Music is the key

This is a timely release from ABC Classics. The Australian soprano Nicole Car made her Royal Opera debut last autumn, as a touching Micaëla before starring as Tatyana. Both roles feature on this cannily programmed disc – a mixture of well-loved classics and a few specialities. Essentially a calling card, it demonstrates Car’s ability in rarer Russian and Czech repertoire, the extract from Smetana’s The Kiss lending the disc its title. She begins the disc boldly, with Marguerite’s Jewel Song – just the sort of repertoire one associates with her compatriot Dame Joan Sutherland, but Car’s is a lighter instrument. She possesses a lovely lyric soprano, not a glamorous sound, but full of dewy freshness, nowhere more so than in Mimì’s aria, where the voice has a rosy bloom. Her Mimì is very much the ‘girl next door’ and she ends with a charming final line. Micaëla has a similar innocence. Her Thaïs shows promise, although the raw final note on the optional high D on ‘éternel...

Deutsche Grammophon is delighted to announce the signing of an exclusive agreement with Víkingur Ólafsson and looks forward to collaborating with the  Icelandic pianist on a range of innovative recording projects. Ólafsson has recently finished making his first album for the yellow label at Reykjavík’s iconic Harpa concert hall. Christian Badzura, Executive Producer, Deutsche Grammophon Artists & Repertoire, says, “Víkingur is an exceptional pianist and curator. His performance, choices of repertoire and visions for recorded sound are a fresh breeze in the classical music world. Be it Scarlatti, Rameau, Bach or Glass, Víkingur’s interpretations sound timeless.” Described by The New York Times as a “splendid pianist” and by Piano News as an “immense talent”, Ólafsson is much sought-after by international conductors, orchestras and artists as both a chamber and concert musician. Now 32, he graduated in 2008 from The Juilliard School, where he studied with Rob...

C hopin has remained one of the staples of Maurizio Pollini’s career both on record and in the concert hall for more than half a century. Since completing his recordings of most of the major works (only the mazurkas were not covered comprehensively), his most recent Chopin discs have returned to parts of that repertory to explore it chronologically. After collections devoted to works with opus numbers in the 20s and 30s, the latest focuses on the last pieces from Opp 59 to 64. There’s the Barcarolle and the Polonaise-Fantaisie, together with six mazurkas, two nocturnes and three waltzes, and the unfinished F minor Mazurka Op 68 no 3 added as an epilogue. It’s easy to understand why Pollini should have been drawn back to these late pieces, with their harmonic daring and structural subtleties. He gives a fascinating account of the Barcarolle, austere and detached, but also intensely focused, though the Polonaise-Fantaisie, one of Chopin’s supreme achievements, disappoin...

Apart from occasional trips back to her native Quebec for opera and recital dates, mezzo-soprano Julie Boulianne conducts her career primarily in Europe. And what a career it is: In December she made her role debut as Donna Elvira ("the highlight of the evening") in Mozart's Don Giovanni at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in Paris; in September she made her debut at Toulouse's Théâtre du Capitole in one of the title roles in Berlioz's Béatrice et Bénédict (one reviewer astutely praised her distinctively rich timbre). Coming up in 2017, she stars in Opéra de Limoges's production of Rossini's La Cenerentola , and in May, audiences in Quebec City can hear her sing Rosina in Opéra de Québec's Barber of Seville . Boulianne does make time in her opera schedule for regular concerts with Montreal harpsichordist Luc Beauséjour, with whom she has developed a remarkable complicity. Alma oppressa , due out Jan. 27 on Analekta Records, evolved from o...

‘That’s it done at last, this blasted sonata! Will it please or not? That is the question.’ So wrote Saint-Saëns, not without humour, of his second ‘quadruped’ for cello and piano. He adored the cello, as is shown by much more than the famous Swan. He wrote three sonatas for it , but unfortunately the last two movements of the Third Sonata have been lost and what is left survives only in manuscript. Emmanuelle Bertrand and Pascal Amoyel play it here with emotion and total respect. The Concerto also included here is today one of the ‘musts’ of the concertante repertory for cello.

