On his second album with Signum Records, internationally acclaimed violinist Charlie Siem is joined by the Philharmonia Orchestra, conducted by Oleg Caetani to perform works by Beethoven.

Charlie Siem is one of today’s foremost young violinists, with such a wide-ranging diversity of cross-cultural appeal as to have played a large part in defining what it means to be a true artist of the 21st century. Siem has appeared with many of the world’s finest orchestras and chamber ensembles, including: the Bergen Philharmonic, the Camerata Salzburg, the Czech National Symphony, the Israel Philharmonic, the London Symphony, the Moscow Philharmonic, the Oslo Philharmonic, the Rotterdam Philharmonic and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.

The Philharmonia is a world-class symphony orchestra for the 21st century, based in London at Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall, resident in cities and at festivals across England, and streaming online.

Shortly after Josef Myslivecek left Prague for Italy in 1763, he earned important standing there and soon was enjoying the first great successes of his operas. However, opera was far from his only area of interest. In Padua in the late 1760s, Myslivecek was still able to become familiar with the music of the violin virtuoso Giuseppe Tartini, and it was probably under its influence that Myslivecek successively produced six violin concertos of his own. There are certain unmistakable archaic elements in Myslivecek’s concertos that show Tartini’s influence. The period when they were composed overlaps with the period of Myslivecek’s intensive contacts with the young Mozart, and many aspects of Mozart’s violin concertos were clearly influenced by the music of his elder friend.

The recording by Shizuka Ishikawa, a laureate of the prestigious Queen Elisabeth Competition in Brussels (1976) and of the Fritz Kreisler Competition in Vienna (1979), apparently represents the only complete set of Josef Myslivecek’s violin concertos. The young Japanese virtuoso recorded them for Supraphon in 1983 and 1986 in the Dvorák Hall of Prague’s Rudolfinum, and her artistic partner was none other than the conductor Libor Pešek. “Il Boemo” and his violin concertos – released for the first time as a complete set.

Timothy Hopkins is a German/American cellist living in Leipzig, Germany. He has a special fascination with performing arrangements and transcriptions of other instruments' literature for the cello. These include, for example, his own arrangements of the Chaconne from the 2nd Partita for Violin by Johann Sebastian Bach, the 24th Caprice by Nicolò Paganini, Rondo Capriccioso by Camille Saint-Saëns, or, for example, the famous Violin Sonata by César Franck, which he performs in his own version on the cello. Timothy is a passionate chamber musician and has performed several times as a member of the Lipsia String Quartet and the Max Klinger Piano Trio at the HARMOS Chamber Music Festival in Portugal and at Rice University Houston/Texas. He also forms the Cello Duo Grancelli with his fellow student Moritz Klauk from Leipzig. Solo and chamber music performances have taken him to Italy, Spain, Portugal, Austria, the Czech Republic, Switzerland and the USA. As a soloist he has played several times with the Göttingen Symphony Orchestra, the MDR Symphony Orchestra as well as the Castello Symphony Orchestra (Spain) and is a prize winner of national and international competitions.

After being forced out of his Soviet-occupied home in Bukovina (Chernivtsi), Radu Paladi was an exceptional, extraordinary talent, whether as a composer, pianist, conductor, or lecturer. In the 1950s, a time that was politically as well as artistically particularly tricky, Radu Paladi managed to find his artistic path and own distinctive voice, incorporating and elevating Romanian folklore in his highly elaborate compositional technique to fascinating effect. His music, combining depth, brilliance, and vitality, spoke to listeners with an immediacy that made hearing his music an exhilarating experience.

REVIEW:

Radu Paladi (1927-2013) was an important musical personality in Romania—as a composer, conductor, interpreter, and pedagogue.

We are dealing here with very expressive music that focuses on emotion.

The piano concerto, with Oliver Triendl as soloist, starts like a whirlwind, and all the musicians put their full energy into this at times ecstatic bundle of music. A wonderful contrast is provided by the second movement, a lament in which soloist and orchestra listen very delicately into the silence. Eugene Tzigane stretches the tension to bursting point and shapes the climax of the movement passionately and stirringly. The finale, in turn, is a single bubbling fountain of virtuosity and tonal brilliance.

