Music is the key

J. S. Bach wrote, or rewrote, seven solo harpsichord concertos. Most of them began life as showpieces for other instruments – violin, oboe d’amore – and occasionally their potted history makes for an awkward conversation between harpsichord and the rest of the band. Not here. Andreas Staier’s grit, flair and expressive freedom, plus Freiburger Barockorchester’s athletic ensemble playing, makes these performances bounce and swing. Staier embraces the chunky chordal textures gained over the single-line originals and gives them a thick, meaty attack that is great fun: try the last movement of BWV 1058 – better known as the A-minor violin concerto – to see what I mean. His harpsichord is a 10-year-old Parisian instrument modelled on a Hass of 1734, almost exactly the date of the concertos themselves. The sound is brawny and dark-hewn, with melodies that sing every bit as much as a bowed or blown instrument. (Kate Molleson / The Guardian) Nowadays, J.S. Bach's seve...

Following the stunning success of their best-selling debut, Suzi Digby’s crack vocal ensemble ORA presents their new album: ‘Refuge from the Flames’. Dedicated to the legacy of Girolamo Savonarola, 15th century Dominican and religious reformer, this new CD further showcases ORA's commitment to bringing together Renaissance choral masterpieces and commissioned reflections from contemporary composers. ORA bring a wealth of experience that gilds these pieces, both new and old, into the lustrous works of art they truly are. “We begin and end this second ORA album with two contrasting settings of the Miserere mei (Psalm 50, Vulgate). Over the centuries this text has inspired reflections by many Christian writers, none more influential than those by Girolamo Savonarola, and we have devoted much of this album to his extraordinary legacy. Central to the recording is Savonarola’s meditation on the psalm, 'Infelix Ego', written shortly before his execution. We pre...

Bavarian soprano Christiane Karg made her Wigmore Hall debut in 2012 with a beautiful song recital which also became her first release on Wigmore Hall Live; four years on we are excited to present her second release. A regular guest at the world’s leading opera houses, singing roles from Musetta ( La bohème ) to Amor ( Orfeo ed Euridice ), she is also revered for her enchanting performances on the concert platform alongside conductors such as Nikolaus Harnoncourt and Yannick Nézet-Séguin. Christiane is joined by Malcolm Martineau celebrated as one of his generations greatest accompanists. This recital explores the unique relationship between the Schumanns and Brahms . After Robert’s death Brahms’s passion for Clara grew but it was reciprocated only with a protective motherly care. They remained close friends but Brahms never truly recovered. This programme presents love in many different guises from the stirring ‘Widmung’, to the heartfelt ‘Liebst du um Schönheit’ and ...

"One glance at Schubert's trio, and the miserable hustle and bustle of human existence vanishes, the world takes on fresh lustre", wrote Robert Schumann in 1836 of Schubert's Piano Trio D898. He was equally admiring of the Viennese composer's other great trio, D929 , notably its funeral march-like Andante con moto, later to achieve cinematic fame in Kubrick's 'Barry Lyndon'. Here three peerless interpreters bring out every nuance of these endlessly fascinating works on their 'period instruments', including a splendid copy of an 1827 Viennese fortepiano.

Fuyuko Nakamura graduated from Toyo Eiwa Jogakuin High School. She attended Ayaha Piano Performance Study and Piano Art Academy Attached to Showa Music University. In 2011, she earned full scholarship at Showa Music University Piano Course, where she studied for four years, graduating at the top of her class with Special Award, performing at the 85th annual Debutant Concert. Currently, she is studying with Mi-Joo Lee at Berlin Art University. She has studied with Fumiko Eguchi, Seiko Ohtomo, Tomoko Tami, and Kie Nara. She has taken master class by Seigei Drensky , John O’corner , Anri Valda, Andrzej Jasinski, Piotr Paleczny,Jacques Rouvier,Alexander Kobrin, and Paul Badura-Skoda. She attended at New York Keyboard Festival and Kawai Russian Piano School, and performed at Belgium Musica Mundi Music Festival, Russia Kreml Music Festival, and Soeul Music Festival. She has performed with Japan Philharmonic Orchestra, Taiwan National Orchestra, Polish Kakau Orchestra and Si...

