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Grainger: Complete Music for Wind Band, Vol. 3 / Engeset, Royal Norwegian Navy Band
Naxos · Jun 2018CD$19.99 -
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Bach, Boccherini, Brouwer, et al.: Musical Landscapes / Cracow Guitar Quartet
DUX · Jul 2022CD$21.99 -
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Mozart: Requiem & Ave Verum - Bruckner: Motets / Marschik, Vienna Folk Opera Symphony
Capriccio · May 2017CD$16.99 -
SaleHagen: Shining Brow / Falletta, Orth, Harris, Frankenberry, Buffalo PO
Naxos · Mar 2009CD$29.99$14.99 -
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Dalberg: The String Quartets / Nordic String Quartet
Nancy Dalberg (1881-1949) completed three string quartets, and they hold a place of their own among her compositions. No. 1 in D minor was the very first instrumental work that she presented at a public concert (1915). No. 2 in G minor, op. 14 (1922), was the first work that was published and played outside Denmark, while No. 3, op. 20 (1927), which is dedicated to her teacher, Carl Nielsen, was not published during her lifetime. The present release of the three quartets features two world premiere recordings. Nancy Dalberg is considered one of the first female composers in Denmark, and she was the first woman in Denmark to compose a symphony. This release sheds new light on one of the world’s finest female composers, who due to her lifetime never got the acknowledgement she deserved.
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REVIEW:
This is a genuinely exciting release, and not only for the devotee of Scandinavian music. These are string quartets of genuine quality, revealing a distinctive compositional voice, here in very fine performances and transparent recording. The music is serious, often very muscular, both strong and rewarding, tonal and assured.
Nancy Dalberg is not well-represented on record, though there is an interesting compilation from 1999 (Da Capo 8224138) which contains orchestral pieces, including Capriccio for orchestra, Scherzo for String Orchestra ,eight selected songs, Fantasy Piece for Violin and Piano, and a performance of String Quartet No. 2 by the esteemed Carl Nielsen Quartet. Interestingly, the second quartet is something of a staple for Nordic and—especially—Danish quartets, yet the other two, no less worthy, are here receiving world premiere recordings. The earlier performance has many delights, is generally swifter than the new, yet the Nordic Quartet lose nothing in urgency while being served by superior sound. The new recording has the extra merit of being heard in the context of the other two, and my preference is for the new one.
Nancy Dalberg’s output was relatively small, consisting largely of songs and these quartets. Her orchestral works, mentioned above, also included a symphony—the first written by a Danish woman. Contemporaries commented that her symphony had nothing specifically feminine about it (why should it?). It would be good to have a modern recording—a cursory search revealed no sign of one.
The First Quartet was performed privately—among the players was Carl Nielsen, her friend and teacher. It follows the usual four movements with a cheery scherzo in second place. A strong sense of rhythm is evident in all three faster movements. The cello-led Adagio is both dark and intense, despite its brevity. Though written when Dalberg was still Nielsen’s pupil, this is no prentice work but a significant contribution to the medium.
The more familiar Second Quartet is very spirited, more instantly attractive, but the slow movement, Andante con moto e cantabile, again in third place, touches many depths in stern elegance.
The final quartet is in only three movements and is musically the most advanced and tightly constructed. There is no slow movement, but an intensity of feeling and some sense of sadness is evident throughout. Instruments often appear in high pitches (most notably the cello) and there is confident handling of the most complex polyphonic forms.
Recording quality is as fine as we might expect from this source, and my recommendation is unreserved.
– MusicWeb International (Michael Wilkinson)
The individual and the entire tissue
J. S. Bach: The Cello Suites on Six Different Instruments
Grainger: Complete Music for Wind Band, Vol. 3 / Engeset, Royal Norwegian Navy Band
The final volume of Percy Grainger’s complete music for wind band once again respects his precise instrumental demands in pieces that span the breadth of his career, from his first large work in the genre, ‘The Lads of Wamphray March,’ to ‘The Power of Rome and the Christian Heart,’ his largest such work and one of his last. Also to be heard are ‘A Lincolnshire Posy,’ one of the genre’s most famous and beautiful works; ‘The Immovable Do,’ which contains “the most long-held pedal note in all music”; and the revolutionary ‘Hill-Song No. 1,’ which Grainger considered the greatest of all his compositions. All of the scores in this series follow, to the letter, Grainger’s specific instructions as to the instrumentation. The Royal Norwegian Navy Band have starred for Naxos before, not least on some Sousa albums. Bjarte Engeset has been music director of the Tromso Symphony Orchestra and The Norwegian Wind Ensemble, artistic director of Northern Norway’s Northern Lights Festival and Opera Nord, as well as permanent guest conductor of the Flemish Radio orchestra. His discography includes more than 30 best-selling recordings, including an eight-album set of Grieg’s complete orchestral works on Naxos.
