Il Giardino d’Amore / Stefan Plewniak / Natalia Kawalek / Dawid Biwo AMOR SACRO AMOR PROFANO

 Love is crazy one may say, love you can not define,  love is all you need. Amor, Amore, l’Amour,  Je t’aime … so many ways to express something sweet inside of us, in some quiet secret and sacred part of our souls. Amor Sacro Amor Profano gently and softly leads us to this world where love write her own scenarios.

Amor Sacro Amor Profano features music of Vivaldi, Bach, Handel, Lully, Charpentier, Stradella, Caresana, Corelii. 

Il Giardino d’Amore / Natalia Kawalek CANTATES ET PETITS MACARONS

On a quiet summer afternoon, with the living room door half open, through the doorway comes a smell of perfume, muffled laughter from the courtesans and the sweet sounds of the violin virtuoso…

Delicious music of the XVIII century Paris salon.

This CD contains masterpieces of the best masters of french baroque secular cantata which were : Montéclair, Rameau, Clerambault, and fantastic instrumental chamber music of the genious Couperin, and Marais. This combination of composers, and choice of the repertoir gives very colourful, divers, and exciting program. With the works of Clérambault, Montéclair and Rameau, the French Cantata reached a kind of apogee, pushing the limits of its theatricality and becoming increasingly more operatic. On one hand, these composers borrow the varied pace, exuberance and quick modulations from the Italian style, on the other hand, they expand the instrumental parts, using trumpets, horns, violins and even timpani, which far from being a mere accompaniment to the story. Marin Marais was one of the first to introduce trio compositions, typically used by the Italians, into France. His famous Sonnerie de Sainte Geneviève du Mont de Paris (Bells of St. Genevieve in the Hills of Paris) is an amazing example of virtuosity on the viola da gamba. François Couperin, less engaged with cantata writing than his contemporaries is one of the most important chamber music composers of the French Baroque, in which he reaches an artistic peak with Le Gouts Reunis, and L’Apothéose de Corelli.

Il Giardino d’Amore THE HEART OF EUROPE

The Heart of Europe – Corona Regni Poloniae – 1500 – 1750 is a new CD lanced by Ëvoe Records.
Main goal of this album is to present rare music of Central Europe during 250 years of late Renaissance and Baroque era, especially focusing on the cultural exchange between Ottoman Turkey and Occidental Europe. In this context Poland (in latin Corona Regni Poloniae) is presented as The Heart of Europe being culturally linked with those different worlds. The topic of the CD concentrates around the date of the biggest battles between christianity and islam which took place in Vienna in 1683.

Fascinating personality and key person in this story is Wojciech Bobowski – (in Turkey called Ali Ufki ) who represented both cultures and connected their music. The other interesting composers appearing in this album are Johannes de Lublin, Gorczycki, Zielenski, Mielczewski, Klosseman. You can listen also to great Battalia by Biber, and Turcaria by Fux in new exciting arrangements with much bigger instrumentation. The salt and pepper of this CD is of course instruments typical for ottoman culture such as ney or santur.

The CD is recorded by Il Giardino d’Amore orchestra and choir in cooperation with Tempus and Trombastic Ensembles.
The diversity of genres and the compositions of the CD is a great advantage blending smoothly sacred and secular music with popular and court dances.

We would like to encourage our listeners to explore more about this fascinating music and history. We hope that curiosity will bring new discoveries and new presentations soon. The CD is an incredible adventure for the musicologists, music lovers, and great fun for the whole families with young members, especially enjoying the dynamic rhythms, and original colorful melodies of past times and kingdoms.

Jakub Jozef Orlinski / Natalia Kawalek HÄNDEL Enemies in Love

Enemies in Love is a dazzling disc of Handel Arias and Duets performed by soprano Natalia Kawalek, counter tenor Jakub Jozef Orlinski and Il Giardino d’Amore conducted by Stefan Plewniak.

The album explores themes of love, jealousy, war, intrigue and religious conflict. The singers delight the listener with their virtuosic display, as one would expect from a recording from Evoe, a label specialising in vocal and orchestral Baroque music.

Polish countertenor Jakub Jozef Orlinski has gained a reputation as a singer of striking vocal beauty and daring stage craft. Trained at The Juilliard School, he is an avid interpreter of the roles created by Handel. Polish mezzo-soprano, Natalia Kawalek, studied at the Frederic Chopin University of Music in Warsaw. In the summer of 2016 she made her debut in Glyndenbourne singing Cherubino in Le Nozze di Figaro of Mozart. In 2016 she sang also in Verdi’s Macbeth, together with Placido Domingo in Theater an der Wien. In 2017 she sang in Teatr Wielki in Warsaw being part of the Korngold Die Tote Stadt opera production staged by M.Trelinski.

Gérard Souzay / Dalton Baldwin CLAUDE DEBUSSY Lieder

From almost any point of view, the DGG recording by Gérard Souzay of three major Debussy song cycles is an absolute must for those who admire the French art song sung with absolute perfection of style. For Souzay‘s mastery of this material is, in the final analysis, quite beyond logical analysis. For example: flawless diction, each syllable articulated with the greatest clarity, and perfect vocal legato are, by their nature, rather at odds with each other. Yet Souzay, by methods quite his own, manages to excel in both. His control over musical phrasing, moreover, in no way unbalances his extraordinary ability to produce the maximum dramatic effect with the simplest of vocal means. The meaning of each poem is projected with astonishing incisiveness.

Finally, what is most important, the songs really, truly sing. The Impressionist art song, in the wrong hands, can too often come over like a maze of declamation supported by aromatic sound – like a parody of itself. Souzay’s readings make the material sound as direct, shapely, and lyrical as any song by Schubert. The issue is altogether superb, and Deutsche Grammophon has provided a sound that suits the music and the singer perfectly. Need more be said? (HiFi Stereo Review, 1962)

Monique Haas CLAUDE DEBUSSY Préludes I & II - Etudes

Monique Haas is widely regarded as among the leading French pianists from the early and mid-twentieth century. She performed a broad repertory, from J.S. Bach, Haydn, and Mozart to Bartók, Prokofiev, and Messiaen. Not surprisingly, she played and recorded much French music, including the entire outputs of Debussy and Ravel. Her precise, elegant style fit well with Baroque, Classical, and modern music, leaving little wonder why, apart from a few works by Schumann and Chopin, she avoided the Romantic school. Haas concertized widely and frequently, her tours covering most European countries, the United States, the former Soviet Union, Asia, and Australia. Much of her extensive discography is still available from several labels, including Deutsche Grammophon, BMG, Elektra, and Profil.

Monique Haas was born in Paris on October 20, 1909. Her first advanced studies were at the Paris Conservatoire, where her most important teachers were Joseph Morpain and Lazare-Levy. Haas won first prize in piano performance as a student there in 1927, and later took private lessons from Rudolf Serkin and Robert Casadesus.

Haas' husband was composer Marcel Mihalovici, who wrote many of his piano compositions for her, including sonatas and several works for piano and orchestra. She made notable recordings of his Op. 45 Sonata for Violin and Piano (No. 2) and his Op. 46 Ricercari. In the pre-war and wartime eras, Haas performed on occasion with some of the most prominent composers of the day, among them Poulenc, Stravinsky, Hindemith, and Enescu, who was a friend and mentor of Mihalovici.

