Music is the key

If Avi Avital’s intention is to do for the mandolin what Andrés Segovia did for the classical guitar, he’s already well on the way. Appropriate then that this, his third and possibly best release to date, should feature three Vivaldi concertos popular with guitarists. This homage to Venice’s favourite musical son in many ways picks up where Avital’s terrific debut recording of JS Bach concertos left off. This time, the mandolin’s on home turf, not only returning to its Italian roots but in one case rejoicing in a concerto actually written for it. Avital and the superb Venice Baroque Orchestra make the C major Mandolin Concerto, RV425, their own, the pizzicato strings and organ continuo the rich clay into which Avital carves his crisp, fluid lines. But even better is the utterly thrilling account of ‘Summer’ from The Four Seasons . Here, as throughout, Avital’s astonishingly smooth legato playing is broken up by rapid détaché passages and propulsive strums that sweep t...

My dislike for Gardiner runs so deep that a voice in my head says, “Give it a rest.” He has won every battle I wish he’d lost, from Bach devoid of spirituality to Beethoven without depth. But win the battles Gardiner did, and in England he’s a cultural eminence. This is the second release under his direction from LSO Live in a short period, the other one being of Stravinsky’s Oedipus Rex and Apollo (the latter in a very good performance). At 71, Gardiner has been on the musical scene for a remarkable 50 years, and one can only admire the Monteverdi Choir and Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique founded by him—they raised period performance to an unprecedented level. But I never felt that Gardiner possessed the requirements of a good general conductor, a bias reinforced here by his rackety, amateurish Hebrides Overture . The London Symphony would play it better without Gardiner’s arbitrary tempo changes, bumpy accents, and mundane phrasing. It’s helpful for a co...

It's hard to describe Heiner Goebbels' homage to the Austrian writer Adalbert Stifter (1805-1868), whose descriptions of the natural world have been admired by generations of writers – from Rainer Maria Rilke and Thomas Mann to WH Auden and Marianne Moore. When it was first presented in Lausanne in 2007 Goebbels categorised Stifters Dinge (Stifter's Things) as a "performative installation"; it came to London the following year. The "performance" comes from five grand pianos, all played in different mechanical ways and forming part of a set that, in the course of an hour, inches menacingly towards the audience across tanks of inky black liquid only to retreat again. The pianos stumble out repeated morse-like signals, Nancarrow-style cascades of notes and the slow movement from Bach's Italian Concerto, while samples of industrial noise, ethnographic recordings, interviews with Claude Lévi-Strauss and Malcolm X, and readings from William S Burroughs ...

 "I consider this one of my most richly lyrical and consistently inspired works," wrote Keith Jarrett of Arbour Zena. "Jan Garbarek's contribution is irreplaceable and ecstatic." It is easy to agree that Arbour Zena is one of Jarrett's most exceptional albums. In some ways a follow-up to Jarrett's first recorded collaboration with Jan Garbarek, the previous year's Luminessence for saxophone and string orchestra, Arbour Zena adds Keith himself and bassist Charlie Haden to the mix. Evocative writing for strings, beautiful playing by Jan, Keith, and Haden at his most soulful, and a glowing panoramic production make this 1975 recording one of the finest of ECM's first decade albums.

Repentance and Sotto voce are the downbeat titles of two recent compositions by Sofia Gubaidulina but there’s nothing apologetic or retiring about the music. Now in her early eighties, Gubaidulina is exploring ever more unusual instrumental combinations: viola, double bass and two guitars in Sotto voce , cello, double bass and three guitars in Repentance . In both there are dramatic confrontations involving moods that shift between heartfelt lament and forceful defiance by way of textures that relish the full spectrum of possibilities available when such disparate string instruments are brought together; Repentance is particularly imaginative in the way – without electronics – it evokes a mixture of acoustic and what sound like electro-acoustic sonorities. Gubaidulina’s strength has always been to rhapsodise without rambling: even on the tiny scale of the two-and-a-half-minute Serenade for solo guitar from 1960 she creates an intriguing soundscape with a disconcert...

Keith Jarrett evidently has carte blanche to do anything he wants at Manfred Eicher's ECM label -- and thus encouraged, he takes ample risks in a field that is swamped with able and formidable competitors. Mozart's piano concertos may be relatively easy to play but they are notoriously hard to interpret -- that's where the true music-making comes in -- and brave intentions aside, Jarrett cannot do very much with this music beyond playing the notes accurately and cleanly. He brings nearly nothing of his own to the "Concerto No. 23"; much of it is precious and monochromatic, though he finally does generate some animation in the "Finale." Jarrett's tempo for the opening movement of the "Concerto No. 27" isn't out of line, it just seems much slower than it actually is due to his stolid, doggedly literal playing; the larghetto is actually a bit fast, and the rondo lacks point and wit. The adagio movement of the "Concerto No. 21"...