Vita Nova includes four pieces by Bryars in which ECM appeared to be, at least partially, attempting to cash in on the new age-y vogue of the early '90s for the sort of quasi-medieval music made relatively popular by assorted singing monks, Arvo Pärt, and the Hilliard Ensemble with Jan Garbarek. Indeed, that latter group is on hand here to perform "Glorious Hill," and the results are as blandly attractive as the listener might guess given the following recipe: Take a mushily mystical text (in Latin), set to vaguely medieval sounding music, and spice with a dash of chromaticism and a pinch of minimalism. It's all handsomely produced and sung but terribly precious and overly palatable. How far Bryars had come from the rich reality of the tramp singing "Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet" in his masterpiece from the '70s. Unfortunately, the remainder of the disc also fails to deliver much more than prettiness. The longest composition, "...

The music of English composer Gavin Bryars has long managed the distinction of being both “accessible and defiantly personal” ( The New York Times ). A deep yet unsentimental emotional resonance and a patient, contemplative view of time – whether relating to harmonic rhythm or human experience – are complementary characteristics that run through his instrumental, vocal and theatrical catalog like a red thread, the composer inspired by disparate spirits from Wagner and Satie to Cage and Silvestrov. The ECM New Series released multiple recordings of Bryars’ music in the 1980s and early ’90s, including the classic albums After the Requiem and Vita Nova . The first full ECM album from Bryars in decades is The Fifth Century , which includes the seven-part title work: a slowly evolving – yet immediately involving – setting of words by 17th-century English mystic Thomas Traherne, performed by the mixed choir of The Crossing with saxophone quartet PRISM. The album also features Tw...

Warner Classics renews its collaboration with the PKF-Prague Philharmonia and the orchestra’s music director and chief conductor Emmanuel Villaume, with a new album to be released in January 2017. Critically acclaimed pianist Andrew von Oeyen makes his label debut with the PKF-Prague Philharmonia and Villaume for a high-energy album of music by Saint-Saëns, Ravel, and Gershwin. As with the orchestra's 2014 label debut Héroïque, with New Orleans-born tenor Bryan Hymel singing grand opéra rarities, the forthcoming release brings French and American connections to the fore. Von Oeyen says that the choice of repertoire has been influenced by his own travels and the two centers of his international career. “I have been living between France and the US since 2002. Both Ravel and Gershwin appeal to me, as do croissants and bagels!” he explains. “Perhaps, then, it is no coincidence that my first album for Warner Classics presents a Franco-American theme and explores the...

Three Worlds: Music From Woolf Works , as the name suggests, draws from Richter's score for Wolf Works , a critically acclaimed three-act Royal Ballet production from Wayne McGregor inspired by the works of the influential English writer Virginia Woolf. Described as featuring "a vast palette of sounds—from solo instrumental and orchestral episodes, to electronic textures and music for wordless soprano," the score makes use of themes from three of Woolf's novels, Mrs Dalloway , Orlando and The Waves . It also employs a rare 1937 BBC recording of Woolf reading an essay called "Craftsmanship," reportedly the only surviving recording of Woolf's voice, along with the farewell note she left her husband before committing suicide in 1941, which is read by Gillian Anderson.

Yu-Chien Tseng studied music in Taiwan and continued at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia (USA) under Profs. Kavafian and Aaron Rosand. In 2009 he won the 10th Pablo Sarasate International Competition in Pamplona (Spain). In 2011 he won the Isang Yun Competition in Tongyeong (South Korea) and also was awarded a special prize at the XIV International Tchaikovsky Competition (as best of those in Round II who did not make the finals). In 2012 he took fifth place in the Queen Elisabeth International Competition in Brussels. He has performed with the Philadelphia Orchestra, the National Orchestra of Belgium, and the symphony orchestras of Singapore, Taipei, and Navarra among others. He has given solo concerts in cities in the USA, Europe and Asia.

"After the widely noticed performance at the "Acht Brücken Festival 2016" at Cologne's Philharmonic Hall, Gregor Schwellenbach, Hauschka, Erol Sarp (of „Grandbrothers“), Daniel Brandt, Paul Frick (both of "Brandt Brauer Frick") and John Kameel Farah will be releasing their interpretation of Steve Reich’s "Six Pianos" as a studio recording via FILM. The re-recording of this piece is an interpretation of Reich’s composition but still far more than just that – it is a modern approach to his idea behind it. The basic idea came up at the beginning of the 70s at "The Baldwin Piano & Organ Company" in New York. During a rehearsal phase Steve Reich spent in this very piano store, the idea emerged of writing a composition for all the grand pianos available to him at the company. By the time of the finished piece, the actual number of pianos had settled down to six, whereof „Six Pianos” developed in 1973. On the occasion of ...

