Classical Music

Born in Shanghai in 1955, Xiaogang Ye is regarded as one of China’s leading contemporary composers. He has written music in a variety of genres, including symphonic and chamber works as well as scores for the stage. Ye has also composed music for films and the two works recorded here are both examples of this. Sichuan Image consists of 29 brief and atmospheric pieces composed to accompany a filmed travelogue of the scenic province in Western China. In preparation for the work, the composer visited mountains, river, villages and ancient historical sites in Sichuan. Lending further color to the large symphony orchestra, four Chinese musicians perform on traditional instruments. The album closes with Concerto of Life, a suite in five movements for piano and orchestra with Noriko Ogawa taking on the solo part. The work is based on the score for a feature film of the same name telling the story of a piano teacher and his students. Ogawa has also appeared on a previous album of Ye’s music alongside the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and conductor José Serebrier – a release named Editor's Choice in the Gramophone, whose reviewer described the performances as 'superb' and Ye's scores as possessing ‘lyrical elegance, searching drama and depth of color…’

"Yevgeny Sudbin was born in St Petersburg and has lived in the UK since 1997. His previous outings on the BIS label, with recitals of Scarlatti (reviewed twice on these pages) and Scriabin have all been received to great acclaim, as has Sudbin’s concerto recordings for the same label...It is clearly apparent that Mr. Sudbin has established an enviable reputation, and for those to whom his name is already familiar, this release will be another shot in the arm of fine collections of piano recordings the world over.

There are quite a few rather special recordings of Haydn piano sonatas, but with 51 in the catalogue there are few pianists who would even consider tackling the whole lot, John McCabe on Decca being a distinguished exception, Jeno Jandó a highly competent if marginally less distinguished budget alternative on Naxos. There are a few fortepiano recordings both complete and ongoing, the Brilliant Classics one offers a different kind of Haydn to that on a modern grand piano, as does the excellent BIS complete set played by Ronald Brautigam. A pianist whose recordings have impressed me in recent years is Ragna Schirmer, and hers is the kind of cleanly unpretentious and witty playing with which I would compare Yevgeny Sudbin’s performances here. Schirmer gives Haydn every chance to shine and blossom in recordings which are crisp and full of colour, warm and clear at the same time, carrying us away with the music’s message, alive to the echoes of past music and the surprisingly potent emotional charge which can be surprising to find in this composer.

This is not so much a ‘better than’ kind of review, but I find it is useful to have a reference and a starting point from which to evaluate a new recording of an idiom which is familiar, even if the pieces don’t overlap. Yevgeny Sudbin has that lightness of touch which is essential for good Haydn, and especially good Haydn at the keyboard. The opening Allegro moderato movement of the Sonata No.47 in B minor says much about the rest of this programme, with richness of contrast and moments of drama fully exploited between music of almost naive simplicity. This simplicity is as important to Sudbin as every other aspect of this music. The thinning of texture to two-part lines which suggest harmony as much as proclaim it are all superbly rendered, sometimes held to the middle of the keyboard, sometimes turning the left hand into and orchestral bass section or a driving rhythmic leaping thing which serves multiple functions. The Minuet of this sonata is a development on this kind of purity of expression, and Sudbin knows exactly what he is doing, shaping phrases with elegance and a sense of proportion which seems to provide all answers: ‘yes, this is how it should sound.’

If I were to compare Sudbin and Schirmer then, by a small margin, Sudbin seems to explore depths ‘into’ or ‘within’ the notes a bit more, digging a little deeper where Schirmer sparkles and shines with a more twinkly kind of wit. This is all by a marginal degree however – Sudbin sparkles and Schirmer digs as well, just take the Finale: presto of this sonata for some crackling at the keyboard from Sudbin, with the minor key providing a reason for that extra layer of dark passion.

