Music is the key

In honor of groundbreaking American composer Terry Riley’s 80th birthday, Nonesuch Records releases One Earth, One People, One Love: Kronos Plays Terry Riley —a five-disc box set of four albums of his work composed for, and performed by, his longtime friends and champions Kronos Quartet—as well as a new disc called Sunrise of the Planetary Dream Collector: Music of Terry Riley , on June 23, 2015, in North America and July 10 for the rest of the world. Riley and Kronos met more than 35 years ago, and since then, the quartet has commissioned 27 works from him, more than from any other composer in the group’s history. Sunrise of the Planetary Dream Collector includes a new recording of the title piece, which was Riley’s first for Kronos, as well as previously unreleased recordings of Lacrymosa – Remembering Kevin and One Earth, One People, One Love from Sun Rings ; Cry of a Lady (originally released on A Thousand Thoughts ); and G Song and Cadenza on the Night Plain (bot...

The art of improvisation was for much of musical history one of the most formidable weapons in the arsenal of performers. But in the 19th century it became largely lost (virtuoso pianists like Liszt and organists being notable exceptions) as the concept of the “sacrosanct score” gradually took root. In “art music”—to use a poor term to distinguish it from jazz—it is only with the revival of early music during the latter half of the last century that a reawakening of interest in improvisation has emerged, with performers as diverse as Robert Levin and Andrew Lawrence-King reviving long lost techniques and pushing back the boundaries of timidity. No period lends itself more readily to such extemporary music-making than the late Renaissance or the early Baroque , a period during which countless treatises dedicated to providing examples for both vocal and instrumental embellishment appeared. For instrumental players, such improvisatory techniques specifically in...

Philippe Manoury is one of the world's leading composers and computer music researchers. He studied composition with Gerard CondZ and Max Deutsch (one of Schoenberg's first students in Vienna), and at the Conservatoire National de Musique de Paris, with Michel Philippot and Ivo Malec. He studied computer-assisted composition with Pierre Barbaud beginning in 1976. In 1978, Philippe began teaching in Brazil at universities in Sao Paulo, Brasilia, and other locations. A major appointment followed at the Conservatoire National SupZrieur de Lyon (1986-96). Most significant is his long association with the world's leading center for computer music research, IRCAM (Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique), a branch of the Centre George Pompidou in Paris. Philippe has worked as a musical researcher (in collaboration with Miller Puckette) since 1981, and as a Professor of Composition since 1993. At IRCAM Manoury composed Zeitlauf (1981), a work for mixed cho...

“Rarely do I find a record so irresistible that I listen to it over and over, well beyond what's required for a review. This is such a record… Part of the attraction is simply the joy of discovery. …These etudes represent Alkan at his best and most accessible. For the newly-initiated this would be a good place to begin… Stephanie McCallum is a thoroughly convincing champion of this music. Not only are her fingers up to the quite formidable technical task, but she has the right kind of temperament. Her playing has real character and elan.” (American Record Guide, May/June 1995) “As fas as I know, the Australian Stephanie McCallum is the first woman pianist to record Alkan. There is, frankly, little to choose between her and Bernard Ringeissen who, at the moment, offers the sole alternative in Op. 35…. McCallum has a formidable pianistic armoury and… it's a most impressive recital. In particular, I urge you to hear her beautiful account of Etude no 19 "Cha...

This low-budget Philip Glass opera, Les enfants Terribles, is based on a novel and play by Jean Cocteau, forming the third ring in Glass' trilogy of works devoted to the elaborate personal mythology of the great French visionary. Foregoing the controversial and dualistic 1949 film of Les enfants Terribles made by Jean-Pierre Melville, Glass decided to realize the visual element through a collaboration with choreographer Susan Marshall, re-creating Cocteau's story as a "dance opera." Les enfants Terribles is the most compelling Glass score beheld in many years.  Released by Glass' own Orange Mountain Music, the recording sounds like a rehearsal, with the voices of the principals -- soprano Christine Arand, mezzo-soprano Valerie Komer, bass-baritone Phillip Cutlip, and tenor Hal Cazalet -- drifting about in space as if though going through the motions of a play blocked out in a large dance studio. Glass eschews his patented orchestral scoring for a Les noces-esqu...