In the postwar era, Haas concertized regularly throughout Europe and abroad and made numerous recordings, mostly for Deutsche Grammophon. Among her earlier efforts from this period was a memorable Ravel G major (1948), and a Stravinsky Capriccio (1950). She would record the Ravel again, just as memorably, in 1965, along with the Concerto for the Left Hand.

Haas remained active on the concert stage and in the recording studio even while she took up teaching (1967-1970) at the Paris Conservatoire and conducted master classes at the Salzburg Mozarteum.

In her last years, Haas was less active. Her husband died in 1985 and she died in Paris two years later, regarded as one of the most influential and highly praised pianists of her generation. In 2006 Deutsche Grammophon released an eight-disc set of Haas' complete recordings for the label, made between 1948 and 1965. (Robert Cummings)

Seldom Sene / Klaartje van Veldhoven DELIGHT IN MUSICKE

Recorder quintet SELDOM SENE, founded in Amsterdam in 2009, is a group of five musicians with a mutual passion for consort playing. With a combined interest in the interpretation and performance of both early and contemporary music, these highly skilled and dynamic players each bring a wealth of expertise, creativity, passion and virtuosity to the ensemble. With inventive programmes that juxtapose early and contemporary music, Seldom Sene excels at all aspects of ensemble playing, performing with "power, precision and profound expression" (Gustavo Beytelmann, Illzach 2011).

The musicians originate from Germany, England, Spain and Holland and met whilst studying at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam. They perform on a collection of over 50 different recorders, including a variety of baroque and modern instruments and also own renaissance consorts with recorders made by Bob Marvin, Francesco Li Virghi, Monika Musch and Ture Bergstrøm.

Whilst searching for more unfamiliar repertoire, one of the first pieces to catch their attention was Seldom sene by the English composer Christopher Tye – a short work full of beauty, precision and striking rhythmic complexity that they felt captured the essence of their vision: performing unique and compelling repertoire at a standard that is seldom seen and heard. Since their foundation, "Seldom Sene excels because of their excellent musical interpretation and beautiful choice of repertoire" (Frédéric de Roos, Le Mans 2009).

n October 2009 the group made their debut at the "Concours International d’Ensembles de Flûte á bec" organised by the "Société des Amis de Arnold Dolmetsch" in Le Mans where they were awarded 1st Prize. In 2011 they received the Interpretation Prize (by unanimous vote of the five jury members) at the 17th International Chamber Music Competition in Illzach (France). In September 2014 they were awarded the First Prize, the Audience Award and the Press Prize of the International Van Wassenaer Early Music Competition, which took place during the Utrecht Early Music Festival.

Seldom Sene has given many recitals in renowned series​They record for the Dutch label Brilliant Classics, which released CDs Taracea (2014), El aire se serena (2016) and J.S. Bach: Goldberg Variations (2017), selected as Bach Album of the Year 2017 by the listeners of the Dutch radio station Concertzender. Their fourth record, Delight in Musicke is a selection of songs and instrumental music from the English Renaissance featuring soprano Klaartje van Veldhoven.

Discantus / Brigitte Lesne VON BINGEN Hortus Deliciarum

‘Hortus deliciarum’ is truly a garden of delights, a recital of mainly 12th-century pieces, planned by Marie-Noël Colette and Brigitte Lesne and performed unaccompanied by Discantus. Some of the pieces come from a transcription made in 1818 of Herrad of Landsberg’s wonderful manuscript of that name, sadly destroyed in 1870. Others come from various manuscript sources, including Hildegard von Bingen’s Symphonia Harmoniœ cœlestium revelationum. 

The programme revolves chiefly around the Christmas season, with Mary the Mother of Jesus as the central figure. It begins with five stanzas from Sedulius’s wonderful alphabetical poem, A solis ortus cardine, starting at the letter E, ‘Enixa est puerperal’. We hear a few examples of traditional chants, including pieces of the Proper: the gradual Dilexisti, from the Common of Virgins, and the Offertory Offerentur regi virgines in a particularly beautiful and highly ornamental version. The singers have their own way of interpreting the rhythm of the early notation, and the overall impression of constant flow which they achieve is impressive. Other pieces include several troped items from the Ordinary.

The unison singing is quite remarkable for its clarity and smoothness. The singers have discovered, too, how to manage repercussions, subtly but entirely convincingly. The ordering of the recital, with its frequent use of First Mode pieces juxtaposed, and its judicious groupings, is successful and never monotonous. The listener is left with a good sense of how sacred music was developing in the 12th century by leaps and bounds in so many directions, even to the extent of cantillated readings being occasionally sung in three parts. (Gramophone)

The London Haydn Quartet HAYDN String Quartets Opp. 54 & 55

Period performance on a string quartet involves the strings and the bow more than the instruments themselves, which may well date from the 18th century even in the case of modern performances. The London Haydn Quartet, using gut strings and Classical-era bows, is one of the leading groups devoted to historical performances of the monuments of the quartet literature, and this double album is part of a series devoted to Haydn's 68 quartets. They cultivate a light, at times almost fantastical sound that forms an intriguing contrast with the often dense and economical structures of these quartets. Sample one of the quintessential Haydn monothematic opening movements—say, that of the String Quartet in E flat major, Op 50, No 3—for the effect. The players have a really nice way with the languid slow movements, and the wit of the minuets is understated. All these pieces can be played in other ways, but it's worth investigating to see whether these rather sensuous readings click with you. A major attraction is Hyperion's Potton Hall sound, musically appropriate and technically flawless. The proclamation in the graphics that the quartets are "performed from the Artaria edition published in Vienna in December 1787" is less interesting than it may sound; many performances derive from this edition or its successors, which in some respects slightly distorted the four Haydn autographs that remain from the set of six. But this is distinctive and attractive Haydn overall. (AllMusic)

Edna Stern / Amandine Beyer CHACONNE

The chaconne, like the passacaglia, is an old dance of Spanish origin, often slow and solemn, which is built on a rhythmic scheme in triple time. The term chaconne came to designate a variation form founded on a theme of four or eight bars stated in the bass, and ending with a clearly marked perfect cadence. Cadential regularity, a slow and solemn tempo, triple time, and the ostinato principle are the essential characteristics of this imposing form whose majestic gait and demonstrative, ostentatious character make it a Baroque phenomenon par excellence. This major genre inseparable from the Baroque style, was to prove ideal terrain for the creators of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Its unrivaled period of expansion, notable for distinguished contributions from such men as Frescobaldi, Couperin, and Buxtehude, culminated in the works of Johann Sebastian Bach, with such noted examples as the towering Passacaglia in C minor for organ, BWV582. (Arkiv Music)

Olga Andryushchenko 20th CENTURY PIANO WORKS

Olga Andryushchenko was born in Moscow and educated at the Central Special Music School, and the Faculty of Historical and Modern Performing Arts of the Moscow Tchaikovsky State Conservatory under Alexei Lubimov. She also studied organ. She completed her postgraduate studies at the same conservatory, and was also a DAAD scholarship-holder at the Cologne Hochschule für Musik.

