Less than three years have passed since Yevgeny Sudbin's remarkable début on disc: a Scarlatti recital which caused reviewers to compare the then 25-year4 old pianist favourably to Horowitz and Pletnev. The following Rachamninov disc cause Piano Magazine (UK) to describe him as 'a major world-class artist'. The latest offering - an intriguing double-bill of Tchaikovsky's and Medtner's First Piano Concertos - was released previously this year, earning him an 'Editor's Choice' in the Gramophone. The grounds for that distinction, as given in the magazine, are certainly just as apt for the present Scriabin recital: 'Yevgeny Sudbin's performance here fairly explodes with imagination, feeling and desire. Here, one feels, is a pianist hungry to test himself intellectually and emotionally as well as technically.'

One of the boldest and most radical composers of all time, Alexander Scriabin had a lifelong obsession with occult and mystical ideas. Initially under the influence of Chopin, Wagner, and Liszt, his music later became more complex, taking on an expressive power which provoked extreme reactions from audiences – of adulation as well as repulsion. Not shying away from hyperbole, Scriabin once declared: ‘I am the apotheosis of creation – I am the aim of all aims – I am the end of all ends.’

The three works featured on this release belong to Scriabin’s final compositional period where the music seems to veer between voluptuous languor and striving energy. Composed back-to-back, the Poem of Ecstasy and the Fifth Piano Sonata are drenched in bitter-sweet harmonies and carefully constructed dissonances. The scores of both works make reference to the same poem – by Scriabin himself – which ends with the lines ‘thus the universe resounds with the joyful cry: I AM!’. In his last symphonic poem, Prometheus — The Poem of Fire, Scriabin aims even higher. Here he expresses the evolution of the world from formless chaos, through the appearance of mankind, fertilized by the divine spark, towards spiritual liberation and ultimate transcendence. The unusually large orchestra and a wordless choir produces a kaleidoscope of contrasts, colors and sounds caught up in an ecstatic whirl.

REVIEWS:

In Scriabin’s work, the Prometheus myth is focused less on the creative element of Prometheus and more on the theft of fire, which allows the composer to create ‘light-filled’ images. Lan Shui creates a very great tension from the very first bars, giving expression to the fantasy nature of the composition. We thus hear music with those detaching particles of sound that, like the flock of birds in flight, create effects from ever-changing forms. Shui thus proves to be an imaginative conductor who spurs his orchestra and choir on to an outstanding performance. Evgeny Sudbin blends perfectly into this feverish sound...A great performance!

-- Pizzicato

Lan Shui and his Singapore Symphony Orchestra...inflame the subject; they delight in lascivious sensualities, the better to suddenly cause volcanoes to burst. All this is of a dizzying control and a sonic refinement...

The pianist is none other than Yevgeny Sudbin...He touches on genius in Prometheus, but you also have to hear him burn his keyboard, all hammers and iron, for a 5th Sonata that sounds as if it had just come out of the forge. A great album - totally unexpected, and recorded with striking fidelity.

-- Artamag'

Nineteen years after his first recital devoted to the music of Alexander Scriabin [BIS-1568], Yevgeny Sudbin returns to the works of this eccentric Russian composer with a new recital that brings together pieces composed at various points in his career. Of his special relationship with this composer, Sudbin writes: 'I simply cannot think of any other composer who consistently brings out such a primordially raw and physical reaction in me and, with time, his grip has only intensified on me.' Arthur Rubinstein once said that 'Scriabin's music is like a narcotic. It is so intoxicating that it can become dangerous', to which Sudbin adds by way of precaution, 'enjoy responsibly at your own peril.' Carefully prepared by Sudbin, the programme reveals Scriabin's stylistic evolution, from his beginnings when he was still influenced by Chopin and devoted to small forms, through his middle period where the rich, late-romantic idiom is just beginning to cross into darker, more complex realms, on to his late period in which, in Sudbin's words, 'one sometimes feels too close to the edge of insanity'. In his latter works, Scriabin indeed seems to push music to the expressive limits in order to create a climate of spiritual ecstasy.

