Music is the key

After the success of their first volume Ophélie Gaillard and Pulcinella propose a second disc devoted to Johann Sebastian Bach's most talented and surprising son, Carl Philipp Emanuel (1714-1788). The Sinfonia in C major expresses multiple emotions, ranging from irrepressible suffering in the Adagio to joyous release and insouciance in the concluding Allegretto, tinged with near-Mozartian grace. The Cello Concerto in B flat reveals the influence of the waning Baroque era and Vivaldi in particular. The Sinfonia in E minor, nicknamed 'Fandango' and dating from his Berlin years, is commonly regarded as one of his finest symphonies. The particularly virtuosic Sonata for cello piccolo and keyboard shows to advantage the two soloists of this recording: Ophélie Gaillard and Francesco Corti, whose fieriness is further revealed in the Harpsichord Concerto in D minor. (Presto Classical)

Pianist Lucas Debargue quickly became the most talked about competitor at this year's International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow, garnering praise for the emotional expression in his playing and his musical individuality and integrity. The London Spectator called Debargue 'the real winner' of the competition, due to the Moscow Music Critics Association prize bestowed on the 4th prize recipient. Debargue began piano studies at age 11 at the Compiegne Conservatory under Christine Muenier. He gave up formal studies at age 16, but always maintained an admiration for virtuoso repertoire. After three years completing his Bachelor of Science at Paris 7 Diderot University, two of which spent famously not touching a piano, Debargue began studying at the Beauvais Conservatory under Philippe Tamborini. There he met his current professor Rena Shereshevskaya at the Rueil-Malmaison Conservatory and this encounter became decisive to him. They soon prepared for his e...

Double Grammy Award winner Pinchas Zukerman stars as violin and viola soloist and conductor in a landmark new Decca recording with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. 'Elgar & Vaughan Williams' offers his mature thoughts on Ralph Vaughan Williams' evocative masterwork The Lark Ascending, which Zukerman first recorded over forty years ago. It also includes revelatory performances of Elgar's Introduction and Allegro and Serenade for String Orchestra, Vaughan Williams' Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis , such evergreen Elgar miniatures as Salut d'amour and Chanson de matin, and the world premiere recording of In Moonlight, an arrangement for solo viola, strings and harp of Elgar's celebrated Canto popolare. Maestro Zukerman here draws on the strength of his partnership as Principal Guest Conductor of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra as the orchestra celebrates its 70th anniversary. Pinchas Zukerman recorded his new album at Cadogan Hall, ...

Marie van Rhijn's 2016 album on the Evidence label is a collection of brilliant harpsichord pieces arranged from the tragédie en musique, Alcide, a collaboration by Marin Marais and Louis Lully, son of the composer Jean-Baptiste Lully. Marais was most famous as a composer of viol music, which became enormously popular in the court of Louis XIV, though he is not known to have composed any works for the harpsichord, so these keyboard transcriptions of his operatic music might be a bit unexpected. Consisting of airs and dances, such as the courante, the sarabande, the menuet, and the passepied, most of the pieces here consist of two lines with elaborate ornamentation and are quite suitable to the keyboard. Van Rhijn is a virtuoso of the harpsichord, as well as an authority on vocal music of the French Baroque, so her lively performances convey something of the drama and florid lyricism of the original work, infused with a personal flair that makes her playing fascinating. In additio...

Mark Padmore (b.1961) started his musical activities as a clarinetist and singer. During the early 1980s he sang with The Sixteen and the Hilliard Ensemble. With the Hilliards he can be heard on ‘Perotinus’, an ECM album that has meanwhile achieved legendary status. In the 1990s he worked as a soloist with William Christie, Philippe Herreweghe and John Eliot Gardiner, and was much sought after as the Evangelist in the Passions of Johann Sebastian Bach. In 2002 he appeared for the first time in a lieder recital, singing Schubert’s ‘Die Schöne Müllerin’. His accompanist, Roger Vignoles, encouraged him to concentrate on the lied repertoire, and as a result, Padmore now spends a large amount of his time on the recital podium. He performs with seasoned accompanists: Julius Drake, Graham Johnson and Malcolm Martineau, and has also forged performing relationships with famous pianists: Imogen Cooper, Till Fellner and Paul Lewis. The latter accompanied him in very successful recordings of Sc...

