mixture of charming folk and modern-sounding sections. As an accomplished instrumentalist and very familiar with Brazilian music, he finds the ways and means to model the character of the pieces and exude Brazilian flair. In the Violin Sonata, the Capriccio and the Four Seasons, he is able to demonstrate his skills as a soloist, which he does convincingly.

The cellist Rafael Cesario makes his solo appearance in Praeambulum, which he also performs successfully. In Das Cirandas and Le Livre magique de Xangô, he performs his parts alongside the violinist in an appealing and confident manner.

-- Pizzicato

Stravinsky, Bartok and Martinu were established international figures when they wrote these works for violin, travelling across Europe as well as the United States. With the onset of World War Two, all three composers would ultimately emigrate because of their rejection of fascism. In an age of political upheaval and cultural displacement, each of them found an individual approach to reinventing the language of tonal music, laying down roots in the west without abandoning their Eastern European identities. While the Russian-born Stravinsky was experimenting with possibilities of modern violin technique in his concerto, Martinu took these efforts a step further in his Suite concertante by blending the sounds of his native Bohemia with the colours of French neo-classicism. In the Rhapsodies, Bartok turned to the folk music of Hungary and Romania.

Frank Peter Zimmermann, joined here by the Bamberger Symphoniker and its conductor Jakub Hrůša, continues his exploration of the great violin works of the 20th century after his acclaimed recordings of works by Hindemith (BIS-2024), Shostakovich (BIS-2247) as well as Martinu and Bartok (BIS-2457), a recording unanimously acclaimed by the critics, gaining a Diapason d’or and named ‘Concerto Choice’ by BBC Music Magazine, ‘Editor’s Choice’ by Gramophone and one of Classica’s ‘Chocs de l’annee’.

REVIEW:

With Jakub Hrůša and his super-attentive Bamberg orchestra, Frank Peter Zimmermann trumps the self-confident projection of his younger self. Stravinsky’s framing movements seem defter now, particularly the opening Toccata with its chortling bassoons.

-- Gramophone

Their interpretation of Stravinsky’s Violin Concerto becomes an equally sarcastic and seriously elaborated confrontation. Even in the opening Toccata, taken from the baroque form, the notes buzz and chirp like a summer meadow full of birds and insects. In general, the performers give the work a floating lightness that dispels everything earthly. At no point do you notice the technical demands.

In the two arias, too, the participants maintain the intensity and musical pressure. The concluding Capriccio then gives Zimmermann another opportunity to let his violinistic fireworks leap, jump, and shine in an artfully choreographed manner. He knows he is in the best of company with his accompanists, as they also carry the sarcastic aspects of the score as well as demonstrating the ambiguity with pointed articulation.

Bartok’s rhapsodies are constructed in two parts, like a Csárdás, which has a slow and a fast part. Bartok has retained much of the character of the music here, which he borrowed from folk melodies. The performers know how to show this raw side of the music of the people with verve and well-dosed energy.

The first version of the Suite concertante already had a difficult genesis, as Martinů was, to put it casually, lovesick during its composition. The elegiac music of the meditation therefore has a special depth of expression, which Zimmermann and his accompanists shape with deep feeling.

Martinů created the fundamentally new second version of the suite primarily at the request of the soloist Samuel Dushkin. The Aria from this version links up with Stravinsky’s concerto, as does the same original soloist. Many of the elements that characterize Martinů’s works – references to Czech folk music, vitality, changing rhythmic patterns and a mostly traditional harmony that does not exclude harsh dissonances – can also be found in the suite.

Zimmermann also demonstrates his violinistic skills in the suite, which are characterized by elegance and mastery of the instrument, in an engaging and memorable, yet spontaneous manner, so that the suite shines with fresh brilliance and brings Martinů to the trapeze. Hruša and the Bambergers are still to be found at his side and are audibly at ease with the music of their not only geographical neighborhood.

-- Pizzicato

Georges Migot (1891–1976) authored a vast oeuvre founded on two principles that in various ways pervade all of his work: a nationalist aesthetic and a link to the past. This emerges and is reinforced in repeated references to the French lutenists of old, as well as troubadours and trouveÌres, folk song and ancient monodic forms, particularly plainchant. Rather than limit himself to copying their external structure, however, Migot sought to extract the spirit, sensitivity, grace and sense of freedom from these historic forms, which he believed better suited the infinite nature of human sensitivity. Despite strong and professed ties to his contemporaries Faureì and Debussy, Migot cannot be placed in any school or branch of 20th-century music.

Pour un Hommage aÌ Claude Debussy (composed May 1924) coincided with the Paris debut of Andreìs Segovia and is dedicated to him. Migot composes lines with a modal flavour supported by rich and resonant arpeggiated chords, with densely packed notes providing a thorough exploration of all the instrument’s colours.