PALESTRINA: Missa L'homme arme / CAVAZZONI: Ricercari
Grigny: Livre d'Orge / Isoir
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REVIEW:
This is the second time Isoir has tackled the de Grigny oeuvre. These recordings were taped by Radio France at Saint-Michel-en-Thiérache in 1992. Twenty years earlier, the organist set down his interpretations for the Calliope label, using two organs – l’orgue Clicquot de la cathédrale Saint-Pierre, Poitiers and the Grand Orgue Jean Esprit Isnard de la Basilique de St Maximin la Sainte Baume. Since I have these earlier recordings, I made a head-to-head comparison. The two recordings are interpretively close, which is hardly surprising, and both adhere to very similar sounding registrations. The earlier set is more closely recorded, with some distance placed between the organ and the listener in the later version.
I am impressed by Isoir’s handling of registrations, in which he fully explores the Saint-Michel-en-Thiérache organ’s full potential. The liner notes, in French and English, give a brief history of the instrument and provide a list of its specifications. Radio France have achieved a warmer and more intimate sound than that found in the earlier set. The reissue of this 1992 cycle is a tribute to the great organist André Isoir who died in 2016.
– MusicWeb International
Haydn: Music for Prince Esterházy and the King of Naples
Up until the late 18th century, almost all music was written for a specific person or institution, and often with a specific occasion in mind. But the works featured here are associated with their maker’s employer to an unusual degree: the Baryton Octets (and the Quintet Hob.X:10) were written for the private use of Prince Nikolaus Esterházy I, for performances that may have been heard by nobody but the musicians themselves. At such occasions, the part of the baryton, an instrument of the gamba family which was outmoded already at the time of composition, would be played by the Prince himself, while his favourite horn-player performed the highly virtuosic horn parts. Similarly, the ‘Concerti a Due Lire’ and the Notturni were commissioned by Ferdinand IV of Naples for his own consumption: a great lover of the ‘lira organizzata’ – a development of the hurdy-gurdy – he contacted a number of composers in order to expand the very limited repertoire of this highly unusual instrument. In fact, so unusual was the lira that Haydn, fearing that his music would never be played outside of the court in Naples, soon made versions in which the lira parts were replaced by other instruments. The result is to be heard here – glorious chamber music for various combinations of instruments, including flute, oboe, clarinet, horn, violin, viola, cello and double bass. Haydn Sinfonietta Wien’s acclaimed recordings of these works were originally produced and released by the Koch/Schwann label, with the exception of Notturni Nos 2, 4, 5 & 8, which, although recorded during the same period, were never released. For this collection the original recordings have been remastered by BIS Records.
Bach, Boccherini, Brouwer, et al.: Musical Landscapes / Cracow Guitar Quartet
The album Musical Landscapes contains a carefully thought over and set together group of eight compositions. The latter are formative of a specific music journey that spreads out from north to south and from west to east. This journey integrates diversity and beauty of art experience: from musical subtleties through grandeur of sounds, up to Spanish guitar temperament, from raindrops to storms with hailstones, from corta figure to sonorism. The selected compositions are, on one part, the most prominent works of world music in new arrangements and, on the other, the rarely performed pieces that were originally composed for the four-guitar ensemble. The presented transcriptions, full of the four musicians’ creative solutions and conceptions make up a new repertoire characteristic of fairly individual and authorial traits. The keynote of the project is the landscape conceived of in variety of manners.
Schoenberg: Pierrot Lunaire, String Trio / Stiedry-Wagner
SCHOENBERG Pierrot Lunaire 1. String Trio 2 • 1 Arnold Schoenberg, cond; 1 Erika Stiedry-Wagner (voc); 1 Rudolph Kolisch (vn, va); 1 Stefan Auber (vc); 1 Kalman Bloch (cl); 1 Leonard Posella (fl, pic); 1 Eduard Steuermann (pn); 2 Robert Mann (vn); 2 Raphael Hillyer (va); 2 Claus Adam (vc) • SONY 45695, mono/stereo (52:53)
As in the case of several of my other CHoF recommendations, this one is for half-a-record, in this case for the 1940 recording of Pierrot Lunaire directed by the composer. It’s not that the 1967 performance of the String Trio is a poor one—it’s not—but the 1985 recording of the String Trio, also by members of the Juilliard String Quartet (for such they are) only with Samuel Rhodes on viola and Joel Krosnick on cello (Sony 47690) supercedes this one. It is the recording of Pierrot Lunaire that is wholly unique.
