Music is the key

German tenor Jonas Kaufmann came on the scene in the mid-1990s and has gradually risen to the top rank of the operatic world. His is a remarkable voice in many ways. Like Plácido Domingo, to whom he is a sort of German opposite number, he excels in both Italian and German opera and also sings well in French and English (in an odd performance of a piece from Weber's Oberon, track 17). He adds freely dramatic shaping to lines of the big Verdi and Puccini tunes, almost always defamiliarizing them in ways that seem personal and passionate, with a bit of vocal gravel applied at just the right moment. Kaufmann has done his part to rediscover a languishing repertory, in his case verismo opera from around the turn of the century, and this Best of Jonas Kaufmann collection may be worth the price simply for the little-heard Ombra di nube of Licinio Refice (track 15). The collection represents a good mix of standards and innovative thinking. And, through it all, there's the...

Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji (1892-1988) may remain an outwardly formidable and eccentric figure, but his music, with its heady transformation of past exotic idioms into a bewildering alternation of excess and economy, is a marvel of inventiveness, appealing notably to those whose taste runs to music at once serious and exotic.  Son of a Spanish-Sicilian mother and a Parsee father, Sorabji was celebrated for his polemical outbursts and opinions. Yet beneath the mask of his extravagance (‘Ravel, like Alexander Pope, is full of cocktail cretinisms’) he possessed a penetrating, witty, if frequently mischief-making, mind. Musical aphorisms (the final Arabesque on this delectable disc) alternate with works lasting several hours and his writing can be so intricate that it spreads its tendrils over as many as seven staves. Small wonder that it is only recently that Sorabji’s mysterious star has started to shine.  Remarkably, Elizabeth Farnum and Margaret Kampmeier’s ...

The tenor Jonas Kaufmann has taken the unusual step of telling his Facebook followers not to buy an upcoming release on Decca Classics called Jonas Kaufmann - The Age of Puccini .  The message reads: Dear Friends,  Please do not let yourselves be deceived by the Decca release 'Jonas Kaufmann - The Age of Puccini'. This compilation contains only three Puccini arias - my recordings of 'Che Gelida Manina' and 'E lucevan le stelle' from 2007 and a scene from La Rondine, that I recorded with Renée Fleming in 2008 for the album 'Verismo'. The remaining 18 tracks are essentially my old recording 'Verismo Arias' from 2010. THEREFORE familiar recordings - in new packaging. I was not consulted in its making, this has been done without my knowledge and approval.  The 'real' Puccini album, which I recorded with Antonio Pappano in Rome in Autumn last year is titled 'Nessun dorma' and will be released on Sony in the middle ...

A branch snaps with icy confidence. It seems like an everyday occurrence, an everyday sound. But within the oeuvre of Michel van der Aa (1970), the snap of a branch means more than just that. In a musical context removed from the ‘everyday’, the gesture suddenly suggests loneliness, insanity, anger. And while the crisp noise a breaking branch makes is indeed pure nature, with closed eyes it also carries an electric charge. The gesture and the sound carry more layers and more weight than one might think. That breaking branch is a symbol for Michel van der Aa’s oeuvre in general and the Here trilogy in particular. The interaction between natural and electric sounds and a visual-theatrical component are recurring themes in the Here trilogy , composed between 2001 and 2003 . The cycle is thematically related to the chamber opera One (2002). In One an anonymous female character (soprano) undertakes an obsessive search for herself, and enters into a dialogue with her alter ego...

This is a unique collection of American works involving the clarinet‚ brilliantly performed‚ but sadly‚ it is a disc very hard to enjoy because of the unrelentingly aggressive quality of the recording. Most of this music is jazz­influenced‚ which may account for the balance of a recording‚ made in the Olympic Studios in London‚ which makes it feel as though you are shut up in a matchbox with very loud and persistent performers. Maybe that is the way some jazz­lovers want to hear their music‚ but these are works that‚ for all their brash qualities‚ demand the subtlety of light and shade‚ of dynamics less than fortissimo‚ and they hardly get that here. For all the virtuosity and feeling for idiom in Sharon Kam’s solo work ‚ it sometimes feels as though one is actually inside the clarinet. I remember feeling how unnecessarily dry and aggressive the recording was for Simon Rattle’s ‘Jazz Album’ – listed in selected comparisons above – which includes Bernstein’s Prelude‚ Fugu...