His four-movement Sonate pour guitare, two PreÌludes pour 2 guitares dedicated to the Argentinian Duo Pomponio-ZaÌrate, and a substantial and tricky Sonate pour 2 guitares date to the early 1960s. These pieces have a more clearly defined and linear style, and feature a profound musical idiom, brimming with emotion.

The three movements of the Sonate pour flu^te et guitare – dedicated to Brazilian guitarist Turíbio Santos – are stylistically similar to the above compositions. Migot gives both instruments various solo opportunities, and the two accompany each other, both during the more evanescent passages, where the writing is extremely sparse, and in more densely notated sections.

The 3 Chansons de joye et de souci originate in a cycle of 6 PoeÌmes setting Pierre Moussarie for voice and piano. They were arranged for voice and guitar in 1969 by the composer himself. In these, his final works for guitar, Migot provides us with a sample of his highly refined aesthetic, obtaining sounds not commonly heard on the instrument.

Max Reger (1873–1916) is noted for his devotion to Johann Sebastian Bach. His 3 Suites for Viola Solo Op. 131d – completed a year before his death – belong to a collection of works with an ancient feel in the style of Bach, which also comprises music for solo violin, for two violins and for cello. The three solo viola suites all emphasize the polyphonic nature of an instrument that to this day is still considered monodic.

Henri Vieuxtemps (1820–1881) was a key exponent of the Franco-Belgian school of advanced virtuoso violin technique and a contributor to the founding of the Russian school. His Capriccio per viola sola, Op. 55 begins with the instruction Lento, con molta espressione, a character that pervades the entire work. It is packed with rapid virtuosic passages that are challenging both for the left hand and the bow, maintaining a constant dialogue across a range of timbres.

In the 1970s, following years of avant-garde experimentation, the Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki (1933–2020) returned to a more ‘classic’ style, with conventional notation and melodies or small melodic intervals at the heart of his works. This is true of his Cadenza for Solo Viola, written in 1984. It is considered a piece in its own right, despite close links with the Viola Concerto written a year earlier.

Benjamin Britten (1913–1976) composed his Elegy for solo viola in 1930. Discovered only after his death, it can be seen as a youthful musical reflection and commentary on his miserable boarding school experience.

The Élégie for solo viola by Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971), composed in 1944, arguably has the structure of a two-part invention, divided up into exposition, fugue and recapitulation, and the various stages highlight the instrument’s polyphony with echoes of Bach.

A beloved trio of Romantic violin sonatas in the passionate and assured hands of an exciting Italian violinist near the start of her career: an auspicious debut on Brilliant Classics.

Germana Porcu Morano has produced a gripping account of the three violin sonatas by Edvard Grieg in partnership with one of the great Italian musicians of his generation, Bruno Canino. The pianist brings decades of experience to bear on parts which, especially in the testing Third Sonata, demand a virtuosity beyond anything in the Lyric Pieces. Meanwhile Porcu Morano’s urgently communicative musicianship is well suited to works which exemplify the fascinating tension between Grieg’s musical nationalism and his cosmopolitan outlook as a composer with colleagues and friends across Europe.

There are Norwegian elements to all three sonatas – Grieg’s teacher, Niels W Gade, even pronounced his verdict on the Second as ‘too Norwegian’ – but in counterbalance to the folk-like melodies which especially bring a rustic character to both slow movements and finales, there is a breadth of form and broad current of German romanticism to be appreciated in the first movements. Grieg himself took particular pride in the Third, a work of full maturity written in 1886 unlike the student efforts of the first two sonatas, and Porcu Morano’s performance captures the composer’s sense of its ‘broader horizons’.

Winner of the 30th edition of Michelangelo Abbado violin competition held in Milan in 2009, Germana Porcu Morano studied in Bergamo, and has gone on to win several other national and international prizes. She has performed as a soloist and in chamber ensembles across Europe and in China. She is a member of the Paganini String Quartet, with plans afoot to record the complete quartets by Paganini.

The most complete set of Lekeu’s piano music ever recorded, demonstrating the full range of genius cut off in his prime.

After his death from typhoid fever at the age of just 24, in January 1894, Debussy and many others lamented the passing of a musician with the world at his feet. ‘There is a Belgian school,’ wrote Debussy in 1896. ‘Next to Franck, Lekeu is one of its most remarkable representatives, this Lekeu, the only musician to my knowledge whom Beethoven really inspired.’

Partly due to his sudden demise, very little of his extant music has been published; among the works for piano only the monumental, five-movement Sonata in G minor, an album of three beautiful short pieces written in 1892, and a Mazurka. Jacopo Salvatori demonstrates, on this groundbreaking new album, how much else there is for pianophiles and enthusiasts for French romanticism to enjoy.