Directed by the composer, it was the first of Schoenberg’s mature works to be recorded (Leopold Stokowski had recorded the earlier Gurrelieder in 1932 for RCA Victor). It includes pianist Eduard Steuermann, who had been playing this work since its premiere in 1913, and soprano Erika Stiedry-Wagner, who had been speaking/singing the vocal part in performances under Schoenberg’s direction since 1921. (In Robert Craft’s book Stravinsky: Discoveries and Memories, reviewed elsewhere in this issue, he writes of a performance in Italy of Pierrot Lunaire under Schoenberg’s direction, attended by none other than Giacomo Puccini. Stiedry-Wagner was probably the speaker in that performance as well.)
Curiously for an experienced singer who had performed this work many times with Schoenberg, Stiedry-Wagner sings several wrong pitches in “Eine blasse Wäscherin”; but as Dr. Avior Byron, a musicologist and composer who is working on the book Schoenberg’s Writings on Aesthetics and Interpretation in Performance has said, these deviations from pitch were not only accepted by the composer but quite possibly encouraged as a later reconsideration of how this specific song was to be interpreted. You can read the details in Chapter Seven of his book, “ Sprechstimme Reconsidered,” at bymusic.org/images/stories/byronphd/chapter_7.pdf. To begin with, there were no less than five takes made of this song (in addition to five each of “Valse de Chopin” and “Madonna,” and four each of “Gebet an Pierrot,” “Raub,” “Rote Messe,” and “Galgenlied”), and Stiedry-Wagner deviates from the written pitch in all of them. With the composer in charge, this error could have been remedied with a 15-minute piano rehearsal; but the fact that he allowed the recordings to be made, and the take with the wrong pitches issued, indicates a much deeper level of tolerance on Schoenberg’s part. As Byron illustrates via written comments from Schoenberg, the composer wanted a stricter adherence to pitch in Pierrot Lunaire than in the spoken recitation of Gurrelieder, but in certain songs—“Eine blasse Wäscherin” was apparently one of them—the mode of expression, the curve of the voice delivering the words, the vocal melismas as it were, became more important to him than absolute fidelity of pitch. Therefore, one can indeed accept this deviation as composer-approved and not an errant mistake that the composer did not catch prior to issue.
The bottom line is that Stiedry-Wagner’s performance is utterly fascinating and enthralling in its own way. She rivets your attention much better, for instance, than does Yvonne Minton in the note-perfect recording made under Pierre Boulez’s direction. From start to finish, this Pierrot Lunaire creates an atmosphere that is spellbinding. These performers, most of whom had been doing this work for a long time under the composer’s direction, give about as authentic a performance as can be imagined; and, as Byron makes clear, even the pitch deviations are instructive to modern performers as to how the songs should be done. In tonal Western music, interpretive differences are generally given by means of variants in the phrasing and the stress given to certain words, as in opera and Lieder, but to Schoenberg, the rhythms of Pierrot Lunaire were inviolable; and though he demanded a higher degree of pitch accuracy in this work, he apparently allowed a certain degree of latitude considering the range of one’s voice and the way the music was spoken-sung. Stiedry-Wagner was an accomplished operetta soprano and particularly an actress, thus I suspect that she and Schoenberg discussed the pitch deviations in “Eine blasse Wäscherin” to some extent, especially since all of the five existing takes deviate in one way or another from score pitch and, in fact, each one is different.
So much for “historically informed” performances, eh?
FANFARE: Lynn René Bayley
Mascagni: Iris / Krieger, Berliner Operngruppe
Pietro Mascagni (1863–1945) was one of those composers famous for a single work, the remainder of their oeuvre being practically unknown. His opera Iris is based on the libretto by Luigi Illica, who also wrote the libretti for Puccini operas such as La Bohème, Tosca and Madama Butterfly. It was Illica who gave birth to the idea of an opera about Japan. Exotic subjects, i.e. those set in distant lands, were in vogue throughout Europe, and the Far East in particular was very present at the time. It was Mascagni’s express wish to write ‘original’ music to this specific material, something hitherto unheard-of. This recording with the choir and orchestra of the Berliner Operngruppe under Felix Krieger is a live recording of the Berlin premiere of the original version from the Konzerthaus Berlin. The Berliner Operngruppe celebrated its 10th anniversary.