Having studied under Nelson Goerner, Maria Tipo and Aldo Ciccolini, Olivier Cavé gave his first concert with the Camerata Lysy under the direction of Yehudi Menuhin in September of 1991. He performed as a soloist in recitals and with orchestra throughout Europe. His career took a turn in September 2008 upon the release of a first recording for Aeon, which features sonatas by Domenico Scarlatti. Critics across Europe praised the Swiss pianist with Neapolitan roots for having returned to the source . Dedicated to Muzio Clementi, Cavé’s second recording is even more striking than his first. Released in the autumn of 2010, the CD was given a 5 Diapason rating, 4 Stars from Classica and the highest award from the Japanese magazine Geijutsu Records. This success also led to invitations to perform at prestigious locations throughout the world, such as the Teatro Olimpico in Rome, the Tonhalle in Zurich, and the Phillips Collection in Washington. His tour along the American e...

A new double album, honouring the 80th Birthday of the minimal music pioneer. Includes 2 world premiere recordings. Steve Reich, one of the most influential composers of our time and key founder of the minimalist school of music, is celebrating his 80th birthday on 3 October 2016. The album is not only a celebration of his birthday but also a result of a 3-year-project that started with Reich's residency as "composer in residence" at the MDR Radio Symphony Orchestra. The orchestra-choirs versions of "Daniel" and "You Are Variations" are therefore world premiere recordings. "Duet" was dedicated to and written for Sir Yehudi Menuhin for his 80th birthday. "Clapping Music" is performed on this album by Steve Reich himself and Kristjan Järvi. CD 1 includes Live performances at the Gewandhaus in Leipzig / CD 2 includes studio recordings. (Presto Classical)

In 2015 the French pianist Lucas Debargue became the most talked-about artist of the 15th International Tchaikovsky Competition.  Despite being placed 4th, his muscular and intellectual playing, combined with an intensely poetic and lyrical gift for phrasing, earned him the coveted Moscow Music Critics’ Award as ”the pianist whose incredible gift, artistic vision and creative freedom have impressed the critics as well as the audience”. He was the only musician across all disciplines to do so. Soon after the competition Debargue was signed by Sony Classical, and recorded a live recital for his debut release with music by Ravel, Liszt, Chopin and Scarlatti in his native city of Paris. Debargue was born in 1990 in a non-musical family. In 1999 he settled in Compiègne, about 90km north of Paris and began his initial piano studies at the local music school at the age of 11.  At 15 Debargue ceased piano studies...

Playing and recording Vivaldi’s concertos for two violins, I came to realise how much deeper my love for this repertory and this composer becomes with each new experience.  Beyond the notes and the formal stereotype, Vivaldi seems to me to be a composer endowed with humanity and a profound sense of the harmony of beings with nature. Whether he is composing for orchestra, for voice, for different solo instruments or, as here, for two violins, he always takes care to bring out the beauty of colours (of both timbres and harmonies) , the wealth of combinations, and the versatility of the instruments which he puts through infinite transformations.  Here, in the interplay between the two violins and their partners in the orchestra, we witness all kinds of metamorphoses, and it’s a pleasure that I find hard to explain in words. The pleasure of dialoguing with Giuliano Carmignola, the enchanter who can give each note a diamantine reflection and each rhythm an infinite, joyous s...

Alisa Weilerstein signed an exclusive contract with Decca Classics in 2011. Her first recording under the agreement, a coupling of the concertos by Elgar and Elliott Carter, with Barenboim conducting the Berlin Staatskapelle, was released in January 2013. At the 2014 BBC Music Magazine Awards it scooped the Recording of the Year Award as well as the Concerto Award. The New York Times acclaimed “the soloist’s superb control keenly matched by the conductor’s insightful support”. In April 2014 Decca issued her new recording of the Dvořák Cello Concerto, with Jiří Bělohlávek conducting the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra. Huffington Post reviewed it is “…as if Dvořák were sending her the still-wet-inked score, straight from his head to her heart and hands”, and the Daily Telegraph described it as “spine-tingling” and “irresistible”. Alisa is very excited to announce the upcoming release of  Shostakovich: Cello Concertos 1 & 2 , coming from Decca Classics on September...