For twenty years (from 1663 to 1683) Henry Du Mont directed the music of the Sun King’s chapel. For the daily Mass heard there he built up a new musical repertory consisting of motets for full chorus and more intimate pieces for solo voices. The former aimed to transpose to the context of the ‘ordinary’ the format of the large-scale works conceived for extraordinary ceremonies. Sébastien Daucé presents an innovative approach to these ‘grands motets’ that at once links specific musical features with historical data and reveals all their beauties in every detail. (Harmonia Mundi)

Golden Viennese horn sound, full and at the same time tender piano and velvet, emotional violin sound and vibrato is the beginning of this recording which opens the gate to the powerful, romantic world of Johannes Brahms' music . Deep feelings and musical thoughts are presented with technical easiness, keeping the musical phrase and expression in the center of the listener's attention. The only idea this recording really shows off are Brahms' words "I speak through my music".

Alongside its highly praised Haydn series, the Doric String Quartet continues its Schubert journey with this second volume of quartets, which precipitates us into the fraught world of late Schubert. Both composers will be central in the Quartet’s recitals next year, to take place in the highest-profile international venues, from New York’s Carnegie Hall to Berlin’s Konzerthaus, Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, and London’s Wigmore Hall. Franz Schubert returned to composing string quartets in the 1820s, after four years of focusing on songs which were beginning to gain him wider recognition. His late chamber compositions reveal probably his most characteristic music, full of deep intimacy and profound ambivalence. The ‘Quartettsatz’ (Quartet Movement) presents a turbulent, norm-breaking first movement. Only a fragment survives of a serene Andante in A flat, and nothing for any scherzo or finale. If the 'Rosamunde' and 'Death and the Maiden' (CHAN10737) are t...

Angela Hewitt leaves few stones unturned in projecting the linear specificity of Beethoven’s style. In Op 31 No 1’s first movement, for example, you’ll rarely find the left-hand second subject and the sequential right-hand patterns so logically contoured. No doubt Hewitt’s authority in Bach informs her sophisticated articulation of the Adagio grazioso’s elaborate ornaments (note her fastidiously calibrated trills), achieved with minimum pedal and maximum finger control. For my taste, Hewitt’s Allegretto is a tad deliberate and fussy, whereas Jonathan Biss matches her intricate workmanship in faster, more humorous terms. Hewitt’s subtle timbral distinctions between detached and sustained passages throughout Op 14 No 1 bring Beethoven’s wonderful string quartet arrangement of this sonata to mind. Hewitt lavishes similar care over the modest Op 49 sonatas. She brings a winsome lilt to No 1’s finale which makes up for its sedate tempo. If she holds back in No 2’s Allegro...

The Russian-American cellist Nina Kotova, praised by Gramophone as a “strong and individual artist [whose] depth of feeling and technical control are never in doubt,” here partners with pianist Fabio Bidini in two landmark Russian sonatas from the 20th century, Rachmaninov’s in G minor and Prokofiev’s in C major, and in two smaller pieces by Tchaikovsky . For this recording her partner is the Italian-born pianist Fabio Bidini, whose connection with the United States dates back to 1993, when he was a finalist in the Van Cliburn Competition. In addition to commanding a repertoire of more than 80 concertos, he is an eminent chamber musician and teacher. 

Since I was a little girl, the music of Francis Poulenc has always fascinated me; being born to devout Roman Catholic Korean parents in Montréal, I was raised within multiple backgrounds. I attended a French private school for girls and fully embraced the fact that I happened to be born in a francophone milieu. To add to the mix, my parents had met while studying in Germany and I spoke to my brother in English. Religion and secularity always coexisted in my world. Although Poulenc clearly has no Korean connections, his music thrives in the dichotomy of the sacred and profane, spirituality and light-heartedness, often switching from one to the other quickly and seamlessly while at the same time retaining an unmistakably French idiom and a clarity that ...