Mozart: Requiem & Ave Verum - Bruckner: Motets / Marschik, Vienna Folk Opera Symphony
Capriccio Encore is a series of re-releases of the most famous recordings from Capriccio's back catalogue, fully re-mastered. The legendary recordings of artists such as Sandor Végh, Ton Koopman, Sir Neville Marriner and the Vienna Boys' Choir also contain repertoire highlights that have a particularly special appeal, from the baroque to the present day. This specific Encore album features the Vienna Boys' Choir alongside the Symphonieorchester der Wiener Volksoper, performing Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Requiem in D minor and Ave verum corpus. Also on the album is Anton Bruckner's Motetten.
Hagen: Shining Brow / Falletta, Orth, Harris, Frankenberry, Buffalo PO
Now in his late forties Daron Hagen has been eminently successful for many years in a wide variety of musical genres: orchestral, concertos, chamber music, vocal and opera. He has received commissions from leading American orchestras like the New York Phil, the Philadelphia and the National Symphony and from numerous instrumentalists. He numbers among his teachers Ned Rorem, David Diamond, Witold Lutos?awski and Leonard Bernstein. With such diverse musical influences it's no wonder that his own compositional style is eclectic, a remark that is in no way deprecating. It only denotes that he is at home in a variety of styles and is able to adjust to the requirements for each specific composition. I have listened to excerpts from a number of his compositions and the remaining impression is that here is basically a warm romantic with ability and willingness to write gorgeous melodies. Romeo and Juliet for flute, cello and orchestra is a splendid example and the second movement from his third piano trio Wayfaring Stranger (2007) is extremely beautiful. He is just as adept at writing rhythmically fresh and rather naughty music for brass - the Invention from Concerto for Brass Quintet!. He is also accomplished when writing for the human voice. I haven't heard any of his solo songs - of which there are a lot - but his choral writing is extremely affecting. The Waking Father for six male voices is music to return to. His musical idiom is largely tonal though he employs various modern techniques for expressive reasons. Mixing styles - high and low - is one of his hallmarks and he is a splendid communicator, which his first opera Shining Brow aptly demonstrates.
It was in July 1989 that Daron Hagen was asked by the Madison Opera to write an opera about the famous architect Frank Lloyd Wright. Together with the chosen librettist, Paul Muldoon, Hagen worked out a synopsis and set to work with the first act, which fizzed along without problems. The second act was tougher and he met Leonard Bernstein several times for guidance. Bernstein died in October 1990, before the opera was finished, and it is dedicated to his memory.
Frank Lloyd Wright fell in love with a client's wife Mamah while outlining their house. They left their respective wife and husband, went to Europe. Eventually returning to the USA, they built a house in Wisconsin, Taliesin, which is Welsh for 'Shining Brow'. In 1914, when Wright was in Chicago, his manservant murdered seven people in the house, including Mamah and her two children and then set the house on fire. Two survivors managed to put out the fire but the house was seriously damaged. This is essentially the story of the opera. Frank Lloyd Wright lived until 1959 and probably his most famous creation is the Guggenheim Museum in New York.
Musically Hagen's score is a conglomerate of the manifold styles I referred to in his other works, but wholly efficient and personal. Shining Brow is a number opera with arias, choruses, orchestral numbers and ensembles. The music is very varied to mirror the dramatic and emotional contents of the story. The chorus of draftsmen (CD 1 tr. 2) has 'go' and makes me think of Orff and Carmina burana. Wright's arietta (CD 1 tr. 5) is melodious and agreeable and his wife Catherine's aria (CD 1 tr. 6) has echoes of Broadway musical. The Sullivan Variations (CD 1 tr. 8) is hymn-like brass music and there is another chorus with plainsong character. In act II there is a barbershop quartet (CD 2 tr. 8) and the Canapé Variations (CD 2 tr. 9) is a long gossip scene at a cocktail party played against the waltz from Der Rosenkavalier. Initially there are quotations from the Presentation of the Silver Rose from the same opera. Symbolically this 'theft' of another composer's music is a parallel to Wright's 'theft' of another man's wife. Sullivan's arietta (CD 2 tr. 15) is a song that should be on many opera-lovers' list of the most beautiful opera arias. It is followed by an a cappella chorus that nods in the direction of Bernstein's Candide (the Westphalia chorus). The rhythmic elements are often very much in the foreground and there are no longueurs. To my mind this is a truly inspired and dramatically convincing opera and readers who prefer operas with melodies should know that there is a wealth of melodic inventiveness.