Following a minor key with a major, in this case the Sonata No.60 in C major is a good idea, and Sudbin lifts us high and carries us all the way in the opening Allegro, which is as full of smiles as a comedy turn by Michael Macintyre. His own booklet notes tell us something of how Sudbin approaches Haydn: “Is laughter the best medicine? I certainly hope so and would not hesitate to prescribe a healthy dose of Joseph Haydn twice daily.” Haydn’s humour is not to be found in heavy jokes, but in the very nature of the music itself. Any darkness is more often than not provided as a foil a contrast to those delightful moments of wit, and sometimes, as in this movement the ideas are so fun-filled that such moments need only be held for a few bars in the minor, or a segment of sublime beauty at 6:50 where the pedal suspends the music on a waft of mist for a mere moment. Sublime beauty is the essence of the Adagio of this sonata, and Sudbin traverses its measures with a good deal of freedom, creating a fascinating musical narrative in which you can become lost for what seems like a good deal longer than its 5:53 duration, but which you would gladly have last for a dreaming while longer. Sudbin has combined some of the original material from an earlier version of this movement, which was later revised to fit in with the outer movements of the sonata. I admire this kind of creative license and research based attitude, getting the best out of the music by exploring further beyond the notes on the page than would most musicians. The results certainly speak for themselves.

Elements of Scarlatti appear with the rippling passing ornaments thrown in with effortless ease by Sudbin in the Sonata No.53 in E minor. The contrast between the spectacular Presto and the almost invisible following Adagio could hardly be greater. Sudbin plays the Adagio with such transparency that light and air shine through the whole time: it’s like a single mote of dust floating down to land, slowly and gently, onto a crystal shimmering in a bath of late afternoon sunlight. The sunshine moods anticipate Beethoven in the final Vivace molto, with quicksilver harmonic twists and turns which are still pretty breathtaking even 230 years after they were conceived. About one minute in the mood shifts several gears at once, and we are taken on a journey far beyond expectations.

The Andante con Variazioni follows and refines the model of C.P.E. Bach, involving major and minor variations alternately. Some say this was written as a kind of memorial to Mozart for, although there are smiling moments, these are as poignant as they are jovial, and the mood of the music is certainly more tragic than comic. Refinement and poise, sensitivity and grace are all words which spring to mind for both the piece and this performance, which is given with admirable restraint, reserving the emotional core of the work for a penultimate outburst at 12:39.

To end the programme with a flourish, Yevgeny Sudbin gives us an encore in the form of his arrangement or ‘pianistic impression’ of the finale of Haydn’s String Quartet in D major, Op.64 No.5. “I find [the string quartets] all addictive. Just as his sonatas are incredibly communicative and chamber-music like, his chamber music strikes me as having a very pianistic potential.” Larking with Haydn is therefore Sudbin’s ‘affectionate tribute’ to the Great Master, and one which fits in very well with the vibrant nature of the release as a whole. In fact this whole disc is of course a fine tribute to Haydn, showing once again how alive and resonant his music even today. The entertainment factor is high with this disc, but superficial show is never the basis of the music or the playing. I’m a big fan of the St George’s pleasantly resonant acoustic, and it works very well for the solo piano and this music, with the SACD quality transplanting you straight to Bristol’s top chamber music location. Superbly recorded performances such as these do exactly what Sudbin hopes, seeing Haydn “taken much more seriously, in an unserious sort of way.”

-- Dominy Clements, MusicWeb International

Having previously released recordings of Medtner's three piano concertos as well as three of Rachmaninov's five concertante works, Yevgeny Sudbin on the present disc combines solo pieces by the two friends and fellow-composers. From Sergei Rachmaninov's rich and varied production he has chosen six of the celebrated preludes, including 'Alla marcia' in G minor (Op.23 No.5) as well as the much-loved Prelude No.12 in G sharp minor from the Op.32 set. But Sudbin, who is a great admirer of Nikolai Medtner, opens his new disc with a generous selection of that composer's solo piano music. This section begins with the Prologue from Stimmungsbilder, the eighteen-year-old composer's Opus 1, and closes with Sonata tragica, composed shortly before Medtner left Russia in 1921, never to return. It also includes three of the thirty-some Fairy Tales that Medtner composed throughout his life. ‘No one tells such tales as Kolya’, Rachmaninov used to joke affectionately, and with these pieces Medtner created his own, unique genre. He himself used the Russian word skazka or German Märchen to describe them, and in his liner notes Yevgeny Sudbin suggests that the creative impulse came not only from folklore but also from such diverse sources as Push­kin, Shakespeare and even the Bible. As an interpreter of both these composers, Sudbin has proven himself both in concert and on disc, with previous recordings being named Disc of the Month in Gramophone, 'Essential Recording' in BBC Music Magazine and '10/10' on ClassicsToday.com, to mention just a few of the distinctions awarded them.