No less expressive is the Violin Concerto from 2002, which begins with a moving elegy that suddenly leads into an orchestral outcry. Here, too, the performers live the music with every fiber of their souls, especially again in the slow middle movement. There is a little wink in the finale with the surprising reminiscence of Vivaldi’s Seasons as well as lively folk dances, brilliantly played by Nina Karmon.

The two concerti are accompanied by Eugene Tzigane’s colorful and rousing interpretation of the symphonic suite ‘Das Zauberflötchen’.

-- Fanfare

The best proof that Mieczyslaw Weinberg's music has fortunately and deservedly been experiencing a renaissance in recent years is another album devoted entirely to the person of this composer. This album entitled Weinberg � Sonatas for Violin and Piano was created on the initiative of violinist Michal Kowalczyk and pianists Dagmara Niedziela and Mateusz Rozek. The focus of the artists' interpretative vision is the multidimensionality of the composer's sound language, resulting from both the composer's tragic life experiences and him being rooted in three different cultural traditions. Each of the sonatas featured on the album seems to fully resonate with the events that were accompanying it's creation in terms of emotional expression. The recorded works, although they have just begun to make a regular appearance in concert programs, are undoubtedly a staple of the 20th-century chamber music.

The start of an exciting new project: the recording of the complete violin sonatas by Dussek!

Johann Ladislaus Dussek (1760-1812) was born in rural Bohemia. He led a restless life, travelling Europe as a keyboard virtuoso and settling in several European capitals, notably Paris and London, where he became a fashionable pianist and teacher. His close connection to piano manufacturer Broadwood resulted in important innovations, notably the extension of the keyboard to 6 octaves.

Dussek’s style is rich, harmonically expressive and pianistically challenging, Classicism on the brink of Early Romanticism. Carl Friedrich Cramer writes in the “Magazin der Musik” in 1783: "These sonatas are the only ones of their kind. Rich in new thoughts and traces of the author's great musical genius. Very brilliant, and appropriate to the instrument. The accompaniment of the violin is so artificially combined with the piano part that both instruments are kept in constant attention; so that these sonatas require a violin player who is just as skilled as a piano player."

Played by Julia Huber (violin), a prizewinner of the Locatelli Competition Amsterdam, and concertmaster of L'Orfeo Baroque Orchestra Linz and La Stagione Frankfurt. Miriam Altmann studied piano, fortepiano and harpsichord, she specializes in the Early Classical repertoire and recorded works by Gyrowetz. Both musicians play period instruments.

Kemal Belevi’s works for the guitar, either solo or in combination, as heard on this album, exude the color and allure of the eastern Mediterranean. Without alluding to any specific tunes, he evokes Cypriot folk music in Cypriana, while the linked Four Sketches show his variety in the work’s bracing modernity. Belevi is at heart a romantic and a melodist of touching beauty as can be heard in Catch 22 and in the subtle color study Clouds. The poignant Suite Chypre is heard in this special arrangement made for Silvia and Livio Grasso.

It is an interesting program that Daniel Huppert and the Bergische Symphoniker have presented here. The 2nd Violin Concerto by Sergei Prokofiev (soloist: David Nebel), is combined with the Symphony No. 25 by Nikolai Myaskovsky. The program is completed by the arrangement of the piece "Masks" from Prokofiev's ballet "Romeo and Juliet" for violin and orchestra, made especially for this recording. David Nebel is in demand as a soloist, combining technical brilliance with mature musicality and an unmistakable tone. Highlights of past seasons include performances and recordings with the Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra, the Xiamen Philharmonic Orchestra, Orchestre Royal Philharmonique de Liège and the Lithuanian National Philharmonic. David performed as soloist with the Baltic Sea Philharmonic under Kristjan Järvi at the Finlandia Concert Hall (Helsinki), the Mariinsky Theatre 2 (St. Petersburg) and the Estonia Concert Hall (Tallinn). With the London Symphony Orchestra, Nebel and Järvi recorded together at the famous Abbey Road Studios in London.