For much of the 1980s, Keith Jarrett balanced his improvisational activities with performances of classical music and contemporary composition. On this disc, with concert recordings from 1984 and 1985, he is heard playing Samuel Barber’s Piano Concerto op. 38 and Béla Bartók’s Piano Concerto No. 3, and rising to the challenges of these major works. The New York Times praised Jarrett’s playing of the Barber with Dennis Russell Davies in this period (“a sinewy, vigorously lyrical performance … both sensitive and strong”), and the Bartók with Kazuyoshi Akiyama was most enthusiastically received in Japan. After the Tokyo Bartók performance Jarrett returned alone to the stage of the Kan-i Hoken Hall to play a touching improvised encore, also documented on this recording. The album includes liner notes by Keith Jarrett and Paul Griffiths . (This historical album of music by Barber, Bartók and Jarrett is one of two albums issued on May 8th, Keith Jarrett’s 70th birthday, the oth...

Hille Perl is widely regarded as one of the leading viola da gambists in the world. Because of the prominence of her instrument in the Baroque era, her repertory is rich in works from that period, with the names, J.S. Bach, Telemann, Marin Marais, Sainte-Colombe, and other 17th and 18th century composers headlining her concert programs and recordings. Perl also plays the treble viol, the seven-string bass viol, Baroque guitar, Lirone, and Xarana. She often performs with her husband, lutenist Lee Santana, in duo repertory, and together the pair have formed two other ensembles: Los Otros, with guitarist Steve Player, and the Age of Passions, with violinist/conductor Petra Müllejans and flutist Karl Kaiser. Perl has also appeared with some of the leading Baroque ensembles in Europe, like the Freiburger Barockorchester and the Harp Consort. She has made numerous recordings, many of them available from Deutsche Harmonia Mundi (DHM).  Hille Perl was born in Bremen, Germany, in 1965....

World première recording. In 2007, Philip Glass began a collaboration with violinist Tim Fain when Fain played on Glass' piece 'Book of Longing', a song-cycle set to poems by Leonard Cohen. 'Book of Longing' features instrumental solos by each member of the mixed ensemble. Since that time Glass became interested in Fain's interpretations and Fain was one of the soloists who performed with the Glass Chamber Players. Fain has been an advocate of Glass' music as a soloist for both Glass violin concertos, performed and recorded Glass' Double Concerto for Violin & Cello, and for the past couple of years has toured extensively with Glass in chamber music performances. All this activity culminated with Glass composing 'Partita for Solo Violin' specifically for Fain which is featured here in its world-premiere recording. This piece is the central work around which their duo performances are based, and Fain has incorporated the Partita i...

The title of this album comes from the fact that Haydn wrote most of these insertion arias (arias written to show off the special talents of a singer in a particular production, and substituted for the arias by the opera's composer) for his lover, Italian soprano Luigia Polzelli. Thank goodness these delightful arias have survived, although the operas into which they were originally inserted, by composers like Pasquale Anfossi, Alessandro Guglielmi, and Francesco Bianchi, are forgotten. Haydn's inventiveness and benevolence overflow in this charming music. If there is any criticism of this assortment of arias, it's that they are all relentlessly cheerful and sprightly, and all in major keys, even those with texts like, "Unhappy and unfortunate I am…." While not all these arias reveal Haydn at his most dramatically astute, they find him at his most genial. One of the arias, La moglie quando è buona, is in fact laugh-out-loud funny. Spanish soprano Núria Rial and A...

A native of Würzburg, Germany, Theresa Kronthaler grew up in Rome. Already in her early youth she was enthusiastic about singers and actors. She took lessons with Elio Battaglia in Torino. After studying theatre science in London, she moved to Berlin in 2002 and continues vocal studies at the Acadamy of Music Hanns Eisler with Prof. Renate Faltin and Prof. Julia Varady. She participated in master classes of Dietrich Fischer Dieskau, Christa Ludwig and Thomas Quasthoff. She was prize-winner of the Federal Competition "Jugend musiziert", and in 2006, she was finalist of the "Bundeswettbewerb Gesang". In 2007, she won the first prize of the "Anneliese Rothenberger Competition" on the Isle of Mainau. Her activities as a soloist in concerts and musical theatre productions led her to numerous places, with performances e.g. at St. Petersburg’s and Berlin Philharmonics’ Halls, at Konzerthaus am Gendarmenmarkt Berlin, Tonhalle Düsseldorf, Deutsche...

The booklet of Isabelle Faust’s new recording includes an essay written by her regarding the performing editions used and the significance of the violinist Joseph Joachim in the string works of Johannes Brahms, as seen from a performer’s point of view. Since Brahms did not belong to a generation of composers who mastered several different instruments – as had Bach or Mozart – and composed from the perspective of a pianist, his exchange of ideas with Joachim, which in the case of the Violin Concerto lasted almost a year, was of decisive importance for the final form of the piece, one of the most difficult in the repertoire. Isabelle uses the rarely played cadenza by Ferruccio Busoni, which dates from 1913. Brahms got to know Busoni as a child prodigy and recommended the young pianist in a number of artistic circles: ‘What Schumann did for me, I will do for Busoni.’ The spirit of Joseph Joachim also hovers over the second work on this recording, for the composer regarde...