The clarinet made its bow in the eighteenth century and was the immediate beneficiary of Mozart's attention, but the instrument came into its own in the nineteenth century. Inasmuch as major clarinet literature from the nineteenth century is concerned, works of Carl Maria von Weber dominate the field, but there was more to it than that, and clarinet virtuoso Sharon Kam helps widen the perspective in her Berlin Classics effort The Romantic Clarinet . She starts out with a concerto -- and what a concerto -- by Julius Rietz, a close contemporary of Felix Mendelssohn. It is a superb work; stormy, intense, and involving and probably is to the clarinet what the E minor violin concerto of Mendelssohn is to the violin. On Max Bruch's Concerto for clarinet, viola, and orchestra in E minor, Op. 88 (1911), Kam is joined her brother, violist Ori Kam. To be fair, the work is perhaps friendlier to the viola than it is to the clarinet; much of the time the clarinet holds down the for...

Sharon Kam is one of the world’s leading clarinet soloists and has been working with renowned orchestras in the United States, Europe, and Japan for over 20 years. Mozart’s clarinet masterpieces have been an object of artistic focus for Ms. Kam since the beginning of her career. At the age of 16, she performed the Mozart Clarinet Concerto in her orchestral debut with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra and Zubin Mehta. A short time later, she performed the Clarinet Quintet with the Guarneri String Quartet in Carnegie Hall, New York. As part of Mozart’s 250th birthday celebrations at the National Theatre in Prague, her interpretation of the Mozart concerto was televised live in 33 countries and is available on DVD. In the same year, she was able to realize her longtime dream of recording the Concerto and the Clarinet Quintet using the basset clarinet. Contributing to the widely praised disk were eminent string players Isabelle van Keulen, Ulrike-Anima Mathé, Volker ...

After a rapturous critical reception for their Franck & Strauss Violin Sonatas, James and Andrew turn their attention to three violin sonatas all composed around the years of World War I. The Sibelius 'Berceuse' also dates from the war years when Finland was isolated from the rest of Europe. Sibelius was short of money and busy writing the 6th and 7th symphonies, and planning his 8th: the six short pieces of Op. 79 were attractive to publishers who were wary of large scale works with little chance of commercial return during the hostilities. Debussy would die in 1918 and had, like Elgar, composed very little during the conflict. 'I want to work,' he wrote to his publisher Durand, 'not so much for myself, as to provide a proof, however small, that thirty million Boches can t destroy French thought'. Elgar told a friend 'I cannot do any real work with the awful shadow hanging over us' he said. Suffering from ill health, Elgar wrote the ...

The Ensemble Pygmalion directed by Raphaël Pichon commences its collaboration with Harmonia Mundi with this new recording of J.S. Bach’s lost music to the Köthener Trauermusik (Cöthen funeral music), BWV 244a. Founded in 2006 at the European Bach Festival, Ensemble Pygmalion is a combination of choir and orchestra - all young performers with experience of authentic instruments and period-informed performance. Its repertoire concentrates primarily on Johann Sebastian Bach and Jean-Philippe Rameau. It does however play baroque music and also contemporary works. For this recording there are four vocal soloists. Pygmalion numbers seventeen singers and twenty-four orchestral players. The work Köthener Trauermusik (Cöthen funeral music), BWV 244a also known as the Klagt, Kinder, klagt es aller Welt (Cry, children, cry to all the world) was composed in 1729 for the state funeral of Leopold, Prince of Anhalt-Cöthen who had died a few days prior to his thirty-four...

. . . [from the first chords of the "Figaro" overture, Nézet-Séguin] establishes a bold, fully crystallized concept of Mozartean sonority and the psychological implications behind it . . . [Christiane Karg as the wily servant Susanna and Sonya Yoncheva as the Countess] are just wonderful . . . [Luca Pisaroni's Figaro] makes dramatic points not with his usual word articulation but with more microphone-friendly use of tone Color . . . Even small roles are cast with stars: Anne Sofie von Otter as Marcellina and Rolando Villazón as Basilio help sustain Act 4 . . . [the 50-plus "Figaro" recordings on CD and DVD] show how the opera showcases each generation of Mozart performers . . . Nézet-Séguin's recording takes its place among these touchstones. A great musical mediator . . . Record Review / David Patrick Stearns, Philadelphia Inquirer / 10. July 2016   Luxuriously presented and cast . . . [Nézet-Séguin's Mozart recording] oozes confide...

