Few works of art - musical or otherwise - are as firmly established in the canon of global culture as Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. The sheer size and complexity of it is daunting even today, and at the time of its composition it was a highly revolutionary work. Even so, the audience at the first performance, in 1824, was enthusiastic - as audiences have been ever since. Its appeal has not only stood the test of time, however - the Ninth holds significance for people all over the world, regardless of country: the closest we have to a truly universal piece of music. To record such a work is not a task to take lightly. In preparation for the great occasion, Osmo Vänskä and his Minnesota Orchestra paced themselves by recording two previous discs of Beethoven symphonies, both of which have been greeted with great acclaim. 'It's obvious from the first bars of the Eroica that this is something special... these are great interpretations and a true 21st century take on the music...' wrote the reviewer in Classic FM Magazine of recently released BIS-SACD-1516, while Financial Times' critic stated about the same disc: 'I choose my words carefully when I say this is the best recording of Beethoven symphonies since Carlos Kleiber's with the Vienna Philharmonic a generation ago.' The recording of the Ninth was preceded by three concert performances, and the Minnesota Chorale - one of the finest symphonic choirs in the USA - was meticulously prepared for both concerts and recording. The quartet of soloists has been handpicked and gives a final edge to this huge ensemble in the final movement's Ode to Joy, filling it with all the excitement that this exciting music invites. About a previous disc the critic of the web site Classics Today wrote: 'There's no question that Osmo Vänskä is a true Beethoven conductor.' There is also no question that Vänskä's account of the greatest of the Beethoven symphonies is something that must be experienced!

As one of the finest pianists of his era and an improviser of genius, Ludwig van Beethoven’s preferred vehicle for musical exploration was the piano. With his five piano concertos composed between 1788 and 1809, he not only achieved a brilliant conclusion to the Classical piano concerto, but also established a new model for the Romantic era: a sort of symphony with obbligato piano which was to remain a reference point well into the twentieth century. After the first two concertos, which still closely follow the models of Haydn and Mozart, Concerto No. 3 marks a profound stylistic change. In the piano part, Beethoven pushes the instrument to its limits, leading commentators to remark that he was writing for the piano of the future. This trend continued and reached its fullness in the Fourth and Fifth Concertos, which today rank among the great composer’s most admired works.

In 2009, Haochen Zhang was the youngest pianist ever to receive the Gold Medal at the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. Since then he has captivated audiences worldwide with a unique combination of deep musical sensitivity, fearless imagination and spectacular virtuosity. He now performs the five Beethoven concertos supported by the prestigious Philadelphia Orchestra under its principal guest conductor, the charismatic Nathalie Stutzmann.

REVIEWS:

In a crowded pool of complete Beethoven piano concerto recordings, young Chinese pianist Haochen Zhang makes an impressive splash with his traversal of one of the most imposing cycles in the entire repertoire. With French conductor Nathalie Stutzmann leading the Philadelphia Orchestra, Zhang deftly handles Beethoven’s fiendish runs and cadenzas throughout these five imposing works. Most memorable are the 3rd and 4th concertos, which have the most balance between urgency and delicacy.

-- The Flip Side

Like few other works, Beethoven's late string quartets have gained an almost undisputed standing as the very apex of their genre. Not many of Beethoven's contemporaries would have accorded them this: the composer Louis Spohr called them 'indecipherable, uncorrected horrors' and the quartets were widely regarded as the monstrous products of a madness which at best could be excused by the composer's deafness. One of the first to recognize them for the masterpieces that they are was Franz Schubert, who after having heard a performance of Quartet No.14 in C sharp minor is reported to have said 'After this, what is left for us to write?' Composers after Schubert have been as awestruck by this music, with Stravinsky famously describing the Große Fuge as 'an absolutely contemporary piece of music that will be contemporary forever.' The feeling that Beethoven in these works was giving form to a universal music which transcends genre conventions have also inspired many to adapt various of the quartets for larger forces, including the conductors Dmitri Mitropoulos and Arturo Toscanini. On the present recordings, originally released by the Altara label in 2006, it is the Norwegian violinist Terje Tønnesen's adaptations we hear, performed by himself and his Swedish string ensemble Camerata Nordica. Besides providing the greater dynamic spectrum that a larger ensemble can bring to the music, Tønnesen's main aim has been to strengthen the contrasts between intimate passages and fuller textures by employing solo players in certain passages, as in a concerto grosso. He and Camerata Nordica has also reinstated the Große Fuge in its proper context: that amazing 15 minute monolith was originally intended as the finale of Op.130, but proved indigestible to contemporary audiences and critics - one of whom described it as 'as incomprehensible as Chinese' - and was replaced by an easy-going rondo following a request from Beethoven's publisher.