The sea and Singapore are inextricably bound together - indeed, the first records of a settlement here give it the Javanese name Temasek ('sea town'). Ever since, these islands have provided a base for traders and fishermen, pirates and sailors. With the arrival of the British East India Company in 1819 Singapore quickly developed into one of the most important trading hubs of Asia and, indeed, the world. And although the patterns and methods of world trade and transport have changed, the sea still permeates the daily life of Singaporeans. This also applies to Lan Shui and the Singapore Symphony Orchestra, who on this disc perform four works inspired by the sea by composers as varied as Debussy, Glazunov, Frank Bridge and Zhou Long (b. 1953). The latter was the subject of Rhymes, the orchestra's previous and highly praised disc, of which web site Classics Today wrote: 'Zhou's is a personal, distinctive voice; and his beautifully crafted music achieves a remarkable synthesis of Western and Eastern musical traditions with musically rewarding results.' The reviewer at BBC Music Magazine agreed, calling the result 'utterly compulsive' with the addition: 'Here is orchestral playing of the highest calibre.' Zhou Long's The Deep, Deep Sea has as its title a quotation from Tang dynasty poet Li Bai, and was written for flautist Sharon Bezaly who performs it here. If the sea in Zhou Long's piece is an Asian one, Glazunov used a visit to Crimea and the Black Sea for his inspiration, adding a good pinch of Wagnerism to its not very salty water. Debussy and Bridge on the other hand most probably had the same sea in mind when they composed their works: Debussy finished his La Mer while visiting England in 1904, staying in Eastbourne on the south coast, and Frank Bridge (1879-1949) was born and grew up in Brighton, some thirty kilometres further west.

Sebastian Fagerlund has been described as ‘a composer who commandingly bridges tradition and modernity’ (Klassik-Heute.de) while his music is ‘modern and unorthodox, opulent and strange, masterfully composed and orchestrated’ (MusicWeb-International). Previous acclaimed recordings on BIS include the chamber opera Döbeln, as well as orchestral works and concertos for clarinet, violin and bassoon respectively. Another concertante work froms part of the present programme: Transit for guitar and orchestra, written for Ismo Eskelinen who also performs it here. He is partnered by the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra and Hannu Lintu who have previously championed Fagerlund’s music: the orchestra has commissioned several works, including the guitar concerto as well as Drifts, the opening work here. The release takes its title from the third composition, Stonework, named after those man-made stone structures that are found all over the world, serving a range of purposes, from landmarks and navigational aids to burial monuments.

Classical Music

In the sixteenth century, the quality of a 'civil conversation' was a topic of great interest, both within learned academies and in the verbal games of convivial banquets. As musical virtuosi learned how to 'speak' through their instruments, it was only natural that they would also begin to 'converse'. After a much-acclaimed release in 2023, Seicento Stravagante give us another example of musical conversation, this time between three musicians. In works by thirteen Italian composers from the late 16th and early 17th centuries, the musicians of Seicento Stravagante, recreate the extravagance of early baroque music, when composers wove many individual 'voices' (whether vocal or instrumental) into a harmonious whole. While the compositions could often be played on instruments of various kinds, it was on the violin and cornetto that they could shine most brightly, and the two instruments developed an increasingly close relationship, to the point that they were virtually interchangeable. This recording allows us to appreciate the subtle blend of colours of these two instruments and the richness of Italian instrumental music of the period.

Includes work(s) by various composers. Soloist: Jakob Lindberg.

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It is tempting to think of Nathaniel Shilkret?s Trombone Concerto as Rhapsody in Blue light, as there are many similarities, and the Swedish composer openly expressed his debt to Gershwin. According to the liner notes, it was, in fact, Shilkret himself who conducted the premiere of Rhapsody in Blue , after Paul Whitman, who usually gets the credit, could not agree on tempos with the composer. But the works are not really kissing cousins. Shilkret?s opening movement owes more to central European light dance music than to American jazz, sounding as if it would be right at home at a Viennese pops concert, or even as a Hollywood soundtrack from the 30s (most of which were written by central European émigrés). The next two movements are filled with blue notes and syncopation, conjuring the jaunty swagger of An American in Paris more so than the Rhapsody . The Concerto was first performed, in 1945, under the combined direction of Tommy Dorsey and Leopold Stokowski, who commissioned the work. Lindberg?s performance sounds spot-on, casually virtuosic, with wonderful expressivity and tonal luster.


This CD is worth acquiring for the Shilkret alone, which is a good thing, since the rest of the program is, well, a bit weird. Please notice I didn?t say bad; this is a matter of taste. My colleague William Zagorski enjoyed an earlier BIS recording of Lindberg?s Helikon Wasp , among other pieces, seeming to enjoy the iconoclastic bent of the composer, for whom ?arid musicological debate is excoriated.? Indeed.