Rachel Barton Pine has often performed the Sonatas and Partitas of Johann Sebastian Bach in recital, but her 2016 release on Avie is her first studio recording of this essential masterwork for violinists. Using a Baroque bow on a modernized 1742 Guarneri de Gesù violin, Pine plays the Sonatas and Partitas with crisp accentuation, transparent voicing, and a warm tone, much as she does in her concert performances. Her interpretation, which is influenced by period practices but not limited by them, offers clear counterpoint in the sonatas and buoyant dance rhythms in the partitas, and there is little scratchiness in her stopped chords to disrupt the smoothness and transparency of her elegant lines. Pine's depth of feeling and expressive insights into the music keep it from seeming like dry, technical exercises, yet there is none of the overly rhetorical Romantic approach here, either, so this reading does justice to Bach's likely intentions while communicating emo...

Baritone, harpsichordist, lutenist, harpist and artistic director, Nicolas Achten is a rising figure in the world of early music. Prizewinner at the VIIth International Baroque Singing Competition of Chimay in 2006, he was voted Classical Artist of 2009 at the Octaves of Music Prize, and Young Musician of the Year 2009 by the Union of the Belgian Musical Press. Born in Brussels in 1985, he studied singing, lute, harpsichord and triple harp at the Royal Conservatories of Brussels and the Hague, and completed his training at various masterclasses, including the Académie baroque d’Ambronay and the Centre de la Voix de Royaumont. Since 2004, Nicolas has performed with some of the most prestigious early music ensembles including l’Arpeggiata, La Fenice, La Petite Bande, Ausonia, Les Agrémens, Akadêmia, Les Talens Lyriques, il Fondamento, Les Musiciens du Louvre, Il Seminario Musicale, Le Poeme Harmonique, and the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin, and under the direction of conductors s...

At the very end of 1706, not yet 22 years of age, George Frideric Handel arrived in Rome. “Having shown off his skills to the amazement of everyone” on the organ of St John Lateran on 14 January 1707, the young talent from beyond the Alps immediately established himself in the lively cultural fabric of the city, causing a disruptive reaction, an alchemy that was to transform the traveller as much as his hosts. The compositions recorded here testify to this meeting: a dialogue between two musical cultures that shared an illustrious history and an extremely dynamic modernity; a dialogue captured in the first annus mirabilis of the crucial Italian tour that gave rise to the earliest masterpieces by the Saxon, as German musicians were often called in Italy. By the first weeks of the year, Handel was already caught up in a dense network of aristocratic patronage, both secular (the Marquis Ruspoli) and ecclesiastical (the Cardinals Ottoboni, Colonna and Pamphili), and that saw...

Released in the year of Shakespeare’s 400th anniversary, Valery Gergiev and London Symphony Orchestra are joined by soloists Olga Borodina, Kenneth Tarver and Evgeny Nikitin for Berlioz Roméo et Juliette, recorded live at the Barbican Hall in November 2013. Part of a major series of eight concerts, this work toured to venues in the Czech Republic, Germany, Austria and France. A large-scale ‘symphonie dramatique’, Roméo et Juliette was the fruit of the composer’s dual fascination with Shakespeare and with the actress Harriet Smithson, whom he was later to marry. Using the story of the star-crossed lovers as a starting point, Shakespeare’s passion and drama is deftly portrayed through his music, as well as through the abundance of lyrical poetry, written by French poet Émile Deschamps. Grammy-award winning mezzo-soprano Olga Borodina is a star of the Mariinsky Theatre, regularly appearing at major opera houses...

A decade has passed since Trio Wanderer gave us a superb set of Brahms’ Piano Trios with the first Piano Quartet as filler. That recording set a benchmark thanks to the ensemble’s ideal balance of elegance and expressive intensity, so this sequel is long overdue. The rarely heard first version of the Op. 8 Trio is a fascinating adjunct to that set and the Wanderers tackle the work with a different mindset, helping to delineate the self-critical composer’s maturing concision. They don’t linger as they did during the lengthy first movement, which Brahms initially over-egged with five themes, several of which were replaced by the lovely secondary subject. Hanslick thought the fugato passage as inappropriate as a schoolboy Latin quotation in a love poem and the composer took note and cut it. The marvellous Scherzo he left well alone but for a few nips and tucks, however he wisely remodelled the middle of the slow movement; the mood swings of the original are superfluous with such...