After acclaimed recordings of the great Romantic violin concertos by Brahms, Bruch and Tchaikovsky, Vadim Gluzman takes on the work that in the beginning of the 19th century mapped out a new course for the genre: Beethoven’s Violin Concerto in D major, Op.?61. With this work, Beethoven rejected the idea of a virtuoso display piece with a largely irrelevant orchestral accompaniment. Instead he presented a symphonic reinterpretation of the concerto principle, with soloist and orchestra becoming equal partners in a texture that is interwoven on many levels. Largely forgotten for several decades after the first performance in 1806, it is now considered one of the greatest violin concertos. However innovative Beethoven was in his opus 61, he nevertheless remained true to the tradition of allowing the soloist several cadenzas. Over the years, a number of composers and great violin virtuosos have proposed their own cadenzas for the concerto, with Alfred Schnittke being one of the more unexpected names. For this recording, Gluzman has chosen to perform Schnittke’s cadenzas, as a link to the second work on the disc: the composer’s Concerto No.?3 for violin and chamber orchestra. To Schnittke, the relationship between soloist and orchestra is quite different from that demonstrated in Beethoven’s score: ‘It seems to me that this relationship is never harmonically equitable and balanced… The soloist and orchestra are in fact adversaries.’ However they may be labelled, James Gaffigan and the Luzerner Sinfonieorchester nevertheless provide unstinting support to Gluzman in both scores.

Previous installments of the Beethoven sonata cycle from Frank Peter Zimmermann and Martin Helmchen have met with wide acclaim. Described as ‘conversations by a perfect instrumental pairing’ in BBC Music Magazine, the albums have received a Choc in Classica and the recommendation of German website klassik.com, respectively. This the third and final volume brings together Beethoven's last three works in the genre, composed between 1801 and 1812. The center-piece is the ninth sonata, the famed ‘Kreutzer Sonata’. 

Highly regarded as soloists as well as chamber musicians, Frank Peter Zimmermann and Martin Helmchen are also known for an unostentatious and selfless musicianship which never obscures the music they are performing. When they started their collaboration in 2018, it was with the aim of playing and recording Beethoven's 12 violin sonatas. A series of recitals at prestigious venues and festivals was followed by the first recording sessions, which took place in September 2019. Enjoy the results!

Frank Peter Zimmermann is widely regarded as one of the foremost violinists of his generation. Martin Helmchen has established himself as one of the most prominent pianists of the younger generation. 

REVIEWS:

How elegantly unforced these works come over today. Zimmermann’s sound is light, flexible, and finely shaded, with Martin Helmchen delivering effortless virtuosity. The opening of the First Sonata brings an unleashing of exuberant energy, while the opening of the Second is the epitome of mercurial high spirits. These recordings are conversations by a perfect instrumental pairing.

– BBC Music Magazine

They’re never afraid to express themselves poetically or to linger over an expressive moment. Yet there’s a briskness and momentum about all four performances. These performances wed classical verve to a profoundly Romantic spirit, and I suspect that Beethoven would have rather enjoyed the result.

– Gramophone

2020 saw the release of the first installment in this three-album traversal of Beethoven’s violin sonatas – a disc which has garnered distinctions such as Choc de Classica and Cum Laude (Luister), with performances that ‘wed classical verve to a profoundly Romantic spirit’ (Gramophone) in ‘recordings that are conversations by a perfect instrumental pairing’ (BBC Music Magazine). As Frank Peter Zimmermann and Martin Helmchen open the second disc, they do so with the iconic Spring Sonata, Op. 24. Completed in 1801, the work proved immediately popular with a second edition appearing only months after the first publication. There were also numerous arrangements for a variety of forces – including a song based on motifs from the sonata’s slow movement. Soon after completing Op. 24, Beethoven began work on a set of three sonatas of which the first two are included on this album. Musically the Op. 30 sonatas continue the development that had begun with the Spring Sonata towards a contrast-rich, symphonic style. Beethoven originally planned to end the first and shortest of the three with the expansive movement that later became the finale of the great Kreutzer Sonata. As this would clearly have ruined the proportions of the work, he eventually replaced it with a set of variations. Closing this album is the second sonata of Op. 30, in C minor. It is the most important of the set; a genuine Grande Sonate in four movements, and an early example of Beethoven’s ‘heroic’ style.