She has won a number of important prizes and awards, including the 4th International Piano Competition “Franz Schubert and the Music of Modernity” in Austria (2000), the Premium Piano Seiler 2nd International Piano Competition in Germany (2001), the Premio Vanna Spadafor International Piano Competition in Italy (2004), the Bach Competition in Leipzig (2006), the Musica Antiqua International Fortepiano Competition in Belgium (2007), the A. Scriabine International Piano Competition in Paris (2008), the N. Rubinstein International Piano Competition in Paris (2008), and the Fortepiano Competition in Schloss Kremsegg (2011).

She was a soloist of the Moscow State Philharmonic Society (2002–2004), and performs both as a soloist and in ensembles, playing piano, organ, fortepiano or harpsichord. She has also given a number of piano recitals and played with orchestras in many cities of Russia, Austria, Germany, Sweden, Italy, the United States, Belgium, Finland, Great Britain, Canada, France, Japan and elsewhere.

Jean-Luc Godard NOUVELLE VAGUE

This is the complete soundtrack - music, dialogue, sounds - of Jean-Luc Godard's Nouvelle Vague, premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 1990.'In making this film,' Godard said at a press conference later that year, 'I heard a great deal of music; music produced by Manfred Eicher.I can well imagine how musicians are inspired and influenced by these sounds. And I too have immersed myself in this music, and I have felt,in my work, like a musician.' Interviewed at the Toronto Film Festival of 1996, Godard returned to this theme: 'Manfred began our relationship by sending me some music. It was new music of Arvo Pärt and, especially, David Darling, which I had never heard of before. And after listening, I wrote to him and asked him to send me more records of his company. And I had the feeling, the way he was producing sound that we were moreor less in the same country: he with sounds, me with images. And the music that he sends me is music that brings me to some ideas in moviemaking. In fact, some of the records brought me to a picture called Nouvelle Vague and later other ones... and I began to imagine things due to that kind of music.' Cahiers du Cinéma: 'The Nouvelle Vague soundtrack is magnificent. The intertwining of the various forms of music, voices and sounds is one of the most extraordinary ever heard, even including Godard's oeuvre.' Includes the voices of Alain Delon, Domiziana Giordano, Roland Amstutz, Laurence Cote, Jacques Dacqmine, Christophe Odent, Laurence Guerre, Joseph Lisbona, and others. (ECM Records)

Ensemble Correspondances / Sébastien Daucé MARC-ANTOINE CHARPENTIER La Descente d’Orphée aux Enfers

Marc-Antoine Charpentier (1643-1704) dedicated himself principally to composing sacred music for a pious duchess and a Jesuit chapel. Those works often smolder with inner embers, making him the musical equivalent of the French Caravaggist painter Georges de la Tour. His only full-scale opera was a flop (“too learned,” said the critics), but he also composed several short operas for the duchess’s entertainments. The most intriguing, La Descente d’Orphée aux Enfers (The Descent of Orpheus into Hell), has been recorded several times before, but never as convincingly as in this luminous performance by Ensemble Correspondances (directed from the organ by Sébastien Daucé), in which historical scholarship deepens engaged musical instincts.

Top-drawer early-music chamber singers lead the cast, including the American light tenor Robert Getchell, affecting as grief-stricken Orphée, and the French bass Nicolas Brooymans, as malleable Pluton. The choral and instrumental work is exemplary, everywhere subtle in phrasing and fluid in embellishment; the nymphs and shepherds lamenting Eurydice’s death prove heartrending in the restrained articulation of their dissonances. This emotionally wrenching piece ends enigmatically, with Orpheus recovering Eurydice but just setting out on his journey with her back to the land of the living — a trip we know will be bumpy — while the Shades dance a ghostly goodbye. (James M. Keller)

Antoine Tamestit / Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks / Daniel Harding WIDMANN Viola Concerto

Antoine Tamestit's recording of Jörg Widmann Viola Concerto is released on Harmonia Mundi on 23 February 2018. Tamestit gave the world premiere of the concerto in 2015 with the Orchestre de Paris and Paavo Järvi. “One of the most gifted French musicians of the era,” wrote Le Figaro, “the work is made to measure for Tamestit, his style of playing, his tone, his personality.” The work was co-commissioned by the Swedish Radio Symphony and Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks with conductor Daniel Harding, who play on the recording. 
As well as Widmann’s Viola Concerto, the disc features chamber works performed by Tamestit and Bruno Philippe, Marc Bouchkov and the Signum Quartet. 
The theatrical concerto sees the soloist exploring a range of positions on the stage. Initially seated behind the harp players the soloist moves towards the centre of the orchestra and eventually ‘front and centre’ assuming the traditional position for the soloist. 
Tamestit has already performed the concerto widely, and it has proved popular with audiences at subsequent performances with the Danish National Symphony Orchestra, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, Stavanger Symphony Orchestra, Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra and Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra.

Duo Jatekok LES BOYS

The piano duo formed by Arthur Gold (1917–90) and Robert Fizdale (1920–95) enjoyed immense fame in the post-war years. Poulenc wrote a piece for them, as did Darius Milhaud, Samuel Barber, Luciano Berio and John Cage. They recorded with Leonard Bernstein. Nicknamed "The Boys", they played all over the world and were praised for their ‘seamless perfection and an inimitable "joie de vivre" (New York Times). The Boys were also famed for their bestselling books and television programmes on cooking, their other passion! Duo Jatekok was formed in 2007. Like The Boys and unlike most current piano duos, Adélaïde Panaget and Naïri Badal are not siblings, but childhood friends. "They have everything going for them: dynamic rigour and expressive energy, exuberant keyboard skills and multilingual touch, and more than anything else, a sort of jubilatory osmosis", wrote Le Monde. For this first recording on Alpha, they have decided to pay tribute to "The Boys" with a programme of works written for them, Poulenc’s Sonata for two pianos and Élégie and a composition by a legend of jazz, the American pianist Dave Brubeck, Points of Jazz. Duo Jatekok also wanted to include music by one of their contemporaries: Baptiste Trotignon’s Trois Pièces (including one dedicated to Poulenc!) complete the programme.

Houston Symphony / Andrés Orozco-Estrada MUSIC OF THE AMERICAS

Having demonstrated their musical excellence with three well-received recordings on PENTATONE of orchestral works of Antonin Dvořák, Houston Symphony and Andrés Orozco-Estrada now present an album that comes closer to their cultural roots than ever before. Dance rhythms, jazzy harmonies, bright colours, city sounds; everything one associates with The Americas can be heard on this recording. With George Gershwin’s 1928 piece An American in Paris, Silvestre Revueltas’s Sensemayá (1938), Leonard Bernstein’s Symphonic Dances from West Side Story (1961) and Ástor Piazzolla’s Tangazo (1970), it brings together composers from across the twentieth century, all connected by their belonging to the Americas. Moreover, all of these composers reconfigured the barriers between classical and popular music, combining them to produce a sound that illustrates their home region. In choosing these particular works, Houston Symphony and Andrés Orozco-Estrada have aimed not to cover the entire continent but rather to provide ‘impressions’ of America and to ‘illuminate’ as many colours in the music as possible. 