The title of this release and the glowering skyscape on its cover are pure marketing – the piece from which the title comes is not about April weather at all – but I don’t think anyone lured by it into buying a disc of 17th-century chamber music need feel aggrieved. We don’t get enough reminders that Pachelbel was a real composer of quality chamber music, yet here is his complete Musikalische Ergötzung of 1695, consisting of six ‘Parthien’ (or suites) for two violins and continuo. Add in a seventh, unpublished suite, six secular songs and the Canon and Gigue, and these are ‘musical pleasures’ indeed. If April is a red herring, the presence elsewhere in the artwork of Brueghel is more apt, for Pachelbel’s music has a strong sense of connection with the world. The songs deal feelingly with death, the perfidy of princes (that’s the April showers one), ‘Good Councillor Walther’ and a nameless patron, while the suites, for all their restless counterpoint, never lose touch...

Australian violinist, conductor and composer, Richard Tognetti has established an international reputation for his compelling performances and artistic individualism. He studied at the Sydney Conservatorium with Alice Waten, in his home town of Wollongong with William Primrose, and at the Berne Conservatory (Switzerland) with Igor Ozim, where he was awarded the Tschumi Prize as the top graduate soloist in 1989. Later that year he was appointed Leader of the Australian Chamber Orchestra and subsequently became Artistic Director. He is also Artistic Director of the Maribor Festival in Slovenia and Creative Associate of Classical Music for Melbourne Festival. Tognetti performs on period, modern and electric instruments. His numerous arrangements, compositions and transcriptions have expanded the chamber orchestra repertoire and been performed throughout the world. As director or soloist, Tognetti ha...

"Let the Wind Speak" is as much an exploration of Kaija Saariaho’s flute writing as her long-time collaboration with soloist Camilla Hoitenga, who plays everything from piccolo to bass flute, vocalizing and executing multiphonics with organic ease. The oldest and most widely performed work, Laconisme de l’aile (track 10), which the Finnish composer first presented her in 1982, moves from a short poetry recitation into fitful, rapidly fluctuating lyricism, only to end with a series of rising scales before the sound vanishes into thin air. In Couleurs du Vent , performed on alto flute, Hoitenga seamlessly blends speech with extended techniques. Works such as these reveal Saariaho’s ability to combine melodic invention with a relentless push toward new technical frontiers. The opening track, Tocar , reorchestrated for flute and harp (Héloîse Dautry), has the feeling of a recitative as the flute sings above rivulets of archaic sound. Faultless audio engineerin...

Karlheinz Stockhausen is a composer who has never been prone to self-doubt; otherwise he couldn't have persevered through the process of creating his monumental seven-opera cycle LICHT (Light), a project that occupied him from 1977 until 2003. At just about twice the length of Wagner's Ring cycle, and requiring extraordinary performing forces (including four helicopters flying over the theater in one opera) it's probably safe to call LICHT the largest musical piece ever executed. The cycle follows the interactions of three archetypes -- Eve, Lucifer, and the archangel Michael -- and each opera is devoted to one day of the week. "DIENSTAG" (Tuesday), the shortest, lasts a mere two and a half hours; "SONTAG" (Sunday), the longest, clocks in at just under five hours. The music for all the operas is derived from a single "super-formula," which gives the works a unity ...

The U.S. branch of the Steinway piano firm has issued a series of piano recordings that is carefully curated so as to reflect the company's roots in the music scene of a century ago, or a bit more. This gives the label's output a satisfying coherence as well as bringing forth some intriguing individual concepts. This release by the Anderson & Roe piano duo is a representative example that might appeal to those who've had their fill of severe historical-performance approaches to Bach. It wouldn't have been strange in the 19th century to present an evening of Bach's music on two pianos, for that medium was a common one for bringing music of large dimensions into the home or a small community venue. Greg Anderson and Elizabeth Joy Roe thus capture a slice of the American musical past, but they also expand upon it creatively, which is what brings projects like this to life. They employ the talents of a variety of arrangers, including themselves, and th...