Linn is delighted to announce a new collaboration with violinist Jonian Ilias Kadesha. This highly distinctive musician has worked with leading artists and orchestras such as Chamber Orchestra of Europe, Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Nicolas Altstaedt, Steven Isserlis and Patricia Kopatchinskaja to name but a few. For his debut album on Linn, he has recorded a high-flying recital of solo violin pieces spanning five centuries. One of the oldest pieces of music written for solo violin, Biber’s angelic and absolutely mesmerizing Passacaglia stands alongside Bach’s enduringly famous Second Partita, whose last movement is the starting point for the Ciaccona for Violin Solo by Swiss composer Helena Winkelman, which receives its first commercial recording here. Twentieth and twenty-first-century works by Schnittke, Kurtág and Lera Auerbach, all heavily inspired by Bach’s music, complete the program which augurs a fruitful partnership with a promising young talent.

This release couples Gian Francesco Malipiero’s two contrasting violin concertos with the world premiere recording of his kaleidoscopic orchestral work Per una favola cavalleresca, evoking legendary scenes of love, tournaments, battles, moonbeams and heroes. Malipiero’s First Violin Concerto is one of his most beautiful and joyful works, a remarkable achievement for a composer who is said to have played the violin badly in his youth. His Second Violin Concerto, written 30 years later, sounds astonishingly different on a first hearing, but reveals itself to be inspired by the same lyrical impulse as the earlier concerto.

Review

Naxos/Marco Polo have been staunch allies of Malipiero of yore. Their example has been all the more admirable since their advocacy dates from a decade or more after the composer’s death. First, they recorded all the symphonies - and there are lots of them - in Russia on Marco Polo. These were done largely with the far too easily overlooked Antonio de Almeida (1928-1997). That multiple-CD series has been reissued on Naxos.

His First Violin Concerto (1932) is in the accustomed furiously confident three movements. There’s no hint of neo-classicism or museum-rigid “Alte Stil”. This is fast-flowing music where the orchestra keep pace with the ardent solo, here played with unblinking skill by Paolo Chiavacci. The writing is juicy and its probing ardour continues into the central Lento and the nicely rounded finale. This is a work and performance that, for me, never descends into tedium.

Per una favola cavalleresca (For a chivalric tale) is in four movements and is the earliest piece here. It is claimed to be inspired by legendary scenes of love, tournaments, battles, moon-beams and burials of heroes, possibly with links to a Malipero opera Lancelotto del Lago. It’s the longest work here, in four unnamed movements, across half an hour. It’s masterfully orchestrated with no strata of the orchestra wasted. Romantic to the hilt and occasionally voluptuous in the familiar manner of Respighi, as in his Ballad of the Gnomes. Even within these bounds it is a full-lipped piece yet with plenty of nocturnal facets as in parts of the third movement. Written at about the same time as Sibelius’s Suite mignonne which, at least in its titles, has its chivalric overtones, it is a very different. The Malipiero is more head-on and drips with juice as you can hear with the no-holds-barred brass fanfaring of the highly coloured finale. One can easily read into this the betrayal of Arthur and his anger, even if the work and the movement does end in a romantic glow.

Malipero wastes nothing - no time beating of useless filler material - both this and the second concerto are over and done with in about twenty minutes. The second - quite a short piece at 19:35 - is cooler. It was written a decade before the composer’s death and confronts a very different world order from the First. It is by no means devoid of passion. Even so, darker emotions are in play. The soloist has to make speedy headway. Disillusion inflects the central non troppo lento which is lichen-hung. The finale is another work of testing virtuosity, but brusque.

Another point to make is that these works, especially the First concerto and the Cavalleresca at times seem wrung from the same harmonic material as Vaughan Williams’ The Lark Ascending but always stand in their own right.

A Malipiero genre admirably tackled by the familiar La Vecchia and his orchestra. They have been most agreeably performed and recorded.

--MusicWeb International (Rob Barnett)

Jean-Marie Leclair was a master of fusing Italian and French idioms, conjoining the lyricism of the former with the dance momentum of the latter. Nowhere is this better exemplified than in his third book of violin sonatas. The sonatas in this album embody rich melodic beauty, drone and rustic elements – most vividly in the Tambourin of the C major sonata in which a hurdy-gurdy is employed– and demand tour de force virtuosity such as in the joyous Ciaccona of the G major sonata. De-scribed by Gramophone as ‘technically and musically a marvel’ (Naxos 8.572866), Adrian Butterfield completes his acclaimed traversal of Leclair’s Violin Sonatas Books Nos.1–3.