Bruce Brubaker joined the New England Conservatory faculty as piano chair in 2005. In live performances from the Hollywood Bowl to New York’s Avery Fisher Hall, from Paris to Hong Kong, and in his continuing series of recordings for Arabesque—Bruce Brubaker is a visionary virtuoso. Named “Young Musician of the Year” by Musical America, Bruce Brubaker performs Mozart with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and Philip Glass on the BBC. Profiled on NBC’s "Today" show, Brubaker’s playing, writing, and collaborations continue to show a shining, and sometimes surprising future for pianists and piano playing. His blog “PianoMorphosis” appears at ArtsJournal.com. Pulitzer Prize–winning Washington Post critic Tim Page has said: “I wouldn't trade Pollini, Argerich, Richard Goode, Peter Serkin or Bruce Brubaker (to mention a terrific younger artist) for any handful of Horowitzes!” Brubaker was presented by Carnegie Hall at Zankel Hall in New York, at Trifolion in Echtern...

The 2017 New Year's Concert took place on January 1, 2017, under the baton of Gustavo Dudamel in the Vienna Musikverein. Gustavo Dudamel, who was born in Barquisimeto, Venezuela in 1981, became the youngest conductor in the 75 year history of the New Year's Concert. In 2007, Gustavo Dudamel conducted the Vienna Philharmonic for the first time at the Lucerne Festival and made his debut at the Vienna Philharmonic Subscription Concerts in 2011. Dudamel conducted the Summer Night Concert Schönbrunn in 2012 and led the orchestra on its traditional Vienna Philharmonic Week in Japan in 2014. The 2017 New Year's Concert was broadcast in over 90 countries and followed by up to 50 million television viewers around the world.

Since I remember myself, there were sounds of violin and piano. I must have been present during hundreds of hours of scrupulous work, when my grandmother was teaching my sister the violin, long before being aware of what it all really meant. Music was all around me. My mother played the piano. Often the violin students of The Moscow Conservatory came to rehearse chez nous, and that is how I became familiar with every microscopic detail of most violin pieces she had accompanied. My mother loved accompanying, she made everyone feel confident, even in most treacherous passages. We knew she would always wait, or, in any case, do just the right thing in order to support a player. Masterful accompanists are hard to come by; they must be cherished. It was Spring of 1986 when I was taken to my sister’s violin lesson. At that time The Soviet Union was still in the “high achievement” phase in the arts. The promising talents were screened in rigorous exams and were selected or r...

Sony Classical present Italian duets and arias with baroque stars Nuria Rial and Valer Sabadus. The Spanish soprano Nuria Rial and the countertenor Valer Sabadus are both stars of the booming baroque music scene. Nuria Rial is a bright soprano with her “addictive timbre“ and Valer Sabadus's velvety "dramatic, crystal clear and lyric voice" (Süddeutsche Zeitung) are for the first time united in one recording. With the excellent Kammerorchester Basel they send the listener on a voyage of discovery to Italy , to lesser known music by Alessandro Scarlatti, Giovanni Paolo Colonna, Giovanni Gabrieli, Antonio Lotti, Giovanni Battista Bononcini, Bernardo Pasquini and Antonio Caldara. The arias and duets are mainly from oratorios, which have already fascinated many listeners. (Presto Classical)

Steve Reich has been described by The Guardian as one of “a handful of living composers who can legitimately claim to have altered the direction of musical history" and as “the greatest musical thinker of our time” by The New Yorker . Reich celebrates his 80th birthday on October 3, and The ECM Recordings brings together the landmark albums Music for 18 Musicians , Music for a Large Ensemble/Violin Phase and Tehillim in a limited edition set to mark the occasion. Originally released in 1978, 1980 and 1982 , each of these recordings had a decisive influence which continues to reverberate across musical idioms. The 3-CD box set includes a 44-page booklet with original liner notes by Steve Reich, a new essay by Paul Griffiths, and session photography by Deborah Feingold and Barbara Klemm. (ECM Records)