This is the sixth and final volume in Barry Douglas’s survey of Brahms’s output for solo piano, which started four years ago. The recital completes a project that over 441 minutes has represented a ‘triumph of Brahmsian thoughts’ and in which ‘every sound is resonantly Brahmsian’. According to BBC Music, ‘Douglas’s tone is a deep velvet cushion, the legatos full of affection and the rhythms galvanised with great energy’.  The music recorded here spans the entirety of the composer’s creative career, from March 1852 (the Study after Weber) – eighteen months before the life-changing meeting between Brahms and Robert and Clara Schumann – to August 1893 (the Intermezzo, Op. 118 No. 6) – less than four years before his death, on 3 April 1897.  The selection of works offered here invites us to consider Brahms under many aspects – arranger, virtuoso, pedagogue, historicist, and above all pianist – which Barry Douglas embraces perfectly.

This album is the penultimate in what BBC Music has described as a ‘triumph of Brahmsian thought’, namely the survey by Barry Douglas of the composer’s complete works for solo piano. Three years after the release of Volume 1, the winner of the 1986 Tchaikovsky Competition is now performing this repertoire in the finest international venues, such as the Wigmore Hall in July 2015 and Concertgebouw in 2016, when the series will come to a highly anticipated climax with the final volume. Taking a big step further in his career with this achievement, Barry Douglas is gaining a reputation of one of the few accomplished world-class piano virtuosi of the romantic repertoire. This fifth volume is probably the most virtuosic to date, as it includes the transcendent Scherzo in E flat minor (among Brahms’s earliest surviving compositions), technically demanding variations (especially Book II of the famous Op. 35; see Volume 4 for Book I), as well as several intermezz...

Barry Douglas’s critically acclaimed series continues into its fourth volume. A celebration of Brahms’s solo piano works, each disc has been praised for its artistry and integrity. From Volume 1, heralded from the outset by BBC Music as “a triumph of Brahmsian thought, with playing that gets right to the heart of the composer”, to Volume 3, of which The Guardian described Douglas’s performances as “first-rate, with a real Brahmsian mix of toughness and slightly gruff charm about them”, the discs explore Brahms’s works in unexpected and creative ways.  Programmed as a stand-alone recital, Volume 4 begins with the monumental C Major Sonata ; a work that Brahms published as his first opus despite the objection of Robert Schumann, who was in the process of recommending Brahms’s works to Breitkopf & Härtel for publishing. Schumann’s works also feature on the disc in Brahms’s Variations on a Theme by Robert Schumann, Op. 9, and the structure is repeated in Variations on a Theme ...

Barry Douglas returns for the highly anticipated third volume in his series devoted to Brahms’s solo piano music, the first two volumes having been met with widespread critical acclaim. Of Vol. 2, International Record Review wrote, ‘this is indeed Brahms playing of the utmost integrity and authority… this cycle looks set to become a benchmark’. The selected Intermezzi performed here come from the collections of short piano pieces which Brahms published in 1892 – 93, his last works for piano. A sense of wistful, melancholic reflection pervades these exquisitely crafted masterpieces of Brahms’s late maturity. Composed at the other end of his life, at the age of twenty, the Piano Sonata in F sharp minor is full of a youthful, strident energy. It was among the pieces that, when he heard them privately, convinced Robert Schumann of Brahms’s genius. It was dedicated to Robert’s wife, Clara, who was to remain a key figure in Brahms’s life. Indeed it was Clara who, having heard...

Following the varied programming of Johannes Brahms: Works for Solo Piano, Vol. 1, Barry Douglas presents a mix of early and late pieces to give the second volume emotional balance, and sets a series of short pieces against a monumental masterpiece. Douglas is a thoughtful and eloquent performer, and his Brahms has the hallmarks of serious consideration and introspection; nothing here is superfluous or simply offered for show. The sensitive selection of three Ballades and three Intermezzi to frame the muscular Rhapsody Op. 119/4, gives the first part of the program an internal unity and feeling of logical organization, even though the shifting moods feel as effortless and unplanned as clouds passing on a sunny afternoon. The Sonata No. 3 is placed at the end of the recital, as befits its stature, and Douglas' interpretation gives it the feeling of gravitas and inevitability. Yet it also partakes of the fleeting moods that were carefully prepared in the early part of the program...