The second ECM New Series album to fully showcase pure-toned Estonian vocal group Vox Clamantis and its artistic director/conductor Jaan-Eik Tulve is devoted to compositions by their great countryman, Arvo Pärt – whose music has been the most performed globally of any living composer over the past five years. This album – titled The Deer’s Cry after its first track, an incantatory work for a cappella mixed choir – is also the latest in an illustrious line of ECM New Series releases to feature Pärt’s compositions, the very music that inspired Manfred Eicher to establish the New Series imprint in 1984. Along with such classic works as Da pacem Domine the new album includes first-time recordings of the a cappella pieces Drei Hirtenkinder aus Fátima and Habitare Fratres . There is also an a cappella version of Alleluia-Tropus , which Vox Clamantis previously recorded alongside instruments for the acclaimed New Series album Adam’s Lament . Rarely recorded material makes up n...

An aristocrat who forged an idiosyncratic style of musical expression, Don Carlo Gesualdo, Prince of Venosa, was one of those composers in music history who can truly be described as being ahead of his time. Gesualdo was a highly expressive composer and a virtuoso performer on the bass lute. Yet his chromatic progressions baffled his contemporaries and had to wait until the 19th-century era to find resonance in artistic parallels. Among his most important compositions are six books of five-part madrigals dating from between 1594 and 1611. The last two books in particular – this recording by the Hilliard Ensemble brings new performances of Book 5 – displays his dissonant musical language with its extreme harmonic disruptions, striking tempo contrasts and a distinctly modern feel for drama. The Hilliard Ensemble’s expressive singing, here also featuring soprano Monika Mauch and countertenor David Gould, conjures up that sound described by the great music historian Hans ...

ECM offers some of Giya Kancheli’s most compelling music in Lament (Music of Mourning in Memory of Luigi Nono) . This 1994 outpouring for violin, soprano, and orchestra is a requiem, a postlude, a concerto, and homage. It is also more than these, spreading its heavy wings wide across an ever-changing landscape. Kancheli revisits the words of Hans Sahl, whose verses appeared upon the same lips in EXIL , this time through his poem “Stanzas.” I go slowly hence from the world Into a domain beyond all distance, Gidon Kremer’s violin seems to arise from a shadow within a shadow. Soon joined by flute, which acts like a hooded guide through the wilderness, Kremer flirts with his surroundings. The orchestra responds provocatively to these agitations, only to blend back into the woodwork from which its sounds are born. As strings wander toward the horizon, every bowed step seems only to bring them closer to me, as if I were but a projection of a faraway self. And what I was a...

What’s not to love about Pretty Yende? Her voice is delightful, her personality sparkles, and her story is inspiring. Just 31, Yende has gone from life in a South African township to stardom on the world’s opera stages. Now her first album, titled “A Journey,” documents her impressive lyric abilities, her lustrous tone and especially her mastery of coloratura. Runs and trills are tossed off with seeming ease, and she can soar to a high E natural without sounding strained. The seven selections, mostly bel canto arias by Rossini, Donizetti or Bellini, reflect stages of her story, triumphs in vocal competitions or important debuts. She sounds lovely, with one reservation: There’s a slightly generic quality to her singing, a lack of interpretive depth beyond mastery of the notes. In keeping with her personal narrative, she includes the “Flower Duet” from Delibes’ ”Lakme,” with mezzo Kate Aldrich as partner. It’s by now part of Pretty Yende lore that her interest in ope...

Mirror is the first ECM New Series album from Estonian composer Tõnu Kõrvitz (born 1969), who emphasizes his links to his homeland’s music at several levels. The album begins with a fantasy on a song by Veljo Tormis. Like the older composer,   Kõrvitz has been influenced by folk song and archaic musical tradition, which find their echo in the refined and texturally-rich spectrum of his own, labyrinthine pieces.  His music is well served here by the Tallin Chamber Orchestra and the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber under  Tõnu Kaljuste’s assured direction and by soloist Anja Lechner.  Lechner’s cello is foregrounded in Peegeldused Tasaset Maast (2013),  Laul (2012, rev. 2013) and the album’s largest piece Seitsme  Linnu Seitse Und ( 2009, rev. 2012), a collaboration with the poet Maarja Kangro, which is both choral suite and cello concerto. In these “seven dreams of seven birds” the choir sings in Estonian and English and th...