There is no question as to Yundi Li's technique. When this recording was made in 2001, Li was a mere 19 years old, but from the evidence on this disc, he was already a formidable technician. The extravagant technical difficulties of the repertoire -- Chopin's Sonata No. 3 , several of the etudes, and the Andante spianato et grande polonaise -- are dispatched with skill and panache from the most delicate arabesques to the thunderous double octaves in contrary motion. Although there have been many other pianists who have played these works as well or better from a technical point of view, Li's performances stand up well in their company. But for all of his maturity as a technician, Li's interpretations are still those of a youth. The deeper meaning of the Sonata No. 3 -- its awe-inspiring harmonic structure and its formalization of fear and courage in the opening and closing movements -- are wholly beyond Li. The transcendent elegance of the Andante spianato and the radi...

Following his 2015 release of Frédéric Chopin's Préludes on Deutsche Grammophon, Yundi Li continues his survey of the Polish master's works with the Four Ballades, the Berceuse in D flat major, and the Four Mazurkas, Op. 17. Yundi's album is part of his ongoing Chopin Project, which has the appearance of being his life's work, so closely is he associated with this music. In keeping with Chopin's preferences, Yundi plays with calm introspection and flexibility in his phrasing, which gives the music a spontaneity that avoids formulaic Romantic clichés. Most importantly, Yundi's use of rubato and his dynamic adjustments are appropriate to the music's flow and not employed for sentimentality or showmanship. Instead, Yundi gives the lyrical Ballades room to breathe, and the tugging of the tempo is always at the service of expression, rather than effect. To sample Yundi's exquisite treatment of line and pacing, the poetic opening of the Ballade in F major, ...

With four saxophones and a piano the line-up of Alliage is already unique. But for their new programme Fantasia the two-time ECHO Classic winners have invited the ‘queen of clarinet’, Sabine Meyer. The soloist and the quintet embark on a musical fairy-tale journey, narrated in a new and exciting sound synthesis that savours all symphonic possibilities of a large orchestra and yet promises the intimacy of subtle chamber music. On one hand, Meyer’s clarinet sets soloistic accents and leads the high registers; on the other hand, she elegantly fits herself into the chameleon-like saxophone sound, so, the listener could hardly differ within the family of instruments.  Like a storyteller narrating his own adaption of a legend the Alliage Quintet and Sabine Meyer move through imaginative compositions of Alexander Borodin (Polovtsian Dances), Igor Stravinsky (The Firebird), Paul Dukas (Sorcerer’s Apprentice), Leonard Bernstein (‘Candide’ overture), and Dmitri Shostakovich (Five Pieces)...

If you are going to substitute the singing voice for an instrument what do you get? The warm and lyrical voice of the cello of course! Christian-Pierre La Marca’s Cantus ticks all boxes when it comes to originality, having interpreted famous sacred pieces into a single-instruments voice - the cello. What is left is an understanding of the musical emotion displayed in these famous pieces, with his repertoire including the titles Mass, Stabat Mater and Agnus Dei. Tackling on classics by Mozart, Bach and Pergolesi is a stupendous task, however Christian-Pierre successfully reveals the intensity of these melodies. In turn his album acts as a message, reinforcing the eighteenth century idea that music, by its power of proposition and submission, goes beyond words to express the unspeakable, often with clarity and extent. If you admire the organ, viola and theorbo of sacred music than Cantus is for you , with Christian-Pierre’s repertoire covering the most important name...

Following up on their acclaimed recording of Schumann's Dichterliebe and Liederkreis, tenor Mark Padmore and fortepianist Kristian Bezuidenhout join forces once again for a varied and appealing lieder recital of songs by Beethoven, Haydn, and Mozart . Works featured here include Beethoven's An die ferne Geliebte, Mozart's Masonic Cantata and selections from Haydn's English Songs. Don't assume that the British tenor Mark Padmore is an opera lightweight from the ethereal sound and almost choirboy purity of his voice...he can sing with penetrating intensity...his is an intimate tenor voice, ideally suited to the Evangelist in Bachs St. Matthew Passion, and, as this new recording again demonstrates, the lieder repertory...This is eloquent lieder singing driven by astute and sensitive attention to the texts. (The New York Times)   The songs are thoughtful and the interpretations deeply considered. Tenor Mark Padmore sidles in with an artless tone a...