The first thing to say about the first instalment in Barry Douglas’ new Brahms series for Chandos is that the programming alone makes it one the most engaging Complete Works piano discs you could hope to own. Douglas, rather than grouping pieces in their entire published sets as is the recording norm, has instead chosen to mix things up. So, an intermezzo from one book might sit next to a capriccio from another. Where pieces from the same set do make it onto this disc, such as the two Opus 79 Rhapsodies, they're split apart. The result is a massively engaging running order. Topped and tailed with concert platform panache by the Rhapsody Op.79 No.1 and the Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Handel (Op.24), the middle meat of the disc contains more reflective representations ranging from Opus 10, composed as a 21-year-old, through to three of the mature sets, Opuses 116, 117, 118, published near the end of his life. The ear is naturally led to compare and contrast t...

Two earlier discs by Boris Giltburg got slightly lukewarm reviews in Fanfare . Reviewing a recital back in 2006, Colin Clarke concluded that, despite the pianist’s “tonal resources,” Mussorgsky’s Pictures just didn’t “all add up,” while his Prokofiev Eighth, intelligent as it was, needed to be more diabolic in the finale (30:2). Reviewing a more recent disc of Prokofiev’s three so-called “War Sonatas” (including a reprise of the Eighth), Raymond Beegle was even more neutral: “Boris Giltburg has many of the qualities of his predecessors, but gives us no particular virtue that stands above them” (36:4). This new disc offers repertoire of similar grandeur—but I hear playing of a distinctly higher order.   Giltburg is, without a doubt, a hard-hitting pianist with an old-fashioned, heart-on-the-sleeve Romantic temperament. Although he’s capable of caressing the instrument (he miraculously captures the distilled beauty of the chordal section that begins sev...

To celebrate their 25 th anniversary, vocal ensemble Magnificat directed by Philip Cave have created a programme of Renaissance polyphonic works inspired by Girolamo Savonarola's (1452-98) famous meditations written while awaiting execution. One contemplates Psalm 50, Miserere mei, Deus , and another Psalm 30, In te, Domine, speravi . Savonarola was a Dominican friar burnt at the stake for his reformist preaching, his ashes scattered in a river to prevent supporters preserving them as relics. This disc opens with Josquin's extraordinarily vast setting of the Miserere . Weighing in at just over 17 minutes, it is a motet of grandiose proportions characterised by repetition of the words ‘Miserere mei, Deus' (Have mercy on me, God). This functions like a refrain with five voices framing what is mostly a two- or three-voiced texture. Added to this, Cave employs his full complement of singers for each refrain and uses just solo voices in between, further emphasising the va...

The Asasello Quartet is a European ensemble. Founded in the year 2000 by students in Walter Levin’s chamber music class at the Basel conservatory, the musicians have gone on to make a name for themselves as outstanding interpreters of the classical/Romantic repertoire, modern classical music and more. The founding four completed their formal studies with the Alban Berg Quartett and David Smeyers at the Cologne Hochschule für Musik und Tanz. Numerous accolades and awards as well as project funding grants have allowed the group to realize original concepts and to put new ideas, recording techniques and forms of concertizing into practice. Asasello programs are intelligent and sophisticated; never mainstream. If need be, “the Asasellos” will gladly jump from their chairs or out of their tuxes. A new GENUIN CD with the thrilling Asasello Quartet! It’s the third disc released by the ensemble, known for its unconventional concert ideas, and it has now also made a name for its...

Andrew Manze is familiar to classical listeners as a violinist and as a specialist in early music, but he has also pursued conducting, performing orchestral music of a more modern vintage. His concert performances have increasingly featured the symphonies of Ralph Vaughan Williams, and this 2016 release on Onyx of the Symphony No. 2 in G major, "A London Symphony" and the Symphony No. 8 in D minor gives a clear idea of his approach to this music. The impassioned reading of "A London Symphony" with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra reveals that Manze has an affinity for expansive melodic lines, poignant harmonies, and rich, atmospheric orchestration, and the sounds the orchestra produces are quite lush and luxuriant, wholly appropriate for Vaughan Williams' post-Romantic phase. The Symphony No. 8 , dating from 1955, is Vaughan Williams' shortest symphony, and his use of pitched percussion creates a wonderful atmosphere that is unique in...