The contemporary Swedish composer Fredrik Högberg gives us the campy concerto subtitled ?The Return of Kit Bones,? with English dialogue, supposedly inspired by Spaghetti westerns, but with heavy doses of schlocky Broadway musical mannerisms as well. Sensitive listeners should be prepared for the occasional scatology. Charming and rather goofy stuff this, and, musically, as light as a feather.


Trombone fanciers will surely want to hear the fabulous playing of Christian Lindberg showcased on this CD, and the Shilkret Concerto is a veritable revelation. Suggestion for a future release; the Shilkret along with the equally neglected and completely delightful Trombone Concerto of Nino Rota.


FANFARE: Peter Burwasser

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Dmitri Shostakovich was a versatile composer: popular and serious styles came to him with equal ease and are frequently found together in the same work. In his twenties, before the heavy hand of Soviet officialdom slapped him down in 1936, music of every kind poured out of him: symphonies, operas and full-length ballets but also a great amount of music for film and theatre. Here Andrew Litton leads the Singapore Symphony Orchestra in a program which explores this lighter side of a composer who is otherwise often regarded as unrelentingly serious.

The album opens with Suite for Jazz Orchestra No. 1, which Litton conducts from the piano. Consisting of three brief movements, it is the only truly original work on the disc, written in 1934 for a competition aimed at making ‘Soviet Jazz’ more respectable. The remaining suites are all reworkings of existing music, such as the ballets The Age of Gold – about the adventures of a Soviet football team visiting the decadent West – and The Limpid Stream, portraying a group of entertainers visiting an idyllic collective farm. The Suite for Variety Orchestra is a compilation that the composer made in the late 1950s from three film scores, a ballet movement and four piano pieces. Closing the album is Shostakovich’s 1927 orchestration of a Broadway classic, Vincent Youmans’ "Tea for Two," which had become a hit under the title "Tahiti Trot."

REVIEW:

Entitled Jazz & Variety, this album encompasses four of Shostakovich’s more popular-style suites, mainly drawn from his ballet and theatre scores. These range from the poker-faced, Kurt Weill-like stylization of 1920s dance music, complete with plunking banjo, in the Suite for Jazz Orchestra No. 1 (1934), via the Prokofiev-like burlesques of The Age of Gold – a 1930 ballet about the vicissitudes of a Soviet football team in the wicked West – to the more straightforwardly traditional ballet numbers of The Limpid Stream(1935/45) set on an idyllic collective farm, and the Suite for Variety Orchestra put together from various pieces from the 1950s.

One item, the Waltz from the Jazz Suite, recurs twice: more fully orchestrated in The Limpid Stream, and in yet a third arrangement with a different, more banal middle section, in the Variety Suite. The collection culminates in Shostakovich’s twinkling orchestration of a version of ‘Tea for Two’, entitled Tahiti Trot (1927). Yet, in the middle of all these frolics, the searing intensity of the extended Adagio from The Age of Gold reminds us of the other, tragic side of Shostakovich.

Andrew Litton and the Singapore Symphony Orchestra lavish more care and subtlety on these pieces than the quality of invention in some of the music maybe deserves, additionally flattered by BIS’s spacious recording – though the Jazz Suite might have more bite in a drier acoustic. Still, this is a superior collection for those who relish this lighter, sometimes naughtier side of Shostakovich.

-- BBC Music Magazine

The two "Chamber Symphonies" recorded here are in fact two of Dmitri Shostakovich's celebrated string quartets, orchestrated, with the composer's approval, by Rudolf Barshai, who as a member of the Borodin Quartet enjoyed a long collaboration with Shostakovich. A recurring element in Shostakovich’s œuvre is the use of "popular" music, such as themes reminiscent of the circus or cabaret and "Gypsy" tunes. It is also well known that Shostakovich was acquainted with, and deeply attracted to, Jewish folk music, which he described as "almost always laughter through tears" – a quality he found "close to my ideas of what music should be". The disc is part of a project called Essential Music initiated by the re:orchestra, a young and vibrant ensemble based in Rotterdam but with its members active in some of Europe’s foremost orchestras. Together with its artistic director, the Mexican-Dutch conductor Roberto Beltrán-Zavala, the ensemble regularly undertakes multidisciplinary projects attracting a rocketing audience of young people. For the present disc, the multi-instrumentalist Vasile Nedea, with a Romani background, has arranged a Russian klezmer dance, a group of folk melodies from Transylvania and Muntenia and two Romanian dances: Turceasca and Hora de la Goicea.