Review:

This is a wondrous disc. Sudbin seems to have an exceptional affinity with Medtner’s language. He brings both his heart and his head into play when performing these pieces. His head tackles and illuminates textures and harmonies that might seem opaque and knotty on a first study of the scores; his heart is then harnessed to convey the extraordinary sensibility, passion and thoroughly individual cast of melody that courses through the music.

Medtner’s natural companion on this disc is his intimate friend, Rachmaninov, from whose Preludes Opp 23 and 32 Sudbin draws six pieces. In all six of these preludes Sudbin deploys a luminous spectrum of timbre, a clear interpretative focus and a finely tuned imagination to encapsulate their very essence.

– Gramophone

YL Male Voice Choir was founded in 1883 - 125 years ago - under the auspices of the Helsinki University. Two years later Jean Sibelius became a student at the conservatory in Helsinki, and soon what would become a long and fruitful collaboration began. The present programme includes both a cappella works and works for male choir and orchestra, in which YL is supported by the Lahti Symphony Orchestra conducted by Osmo Vänskä. It takes us through a variety of moods and themes: from the brief and very moving 'Sydämeni laulu' - a lullaby for a dead child - to 'Tulen synty' (The Origin of Fire), a re-telling of the ancient Kalevala legend of how fire came into the world, as well as the patriotic sentiments of 'Vapautettu kuningatar' (The Captive Queen) and, of course, the hymn from 'Finlandia', probably Sibelius's most famous composition, here in a choral version.

In the compositions of Yoshihiro Kanno (b. 1953) he bases himself on three idioms: Western instrumental music, Japanese traditional instruments and computer music. Combining these various elements freely, he creates scores for Japanese instruments and computer as well as for Western and Japanese instruments. The pianist Noriko Ogawa, acclaimed for a wide-ranging discography comprising music by Mozart and Debussy to Takemitsu and Graham Fitkin, is a champion of Kanno's music, having commissioned three of the works on the present disc, the so-called 'Particle of Piano' series.

Features hits by Albinoni, Pachelbel and others, plus masterworks from Bach to Stravinsky and, reflecting BIS's origins as a label, highlights from Nordic composers.

Zhou Long, born 1953 in Beijing, came to the US in the 1980s and studied at Columbia University with composers Chou Wen-Chung and Mario Davidovsky, among others. Prior to this release, two collections of his chamber music have been reviewed in Fanfare—one by myself in 22:5, and one by Peter Burwasser in 19:1. Both of us were attracted to the composer’s ability to blend the sonorities of Chinese and Western instruments and devise convincing formal designs that drew from both musical cultures. In “limiting” himself to a Western orchestra (except for additional and varied percussion) in this program, he has in a sense set himself a greater challenge, and succeeds admirably.

What impresses most about these four works are the breadth of orchestral colors Zhou manipulates, and how the musical drama grows directly out of those colors. The four Poems from Tang, for example, are purely instrumental evocations of Tang Dynasty (AD 618–907) poems (printed in English translation in the booklet), where sounds of nature as well as intimations of mist, clouds, flames, and dreams emerge within fugitive rustling, burbling, and murmuring timbres, in contrast with full ensemble passages reminiscent of Stravinsky’s orchestral palette in The Firebird. Moreover, the rhythmic insistence of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring appears to have influenced Zhou in the remaining works; in The Rhyme of Taigu an expanded percussion section not only adds haunting colors and textures but provides an energetic, repetitious rhythmic impetus, and Da Qu, which isolates Jonathan Fox’s bells, vibraphone, and gongs against an orchestra that threatens to erupt from tranquil to volatile, near chaotic, expression in the blink of an eye, is even more exotic and vibrant. (Note to solo percussionists and adventurous orchestras: this work has great audience-wowing potential.) Even the brief transformation of a Shaanxi love song, mixed with Zhou’s recollection of farmers burning their fields, in The Future of Fire builds to thunderous Rite-like climaxes.