Kim Kashkashian is easily one of the finest violists to ever place her bow on the instrument. She shines just as effervescently in the company of an orchestra as she does solo or here alongside Robert Levin, a trusty accompanist with whom she shares a palpable musical bond, and puts the range of her talents on full display in this fine chamber program of mostly rarities. On the whole, this album is very warmly recorded . Levin pulls from the piano an almost gamelan-like quality, while Kashkashian luxuriates in the plurivocity afforded to her. She interacts with her instrument as would fingers upon a spine and her tonal depth often breaches cello territory. For anyone who is curious to discover what her playing is all about but who is wary of her penchant for the contemporary, this is an ideal place to start. (ECM Reviews)

This is one hell of a performance of Shostakovich’s First Cello Concerto. Emmanuelle Bertrand and conductor Pascal Raphé team up to produce one of the most intense and neurotic versions yet of this intense and neurotic piece. In the outer movements, they adopt fleet tempos that emphasize the music’s twitchy edge, and the engineers daringly balance Bertrand a touch less forward then usual, comfortably within the ensemble. This highlights every mocking grunt and snort of the wind section – listen to the contrabassoon in the first movement’s second subject. It’s unforgettably vivid and to the point.  The slow movement and ensuing cadenza, by contrast, are intense in a different way: slow, hushed, and grave (save at the anguished climax of the former). I was particularly pleased that Bertrand was able to keep her usually adenoidal breathing in check at the start of the cadenza. Indeed, although a certain amount of huffing and puffing seems to come with the ...

Raise your bowler hat. If you are to buy just one Satie disc in this year celebrating the 150th anniversary of his birth, this should be it. Eschewing the temptation to throw in a few popular favourites, such as Je te veux or La diva de l’Empire, soprano Barbara Hannigan and pianist Reinbert de Leeuw have created a recital that goes much deeper into the refined essence of the composer. The focus is Satie’s often overlooked masterpiece, the cantata Socrate. Started in 1916, but not heard until 1919, it sets portions of Plato’s dialogues in a manner that Satie himself described as lucid, transparent, even fragile. In order to be in an appropriate frame of mind during its composition, the composer even restricted himself to eating only white food. The result is a hypnotic work that gives every impression of having neither beginning nor end and is vital to understanding key works by Les Six or Stravinsky in the 1920s, not least the latter’s ballet Apollo. Drawing on a long association w...

“The viola is commonly (with rare exceptions indeed) played by infirm violinists, or by decrepit players of wind instruments who happen to have been acquainted with a stringed instrument once upon a time.” –Richard Wager If ever a recording could put Wagner’s infamous statement to rest, this would be it. Simply overflowing with musical brilliance, it remains one of the finest examples of what the viola is capable of. Kim Kashkashian’s technique and passion are almost palpable and one can only marvel at the humble respect she brings to both. The viola doesn’t simply exist somewhere between violin and cello, forever doomed to be second rate to both. It is, rather, an utterly dynamic and rich musical object, and the ways in which Hindemith unravels its subtler intonations in these sonatas is nothing short of monumental. Every chapter tells us something new, until the linguistic possibilities of the music represented in this eclectic set are exhausted.   Of the many...

Composed almost 50 years apart, Dvořák’s Cello Concerto in B Minor (1895) and Schumann’s Cello Concerto (1850) are closely linked in the pantheon of Romantic concerto literature. Cellists of many generations have long looked at both of these pieces as essential components in their artistic development, and each has been recorded many times over by the titans of the instrument to showcase their technical mastery. At age 26 international soloist Carmine Miranda bases his interpretations of these masterworks from several years of historic research and performance experience, which have led him to discover new secrets to be found in the scores of the Navona Records release SCHUMANN | DVOŘÁK: CONCERTI FOR CELLO & ORCHESTRA . Miranda, whose playing has been described as “remarkable” (Gramophone), “a fiery presence” (Limelight) and “spectacular” (Sonograma Magazine), seeks to balance concepts of classical traditions, multinational folklore, and technical prowess combined w...