Sensemayá showcases the highly original combination of native elements from the pre-colonial indigenous past with avant-garde techniques that characterizes the music of Mexican composer Revueltas. Leonard Bernstein’s West Side Story, from which a suite of Symphonic Dances is featured on this album, belongs to the most popular and famous American music ever. Bernstein illuminates the story of two rival gangs in New York by juxtaposing a jazz-blues ‘American’ idiom with a more ‘Latin American’ Puerto Rican sound, in which the Cuban mambo and cha-cha, and the Mexican huapango are also integrated. Ástor Piazzolla’s Tangazo (grand tango) incorporates neo-classical elements such as a fugue into the national Argentinian dance music par excellence, realizing a reconciliation between native influences and trends in contemporary classical music. In Gershwin’s jazzy symphonic poem An American in Paris, city sounds temporarily give way to a sorrowful, homesickness blues, but the piece ends in regained excitement. (PENTATONE)

Myung-Whun Chung / Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra MAHLER Symphony No. 9

For this 2015 Deutsche Grammophon release, Myung-Whun Chung leads the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra in a revelatory performance of Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 9 in D major, which is often regarded as the composer's farewell to music and life. Notwithstanding the fact that Mahler went on to write a substantial part of his unfinished Symphony No. 10 (making discussion of a farewell to music moot) and was feeling healthy and optimistic for his career, the Ninth is still a powerful essay on his anguished inner life, his neuroses, his fear of death, and his ultimate resignation to fate, all of which are central to the music's drama, though not to a specifically autobiographical program. Chung and the orchestra grapple with the symphony's raw emotions and demonic drive, and make it a compelling and even draining experience, especially in the furious Rondo-Burleske, which includes some of Mahler's most violent and self-mocking passages. Even so, the effectiveness of the musical expression comes from Chung's careful study and close attention to details, and his profound understanding of the Ninth gives it the pacing and energy to feel spontaneous and volatile, yet inexorable and complete. While Chung is best known as an expert interpreter of French music, particularly of the works of Olivier Messiaen, he proves here that he is a true Mahlerian, and fans of the composer should regard this recording as essential listening. (Blair Sanderson)

Anne Gastinel / Nicholas Angelich / Gil Shaham / Andreas Ottensamer / Frankfurt Radio Symphony / Paavo Järvi BEETHOVEN Triple Concerto - Trio Op. 11

...the special feature of this work is its highly individual form: it’s a concertante work, but it’s also genuine chamber music. This mixture of genres, this duality, isn’t always easy to handle: Gil, Nicholas and I form a trio, but one in which each member takes on a solo part. There’s a real balance to be found, which is harder than when there are only two soloists – as in the Brahms Double Concerto, for example. All through the work, there’s continual inter- action between the soloists, and between the trio and the orchestra. 

This concerto can easily become just a superposition of talents if the three soloists are not as ‘connected’ as they are in chamber music. I’ve often thought that the ideal solution was to ask an existing trio to perform it. The challenge of this recording was to form a trio that could play a concertante work with an orchestra, and to create a group that would function naturally and intuitively. I strongly felt that was what was needed. That’s why I immediately thought of Nicholas and Gil. Nicholas, whom I’ve known for a very long time now, has the rare quality of being both a great soloist and a great chamber musician. He always listens to his partners, and his playing is magni cent. As to Gil, whom I admire and whose playing I really love, he’s someone who is characterised by perpetual exchange and mobility; he too is a great listener, so generous and open to other people’s ideas that it’s sheer delight to play with him. We didn’t know each other, except from hearing recordings or concerts, but things came together quite naturally. The three of us met in Paris to play through the work before meeting the orchestra, about a month and a half before the concerts. That rehearsal is still a wonderful memory: everything was so natural, so self-evident between us! We all felt the same thing, that very spontaneous reaction when you make music together, you phrase together . . . That’s the magic of rst meetings, sometimes. 

The orchestra is also very present in this piece; its part is very important. It doesn’t just ac- company the soloists. We’re dealing here with a real Beethoven symphony, featuring a trio of soloists that reacts to the orchestra in a permanent give-and-take... (Anne Gastinel)

Julia Fischer / Martin Helmchen FRANZ SCHUBERT Complete Works for Violin and Piano - Volume 2

Schubert concluded his personal violin sonata ‘chapter’ early on, as his last work in this genre dates from 1817: the Sonatafor Violin and Piano in A major, D. 574 (Op. posth. 162, Grand Duo). Perhaps he put aside any further plans for violin sonatas he might have had due to a number of significantexperiences he underwent in 1817. Although Schubert is often portrayed by the lay world as never being successful with his compositions during his lifetime, this is not entirely the case. Thus his cantata Prometheus – penned the previous year – had created quite a sensation in Vienna. Otherwise Schubert would hardly have considered giving up his recently (1816) acquired teaching position in favour of creative free-lancing. However, music historians are right about the negative representation of the reception given to Schubert’s works, as indeed, according to traditional tales, fortune did not smile upon him: of all things, this successful work – the Prometheus Cantata – was lost to the world and has not yet been rediscovered to this day. (Pentatone)

Julia Fischer / Martin Helmchen FRANZ SCHUBERT Complete Works for Violin and Piano - Volume 1

The great similarity between the first movement (Allegro molto) of Franz Schubert’s Sonata for Violin and Piano in D major, D. 384 (Op. posth. 137, No. 1, dating from 1816) and the first movement of the Sonata for Piano and Violin in E minor, K. 304 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart must have already been emphasised hundreds of times. The analogies are more than simply astonishing, they are essential – and at the same time, existential. Deliberately so: because at the age of 19, Schubert had well outgrown the need to “crib”. Nevertheless, Schubert imitated his example in every aspect of this Mozart-like movement, including the transitions, secondary motifs and even in the manner he dealt with the rests. And yet he achieved more than simply a “copy”. Schubert’s Allegro molto is a reflection, a kind of “question set to music”: where do I want to go? And the answer must be: I got there a long time since! Because all the later characteristics that gradually emerged to define his personality as a composer (i.e. abrupt stops, harmonic surprises, the ecstasy of the moment vs. the dashing of hope) are already present here and are leading him, as it were, “through Mozart up to himself”. (Pentatone)

Renaud Capuçon RIHM - DUSAPIN - MANTOVANI

French violinist Renaud Capuçon is clearly relishing playing in live performance these twenty-first century concertos which were written specifically for him. Inspired by the number of commissions given by fellow violinists, notably Gidon Kremer and Anne-Sophie Mutter, when commissioning works Capuçon enjoys the privilege of being able to contribute towards expanding the repertoire of the violin. When working with living composers, Capuçon has stated that he enjoys the collaborative aspect of the project.

The earliest work here is Jeux d'eau from French composer Bruno Mantovani a work he completed in 2012. Like many composers before him, conspicuously Liszt, Debussy and Ravel, Mantovani has used a theme of water. With Jeux d'eau, Mantovani was specifically motivated by “the sound of clear water that flows from a mountain torrent.” It was Capuçon who premièred the score in 2012 at Paris. As the title suggests, the score to Jeux d'eau has an ineluctable aqueous quality marked by writing that feels clean, fresh and fluid. There is a variety of textures in both the violin and orchestra parts and noticeably broad dynamics.