The duet madrigal, chamber cantata, or aria was a prime form of the early Baroque, ready-made for a noble family that wished to display its house singers and even draw from them a little bit of competition. There are a number of albums in the genre on the market, but Amore e morte dell'amore (Love and the Death of Love), from reigning Baroque soprano queen Roberta Invernizzi and newer contralto talent Sonia Prina, stands out from the crowd. First there are the rich voices of the singers themselves, who could sing a random web search page and make it sound good, and their razor-sharp coordination. Second is the program, which traverses the entire 17th century and moves into the 18th, holding everything together thematically and largely avoiding well-known numbers (other than the finale duet from Monteverdi's L'incoronazione di Poppea), touching on some unusual mid-century finds by Antonio Lotti and Francesco Durante, with a well-placed ensemble treatment of a Domenico Sca...

Yes, pianophiles who are aware of Alkan have to know that there is not only one great recording of Alkan’s Symphony or Concerto for solo piano.  Like many other people, I was first introduced to Alkan by the technically unflappable recordings of Marc-André Hamelin, and I was pretty much convinced that they were THE definite recordings.  That was until Jack Gibbons’ recording of the complete Op. 39 came along.  And it totally blew me away. After a quick hearing of Gibbons’ Symphony and the Concerto, it’s hard not to realize that his technique yields nothing to Hamelin’s, yet while Hamelin presents us with a cool, Apollonian view of these two masterworks, Jack Gibbons goes all out with his technique, and in dazzling display reveals all their thrilling Dionysian qualities.  Consider the first movement of the Symphony:  Hamelin’s more symphonic approach paints the picture in darker, warmer tones, frequently putting emphasis to the brooding C minor...

Since winning two prizes at the ARD International Music Competition in 2005, Serbian sisters Sanja and Lidija Bizjak have achieved worldwide praise for their solo piano and piano duo performances alike: “brilliant sound, precise fingerwork, and excellent listening skills” – The Independent. For their debut recording on Onyx , they have created a superb programme consisting of two concertos for two pianos and orchestra by Poulenc and Martinu to frame compositions for two pianos alone: Stravinsky’s 'Sonata' and Shostakovich’s rarely heard 'Concertino'. The sisters have appeared at the BBC Proms to great acclaim in Saint-Saens’ 'Carnival of the Animals'. The Serbian sisters Lidija and Sanja Bizjak have achieved worldwide praise for their performances alike (‘brilliant sound, precise fingerwork and excellent listening skills’ – The Independent). For their debut recording on Onyx, they have created a superb programme consisting of two concertos for two ...

  Adélaïde Panaget and Naïri Badal met at a very young age when they were taking the same piano lessons and they developed a similar approach to the instrument. After their time at the Conservatoire de Paris , where they were taught by Brigitte Engerer and Nicolas Angelich, they improved their skills with Claire Desert and Ami Flammer. In 2007 their friendship and shared artistic sensibility led them to create Duo Jatekok, which quickly emerged as one of the most promising duos of its generation. They have won many international competitionJatekoks including in Ghent in 2013 and Rome in 2011, as well as the contemporary music prize at the Forum Musical de Normandie in 2012. In addition, they were artists in residence at the prestigious Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel in Belgium, under the direction of the Artemis Quartet. The energy and enthusiasm they bring to their performances has earned them regular invitations to festivals and international stages such as La ...

This release by the early music group L'Arpeggiata and its leader, lutenist Christina Pluhar, seems to encompass two separate goals, only partly laid out in the handsomely illustrated booklet notes. First is an illustration of the idea that, as the notes put it, "the sea does not separate cultures, it connects them." Jordi Savall and others have released albums that cut across a wide swath of Mediterranean lands from Turkey to Spain (and around to Portugal), finding in them a traditional music that responds well to improvisatory practice, shows the continuing influence of musical practices from the Arab and Ottoman worlds, and reflects a lyric impulse and a tendency toward accompanied vocal song. Pluhar adds different singers and musicians onto her core group according to the national origin of the music, a noteworthy and innovative practice that gets the listener to hear commonalities and differences in a fresh way. The second goal is more unusual: Pluhar and company ex...