There is nothing like the experience of being completely alone on stage, just with my violin. It is the ultimate soul-baring communion both with myself and with the audience. And it is no coincidence that many of the works written for solo violin explore the depths of our shared human experience through this intense medium. For musicians, composers and performers alike, sound is our medium. Through sound we must express everything we wish to communicate. The works on this disc take the violin to its expressive limits. The technical demands on the performer are always in the service of heightened expression, whether of ecstasy, pain, doubt, loneliness, desperation, or acceptance and peace. For me, this is at the heart of why I play the violin, and why I play music, to explore our inner life through the language of sound. Each composer on this disc displays a great depth of knowledge and understanding of the instrument, not only how it can be played, but of how natural resonances...

'Et Lux' is an alluring and timeless work for vocal ensemble and string quartet by leading German composer Wolfgang Rihm, here receiving its first recording. The hour-long piece is dedicated to The Hilliard Ensemble and the Arditti Quartet who gave the world premiere in Cologne in November 2009 and its UK premiere later that month at the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival. This pairing of a vocal group and a string quartet specializing in early music and contemporary music respectively is replicated by the artists on this ECM disc - the Cologne-based Minguet Quartett and the Belgian early music group, the Huelgas Ensemble whose founder, Paul van Nevel, conducts the recording. 'Et Lux' emerges as if from centuries ago, and reflects upon the musical processes that have shaped it, including the ritual of the requiem: "What we have is not music remembered but music remembering." It incorporates text fragments of the Latin Requiem Mass, which...

Musical settings of the requiem may be very public (Berlioz's, for example), or almost painfully private. Valentin Silvestrov's Requiem for Larissa falls into the latter category. "Larissa" was the composer's wife, the musicologist Larissa Bondarenko, who died unexpectedly in 1996. Silvestrov responded to her death with this requiem, believing (like Mozart) that it would be the last music he would write. Fortunately for us, Silvestrov was able to go on living, and he completed his most recent symphony in 2003. Silvestrov has received acclaim in the West for his Symphony #5, a work that seems to exist in a place and time after all music has come to an end. While some composers have excelled at writing preludes, Silvestrov has become the master of the postlude. These are not the crystal-clear codas of Romantic symphonies, however. Silvestrov's music is usually in the process of fading into nothing, but never quite getting there. Clarity and ...

It’s difficult to believe that the first performance of Arnold Schönberg’s Verklärte Nacht (Transfigured Night) in 1901 incited a riot, prompting one critic to report, “It sounds as if someone had smudged the score of Tristan while it was still wet.” Structured as it is around the eponymous poem by Richard Dehmel, in which two lovers test their resolve while wandering in moonlight, the gossamer threads of night are its makeup. Along with The Book of the Hanging Gardens , it is one of the composer’s most visceral works. Not easy listening, to be sure, but nothing worth coming to blows over, either. Its lyrical chromaticism is lush yet opaque and descriptive to the core. Its contours slowly come into focus like a whale from a dark sea, Zehetmair’s violin waiting along with the seagulls for any morsels to escape from its yawning food trap. The Camerata Bern pays strictest attention to rhythm, caressing the physiognomy of every beat with its strings. Though branded as a noct...

After his early visits to Italy, Handel’s desire to experience music in all the main European countries was great enough for him to insist that, on his appointment as Kapellmeister in Hanover in 1710, he should have an immediate twelve months leave of absence to visit England. The Elector’s apparent generosity in so readily agreeing to this has to be seen in its wider context, for as heir to the British throne he was in effect simply allowing the transfer of his employee from one court to his next. Handel was favourably received at Queen Anne’s court, and certainly performed there once, but his eyes were already on Vanbrugh’s new opera house, the Queen’s Theatre in the Haymarket. With his introduction to the publisher John Walsh, numerous society contacts and the sensational success of the first Italian opera especially composed for London, Rinaldo , which opened on 24 February 1711, his reputation seems already to have been partly made. Handel left for Germany in Jun...

Called “the world’s reigning male chorus” by The New Yorker magazine, the San Francisco based GRAMMY award winning ensemble Chanticleer celebrates its 37 th season in 2014-15, performing in 25 of the United States, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Sweden. Praised by the San Francisco Chronicle for their “tonal luxuriance and crisply etched clarity,” Chanticleer is known around the world as “an orchestra of voices” for the seamless blend of its twelve male voices ranging from soprano to bass and its original interpretations of vocal literature, from Renaissance to jazz and popular genres, as well as contemporary compositions. This extraordinary album reflects the musical sophistication of Ignacio de Jerusalem and Manuel de Zumaya, two significant composers in Mexico during the 18th century. This glorious music was widely performed throughout "New Spain," from Guatemala in the south to California missions in the north. Chanticleer is joined by the Chant...