In 2006, Shirly Laub (violin), Tony Nys (viola) and Karel Steylaerts (cello) founded TrioFenix to bring to a wider public through concert performance the seldom-played repertoire for string trio. As well as the great masterpieces, TrioFenix explore and perform lesser-known and contemporary works written in this genre. From the start, they have had the support of Klara, the Flanders Festival, the Ostbelgian Festival and the Musiques en Ecrins Festival among many others. Their first CD was recorded in 2010 on the Fuga Libera label. The well-known Divertimento KV 563 and the six Adagio and Fugues KV 404a by W.A. Mozart became their musical calling card and a significant step for TrioFenix. In 2012 they recorded the Serenades Opus 8 by Ludwig Van Beethoven and Opus 10 by Ernst Von Dohnany for the television channel Canvas. Their new CD dedicated to Beethoven string trios will be released in April 2016 (Fuga Libera). Shirly Laub studied violin at the Royal Conservatory of M...

Widely respected as a pioneer in the field of early music who employed original instruments in performances of Baroque and Classical music, Nikolaus Harnoncourt is also admired for his insightful interpretations of 19th century music. His 2007 recording with the Vienna Philharmonic of Johannes Brahms' Ein deutsches Requiem is characteristic of his handling of the Romantic repertoire, insofar as he clearly knows the best scholarship on performance style, yet neither makes authenticity a fetish nor lets expression suffer through an obsession with period practice. The sound of the orchestra is quite modern and full, and there is no attempt to make the strings play with minimal vibrato or to make the ensemble seem reduced in size or altered in the seating arrangement, unlike some historically informed performances. Furthermore, Harnoncourt's tempos are conventional, and the pacing is steady and even on the slow and reverent side, so his approach shows that he is far from doctrinai...

Anyone who loves Bruckner's music will want to hear this recording since it contains the Finale of his Symphony No. 9, the music which, according to Bruckner's musical executors, never existed except in the mind of the dying composer. But while that story fooled generations of conductors into performing a three-movement version of the Ninth, musicologists have long known that most of the Finale existed in score and sketch at Bruckner's death. But what the musicologists knew to be true has been almost completely ignored until this recording. Almost completely ignored because there have been three previous recordings of Ninth's Finale over the past 20 years and all of them are far more compelling than this one by Nikolaus Harnoncourt and the Vienna Philharmonic . For one thing, all the other recordings of the Finales have been completed with the bits that Bruckner didn't finish filled in, while Harnoncourt's recordings only have the bits that Bruckner finished an...

Yundi Li's premiere recording with the Berlin Philharmonic under Seiji Ozawa demonstrates his steadfast, consistent approach to the piano. Unfortunately for him -- and for listeners -- that means only one of the two concertos heard here is performed as it should be. The Prokofiev Second Piano Concerto, premiered by the composer when he was only 22 years of age, is ideally suited to 24-year-old Li. It is a work filled with youthful energy, bombast, and technical bravura clearly designed to impress. Li knocks this one out of the park. His more-than-ample technique allows him to perform this incredibly demanding work with apparent ease. The extended passages for solo piano are executed with spine-tingling amounts of power and technical precision. Anyone in the market for a riveting performance of only the Prokofiev need look no farther. But then there's still the matter of the Ravel G major Concerto , a work which, unlike Prokofiev, does not rely on ostentatious displays of techn...

Henry VIII was a musician and music lover. This album of cheerful songs and dances brings together some of Henry's own compositions with the best Renaissance music from England and the continent, reflecting the taste of each of Henry's wives and giving a lively impression of Tudor court life. Spanish, French, Italian and English music - including many pieces by Henry VIII himself - in a programme designed to reflect the tastes and characters of Henry's wives. Cheerful songs, dances and reflective pieces give an impression of court life and the music that was made and composed there. Many of the pieces are taken from a manuscript which was written during the reign of Henry VIII and which contains many of the King's own compositions. Henry VIII's turbulent loves and life are famous. It is not so often remembered, however, that court life had its own rhythms and occasions which continued throughout all the confusion and turmoil of the King's ...

