Heino Eller (1887–1970) is the founding father of Estonian professional instrumental music, both as a masterful and original composer, and as a teacher of composition over half a century. His output of around 300 titles is almost exclusively dedicated to instrumental music. Though Eller wrote three symphonies, around a dozen symphonic poems, six string quartets and four piano sonatas, he is nevertheless essentially a master of the small form. Eller’s music is characterized by a bright pantheistic lyricism and a Nordic restraint in expression, whilst retaining a philosophically charged, at times epic undercurrent. This magnificent album is the first ever devoted to Eller’s music for violin, about half of which is represented here — including the demanding second of his two sonatas for violin and piano, the remarkable, hyper-expressionist Fantasy for solo violin, and the most popular, emblematic work in Estonian repertoire for the instrument, Pines.

Ravel was very happy with his second Violin Sonata, written between 1923 and 1927, whose second movement adopts the Afro-American blues. This wonderful sonata is characterized throughout by the contrast between the consistently fairly dry piano part and the smooth, melodic violin.

The Sonata for Violin and Cello, written between 1920 and 1922, is dedicated to Debussy, who had died in 1918, and the work could be thought of as an elegy for the composer. There are references to Debussy’s final chamber works.

A complex and emotional work, the magnificent Piano Trio of 1914 contains four movements all full of exoticism and color.

The definitive collection of Bonporti’s chamber music, including many first-ever recordings.

Labirinti Armonici is an Italian-based early-music ensemble with a string of Brilliant Classics albums to its credit, focusing on the neglected music of the north-Italian composer Francesco Antonio Bonporti (1672–1749). A priest like his contemporary Vivaldi, he focused his creative energies on music for the church and for chamber ensemble, and it is this impressive catalogue of work that Labirinti Armonici has documented.

Bonporti has by and large been heard only in excerpted, fragmentary form on collections of Italian-Baroque composers, but Labirinti Armonici reveal the true breadth of his creative personality. There are four surviving collections of stylish sonatas for two violins and continuo, published as Opp. 1, 2, 4, and 6. Labirinti Armonici take an imaginative approach to the continuo part, enriching the skeletal figured-bass line with cello, harpsichord, and organ in various combinations according to the mood and character of each specific sonata.

When separately issued, these collections won glowing praise from international reviewers, and this reissue makes an invaluable contribution to the field of Baroque chamber music available at a more accessible price than ever. ‘The overall effect is of a highly professional group at home with the repertoire. So little of Bonporti’s works have been recorded to the highest standards; let us hope this is a start of a revival!’ (Early Music Review)

According to Marek Toporowski, the French composer Hyacinthe Jadin (1776–1800) authored ‘the greatest masterpieces of the French literature for the fortepiano from the time of the Revolution.’ Despite dying in poverty from tuberculosis at the age of 25, Jadin accomplished much in his brief life, composing both orchestral and chamber music with a bias towards his own instrument, the piano. This includes concertos and the sonatas featured in this collection, which also offer an optional violin accompaniment. Although several published collections have not survived or been recovered, including a further 12 sonatas for the keyboard.

In a previous album on Brilliant Classics, Toporowski produced a definitive modern recording of Jadin’s Sonatas Opp. 4-6 (96958). In the present collection, he presents Opp. 1 and 3, along with Jadin’s trio of Op.1 string quartets in the composer’s own arrangement for piano and violin. Toporowski finds a pre-Romantic sensibility in this music, with tantalizing anticipations of Schubert, Weber, and even Mendelssohn in Jadin’s heightened language of expression, which ventures far beyond the conventional forms of his contemporaries.

An important point of reference for Jadin was nonetheless the music of Haydn. The Op.1 String Quartets, as played here in the composer’s transcription, are dedicated to Haydn and contain very obvious references to this composer’s style, particularly to his refined modulations. Jadin was also active in Paris while Jan Ladislav Dussek was living in the French capital. As a later co-creator of the London school of piano playing, Dussek seems also to have had a great influence on the young virtuoso. There are salient points of comparison between these sonatas, whether played solo on piano or with their optional violin part, and with the sonatas for the same forces written by Dussek and recently recorded for Brilliant Classics by Petra Somlai, Julia Huber, and Miriam Altmann.

Jadin’s music has never previously been documented in so comprehensive and stylish a manner as in this evolving series from Marek Toporowski, and the quartets receive their first recording in this arrangement, which will appeal to all collectors of Classical-era curios.

Valentin Silvestrov is Ukraine’s leading composer and one of the most distinctive musical voices of our time. This album brings together the two superlative works of Silvestrov’s early maturity – Postludium for Piano and Orchestra and the Symphony for Violin and Orchestra ‘Widmung’. Recorded in the presence of the composer. The Lithuanian National Symphony Orchestra conducted by Christopher Lyndon-Gee can also be heard on 8.574123 in Silvestrov’s Symphony No. 7, Ode to a Nightingale and Piano Concertino.