Sophie Pacini is a protégée of Martha Argerich and it shows…There’s a similar air of in-the-moment rhapsodising and no fear of giving the performance a boot up the backside.” - Gramophone   Born in Munich in 1991, Pacini began her studies at the age of ten as a pupil of Karl-Heinz Kämmerling at the Salzburg Mozarteum, where she was accepted two years later by the newly founded Institute for Highly Gifted Students. From 2007 she continued her studies in master classes given by Pavel Gililov, completing her diploma in 2011 with honours. In 2010 she became acquainted with Martha Argerich, who invited her the following year to give a recital as part of the Martha Argerich Project in Lugano, and who has since become an important figure in the young pianist’s career. “Our first project combines works by Beethoven and Liszt , two composers who have influenced me a great deal musically. They embody what has fascinated and captivated me about the piano from the beginn...

Orphée traces a path from darkness into light, inspired by the various re-tellings of the ancient tale of the poet Orpheus, from Ovid’s to Jean Cocteau’s. A many-layered story about death, rebirth, change and the ephemeral nature of memory, the myth can also be read as a metaphor for artistic creation, dealing with the elusive nature of beauty and its relationship to the artist, as well as the idea that art is created through transgression – by the poet defying the gods who have forbidden him to turn back towards his beloved as he leaves the Underworld. Orphée ’s sonic palette is varied, combining acoustic instruments both solo and in ensemble with electronics and the mesmeric sounds of shortwave radio “numbers stations”. It draws on many facets of his previous albums, incorporating music for solo cello, organ, string quartet, string orchestra and unaccompanied voices. Orphée shows the full range of the Icelandic composer’s remarkable invention and uncanny feeling...

This grande dame of the piano world, possessed of an extraordinarily modest, charming personality – focused on the music, devoted to deeply understanding it – has performed three times during the Chopin and His Europe Festival at the invitation of The Fryderyk Chopin Institute. The recordings on this album come from her concerts in 2010 (when she performed the Piano Concerto in F minor op. 21 with the Sinfonia Varsovia orchestra under the baton of Christopher Warren-Green) and 2014 (when she performed a recital including, among other items, the Nocturnes presented here). A presentation of – by nature – completely different interpretations, which nonetheless form an extraordinarily coherent artistic whole. Superb creations displaying the most beautiful side of pianistic art. (Presto Classical)

"Since it was first performed in 1969, Luciano Berio's Sinfonia has become a classic, certainly the most widely known of all his works and arguably the most successful concert piece by a composer of his generation." The Guardian This release is dedicated to the pioneer of Italian modernism Luciano Berio. His 5-movement 'Sinfonia', is undoubtedly his most well-known work, written for the New York Philharmonic and dedicated to Leonard Bernstein. It has become one of the key works and principle musical manifestations of the 1960s bringing together collage technique and modernism. A few years later, Berio went on to orchestrate a number of songs on texts from 'Des Knaben Wunderhorn' , which Mahler had scored for piano and voice, as if they had been written at the time of the later 'Kindertotenlieder'. A symphonic backcloth tailor-made for the great baritone voice of Matthias Goerne [whose 'Knaben Wunderhorn' songs are alrea...

”Count Kayserling, formerly Russian Ambassador at the Court of the Elector of Saxony, who frequently resided in Leipzig…once said t Bach that he should like to have some clavier pieces for his [court harpsichordist] Goldberg, which should be of such a soft and somewhat lively character that he might be a little cheered up by them in his sleepless nights. Bach thought he could best fulfil this wish by variations, which, on account of the constant sameness of the fundamental harmony, he had hitherto considered as an ungrateful task. But as at this time all his works were models of art, these variations also became such under his hand…Bach was, perhaps, never so well rewarded for any work as for this: the Count made him a present of a golden goblet, filled with a hundred Louis d’or. But their worth as a work of art would not have been paid if the present had been a thousand times as great.” So wrote Sebastian Bach’s first biographer J.N. Forkel in his brief account of t...

This powerful record brings together two of the most seminal works for viola and orchestra of the twentieth century. Although these pieces are as different as they are similar, together they form a distinct balance of sentiment and execution. Giya Kancheli: Vom Winde beweint (Mourned by the Wind) Kancheli’s self-styled “liturgy” is an exercise in patience and surrender. Its opening slam of piano chords is a big bang in and of itself, and sets the stage for the soloist’s epic journey. Wilfred Mellers, in his liner notes, posits the viola’s emergence from such chaos as the “birth of consciousness.” And indeed, one can extrapolate from its startling abruptness the inklings of a life yet lived, fresh and devoid of self-awareness in the greater void of silence. The orchestra skirts the periphery, gradually uniting with the soloist. This contrast mimics the arbitrary stability of human values—at once sacred and mutable—so that moments of resolution always tread a downward sl...