Born in 1986 in Plauen, Anett Fritsch studied at the Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy Music Academy in Leipzig with KS Prof. Jürgen Kurth. In 2001 she was awarded the first prize at the Johann Sebastian Bach Competition in Leipzig. She was a laureate at the international competition of the Chamber Opera at Schloss Rheinsberg in 2006 and 2007, where she sang the parts of Despina in Mozart’s Cosi fan tutte and Adina in Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore. In the season 07/08 the Oper Leipzig engaged Anett Fritsch for various parts, including Gianetta in Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore. Since 2009 Anett Fritsch is part of the ensemble of the Deutsche Oper am Rhein Düsseldorf/Duisburg where she sings among others Pamina, Blanche/Dialogue des Carmelites, Konstanze/Entführung aus dem Serail and Marie/Fille du Régiment. Anett Fritsch had a great success at her debut at the Glyndebourne Festival with the part of Almirena in Händel’s Rinaldo and with the part of Merione in Gluck’s Telemaco...

The stage cantata David features Eleni Karaindrou’s music for a unique piece of Aegean drama, a verse play with words by an unknown 18th century poet from the island of Chios. Its text (first published only in 1979), invites a musical response and Greek composer Karaindrou rises splendidly to the challenge, imaginatively moving between past and present in her settings for mezzo-soprano and baritone singers, instrumental soloists, choir and orchestra. Kim Kashkashian’s evocative viola against strings may trigger associations with Karaindrou’s acclaimed writing for Ulysses’ Gaze. The music also draws inspiration from the world of baroque opera as singers Irini Karagianni and Tassis Christoyannopoulos are brought to the foreground. Karaindrou’s David is a work of changing music colours . Recorded live at the Athens Megaron, it was edited and mixed by Manfred Eicher and Nikos Espialdis for CD release. (ECM Records)

Kjartan Sveinsson, former member of Sigur Rós, releases his first solo project, a four act opera, ‘Der Klang der Offenbarung des Göttlichen’- which translates as ‘The Explosive Sonics of Divinity’. Sveinsson composed the score for his and Icelandic artist Ragnar Kjartansson’s opera inspired by Nobel Laureate Halldór Laxness’ novel ‘World Light’. ‘ Der Klang der Offenbarung des Göttlichen ’ premiered at Berlin’s Volksbühne theatre in February 2014 where Sveinsson was joined by The German Film Orchestra Babelsberg and the Filmchor Berlin for the 50-minute show. The live performance sees each of the four movements set to a different theatrical tableau; with scenery changes and slight weather events sweeping in and out of the set, all of which occurs without a single actor gracing the stage. Kjartansson says that “Der Klang der Offenbarung des Göttlichen’ is a banally romantic opera inspired by Halldór Laxness’s cunning texts about the longing for beauty”. Since 2011...

The South Korean conductor Shiyeon Sung is characterised by a natural authority, a collegial and inspiring rehearsal approach and the ability to tread the fine line between passion and level-headedness. With the Gyeonggi Philharmonic Orchestra, whose chief conductor she has been since January 2014, she toured Europe for the first time in summer 2015. Together, they appeared at the Philharmonie Berlin, in Wiesbaden, at the Musik Festival Saar and elsewhere. In September 2016, she will repay the favour, and conduct the German Radio Philharmonic Orchestra Saarbrücken Kaiserslautern on tour in her home country. Other highlights of the new season include a return visit to the Konzerthaus Orchestra Berlin, her debut concerts with the National Taiwan Symphony Orchestra and the Deutsche Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland-Pfalz as well as a concert performance of Bizet’s Carmen , a “Shakespeare in Music” concert, and a Prokofiev portrait concert with the Gyeonggi Philharmonic Orchestr...

Susanne Elmark completed her training at the Royal Danish Academy of Music in Copenhagen in 1994, and gave her debut concert in 1996. Her teachers were Susanne Eken and Ingrid Bjoner, and she has studied widh Josef Protschka. Susanne Elmark has given numerous recitals in Denmark and Germany, and has performed as a soloist in The Messiah, Mozart's Requiem, Bach's B Minor Mass and Carmina Burana, and she is a patticularly frequent guest with the Danish Radio Concert Ordhestra. She has sung Lauretta in Gianni Schicchi in a production on Danish television. Other roles have included Gilda in Rigoletto at the Braunschweig Opera, the Queen of the Night at the Deutsche Oper and Zerlina with the Royal Opera in Copenhagen. She has had several engagements widh Danish orchestras and appears frequently on recordings. (Naxos Records)