Wolfgang Rihm is one of the pre-eminent composers working today. The winner of several prestigious awards, Rihm has been the recipient of numerous commissions. By my reckoning, Rihm has now written five violin concertos of which the best known is Gesungene Zeit (Time Chant) for Anne-Sophie Mutter who recorded the work on Deutsche Grammophon. Rihm’s violin concerto Gedicht des Malers (Poem of the Painter) was introduced by Capuçon in 2015 at Vienna. Rihm talks about the inspiration for the work coming from artist Max Beckmann, who painted Max Reger a year after the composer had died. Rihm has stated that he could visualise Beckmann painting virtuoso violinist Eugène Ysaÿe in the same way. It is as if the soloist has taken control of the artist’s brush on the canvas. Immediately, the aching intensity of the writing has a Bergian feel and the mainly high lying violin part strongly evokes celestial images. Two main contrasting impressions dominate the work first a mainly cool and shadowy often mysterious atmosphere and secondly episodes of coarsely-hewn agitation. The moods are disrupted by the quickly built screeching outburst at 9.23 and a sudden thunderous eruption at 12.40.

Another Frenchman, Pascal Dusapin, is represented by Aufgang, his concerto for violin and orchestra. In 2008, Dusapin was motivated by conductor Marek Janowski to write a violin concerto, but after some work on the piece, the project didn’t come to fruition. Subsequently a meeting with Capuçon led to the composer reviving the concerto that he completed in 2011. The first performance was given by Capuçon in 2013 at Cologne. Titled Aufgang, the word in English means Ascent, possibly meaning a staircase to the sky, relating to the high register where much of the violin part lies.

Dusapin talks about “emerging light” yet it is the contrasts that are striking. Evident in the opening movement is the very high lying register of the violin part against the orchestra, which becomes increasingly weighty and anxiety laden. Shadowy, infused with nervous tension in the movement two, the violin part gradually gains in prominence and assertiveness. Conspicuous in the third movement is the wild and fiery character at turns coolly expressive.

The liner notes include an essay by Marguerite Haldjian and a note from Capuçon which are helpful and interesting. Recorded live the sound quality across three separate concert halls is uniformly clear and well balanced. There is some minor audience noise but nothing too distracting, and applause has been kept in on two the works.

Playing with robust and impassioned lyricism, Renaud Capuçon is on exceptional form. This is the finest release of contemporary violin concertos I have heard in some years. (Michael Cookson)

Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra / Myung-Whun Chung UNSUK CHIN 3 Concertos

This release represents something of a milestone: a performance of major, public Korean compositions by mostly Korean musicians, recorded for a large Western label and presumably marketed at least as much to Westerners as to Koreans. Composer Unsuk Chin was a student of György Ligeti, but her style resembles his only in her general orientation toward layered textures and rhythmic emphasis. She writes music in which the relationships between blocks of sound shift over the course of a composition, and although her harmonic world is atonal, her writing is not difficult to follow. The concerto form allows an ideal introduction to what she does, and the three works here are attractive examples (she has written several others). Start with the concluding Su, for sheng & orchestra, from 2009. This is the only work on the program with specifically Asian content (and the instrument involved is Chinese, not Korean), but the way the sheng is treated, generating extremely unusual texture combinations with the orchestra, is illustrative of the whole. The Piano Concerto of 1996-1997 is an extreme virtuoso work easily handled by soloist Sun-wook Kim, while the Cello Concerto (2008-2009, rev. 2013) uses a single note as its center and evolves the music of soloist and orchestra from that note in different ways. In none of the three pieces does the soloist fulfill the traditional concerto role of the individual opposed to the crowd, but neither is any of the three simply an ensemble work with a prominent solo instrument. This is precisely the music's considerable appeal, and conductor Myung-Whun Chung draws out the works' often exacting textures to their full extent. Recommended even beyond circles interested in contemporary Asian developments. (James Manheim)

Stile Galante / Stefano Aresi PORPORA L'Amato Nome

Nicola Porpora’s Op 1 set of Italian chamber cantatas receive a new and striking reading directed by Stefano Aresi, a leading interpreter of the Late Baroque composer. Neapolitan-born Porpora brought his nuove musiche with him in the early 1730s when he had set out for London (with his pupil Farinelli) to take advantage of the perceived wavering of Handel’s operatic fame there. Porpora, espying an opportunity there just as Handel himself had done before, quickly ingratiated himself with the nobility in Britain and his 12 cantatas, though probably written in Naples, were published under the patronage of Frederick Louis, Prince of Wales of Great Britain. They enjoyed substantial success at the time, and reflecting the primacy of Italian music across Europe, not least through Porpora’s masterly settings of Pietro Metastasio’s texts extolling Arcadian tastes and ideals.

These dozen works are shared between four singers from Stile Galante – Francesca Cassinari and Emanuela Galli, sopranos, Giuseppina Bridelli and Marina De Liso, contraltos – who have developed their interpretations, including the use of contemporaneous embellishments (such as strascino and cercar della nota), with Stefano Aresi. In addition to directing the project, Aresi contributes a stimulating booklet essay for this new Glossa L’amato nome release which will do much for the cause of modern-day historical reinterpretation of Porpora’s chamber vocal music. (Glossa)

Nigel Short / London Symphony Orchestra / Tenebrae FAURÉ Requiem - J.S. BACH Partitas, Chorales & Ciaconna

Even though Gabriel Fauré's Requiem in D minor receives top billing on this 2012 release from LSO Live, listeners may be excused if they find the performance of J.S. Bach's Partita in D minor with Chorales to be the most interesting part of the disc. Scholarship has revealed the Partita and its famous Ciaconna (Chaconne) to be connected to various funereal chorale melodies, which Bach wove into his music as a private tribute to his late first wife, Maria Barbara. To help illustrate this, Nigel Short and Tenebrae perform the chorales "Ach Herr, laß dein lieb Engelein," "Christ lag in Todesbanden," "Den Tod niemand swingen kunnt," and "Wenn ich einmal soll scheiden," between movements of the Partita and underscoring the Ciaconna where Gordan Nikolic's carefully phrased violin melody makes reference to the chorales. For musical sleuths, this is quite an exercise in detection, though the emotional impact of hearing the violin soaring and weaving through the choir's dirges is not to be underrated. The Bach certainly prepares the listener for the 1893 chamber version of Fauré's somber but soothing Requiem, in which the London Symphony Orchestra Chamber Ensemble accompanies Tenebrae with strength and beauty. While the performances are admirable for their undeniable power to move, the super audio sound of these live recordings is uneven and disconcerting, falling short of the label's usual high standards by being either too thin, as in the Bach, or too booming, as in the Fauré. (Blair Sanderson)