This is a very satisfying album, pairing two highly attuned artists. Ophélie Gaillard is a beautiful cellist. She plays with a lovely, somewhat tangy tone that is expressively produced in every register. She, like Edna Stern, is a somewhat reticent player. Gaillard never tries to bowl you over with high volume, unlike Yo Yo Ma. One hears in her tone and phrasing, perhaps, the influence of Casals. Gaillard plays a 1737 Goffriller cello, here with an 1840 bow. There is no reference to the type of strings used. I recently had the pleasure of reviewing Edna Stern’s solo Chopin recital on Naïve. After studying the modern piano with Martha Argerich, Krystian Zimerman, and Leon Fleisher, Stern in 2003 began work on the fortepiano under the guidance of Patrick Cohen. The 1843 Pleyel piano she plays on this CD features leather covered hammers; one rarely is aware of its being a percussive instrument. The Pleyel was Chopin’s favorite piano. In it one hears on this album Chopin’s...

On her new album Alice Sara Ott takes us into the world of mountain trolls and elves, hills and fjords through a selection of Grieg’s works – his Lyric Pieces, as well as through selected piano versions of pieces from the Peer Gynt Suites, and one of the most famous works of piano literature: Grieg’s piano concerto in A minor, for which she teams up with one of the top orchestras, the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, under star conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen at a live recording. Alice has always been fascinated by the fantasy world Grieg has created and the fairy tale like characters that lend the title to Grieg’s musical miniatures: “This album represents my own very personal journey through Grieg’s ‘wonderland’ . I should like to take this opportunity to invite you to leave behind your everyday lives for a moment and enter Edvard Grieg’s magical and imaginary world with me. Without our really noticing it, we are taken on a journey into a daydream, a ‘wonderlan...

Exil is dedicated to Manfred Eicher, the founder of the ECM label, to whom Kancheli paid such glowing tribute in his interview with SJ in last April's Gramophone. And this five-movement, 48-minute song-cycle is in many ways a true ECM piece – wholly contemporary in spirit, yet not excluding any listener with ears to hear and a soul to suffer.  I suppose I should not be giving a puff for a recording company. Indeed some might counter by saying that music like Kancheli's, which increasingly wears its spirituality on its sleeve, is in danger of creating its own clique of New Age compassion-obsessed fellow-travellers. Certainly there is a danger that a concept such as that of Exil, so resonant in a world of multiple ethnic conflagrations, emotionally blackmails us into uncritical approval. But that would only be so if the music itself were deficient. All I can say is that I am immediately drawn in by the hovering, flute-timbred lines which make up the very discreet taped backgro...

Gustavo Dudamel's rise to fame has been rapid, and his exceptional abilities have been extolled by musicians and critics alike; figures as prominent as Simon Rattle, Daniel Barenboim, and Claudio Abbado have praised his conducting, and he has been the subject of numerous glowing articles in the media, notably Time Magazine and The New York Times. So how does this youthful Venezuelan conductor fare in his 2006 recording of Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 5 in C sharp minor? Due to its phenomenal popularity, this piece has become an acid test for conductors everywhere, and recording it has practically become de rigueur, so Dudamel faces a great deal of competition from the myriad recordings on the market. Yet he makes his version with the Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela noticeable in three important ways. First, he freely shapes the music with an elastic sense of phrasing, using a great deal of rubato in the service of Mahler's wide mood swings, appare...

Arianna Savall’s leader debut for the New Series follows her distinguished contributions to Rolf Lislevand’s “Nuove Musiche” and to Helena Tulve’s “Lijnen”, – sensuous early music on the one hand, bracingly contemporary composition on the other. In both genres she has proven to be a charismatic singer. Now comes “Hirundo Maris” which, with its very fresh instrumental textures, follows another trajectory. Savall and band co-leader Petter Udland Johansen describe their project as a journey linking the Mediterranean and the North Sea. Hirundo Maris is Latin for “sea swallow” and, like that bird’s flight, the quintet – part early music ensemble, part folk group – drifts on musical currents between Norway and Catalonia, adds its own songs, created on the wing, and swoops down to dive beneath the surface of things. Near the centre of the sound are Arianna’s sparkling harps and the drones of Johansen’s Hardanger fiddle; when the colours of the mandolin and more unexpectedly ...