REVIEW:

This is one of the most responsive partnerships I’ve heard in these sonatas, and I’ve heard some really outstanding ones. The togetherness of these two artists in precision of timing and harmonic vibration in matters of phrasing and dynamics is an amazing thing to experience.

-- Fanfare

Around 1800 Vienna was, alongside Paris, one of the European centers for guitar performance. The instrument was well suited for the idiom of Viennese classicism and ideal for domestic music-making and it was promoted by figures such as the virtuoso Mauro Giuliani and the composer/publisher Anton Diabelli. But Beethoven, the towering giant of musical Vienna, seems to have been unmoved by the charms of the guitar – while instead composing for its sibling, the mandolin. Duo Halász, the husband and wife team of Franz and Débora Halász have now rectified this, by appropriating Beethoven’s four extant pieces for mandolin and piano (WoO?43 and 44) as well as adapting some other early compositions, including the Serenade in D major for flute and piano and the Variations on Mozart’s ‘Se vuol ballare’ for violin and piano. In doing so they follow the example of an eminent guitarist and contemporary of Beethoven, namely Ferdinando Carulli, whose 1825 arrangement of the Variations on Mozart’s ‘Ein Mädchen oder Weibchen’ closes the programme. Franz and Débora Halász have made a number of recordings for BIS, together and separately, to critical acclaim, including a Latin Grammy Award for their disc Alma Brasileira with chamber works by Radamés Gnattali.

In his later years often described as the grand old man of Finnish modernism, Erik Bergman (1911-2006) was among the first in Finland to use compositional methods such as twelve-tone technique, serial music, choral Sprechgesang and aleatory counterpoint. His specialty was choral music, and a large part of his huge production involves a choir in some form. This recording focuses primarily on his works for mixed choir that have not appeared on disc before, and gives a broad picture of his production for the medium over a period of more than 60 years. Born to a Swedish-speaking family, many of Bergman's settings were of poems in Swedish, but he was a true internationalist and this two-disc set also includes works with texts in Italian, Norwegian, English, German, and naturally, Finnish. These are here performed by the Helsinki Chamber Choir, Finland's only professional chamber choir, under its artistic director Nils Schweckendiek.

Ingmar Bergman (1918- 2007) made fifty films, directed more than 150 theatre productions and wrote several books, but the recurrent thread running through his life was music. He often said that if he hadn't become a director he would have wished to become a conductor, and went so far as to claim that ‘film and music are almost the same thing. They are means of expression and communication that go beyond human wisdom and that touch a person’s emotional centre.’ Bergman’s interest in classical music became evident early on in his career. Music in Darkness (1948) is about a pianist who loses his sight in a shooting accident. To Joy (1950) features a violinist who dreams of a solo career and Summer Interlude (1951) takes place at the Royal Swedish Opera. He admired all who could perform music, reserving his greatest love for pianists, and concert pianists are portrayed in Hour of the Wolf, Face to Face and Autumn Sonata. One of Bergman’s favourite Swedish pianists was Roland Pöntinen, who here performs a number of pieces featured in Bergman’s films, by composers including Mozart, Chopin and Schumann. Pöntinen is joined by the Stenhammar Quartet in the second movement of Schumann’s piano quintet, used by Bergman to great effect in the award-winning Fanny and Alexander. Another of the director’s favourite performers, the cellist Torleif Thedéen, also contributes to the project, with the sarabandes from three of Bach’s suites for solo cello.

The three works for violin and orchestra gathered here testify both to the versatility of Vadim Gluzman as a performer and to the richness and variety of the influences at play in American music during the 20th century. Like the text by Plato which inspired it, Bernstein's Serenade, from 1954, is a series of statements in praise of love. Musically it is typical of its maker, with allusions both to his own music and to works by Bartók, Mendelssohn and Stravinsky, and with a hint of jazz in the finale. Composed some thirty years earlier, Ernest Bloch's Baal Shem turns to the Jewish culture of Eastern Europe, dealing specifically with aspects of the Chassidic movement. Its second movement, Nigun (Improvisation) is probably Bloch's most famous work for the violin, an attempt to recreate the ecstasy generated by fervent religious singing. Samuel Barber, on the other hand, was deeply fascinated by the music of J.S. Bach and Brahms, although this is not always obvious in his music. His Violin Concerto, which he began to compose in Switzerland in 1939, while war was breaking out in Europe, has been described as having 'a chastened and aristocratic classic style'. That violinist Vadim Gluzman possesses the musical convictions and the supreme command of his instrument to do justice to all of these works will be clear to anyone who has encountered his previous concerto disc, with works by Tchaikovsky and Glazunov. The recipient of numerous distinctions, it was glowingly reviewed, for instance in International Record Review: 'The variety of tone, lithe, sinuous and febrile ... is truly exceptional.' Gluzman is here supported by the São Paulo Symphony Orchestra (OSESP) under John Neschling, a team that has demonstrated its versatility on a number of recordings ranging from Villa-Lobos' Choros to Liszt's piano concertos.