The cast is a good one and several of the members have taken part in earlier productions, including Robert Orth as Frank Lloyd Wright and Brenda Harris as Mamah. They are both excellent and Robert Frankenberry as Wright's one-time mentor and friend Louis Sullivan sports a fine lyric tenor. The Buffalo forces are splendid and JoAnn Falletta brings out the dark dramatic side of the work as well as the lyrical music of which there is also a lot.
The recording can't be faulted and the few stage noises only enhance the feeling of a real occasion. While writing the final paragraphs of this review I have been listening again to large portions of the opera and can report that it grows further with renewed acquaintance. The orchestration stands out as superbly varied, brilliant and expressive and the melodic material is organically interwoven with the story. The only regrettable thing is that there is no libretto available. We get only a synopsis that gives the outline but leaves you in limbo as far as detailed understanding is concerned.
Anyway, relatively contemporary operas are rare guests in the record catalogues. Shining Brow, like Carlson's Anna Karenina that I reviewed a short while ago, are extremely valuable additions to a repertoire that far too seldom reaches beyond Puccini. Daron Hagen has no intention to challenge Puccini; he has his own musical world that is just as valid - and it shouldn't be less accessible to opera-lovers.
-- Göran Forsling, MusicWeb International
WORK OF ART
Philip Van Wilder: Complete Sacred Music & Chansons
This recording presents the complete surviving chamber music and chansons of Philip van Wilder. The program sets him in a historical context: downstream from Josquin and Gombert, collaborating with Tallis and a formative influence on Byrd. Cantores is an early-music choir formed from graduates of Exeter University by Dr David Allison which meets several times a year for specific projects, specializing in the music of the Renaissance.
The Fiery Genius
EUPHONIC SOUNDS
Mozart: The Vienna Concert
Holst: The Planets (Organ Transcriptions By Peter Sykes)
HOLST The Planets • Hansjörg Albrecht (org) • OEHMS 683 (SACD: 60:08)
The story of this organ transcription of Gustav Holst’s iconic orchestral masterwork starts with the duo-piano score—and perhaps an organ version of Neptune, the last movement—created by the composer to assist with orchestration. The keyboard original—a recording is available on Delos Facet—retains a surprising degree of the character of the eventual orchestral suite, and inspired, we are told, this organ version by renowned organist and period keyboard artist Peter Sykes. The transcription is extraordinary, conjuring up all of the color and intensity of Holst’s huge orchestral forces, and Sykes’s 1996 recording on Raven Records leaves one incredulous that anyone could surmount the many daunting technical challenges with just 10 fingers and two feet, and still create a compellingly musical performance of the work. And yet he does so, with little or no evidence of the compromises of pacing and flow usually associated with the sheer physical complexity of fingering, changing registration, adjusting the swell shades, and moving from one manual to another. The relative downside of the Sykes recording is the engineering with which, in truth, I have happily lived for years. It is very likely an accurate representation of the sound of the 100-plus-rank 1933 Ernest M. Skinner organ midway back in its Girard College, Philadelphia hall, but the (glorious) wash of sound produced in the louder sections does leave one guessing at the details.
Enter this new recording from the recording wizards at Oehms Classical. Recorded in the resonant spaces of the restored medieval Church of St. Nicholas in Kiel, Germany, it manages to be hugely powerful in the largest climaxes, while remaining transparent, detailed, and present in both the loudest and softest sections. This is particularly impressive as it can be assumed, since specifications for both are included in the notes, that both of the church’s two organs, located at opposite ends of the nave and playable from a single console, are being used. The 48-rank 1965 Detlef Kleuker organ is surely the lead instrument in the recording, as the 17-rank Aristide Cavaillé-Coll/Charles Mutin organ clearly does not have the pipes to produce such power. Currently lacking surround-sound reproduction, I cannot know if the engineers have clarified the issue of usage by placing the multichannel listener between the organs front and back as they did with the earlier Oehms Wagner: Der Ring—An Organ Transcription SACD produced in this venue. Yet in the end it does not matter, as the sound even in SACD stereo is so impressive and the organs are so well integrated that the effect is of a single instrument with breathtaking French symphonic articulation.