Christian Ferras will most likely be remembered as the violinist who was filmed shedding tears at the end of the slow movement of Sibelius’s Concerto in 1965, and who, after a dramatic downturn in his career, took his own life at the age of 49. And, of course, as the child prodigy from the French provinces who became – at the height of his fame – Herbert von Karajan’s favorite violinist.

His artistic personality was shaped by his utter, though humble, devotion to the music, demonstrated by his appropriate yet lively tone, elegant bowing, effervescent, energetic fingering and considered phrasing. The recordings of Christian Ferras with pianist Pierre Barbizet are of the utmost importance, with the musicians forming an inimitable partnership. The concertos in this collection showcase the violinist as a captivating soloist – Müller-Kray follows his every move in the Beethoven and Tchaikovsky with dynamic sensitivity, Gielen’s analytical expertise within the Berg is unrivalled and Ferras’s partnership with Blomstedt results in a profound interpretation of the Brahms.

REVIEW:

Ferras had a chameleon facility of adapting his style and affect to the composer in hand, a quality most noticeable when we move from the overtly assertive Kreutzer to the dreamy, ethereal little Debussy sonata, to the wild, Romany Ravel display piece, whose recording is notably vivid.... Ferras was a champion of modern, contemporary music and considered himself to be a student of the Romanian composer and the pair’s empathy with this strange, haunting music is not in doubt. Schumann’s powerful, impassioned Violin Sonata No. 2 was premiered by Clara Schumann and Joseph Joachim – who rated it very highly - and it is easy to hear its influence over Brahms. Its performance here is masterly.

-- MusicWeb International

In 1996, the young violinist Jorge Jim�nez heard Bach's Goldberg Variations for the first time - in Glen Gould's famous version on a simple cassette recorder. Since then, this wonderful composition has not let him go. At first he resigned himself to the fact that as a violinist he would never be able to play this work. But over time he realized that several voices can sound at the same time on the violin, as Johann Sebastian Bach exemplifies in his six famous partitas and sonatas for solo violin. Finally, he set to work and began to transcribe one of the most complicated piano pieces of the Baroque into a piece for solo violin. This is, says Jim�nez, like trying to "fit all the furniture of the Palace of Versailles into a tiny garret: You have to choose the best pieces and try to keep the feeling of the big room in the small." Jim�nez, with great knowledge of the piece and exhausting all the technical possibilities of his instrument, has managed to fulfil his great dream: With his arrangement, the Goldberg Variations can now be heard for solo violin, and Bach's six great "solos" have been joined: just as exciting and certainly just as technically demanding.

First released in 2006, Julia Fischer’s recording of Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto, alongside other gems by this composer has proven to be a reference recording. It not only highlights Fischer’s exceptional skill, but also her unique congeniality with the late Yakov Kreizberg, who leads the Russian National Orchestra and accompanies her on the piano on Souvenir d’un lieu cher. After having been re-released in 2016, as well as on vinyl in 2019, this legendary recording now returns in a more affordable Stereo version. One of the world's leading violinists, Julia Fischer is a versatile musician also known for her extraordinary abilities as a concert pianist, a chamber musician and a violin teacher. Julia Fischer holds numerous awards including the Federal Cross of Merit, the Bavarian Maximilian Order, the Gramophone Award and the German Culture Prize. She plays a violin by Giovanni Battista Guadagnini (1742) as well as an instrument made by Phillipp Augustin (2018).

In this new album by violinist and composer Diego Conti, the minimalist ensemble (violin and percussion) becomes a mean and a pretext to search new effects in the simplest and most primordial forms of sound. The extreme contrast between the frequencies, the timbres and the different “attacks” of the sounds of the instruments create atmospheres with which the composer gives life to imaginary planets, visited in his frequent science fiction readings, his great passion. Performed on percussion by Laura Mancini and Gianni Maestrucci, and on the violin by Laura Marzadori, star of the Italian music scene, first violin of the Teatro alla Scala orchestra in Milan, and already on Tactus’ albums dedicated to Ermanno Wolf Ferrari (TC872303) and Leone Sinigaglia (TC861901).