A collection of beautiful baroque and renaissance love songs that reflect the versatility of love – passionate, dramatic and addictive by the most popular composers of this time, from Monteverdi, Purcell, Cesti to Merula and Dowland. Love is Simone Kermes’ most intimate and personal album yet. The arrangement, cast of instruments, and recording set up is as such that the “pop song” quality, the contemporary and eternal spirit, the immediacy of these compositions is revealed. All sung with the unique legato, pure, and silver quality that makes Simone Kermes’ voice so special. Simone Kermes is a dramatic coloratura soprano and multi-award winner. For her solo albums she has received a number of international awards, such as the annual award of the Deutsche Schallplattenkritik, the Echo Klassik award for 2011 Female Singer of the Year, the Diapason d`Or, Midem Award, Choc Le Monde de la Musique and Gramophone magazine’s Recording of the Month. In April 2013 she recei...

Chicago composer Lois V. Vierk's first signature album was released in 1990 on the XI label (for Experimental Intermedia), and contained compositions written from 1981-1986. All of Vierk's compositions are deeply influenced by, and indebted to, Gagaku, the Imperial Court music of Japan. The three pieces here reveal Gagaku's influence in their sonorities and microtonalism rather than in strict thematic structure. "GO Guitars" (the word go means the numeral five in Japanese) is an aggressive piece for five guitars all tuned microtonally around E. The volume is high and the pitch is a wavering, shimmering glissando around sonorities. These all change as the tempo is increased and the notes fall off the board, moving the intersecting tones around to create new ones between E and G. "Cirrus" for six trumpets is a study that La Monte Young copped later for a trumpet work of his own. A choir of trumpets plays a drone tone at the top of the middle register, an...

River Beneath the River features four compositions, covering a ten-year span in the life and work of the composer. It is meant to be a kind of introduction to Lois V. Vierk's work, a primer for the uninitiated, or a "greatest hits" for the aficionado, and is one of the prestigious Tzadik catalog's most welcome additions. The title track, a string quartet from 1993 commissioned by Kronos -- but played here by violinists Eva Gruesser and Patricia Davis, cellist Bruce Wang, and violist Lois Martin -- features several Vierk trademarks. First there is the sense of stillness that slowly evolves into glissando movement. It begins as a downward slide into the point of stillness, but before reaching it, the second trademark comes into play, as systematic activity and movement travel ever upward to a polyphonic epiphany. Energy accumulates until the violins become almost free within the score, placing you on the edge of your seat. Next is a string quartet commissioned by a dan...

Olga Neuwirth 's faible for grotesque themes and her occasional vegetative proliferation of pieces ensured her a permanent place in the repertoire. As brilliant growths of an undomesticated artist. Many-facetted, vigorously arranged scores with the most heterogeneous influences and styles, far remote from any of the false glamour characteristic of postmodernity. With the conductor Pierre Boulez she has found herself a genuine ally. (Wolfgang Fuhrmann)

The title ‘Composer in Dialogue’ stands for a biennial cooperation between the ICI Ensemble and a contemporary figure, the aim of which is to create a kind of ‘work in progress’ through composition itself but also by involving improvisational forms. Performances of pieces thus created remain the intention. The present recording documents an ICI concert with the composer Olga Neuwirth.  Olga Neuwirth began her musical career on the trumpet, before she embraced composition as her favoured means of expression. She remains one of today’s most important protagonists in the field. She can thank exchanges with Adriana Hölszky and Luigi Nono, studies with Tristan Murail, and a befriended author, Elfriede Jelinek, for the path her professional life took.  Olga Neuwirth meets an ICI Ensemble whose calling card is a kind of improvised music that draws on Afro-American roots. Here we must look to Vinko Globokar, Barry Guy, Giancarlo Schiaffini, and George E. Lewis for any explanat...