Kathryn Stott / The Hermitage String Trio FAURÉ Piano Quartets - Nocturne No. 4

These are finely wrought and expressive performances of the two Piano Quartets. The recording quality is a good one, spacious, not clinical.
The Hermitage Trio and Kathryn Stott, that most accomplished musician, start the C minor quite toughly. The tempo is finely judged, but the emphasis is on avoiding the fey or under-nourished. Curiously therefore their Scherzo is a degree under-characterized, though again it’s played with technical eloquence and a real degree of confidence. And there’s certainly a noble simplicity to the cello and piano statements in the slow movement. Stott leads the finale’s dance with verve and resilient rhythm.
In the opening movement of the companion G minor the Allegro is stressed somewhat at the expense of molto moderato. In contradistinction to their preference for bracing tempi elsewhere the slow movement is really very slow. I think it thereby misses the implicit nobility of the writing and the subtlety of the melancholia and its more quicksilver intimations. This to me is rather impersonal, straining at meaning, and imposing a stratum of heaviness instead.
As a corollary I would add that Stott’s playing of the Fourth Nocturne is illuminated by her lovely touch. (MusicWeb International / Jonathan Woolf)

Frieder Bernius / Kammerchor Stuttgart / Hofkapelle Stuttgart WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART Missa in c KV 427

There can be no doubt – the Missa in C minor KV 427 by W. A. Mozart is a fascinating work. Simply calling it a “mass” is inaccurate; indeed, there is hardly more than a musical torso full of enigmas and problems – and brimming with magnificent music. What has survived is a fragment, in more ways than one. Mozart left the work unfinished; moreover parts of the autograph have been lost. Carus has now produced a new edition which is not only based upon a profound knowledge of Mozart’s music and the church music practice of that time, but also meets with the current demands of performance practice. Frieder Bernius is the co-editor of the sheet music edition; he and his Stuttgart Chamber Choir recorded this version on CD. The recording impresses not only by the outstanding musical quality, but also by the particularly noble equipment in a hardcover booklet. In addition to the new version of the mass, the CD also contains a bonustrack with the Credo fragment without completed instrumental parts. A true discovery!

Royal Scottish National Orchestra / Stéphane Denève GUILLAUME CONNESSON Cosmic Trilogy - The Shining One

There’s a new generation of French composers we know little about on this side of the channel, names like Bacri, Beffa, Escaich, Zavaro, and Connesson, now around 40 (see Philip Clark, 1/10, for details of the French context). Thanks to this CD and Connesson’s association with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra we can start to discover more about him.

Aleph, the first part of Connesson’s Cosmic Trilogy, was commissioned by the RSNO and dedicated to its French conductor. The whole cycle is involved with ideas deriving from Stephen Hawking and Kandinsky but Aleph makes an orchestral showpiece on its own – a kind of supercharged version of Ravel’s Daphnis with more than a hint of John Adams.

Connesson admits that his style is eclectic but the much longer second section, also an RSNO commission, lacks the rhythmic impetus that sustains the first one and it wanders in a kind of Debussian reverie. The third section, Supernova, actually written first, inhabits the limitless vistas of outer space. Influences stream past – Messiaen, Milhaud, Bartók, Stravinsky, film music – in an efficiently scored panoply. The CD ends oddly with The Shining One, described as a piano concerto although it lasts only nine minutes. There’s a central section that starts by recalling John Ireland – that must be a coincidence – before the piece whips up to a hyperactive finish. Committed performances vividly recorded. (Peter Dickinson / Gramophone)

Forma Antiqva / Aarón Zapico ANTONIO VIVALDI The Four Seasons

The starting point of this recording is Vivaldi's sonnets, which describe in almost trivial seeming episodes the changing seasons. Caine and Bleckmann have set these sonnets to music like a delicate spring song, the summer turns into an electronic experiment. The autumn leaves come along in a poppy way, frosty the mystically recited winter. Afterwards the young wild ones of Forma Antiqva under the musical direction of Aarón Zapico may play the Vivaldi concertos. […] Their sound is clear and pure, but is also capable of sounding pretty dirty. Then it is pure Rock 'n' Roll. On this CD every flower, every bird, every snowflake breathes. A subtle and fierce Vivaldi in one recording, which shows that these Four Seasons are still far from being ultimately invented. (Radio NDR)

… the Four Seasons are of such enchanting, captivating, haunting and colourful vibrancy, that this can rightly be called a reference recording of historical performing practice: … Aarón Zapico and Forma Antiqva succeed in presenting an expressive, three-dimensional abundance of highest narrative strength, Aitor Hevia plays the violin in a vivid, present, virtuosic and variable style. […] Uri Caine and Theo Bleckmann dare to contribute their own versions of spring, summer, autumn and winter preceding every concerto, performed and … declaimed with the means of our days … It's more than music, an AudioFilm between baroque and contemporary music … (Jazzpodium)

It is a harsh, experimental approach to these famous pieces, highly virtuosic and full of suspense, interrupted by the sweet moments of the slow movements. But when the summer thunderstorm comes and unloads or the floating ice sheets crack under highest tension on the lagoon this is unheard of thus far ... [One of the most fascinating albums of the last months.] (Radio MDR Figaro)  

Nuria Rial / El Concierto Español / Emilio Moreno FRANCISCO CORSELLI Music at the Spanish Court

The first disc from El Concierto Español, the orchestra founded by the violinist Emilio Moreno (who is both a founding member of Frans Brüggen’s Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century and a great champion of Spanish music) is dedicated to one of the most important composers of the 18th century in Spain, Francisco Corselli. Of Italian origin, Corselli spent a considerable part of his career working for the Spanish court, to which he brought the opera seria which was enjoying so much success elsewhere in Europe at the time. Lively orchestral passages and colourful opera arias alternate here with deeply-felt Holy Week lamentations in a recording from 2002, which as the vocal soloist also involved the great Catalan soprano Nuria Rial, who once again is demonstrating her precious talent in Spanish music. (Glossa)

Emilio Moreno / Aarón Zapico LUIGI BOCCHERINI Apocryphal Sonatas

A further chapter in Emilio Moreno’s championship of the music of Luigi Boccherini opens with a new album on Glossa entitled Apocryphal Sonatas, a quartet of works arranged for violin and keyboard; in them Moreno is joined by the harpsichordist Aarón Zapico.

For all that there was a demand in the second half of the eighteenth century for works scored for violin and keyboard from Enlightenment professional musicians and music lovers alike, and for all Boccherini’s fecundity in producing chamber music, only a single set of violin sonatas appears to have been composed by him (and this has been recorded for Glossa by Emilio Moreno and Jacques Ogg). Any new work from Boccherini would speedily find itself made available all across Europe (and beyond) in a variety of different guises. It is not surprising, consequently, to find that eighteenth-century contemporaries turned to the trios, quartets and quintets of this then hugely-popular composer (Haydn was a “fan”), in order to create transcriptions for violin and keyboard from them – but with Boccherini unmistakably remaining the “author”.