BIS’s engineering captures the wide dynamic range of the music vividly, and conductor Lan Shui and the Singapore musicians present everything in the best possible light.

Art Lange, FANFARE

It was in the 1960s, with the opera Die Soldaten and his Requiem für einen jungen Dichter, that Bernd Alois Zimmermann became known as one of the leading composers of the German post-war generation. These and other works from the period were examples of what the composer himself called musical pluralism – a highly individual collage-like technique involving quotations and superimposed metres, rhythms and time levels. The works on the present disc – Zimmermann’s complete production for solo piano - predate this, however. Composed over a period of only 17 years, they trace a journey which begins in a neo-classicism à la Hindemith – as radical an idiom as a young student at the Cologne University for Music could adopt during the Nazi regime. After serving in the war, Zimmermann worked as a freelance composer for the radio, theatre and television, and this has left a trace in both Extemporale and Capriccio, which weaves together seven traditional children’s songs. In Enchiridion II we begin to clearly hear the influence of Schoenbergian twelve-tone technique, which a few years later, in Konfigurationen, has blossomed into serialism, with its subtle gradations of dynamics, articulation and rhythm. Commemorating the 50th anniversary of Bernd Alois Zimmermann’s death in 1970, the acclaimed Spanish pianist Eduardo Fernández makes his first appearance on BIS, showing us little known aspects of the composer.

REVIEW:

This music is played to perfection by the superb prize-winning young Spanish pianist Euyardo Fernanez (his fellow countryman with the same name is a famous guitarist). This is a delightful release in every way, an important addition to the catalog.

– Classical CD Review

Serbian-Swedish Djuro Živkovic has quickly established himself as one of Europe’s leading young composers. His musical style is strongly marked by Byzantine Orthodox music – spiritual, mystical and characterized by fantastic narration, virtuosic instrumentation and a stylistic, highly profiled sound. Živkovic’s music presents a profound and abstract space to reflect on the subject matter of mystery, ecstasy and transcendence. Citadel of Love is a highly personal ensemble work which manages to create a mystical aural experience. The narrative voice of the piano together with the other six instruments, subtly adding voices as well as percussion instruments, carries the listener from beginning to end through an inner drama of intensity and fullness of soundscapes.

I Shall Contemplate… II is an intimate chamber piece for viola and small ensemble, stylistically similar to a sacred cantata, in which improvisatory techniques contribute to the free and unencumbered compositional process. Here, Živkovic’s use of ancient scales creates an archaic, echoing space. The text, spoken by the soloist, comes from old Byzantine mystical books. Finally, Night Music is a fascinating crossover work in which piano works by Alexander Scriabin are mixed with newly composed musical layers, thus adding to the Russian composer an absurd fantasy, estranged passion and exotic illusions.

Released on the occasion of the Swedish Radio Choir's centenary, this recording brings together works that testify to the richness and the vitality of the internationally acclaimed Swedish choral tradition. The programme features twelve extremely varied works, demonstrating the openness, versatility and flexibility of the Swedish Radio Choir and it's multi-award-winning conductor, Kaspars Putnins. It also pays tribute to the pioneering work of the choir's long-standing choirmaster Eric Ericson, whose work has influenced and inspired composers from many generations. The older works, by Ivar Wideen, Lars Johan Werle, Lars Edlund and Ingvar Lidholm, draw on ancient, secular and religious traditions, from Gregorian chant and madrigals, and combine clear melodic lines, glissandos, chants, whispers and traditional harmonies to create a language that is both modern and accessible. More modern works by Anders Hillborg, Britta Bystrom and Johannes Pollak and explore the human voice and it's possibilities in every conceivable way. Staffan Storm, Ulrika Emanuelsson and Anna-Karin Klockar pay tribute to the great Swedish Romantic Hugo Alfven in pieces composed for the 150th anniversary of his birth. Finally, Arne Lundmark and Jan Sandstrom adapt existing folk and religious pieces and 'expand' the musical content, offering a vision that is both personal and respectful of the original work. The Swedish Radio Choir and Kaspars Putnins invite you to celebrate a century of Swedish musical history.