This new release pales in comparison to the earlier Sykes release only in matters of style. Hanjörg Albrecht, the organist in the aforementioned Wagner, as well as in a Poulenc release I lavishly praised in these pages (33:6), is in every way Sykes’s technical peer. What Sykes offers more consistently than Albrecht is not only the essential steak-and-kidney-pie Britishness of the thing, and its moments of wry humor, but also a telling subtlety of voicing. Albrecht is inclined to be a bit too stiff, as in the big tune of “Jupiter,” a bit too obvious in the misty domains of “Venus,” and to linger too long in the reflective passages of “Saturn” and “Neptune.” Still, absent the comparison, I suspect I would have overlooked it for the sheer brilliance of the playing.
And then, what a glorious sound he and his engineers produce. What a rush it must be to create these massive waves of sound, or these complex layers of counterpoint, from a single instrument. What a thrill it is to hear them so clearly. Sykes’s instrument is not so distinctly defined in space as this, though I was happy enough until I heard the new release. I would probably still choose Sykes’s recording if I could have only one. But I have both, and that is the best solution I can offer. Enjoy the sonic feast, and don’t leave it for just the organ buffs.
FANFARE: Ronald E. Grames
Bach: Goldberg Variations / Canadian Brass
--Jed Distler, ClassicsToday.com
World Opera Stars: Ewa Podles
J.S. & J.C. Bach: Motets / Solomon's Knot
This recording features the complete motets by Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750), set in the context of music from the previous generation of his family which inspired him. In his final decade, J.S. Bach researched and performed motets by his father’s cousin, Johann Christoph (1642-1703), whom he greatly admired. Although Johann Sebastian took the motet genre (and presumably his singers) to the limits of possibility, one can also hear the strong influence of the family tradition. This is the first of a series of location-specific Solomon’s Knot recording projects. We chose Arnstadt's inspirational Bachkirche for these works, not only for its wonderful acoustic, but also as a place which connects the two Bachs: Johann Christoph was born in Arnstadt, and Johann Sebastian's first job as an organist was at the church, which came to be named after him.
PLACES
Mozart: Piano Sonatas / Wanda Landowska
Wanda Landowska's reputation as a harpsichordist obscures her considerable achievements as a pianist, especially in regard to these extraordinary Mozart recordings, made at her Lakeville, Connecticut home in 1956. The sound is on the dry side, and Landowska's reposeful, intimately scaled readings rarely exceed mezzo-forte. Yet her seemingly infinite gradations of shading and touch, her immaculate control and timing, plus her well-considered and expressive embellishments (try the K. 333 sonata first movement's exposition for a few elaborate surprises) add up to a master class in style from which many of today's historic-minded interpreters can learn and benefit.
A singing impulse consistently governs Landowska's liquid trills, proportioned rubatos, and finely tuned balances between the hands that ensure no dead spots. She arpeggiates chords with the utmost specificity, abetted by a masterful and sophisticated finger legato technique. As a result, she employs the sustain pedal sparingly and tellingly. Although these performances were reissued on CD only by RCA Japan, they now gain a welcome lease on life courtesy of Arkivmusic.com's "on demand" reprint program. Notes are in Japanese only.
--Jed Distler, ClassicsToday.com
Per la viola bastarda
Carnival - Italian Music for Violin & Guitar / Gomyo, Eskelinen
For her debut album, Karen Gomyo has joined forces with guitarist Ismo Eskelinen in a programme offering fireworks as well as graceful tenderness. A violin virtuoso as well as an expert guitar player, Niccolo Paganini wrote a number of works for the two instruments together. He thus forms a natural point of departure as Gomyo and Eskelinen embark on a journey some hundred years backwards in history, and offer works by three other famous Italian violinist-composers. Neither the violin sonatas by Vivaldi and Locatelli nor Corelli’s celebrated ‘La Follia’ were written specifically with the guitar in mind. They are instead provided with so-called basso continuo accompaniments, to be performed on various chord-playing instruments, such as the harpsichord or the organ. Larger continuo ensembles might also include a lute or a guitar, and it is to this tradition that Ismo Eskelinen harks back as he performs his own realizations of these accompaniments. With one exception, the works by Paganini are on the other hand intended for the combination of violin and guitar – or, in the case of the Grand Sonata, ‘per chitarra e violino’. The centrepiece of the disc is formed by the famous 24th Caprice, provided by the composer with a guitar accompaniment and renamed Variazioni di bravura. Another favourite closes the disc, as Karen Gomyo and Ismo Eskelinen perform their version for violin and guitar of Il carnevale di Venezia, Paganini’s take on a Neapolitan folk song.