Moreno and Zapico, whose stylishly-performed survey ranges from early through to late periods in Boccherini’s career – from Milan to Madrid – enter into the transcription spirit themselves by producing two Boccherini sonatas: these have been derived from a pair of original chamber works with strong Spanish connotations, respectively nicknamed La Tirana and La Seguidilla. Within the booklet Miguel Ángel Marín joins Moreno to argue strongly for the arrangement being a valid means of preserving the unique and original essence of a musical work. (Glossa)

Boston Symphony Orchestra / Andris Nelsons BRAHMS The Symphonies

In a personal booklet note for this set Andris Nelsons celebrates the recorded legacy of Brahms in Boston, referencing complete cycles from Leinsdorf and Haitink and recordings of individual symphonies under Koussevitzky, Munch and Ozawa. Only a conductor supremely confident in his own identity would venture to do so, of course, and Nelsons is nothing if not his own man in this repertoire, confounding expectations in some respects while confirming them in others. His Brahms is as vital, impulsive and rhythmic as all his work strives to be – though not as sheerly dynamic as one might have imagined – but there is blend and bloom, too, with Symphony Hall, Boston, seeming to accommodate this music from the bass lines upwards; a deep and sonorous sound.

Nelsons talks of finding precisely the right character for each movement and in that he truly listens to the music, feeling its pulse and allowing the phrasing to evolve with as little intervention or ‘shaping’ as possible. He is generous without indulgence, muscular without vulgarity. Just occasionally one senses him harnessing his natural dynamism in deference to the music’s noble pedigree. Perhaps I was expecting a higher degree of tension and excitement from the opening movement of the First Symphony. The promise is there in the tragically underpinned sostenuto of the opening – giving way as it does to the enticing woodwinds of the second lyric idea – but maybe the main Allegro could be a shade more imperative.

That’s the thing about this music: you don’t want to unduly drive it but nor do you want to simply luxuriate in it. The second movement of the First brings to the fore the distinguished Boston woodwinds and a sense of the music evolving in the playing of it. And then there is the finale, with storm clouds famously clearing with the BSO’s refulgent solo horn and a chorale of trombones to die for. Now the main Allegro here is liberating for sure, and perhaps Nelsons had been intentionally holding something in reserve because the climax leading to the return of the ubiquitous horn theme is rollicking indeed.

Anyone who thinks that Brahms was the conservative and Wagner the radical needs to think again. The evolution of the Second demonstrates how mindful Nelsons is of that. The myriad twists and turns and underlying threat of the autumnal first movement (where the deviation from and contortion of form is so pronounced) is boldly chronicled, and the second movement – with wonderful string-playing – is likewise gripping in the way Nelsons appreciates how daringly the material is developed. But the sun comes out again in the bracing finale and Nelsons is definitely off the leash. The return of the second subject is the warmest of hugs and the coda is exuberantly rip-roaring, descending trombones cutting through the texture like noisy bell chimes.

The Third Symphony is gorgeous. The first movement has what the Viennese might call Schwung (Nelsons includes the exposition repeat) and the development really earns its climax. In the slow movement the aforementioned naturalness and fluidity of Nelsons’s phrasing (what musicality this man has) is possessed of a spontaneity that repays his belief in the music. The Bostonians really sing. And the celebrated Poco allegretto of the third movement has the appropriate ache of nostalgia. Note, too, the magical evaporation of the finale’s coda: Nelsons’s Wagner tellingly referenced.

And so to the great Fourth. Again, don’t expect Toscanini. Nelsons builds the first movement’s head of steam by stealth, measuring its expansive lyricism – and grandeur – with a growing resolve. The measured processional of the second movement evolves into something quite ravishing, with the return of that second theme in the chest register of the Boston strings especially memorable. A similar voluptuousness arrives with the first variant of the chaconne finale and you can almost feel Nelsons channelling Brahms in the way he moves from one inspired improvisation to the next.

So, much to enjoy from an orchestra who seem to have found the perfect soulmate for this stage in their ongoing journey. The mutual respect and like-mindedness is palpable in each of these performances and, whatever you may feel about this choice or that, there’s always a very real sense of music-making happening ‘in the moment’ and for that one time only. (Edward Seckerson / Gramophone)

Arabella Steinbacher / Festival Strings Lucerne / Daniel Dodds MOZART Violin Concertos Nos. 3, 4 & 5

In the booklet accompanying this issue, Arabella Steinbacher writes: ‘These concertos have been with me since early childhood…I feel they are very close to my heart.’ Anybody tempted to dismiss this as a marketing ploy will soon change their minds on listening to these performances – they really do give the impression of a project backed by an unusual degree of sympathetic understanding.

Steinbacher has a way of searching out what gives each passage, each phrase, its individuality, getting it to speak to us through slight changes in dynamic or emphasis. Nothing is forced: the quick movements are fast enough for the passagework to sound brilliant but always with space for elegant shaping. The Lucerne Festival Strings are a small enough body to allow even accompanying lines to be played in a positive, lively manner (notice the variants in the support the violins give to the returns of the rondo theme in K216’s finale). A top-class recording enhances the sensation of keen participation. Steinbacher finds her sweetest tone for the slow movements; elsewhere, there’s a strong awareness of the sense of fun that pervades many parts of these youthful masterpieces. And she finds an extra injection of fire for the Turkish episode in K219’s finale.

The purist in me noticed occasional over-smooth articulation and, at the other extreme, very short spiccato bow strokes (in the finale of K218, for example). But these are minor issues, within these highly individual, deeply satisfying accounts. (Duncan Druce / Gramophone)

Roberta Invernizzi / Auser Musici / Carlo Ipata THE GASPARINI ALBUM

The latest striking release from soprano Roberta Invernizzi acts as a lightning conductor for this new vocal extravaganza from Glossa devoted to the Italian Baroque composer Francesco Gasparini. Invernizzi finds herself very much home both in the music – which was originally first performed around the turn of the eighteenth century and which provided “influences” for Handel, who was Gasparini’s junior by some 20 years – but also, so noticeably, with the words: librettos from the likes of Zeno, Piovene or Salvi find this singer exercising her customary intelligence.

Carlo Ipata, directing his ensemble Auser Musici, combines his natural and obvious flair for Italian and music of the time – he has also recorded the opera Il Bajazet for Glossa – with the painstaking demands of the research required to identify brilliant arias from slumbering the various shades of neglect. Gasparini wrote some sixty operas, as well as oratorios and many cantatas. For Invernizzi Ipata has crafted a beguiling selection from this abundance of music which proved so successful in both princely soirées in Rome and public theatres in Venice. Arias come from operas such as Il Roderigo and Amleto and oratorios such as L’oracolo del Fato and Atalia. As well as the cantata, Andate o miei sospiri, composed by Gasparini as part of a challenge undertaken jointly with Alessandro Scarlatti, Ipata and Auser Musici have added an attractive flute concerto written during his time as a teacher at Venice’s Ospedale della Pietà. (Glossa)

JÓHANN JÓHANNSSON The Mercy

The team at Deutsche Grammophon are in deep mourning over the loss of our friend, Jóhann Jóhannsson. In the three years of our close collaboration, a true friendship had grown.

We are speechless and take comfort in the memory of Jóhann’s warm, enigmatic personality, his intelligent dry sense of humour and his relentless uncompromising search for new sounds and concepts. Jóhann’s sonic scapes are unique and the void left by his passing can never be filled.