REVIEW:

If you don't know [this] 86-year-old composer's music, a new album by conductor Christopher Lyndon-Gee and the Lithuanian National Symphony Orchestra makes a sonically satisfying place to start. It contains a pair of symphonic works that embody two recurring ideas for Silvestrov: that an end can also be a beginning, and that sweet, nostalgic music can thrive alongside concussive eruptions.

In Postludium for Piano and Orchestra, the composer essentially offers an ending, a "postlude," that becomes something brand new by mixing the avant-garde with old-school romanticism. The piece convulses in orchestral earthquakes of low brass (complete with aftershocks), but eventually gives way to delicate music that yearns for the long-ago beauty of Mozart.

The more expansive work on the album is a 44-minute symphony for violin and orchestra titled Dedication. Who's it dedicated to? Lyndon-Gee, writing in the album's booklet, treats it as an homage to the "life-force" of the human race — which encompasses not only tragedy, but also love and renewal. And yet for Silvestrov, he says, "Everything is a postlude to that which is slipping, inevitably and unceasingly, from between our fingers."

In Dedication, the violin — played with unwavering detail by Janusz Wawrowski — is not battling against the orchestra for domination, as in a typical concerto. Instead, the two protagonists complement each other, breathing as a single organism in Silvestrov's colossal exhalations of sound. Great waves of percussion crest over a spiky violin, a reminder that Silvestrov's early works from the 1960s were considered too avant-garde for Soviet-era officials.

Silvestrov has created his own sound world, charged with turbulence and bittersweet fragments of melody that can seem like quotes from other composers, but aren't. Near the end of Dedication, an elegiac theme, reminiscent of Mahler, emerges in the strings, struggling to rise ever higher through a dark cloud of roiling harmonies.

-- NPR Classical (Tom Huizenga)

Highly regarded as a teacher and composer, Robert Fuchs was an established part of Vienna’s musical landscape. This second volume of his six violin sonatas fuses his trademark lyricism with folk-derived melodies. Violinist Hyejin Chung and pianist Warren Lee present yet more Romantic rarities for violin and piano – works by Schubert (8.573579), Seitz (8.573801, 8.573965) and volume 1 of Fuchs’s violin sonatas (8.574213) are also available.

All the arrangements on this album are of instrumental works that Astor Piazzolla composed for his Quinteto Nuevo Tango. Most prominent is the Vivaldi-inspired Las cuatro estaciones porteñas reimagined in concerto style for solo violin and string orchestra by Leonid Desyatnikov. The seven other companion pieces are heard here in world premiere recordings of arrangements by conductor Ken Selden, who leads the Martingale Ensemble.

Winners of the First Prize at the inaugural Birmingham International Piano Chamber Music Competition, violinist Usha Kapoor and pianist Edward Leung present an album of violin sonatas by American composers Amy Beach and John Corigliano. The album features Beach’s large-scale chamber work of 1896, the Sonata for Violin and Piano Op. 34, and her earlier Romance for Violin and Piano, Op. 23 from 1893, together with Corigliano’s Sonata for Violin and Piano. Completed in 1963, this work was originally called ‘Duo’ and is very much intended for two equal musical partners.

Joseph Mayseder took part in a performance of Joseph Haydn’s oratorio “The Seven Last Words” in 1803 when he was only 14 years old. In later years, he played in numerous Viennese orchestras, including under the direction of Beethoven and Schubert, and was concertmaster of the Vienna Court Orchestra from 1830. He composed numerous violin works and chamber music at a young age, primarily for his own performance. Mayseder’s compositions were performed in thousands of concerts worldwide in the 19th century, including by artists such as Henri Vieuxtemps, Joseph Hellmesberger, Franz Liszt and Giovanni Bottesini; however, they are still considered an forgotten gems today. Vienna-based violinist Thomas Christian, who has already released recordings of the violin concerto and virtuoso works with string quartet by Joseph Mayseder, presents a cross-section of Mayseder’s works for violin and piano on this double CD with the versatile pianist Sina Kloke. The works, all world premiere recordings, range from variations on opera arias to polonaises and fantasies to duos for violin and piano. The combination of virtuosity and unmistakable Viennese charm plays a central role in the interpretation of Mayseder’s oeuvre.