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Mark Wigglesworth's cycle of the symphonies of Dmitri Shostakovich has been evolving gradually since its beginnings in 1997. First out was No. 7, the 'Leningrad Symphony', which Classic CD Magazine described as 'a magnificent release in all respects'. Since then, Wigglesworth has offered us a Ninth, Twelfth and Fourteenth all designated 'Benchmark Recordings' by BBC Music Magazine at the time of their respective releases, a 'Babi Yar' (No. 13) described as 'probably the most convincing Thirteenth to have appeared in the West' in International Record Review, an account of the Fourth in which the conductor, according to the DSCH Journal, proved himself to be 'unquestionably outstanding'... The list could go on, with the general verdict being that the cycle has offered constantly interesting and often thought-provoking interpretations and striking performances. Wigglesworth started his traversal with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, recording Symphonies Nos 5, 6, 7, 10 and 14 with that orchestra, and in 2005 moved across the English Channel to continue the project with the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra. It is the Dutch ensemble that on this last instalment of the series perform the First and the Fifteenth, the alpha and omega of a symphonic production that spans almost 50 years of the composer's life and more than perhaps any other body of musical works reflects world events - the Communist revolution, World War II, Stalinist oppression - and their creator's reactions to them.

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'The majority of my symphonies are tombstones' - these words by Shostakovich are quoted by conductor Mark Wigglesworth in the liner notes to his fifth disc of Shostakovich's Symphonies on BIS. Symphony No. 13, subtitled 'Babi Yar', is a case in point. Shostakovich explicitly stated that he wanted the Symphony - and in particular it's first movement - to be a monument over the 100.000 Jews slaughtered at a ravine called Babi Yar outside of Kiev in 1941. Not just a monument, however: the Symphony was also intended as an indictment against the anti-Semitism that had been brought to its height during the Nazi era, but which also flourished in post-war Soviet Union, with the result that Babi Yar and other atrocities were kept secret by the authorities. This silence was deeply upsetting to Shostakovich, and when he read Yevgeny Yevtushenko's poem Babi Yar, he decided to set it to music. 'I cannot not write it!', he said to a friend. Shostakovich had originally only intended to set this one poem by Yevtushenko, but deciding to create a larger-scaled work he chose four more texts for what was to become a symphony in five movements. As Mark Wigglesworth writes, these poems 'reveal a huge kaleidoscope of Russian events, emotions and ideas.' In the realization of this kaleidoscope, Wigglesworth has the support of bass soloist Jan-Hendrik Rootering, the men of the Netherlands Radio Choir, and - of course - the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, with which the previous instalment in this series, Symphony No. 8 (BIS-SACD-1483), was recorded, to critical acclaim. The reviewer of BBC Music Magazine put it in the following way: 'Mark Wigglesworth ... stretches the playing of the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic to its very impressive limits and remains the finest Shostakovich interpreter of his generation', describing the result as 'a performance which always gives us the full measure of this traumatic masterpiece.'

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These recordings stand out as formidable achievements. They match technical mastery at the highest level with profound insight. No less impressive is the compelling interaction between Zimmermann and the excellent NDR Elbphilharmonie under Alan Gilbert, a crucial component in music that is so symphonic in design.

– BBC Music Magazine

The First Concerto will raise eyebrows. It’s fast, and certainly makes you sit up and hear this concerto in a new light. Zimmerman pursues the Passacaglia’s cantabile line with lyrical ease but can also produce a darker, uglier sound when appropriate, spitting ferociously in the Scherzo and producing icy glissandos, and he does conjure up impish colour in the nose-thumbing Burlesque.

– Gramophone

Stunningly performed and recorded, Zimmermann’s inspiring release on BIS deserves substantial praise.

– MusicWeb International

This release is the fruit of the French pianist Nicolas Stavy’s efforts to uncover unknown works by Dmitri Shostakovich. Spanning some fifty years of the composer’s career, these rarities include early piano pieces influenced by Chopin and the fragment of an unfinished violin sonata, but is bookended by arrangements of symphonic music, by Shostakovich himself and by Mahler, a constant influence.