At the age of 21, Leonard Bernstein wrote what he described as a ‘Hebrew song’ using a text from the Lamentations of Jeremiah. Three years later the song became the final movement of his Symphony No. 1 and in January 1944 Bernstein himself conducted the première of the work. What is being lamented is the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BC, but according to the composer, he primarily wanted to convey the text’s ‘emotional quality’. The first movement thus aims to parallel in feeling the intensity of the prophet’s pleas while the scherzo gives a general sense of the destruction and chaos. Being a setting of the biblical text, the third movement is naturally more literary: the cry of Jeremiah, as he mourns his beloved Jerusalem. During the next few years, Bernstein’s career as a conductor took flight, while the musical On the Town made his name on Broadway. Towards the end of the 1940s he returned to the symphonic genre, however – once more with an extra-musical inspiration. W.H. Auden’s poem The Age of Anxiety is set during the recently concluded war, and falls – like the symphony – into six sections during which four characters express their anxieties, hopes and the quest for meaning and identity. Bernstein chose to portray all four characters via a single instrument, the piano, but he did not want to label the work a piano concerto. The instrument does however come to the fore at various points and in one of the final sections Bernstein supplies what is arguably the most exuberant and rhythmically dazzling display of piano writing in the symphonic literature. For this Christian Lindberg and the Arctic Philharmonic have enlisted the aid of Roland Pöntinen, while Anna Larsson is the soloist in Jeremiah.

Gramophone (2/97, p.p 68-9) - "...[The Yggdrasil Quartet's] readings are thoughtful, with well-judged tempos; they are musically phrased, full of rhythmic life, and distinguished by a refined tonal blend....a strong and enthusiastic recommendation."

The phrase memento mori has its origins in classical antiquity, but the injunction to remember one’s own mortality has been a feature of different cultures and religions throughout the ages. Just as death is universal, so is our need to adjust to this fact, and to consider our lives with it in mind. The arts are, and have been, an important means in helping us do so, which is why the laments gathered on this album speak to us all. The Austrian ensemble klingzeug has gathered examples from across 500 years – from the "Planh" (plaint) by Raimbaut de Vaqueiras, a Provençal troubadour of the early 13th century, to Locatelli’s Sinfonia funebre. Two of the most famous of all musical laments have also found their way onto the disc, albeit not in the form we normally hear them; transferred to a violin, Dido’s Lament from Purcell's Dido and Aeneas has become a song without words, while Dowland’s "Lachrimae" is heard in one of the many arrangements made of it, here by the German composer Johann Schop.

Biber’s ‘Rosary Sonatas’ for violin and basso continuo stand alone in the violin literature and in music history, offering a unique combination of programmatic material and the use of scordatura (tuning a string instrument differently than the standard tuning). Consisting of fifteen sonatas for violin and basso continuo, and a closing Passacaglia for solo violin, the cycle was presented by Biber to his employer, the Prince-Archbishop of Salzburg, in a handsome manuscript sometime before 1687. Through the copper engravings inserted at the head of each sonata in the manuscript depicting key moments in the lives of Christ and the Virgin Mary, the music has become associated with the Catholic Mysteries of the Rosary. As the manuscript is missing its title page, the collection has become known under a variety of names: the Rosary, Mystery, Biblical or even Copper-Engraving Sonatas. The moods and emotions of this highly expressive music range from Mary's wonderment at the Annunciation to the agony of Christ in the garden of Gethsemane, the crucifixion and the subsequent resurrection, celebrated in a fantasy on the hymn Surrexit Christus hodie. Through the use of fifteen different tunings of the violin – one for each of the fifteen sonatas before the return to standard tuning in the closing Passacaglia – Biber achieves a variety of timbres, which combined with his highly imaginative treatment of the violin makes for absorbing listening. Appearing for the first time on BIS, the Greek-American violinist Ariadne Daskalakis has made a number of previous recordings, on baroque as well as modern violin. She is here supported by her fellow members in Ensemble Vintage Köln, a Cologne-based group of musicians specialized in baroque music. As a coupling to Biber's Rosary Sonatas – with a duration of almost 120 minutes – the ensemble has chosen to include the only extant violin sonata by George Muffat, Biber's colleague in the service of the Prince-Archbishop of Salzburg.