The power of his music will live on and continue to touch us. (Deutsche Grammophon)

Composer/producer/multi-instrumentalist Jóhann Jóhannsson is one of Iceland's most prolifically creative musicians, as a solo artist as well as a part of the Kitchen Motors label and collective (which also includes members of Sigur Rós, Múm, and Slowblow) and also Apparat Organ Quartet. Kitchen Motors' aesthetic, which focuses on largely improvised and electronic music, also applies to his other projects. Apparat Organ Quartet, with music described as "machine rock & roll," consists of four keyboardists who play discarded vintage instruments that they refurbish and a drummer. Jóhannsson's work on his own ranges from delicate laptop pop to sound art installations in galleries to collaborations with Barry Adamson, the Hafler Trio, and Pan Sonic. His first solo album, 2002's Englabörn, paired a string quartet with percussion, keyboards, and electronics in a series of bittersweet miniatures, while 2004's Virthulegu Forsetar was a much more expansive work scored for brass, organ, keyboards, and electronics that was composed for and recorded in Reykjavik's Hallgrimskirkja Church. The British label Touch released both of these albums, but 2005's Dis was issued by Worker's Institute.

For 2006's IBM 1401, A User's Manual, Jóhannsson moved to 4AD. One of Jóhannsson's most ambitious projects, it was inspired by the first computer brought to Iceland in 1964 and based on a recording of an IBM computer that his father made on a reel-to-reel tape recorder. A string quartet version of the work was performed as the accompaniment to a dance piece by choreographer Erna Omarsdórtir at the 2002 Dansem Festival. The recorded version of IBM 1401, A User's Manual incorporated vocalizing, electronics, and a 60-piece orchestra along with the original recordings of the IBM computer. Released in 2008, Fordlandia, inspired in part by Henry Ford's failed rubber plant in Brazil, was the second part of a planned trilogy about technology and iconic American brands. Jóhannsson toured the U.S. in summer 2009, and the soundtrack he composed for the animated film Varmints was sold as And in the Endless Pause There Came the Sound of Bees, a limited-edition, tour-only release. The album was given a wider release the following year on Type.

Two years later, Jóhannsson's music for Bill Morrison's documentary The Miner's Hymns arrived on FatCat; during the early and mid-2010s, he composed the scores to many films, including 2012's Copenhagen Dreams, 2013's Prisoners, 2014's The Theory of Everything (which won him a Golden Globe and an Oscar nomination for Original Score), and 2015's Denis Villeneuve-directed Sicario, which also earned a Best Original Score nomination. In 2016, Jóhannsson's collaborative score with Hildur Gudnadóttir for the BBC TV series Trapped won the Best Score award at that year's Edda Awards in his native Iceland; that year, the composer also signed with Deutsche Grammophon to release some of his non-score projects. The first of these was Orphée, his first solo studio album in six years. Inspired by several versions of the Orpheus myth -- including French director Jean Cocteau's film -- as well as Jóhannsson's move to Berlin, Orphée arrived in September 2016. His film music was still a priority, with his score to Villeneuve's sci-fi thriller Arrival released in late 2016. In 2018, he supplied the score for director James Marsh's sailing drama The Mercy. (Heather Phares)

Gewandhausorchester / Andris Nelsons BRUCKNER Symphony No. 4

Spring 2018 sees the release of two new albums by the Leipzig Gewandhausorchester and Andris Nelsons on the Deutsche Grammophon label, coinciding with the orchestra’s 275^th anniversary and the conductor’s inauguration as the new Gewandhauskapellmeister. These live recordings, each coupled with pieces from Wagner operas, form part of a complete Bruckner cycle on the yellow label. Bruckner’s Symphony No.4 will be released on 16 February, Symphony No.7 on 6 April 2018.

In Leipzig, past and present have always gone hand in hand, a successful fusion that will soon be encapsulated in a very special four-week-long music festival. Taking place in the city between 18 February and 24 March, the festival will mark both the 275^th anniversary of the Leipzig Gewandhausorchester, and the official inauguration as the 21^st Gewandhauskapellmeister of the exceptional Latvian conductor Andris Nelsons, one of the most exciting musicians on the world stage today. Deutsche Grammophon is joining in the celebrations by releasing two new albums that not only showcase Nelsons and his new orchestra, but also continue the long-established links between Leipzig and Bruckner.

The first of these albums, scheduled for release on 16 February 2018, features Bruckner’s Fourth Symphony alongside the Prelude to Wagner’s Lohengrin. The pairing reveals the remarkable affinities between the two composers’ idioms. Rich in contrast and musical imagery, both works have the power to captivate their listeners, a quality enhanced by Nelsons’ highly focused and sensitive interpretations.

The second Bruckner/Wagner album to appear this spring will feature the Austrian composer’s Seventh Symphony, a work more closely connected with Leipzig and the Gewandhausorchester than virtually any other ever written. Under the baton of the then Gewandhauskapellmeister Arthur Nikisch, the orchestra gave the symphony’s world premiere in the city’s municipal theatre in 1884, and the Seventh has been performed in Leipzig countless times since. It was therefore an obvious choice to include this legendary work in the orchestra’s 275^th anniversary gala concert which Andris Nelsons will conduct on 11 March 2018. Captured live, this unique performance will be released on 6 April in Germany and 20 April worldwide, in a pairing with Siegfried’s Funeral Music from Wagner’s Götterdämmerung.

Both albums are part of Deutsche Grammophon’s upcoming complete Bruckner cycle with Nelsons and the Gewandhausorchester. In each case, the Bruckner symphony in question will be complemented by an excerpt from one of Wagner’s operas, an innovative programming decision which, along with the high-calibre performers involved, gives the new cycle a distinctive edge. Coupling the symphonies with music by Wagner enables listeners to discover two composers of contrasting character whose works nevertheless display some fascinating similarities of conception. (Deutsche Grammophon)

Gewandhausorchester / Andris Nelsons BRUCKNER Symphony No. 3

With a strong sense of emotional involvement Nelsons breathes life into this wonderful score directing a performance of elevated quality. With ideal weight the cultured playing of the Gewandhausorchester has a steadfast unity of a grade rarely achieved but it never comes at the cost of expression. Impressive too is how Nelsons shapes the phrases with such authority. Glorious too is the quality of the intonation and vibrant tone colour achieved by the orchestra, conspicuously the brass section with its gleaming golden hue . . . In the opening movement Nelsons conveys a strong feeling of grandeur, bold and positive in mood providing a convincing forward momentum. The treasurable second movement Adagio is exquisitely performed by the Leipzig players with Nelsons setting an ideal pace . . . Nelsons' uplifting Scherzo in the dramatic passages is punchy in its urgency and contrasts with the delightful, feathery Austrian "Ländler". It's easy to savour the sense of Alpine majesty that Nelsons creates in the remarkable final movement, sustaining an especially splendid flow which feels persuasive. The section with the joyous Polka over the solemn Chorale sounds especially impressive and after the conclusion of the symphony I can't resist repeating this section again . . . [Wagner]: In a gripping performance Nelsons conducts the "Tannhäuser Overture" with surefire conviction. The Gewandhausorchester respond to his lead with all the expressive zeal and breath-taking virtuosity which one has come to expect. Exceptional is the velvety legato and tonal beauty of the prominent horns. Nelsons interpretation is first class . . . (Michael Cookson /MusicWeb International)