Schubert's music has an immediate impact. No one has expressed this more forcefully than Theodor Adorno in his early essay of 1928: 'Confronted with Schubert's music, tears fall from our eyes before the soul is even consulted. That is how solidly and unmetaphorically it affects us.' It would be wrong, however, to take this as a plea for sentimentality, allowing pianists to claim, as Ulrich Schreiber once put it, 'the right to lend the score a helping hand by improving it'. To avoid this dilemma, one thing above all is helpful, in addition to pianistic skill and aesthetic sensibilities: archival research. This involves the questions of which instruments Schubert played upon, which surroundings his works were performed in, what social groupings they were conceived for and what sound-ideals this imposed on him. Hungarian pianist András Schiff has long been concerned with period performance practice. At first, however, the musical results of the rese...

This release arguably features the two greatest concertos ever written for the violin: performed by one of the most brilliant violinists of her generation, together with one of the finest orchestras, and under the baton of one of the world’s foremost conductors. This recording of Tchaikovsky/Mendelssohn violin concertos bears witness to the eminence of the collaboration between violinist Arabella Steinbacher, conductor Charles Dutoit and PENTATONE’s Orchestra of the Season January June 2015, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, and the result thereof. After waiting for a long time to record these concertos with the perfect collaboration, Arabella Steinbacher didn’t waste any chance to shine with heart-felt enthusiasm and bravura in this recording. Her performance produced such a pure, yet fierce sound that it allowed the music to speak in an immediate, translucent way. Recorded in September 2014 in the magnificent Victoria Hall, Geneva, the Orchestre de la Suisse Rom...

The Barcelona-born composer Leonardo Balada is credited with pioneering a blending of ethnic music with avant-garde techniques. The symphonic tragedy María Sabina , one of Balada’s bestknown works, tells the extraordinary story of Sabina, a Mexican Indian mushroom-cult priestess who meets fierce resistance from her people when endeavouring to open the holy rituals to the outside world. Some of the text in Balada’s work is based on her incantations, of which the composer has written, “While composing the work, the power of the text was so extraordinary that I felt inspired by it. I recall composing the music even when I was travelling, in airports or hotels”. The cantata Dionisio: In Memoriam is a homage to Dionisio Ridruejo, a poet and politician from Soria, Spain, on whose ideological, philosophical and descriptive writings the work is based. (NAXOS)

Throughout his career, Claudio Abbado evinced a keen desire to work with young and unspoilt musicians, and it was this desire that led him to gift to the world of music one new orchestra after another. He loved working with his players with the maximum degree of intimacy and in an atmosphere of mutual understanding that encouraged them to listen to each other. In the course of his life more than a dozen wonderful ensembles were created thanks to his powerful initiative. The two most recent ones were the Lucerne Festival Orchestra, which dates back to 2003, and the Orchestra Mozart , which was established the following year as a project of the Accademia Filarmonica di Bologna and financed by the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio in Bologna. It was with the latter that Abbado developed an especially close bond during the final years of his life, its outstanding qualities demonstrated, not least, by the many prestigious awards that it received. In one of his last interviews, Abbado himself s...

Gidon Kremer returns to the Yellow label after more than a decade with the brand new reference recording of Philip Glass’ Second Violin Concerto – “The American Seasons” , his first solo concerto album in many years.The first Glass Violin Concerto, performed by Kremer and released by DG in 1993, has achieved cult status and shipped close to 90k units (in Germany alone over 25k copies) – and has become a staple of DG’s contemporary music catalogue. Now, this extraordinary follow-up Concerto is at the heart of the repertoire of the Kremerata Baltica. Performed for the first time in San José, Costa Rica with Gidon Kremer as soloist in August 2013, it will be toured later in the year - info to follow shortly. The album is completed by works of Arvo Pärt and Giya Kancheli – two composers both closely associated with Gidon Kremer, and who are both set to celebrate milestone 80th birthdays this year. Gidon has also added the short piece by the well-known Japanese film com...

If you buy only one record of harpsichord music in your life . . . buy this sensational album. The 30-year-old Iranian-American Mahan Esfahani has been making waves among connoisseurs for several years. Now he emerges as a superstar whose musicianship, imagination, virtuosity, cultural breadth and charisma far transcends the ivory tower in which the harpsichord has traditionally been placed . . . Where necessary, Esfahani is brilliantly accompanied by Concerto Köln. Even their final performance -- of JS Bach¿s Vivaldi-inspired harpsichord concerto in D Minor, with its plangently lyrical slow movement -- has a delicious twist. In the last movement Esfahani inserts a flamboyant cadenza by Brahms, of all people. A truly magical mash-up of times past, present and future. (Record Review / Richard Morrison, The Times (London) / 08. May 2015)