In his booklet note, Salvatori describes how he tracked down the manuscripts for several pieces heard here effectively for the first time. They include a beautiful four voices fugue written in 1889, a piece clearly influenced by the teaching of Franck. There is also a series called Morceaux egoists, of which some are lost, but there are pointers in what survives towards a different side of Lekeu to the one known from the familiar, Wagnerian richness of the Violin Sonata. Even the Piano Sonata takes on a different complexion as potentially more of a Suite, somewhat loosely assembled, but unified by a poetic motto from the writer George Vanor. Shedding such light on Lekeu makes Salvatori’s album a unique and valuable contribution to the appreciation of a still little-known but powerfully talented voice of the Belle Epoque.

The three Suites recorded on this CD (BWV 1007, BWV 1008 and BWV 1010) were transcribed for guitar by the performers themselves, following a practice customary for Bach and absolutely familiar to him (the Fifth Suite for cello has come down to us in two versions, one for cello and one for lute: we are not sure which came first). One should therefore recognise the full aesthetic legitimacy of the guitar transcription of these compositions, a practice, moreover, that has now been established for decades. This procedure is ultimately legitimised by the primacy, in Bach’s language, of the harmonic and contrapuntal dimension over their sonic realisation, a primacy that led Ferruccio Busoni, for whom the concept of “transcription” occupies a position of absolute centrality in his aesthetic thought, to transcribe for piano not only numerous compositions for organ by Thomaskantor, but also the Chaconne from the Second Partita in D minor for solo violin. With specific regard to the guitar, one cannot fail to mention the name of Andrés Segovia, who transcribed for his instrument and recorded in 1946 the highly famous Chaconne.

Conductor Dalia Stasevka, who received the BBC Music Magazine’s ‘Personality of the Year’ Award in 2023, and the Lahti Symphony Orchestra present three works by the Finnish composer Helvi Leiviskä, who was Finland’s first major female composer. Initially inspired by the language of late Romanticism – she mentioned Brahms as her favorite composer – Leiviskä developed an original, modern style that eschewed all schools, convinced that it was more important to tread one’s own path than to follow fashionable styles. While her output may seem small in terms of quantity, it more than makes up for it in the quality of the works, especially her symphonies, a genre she considered ‘the highest manifestation of music’.

This disc presents three works: the Sinfonia Brevis, a confidently crafted work reminiscent of Sibelius; the austere, restrained, melancholy and at times very dissonant Symphony No. 2, which could be called ‘tragic’; and the Suite for orchestra No. 2, which uses material from a powerfully descriptive score originally composed for a film. This recording bears witness to the ‘Leiviskä renaissance’ that has taken place in recent years, which has contributed to the rediscovery of a neglected but important voice in Finnish music.

Franz Liszt’s project of transcribing all of Beethoven’s symphonies took him 25 years to complete. His approach retains a deep fidelity to the original score with piano writing that is sumptuously rich and always perfectly suited to the instrument and its possibilities. A celebration of music as an independent and absolute language, Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony is considered the perfect utterance of his musical philosophy, while the Second Symphony looks to the future as it wrestles with the conventions of symphonic tradition. Gabriele Baldocci’s second volume in this edition (CDS7771) was admired in ClassicsToday.com, in which the ‘Beethoven/Liszt ‘Eroica’ symphony transcription conveys an impressive, multi-levelled pianistic sheen’.

Tchaikovsky Ballet Suites was enormously successful when released in 2016, and now reappears in a stereo re-issue. The album had the sisters Mari and Momo Kodama together for the first time in the recording studio, on scintillating form in lively arrangements of music from Tchaikovsky's ballets Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty and Nutcracker. In another first, the release contains the first ever recording of Arensky's transcription of the timeless Nutcracker together with notable arrangements by Debussy and Rachmaninoff. The sisters Mari and Momo Kodama both pursue busy international careers. Momo specialises in French and Japanese composers and 20th century and contemporary composers; she has been widely praised for her 'attractive, lyrical tone' and 'technical brilliance'. Mari has established an international reputation for profound musicality and articulate virtuosity; she has recorded extensively for Pentatone. This album, which has been a huge streaming success on multiple DSPs, will now become available in Dolby Atmos as well, simultaneously to the physical stereo reissue.

German-born American composer Kurt Weill was a leading composer for the stage in the first half of the 20th century. He is best known for his fruitful collaborations with poet and playwright Bertolt Brecht. Their collaborations were hugely successful at the time, and remain popular. In this present recording, the Weill-Brecht collaboration is featured
in the classic The Seven Deadly Sins, possibly their most famous composition. Also presented in this release is the rarely heard yet charming Suite panameenne along with the ever popular orchestral suite from The Threepenny Opera.

This live concert recording, made in 1991 and 1993, was only ever released locally in Basel for a short period after the recording. FHR’s remastered recording will now make the release fully available on streaming platforms along with full worldwide CD distribution.