A composition, as a phenomenon or an act of creation, can be understood as a reflection of the time in which it was written. An improvisation, in some sense, is also an act of creation, a kind of composition, and it also reflects its time. Performing transcriptions, “borrowings” (even of whole pieces), remakes, and quotations was a common thing at the time of George Frideric Handel (1685–1759). Handel himself, as the first cosmopolitical composer in the world, was open to various styles and cultures and would quote and remake his own works. He was a Great Master, undoubtfully equal to Johann Sebastian Bach, but he was not a purist, which may explain some of the solutions we used on this album. Handel was a star and a celebrity of his times. He would compose, understand, and love the genre of opera, which, out of all kinds of art, is closest to the man (with his issues, traumas, and challenges); a genre that is full of life and “venous” like a human body. He was perfectly at ease in the world of theatre, stage, and entertainment. All the above can be easily heard in the harmony and melodies of his sonatas. In some way, we are following this way of thinking – being fascinated by the music of the Great Master, we allow ourselves some surprising (in our opinion) differentiations and modifications. We are doing this here and now, drawing on the past eras (classicism and especially romanticism [sic!]). We are also not afraid to refer to different forms of popular music such as jazz or even pop music. We are doing it, because the music of our time, i.e. popular music, is all around us and sneaks into our minds. We are being impregnated with it beyond our conscience and will, since it is “everywhere we listen”, i.e. in restaurants, shops, on our way to work. Although this aspect of entertainment stands out a bit on our recording, we decided not to remove it. The sonatas presented on this CD are not one-dimensional – there are many parenthesis, interrupted thoughts, and surprising endings. However, the listener will quickly find the beauty, charm, elegance, logic, and depth of this music, always combined with masterful harmony and melodies. The audience can notice perfect, but natural and sincere melodies, in which Handel vents his feelings in a bit uncontrolled and improvised way; feelings that are “poignant in their poetry.” It is especially the slow movements that sound like elegies, epitaphs, or odes, full of pain, longing, mysticism, and wisdom. “Our art, weary of post-Beethovenesque and post-Wagneresque art, can find in Handel’s music (similarly to chamber music by Mozart) a poetic refuge, to heal its futile anxiety and to experience again silence and wellbeing.” Paweł Losakiewicz & Robert Morawski

The world-premiere recording of the complete Violin Concerto in E Minor by Belgian virtuoso violinist and composer Eugène Ysaÿe has arrived! Following the recent discovery of a first movement, further manuscripts which complete the work have come to light – one a full orchestration, others for violin and piano – which were found on opposite sides of the Atlantic. Philippe Graffin’s close collaboration with Ysaÿe aficionado Xavier Falques led to a page-by-page analysis and painstaking reconstruction of the musical puzzle pieces, resulting in this recording of the full, three-movement concerto which displays Ysaÿe’s trademark ardour, intensity and originality.

For reasons unknown, Ysaÿe abandoned his Violin Concerto in E minor in 1885, but some years later embarked on another, Poème concertant, which was also recently discovered in manuscript form and is imbued with passion and the love Ysaÿe felt for his pupil Irma Sethe. Their love was mutual but their relationship could not endure, possibly sealing the fate of Poème concertant which lay undiscovered for over a century but is now brought back to life with this world-premiere recording.

Philippe rounds out the recording with three Ysaÿe gems for violin and piano: 2 Mazurkas de Salon, Op.10, works the violinist / composer frequently performed and gained popularity throughout Europe and Russia in his lifetime; and Rêve d’enfant (“A child’s dream”), which he dedicated to his youngest son Antoine.

This disc couples the last Violin Concerto (1769) by Joseph Haydn with the Double Concerto for Viola and Harpsichord (1762) by his brother Michael: two rarely recorded early Classical gems. This is the debut recording of Pearls in Baroque Chamber Orchestra, composed by some of the best Baroque music players in the Netherlands. The artistic and performance direction is entrusted to two experienced musicians like Ryo Terakado and Noriko Amano.

The three violin sonatas by Bortkiewicz, Kosenko and Skoryk featured on this album transcend the cultural upheavals from which these three Ukrainian composers emerged. Performed by Ukrainian violinist Solomiya Ivakhiv and the American pianist Steven Beck. Kosenko’s Violin Sonata in A minor is a world premiere recording.

REVIEW:

These are expectedly committed performances throughout. Ivakhiv has an excellent accompanist in Beck who is put through a variety of musical paces. The pieces here require a great deal of virtuosic display as well as careful interaction for shaping of phrases. Both musicians are on the same page here interpretively and these gestures come across well here. Ivakihiv has a rich sound in her lower register here and the virtuosic aspects of the pieces are handled beautifully as well. There is a great sense of energy throughout that enhances the intensity of the performances. The album is worth tracking down for exploring rarer repertoire that is given its due here. The acoustic adds to the warmth of the recording as well with the instruments set well within the overall sound picture.

-- SAKENNEDYMUSIC (Steven Kennedy)

Violinist Rolf Schulte presents a program of great American violin works composed between 1947 and 2000. He is joined in two of them by pianist Ursula Oppens.

Renato Wiedemann is a violin player with Brazilian origin. He has recorded an original programme with works by composers from Brazil and Switzerland.