The album opens with the most substantial work on the disc, Shostakovich’s arrangement of his late, great Fourteenth Symphony (1969) for soprano, bass, string orchestra and percussion. With texts by poets including Guillaume Apollinaire, Federico García Lorca and Rainer Maria Rilke, the work evokes death, reaching great emotional depths. Rather than ‘just’ making a piano transcription for rehearsal purposes, Shostakovich included a percussion part as well as one for celesta, in order to reproduce sounds that would be impossible to imitate on the piano alone. This is followed by the substantial fragment of a sonata for violin and piano dated 1945 and four short piano pieces composed around 1917-1919, which reveal a very young composer and demonstrate his surprising individuality and maturity. The final work on the disc is an arrangement of the opening 95 bars of Gustav Mahler's Tenth Symphony which Shostakovich probably made during the 1920s for personal study purposes and to demonstrate the work to his fellow members in one of Leningrad’s two Mahler Societies. In Shostakovich’s transcription for piano four hands, Stavy is joined by Cédric Tiberghien.

REVIEW:

Nicolas Stavy’s painstaking trawl through the Shostakovich Archives has brought together some completely unknown works from the composer’s vast output with a major masterpiece recorded for the first time in a completely different guise. Admittedly, not everything here is of the highest quality. For instance, the earliest music, a collection of four short piano pieces composed during Shostakovich’s teenage years, is fluent but largely derivative.

Yet the rest of the album has much to offer. From the 1920s, we get a deftly scored arrangement of the first 95 bars to the Adagio of Mahler’s Tenth Symphony for piano duet, which is beautifully performed by Stavy and Cédric Tiberghien. Another tantalisingly brief fragment is the large-scale opening section of an unfinished Violin Sonata dating from 1945 which is given a powerfully committed performance by Stavy and Sueye Park.

However, the most substantial discovery is undoubtedly the composer’s reduction for piano and percussion of the orchestral score to his 14th Symphony. Whether or not Shostakovich conceived this arrangement as a viable performing alternative to the original, rather than a useful vehicle for helping the vocal soloists learn their parts, its intimate scoring works particularly effectively in the more reflective settings such as the opening ‘De profundis’, ‘O Delvig, Delvig!’ and ‘The Poet’s Death’. Elsewhere, despite Stavy’s phenomenal mastery of the enormously tricky piano writing, I miss some of the cut and thrust of Shostakovich’s pungent string writing, especially in the frenzied musical argument of ‘Loreley’ and in the furious outburst of anger unleashed at the end of ‘The Zaporozhian Cossacks’ Answer to the Sultan of Constantinople’.

-- BBC Music Magazine

Classical Music

JEAN SIBELIUS Folke Grasbeck, piano (5 CDs for the price of 3) JEAN SIBELIUS - THE SIBELIUS EDITION, VOLUME 10 - PIANO MUSIC 2

The first chapter in the BIS Sibelius Edition contained some of the Finnish master's most celebrated works, his Tone Poems. In the ten volumes that have been released after that, we have presented various less known aspects of Sibelius: the composer of chamber works and piano music, the miniaturist, even as the author of an opera. With the present instalment, the 12th and penultimate, we return to a genre for which he is particularly celebrated, namely the symphonic. The Seven Symphonies are undisputed treasures of 20th-century music which have fascinated great conductors and international audiences alike. They are here presented in performances by Osmo Vänskä, described in American Record Guide as 'the Sibelius interpreter de nos jours', and the eminent Lahti Symphony Orchestra, whose principal conductor he was for 20 years. The team's recordings of the symphony cycle has been described as 'towering head and shoulders over the competition' in the French magazine Répertoire, and on the website Classical Source as being 'almost universally recognised as the best of the digital age'. As these recordings now are given pride of place in the Sibelius Edition, they are complemented by alternative versions and fragments which provide a fascinating background to the final versions. The most substantial of these is the original version of Symphony No.5, available only in this recording, which upon its original release in 1996 not only received a Gramophone Award for its technical qualities but also was described by the same magazine's reviewer as 'one of the most important and above all interesting records to have appeared for many years.' Also unique for BIS are the recordings of the remaining supplementary material, made under the supervision of the violinist and conductor Jaakko Kuusisto and released here for the first time. Besides a number of short fragments which illustrate the decision-making process of the composer's creative mind in detail, it also includes preliminary versions of three complete movements: the scherzos from Symphonies Nos 1 and 4, and the second movement of Symphony No.3. In the accompanying booklet (numbering 128 pages), Sibelius expert Andrew Barnett guides us through this central chapter in Sibelius' oeuvre - an occasion not to be missed!