Music is the key

Commissioned for Coventry’s new cathedral in 1961, Bliss’s cantata The Beatitudes was destined to be overshadowed by Britten’s War Requiem , and the fact that the work’s first performance was relocated to the city’s Belgrade Theatre (instead of the cathedral) did not serve its reputation well. Bliss was, not surprisingly, disappointed and hoped that it would, one day, be heard in the environment for which it was written. This did not occur, however, until the Golden Jubilee of the cathedral in 2012. A hybrid work, like its forbear Morning Heroes , it consists of the nine Beatitudes from the Gospel of Matthew, interspersed with an anthology of 17th-century poetry by Taylor, Vaughan and Herbert (some of which will be familiar from Vaughan Williams’s Five Mystical Songs ), an adapted section from Isaiah and a poem by Dylan Thomas. Not only do these words provide a religious subtext but they also furnish a coherence to the Beatitudes themselves which otherwise, as...

The string quartet repertoire is an unending voyage of discovery and exploration. The great masterpieces of the repertoire conceal unknown jewels in their shadow; these latter works, however, seldom find their way onto a concert programme. This recording introduces our listeners to our first and highly personal anthology of splendidly varied and short pieces for string quartet. We hope you enjoy them - because there are many more such works still to be discovered and enjoyed.  “ Our CD is a collection of short stories : each piece has its own structure and mood, its own individual world. Schulhoff’s five pieces, each with its own individual character, are perfect examples of this.” Rosalinde Kluck - alt violin “The Lekeu piece was a real discovery. Splendid music with great depth. But what a tragedy! How many more masterpieces could Lekeu have composed, if he hadn’t died at such a young age?” Maike Reisener - cello “It was an immense pleasure to get to gri...

Born in 1972, Sebastian Fagerlund was recently described on the website MusicWeb International as ‘yet another obscenely talented young musician from Finland’. The occasion was the release of his opera Dö beln, with a score that the reviewer went on to characterize as ‘both forward-looking and audience friendly’. Composed in 2009, Döbeln is Fagerlund’s first and so far only opera, and on the present disc we hear three orchestral scores. The musicians of the eminent Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra revel in the composer’s striking gift for orchestration, in performances supervised by the rapidly emerging young conductor Dima Slobodeniouk, who has collaborated with Fagerlund on several occasions previously. The clarinettist Christoffer Sundqvist is also well acquainted with Fagerlund’s music , and his playing served as inspiration for the composer as he wrote his colourful and eventful Clarinet Concerto. Following that work here is Partita, consisting of three movements with...

These CDs feature performances by a Grand Old Man of the viola and one of the instrument’s most celebrated present advocates. Now in his seventies, Rainer Moog can look back on a career that started with a prize at the Munich Competition and included a stint as principal violist of the Berlin Philharmonic, followed by several decades of unassumingly successful work as a teacher in Cologne. Nils Mönkemeyer (b.1978) enjoyed a run of competition successes before inheriting his teacher’s position at the Munich Hochschule in 2011. Both players have made a number of recordings during their respective careers but not many of Moog’s are available on CD, making this, his second recording of the Brahms sonatas, all the more welcome. Moog’s view of these pieces is the loving result of countless performances and long reflection on the music: his pacing and phrasing feel absolutely natural, and rubato sounds inevitably right. Moog relishes the music’s broad intervals with heartfelt ...

Having heard Juliette Pochin in concert I know that she can sing more than averagely well. Without such prior experience anyone reading her booklet biography might assume much the same given that it lists collaborations with many well known orchestras and conductors.  Why mention this? Surely her singing on this disc would confirm the fact? Yes and no. She can hold a tune and produce tone with evenness, it’s true. But going by this disc alone one does not learn too much about either her vocal range or her ability to exploit dynamic extremes. Two factors are responsible for this: the recording and the arrangements of the music that are used.  The recording itself, also produced by Pochin, large...

Hailed as one of the most adventurous and outstanding string quartets of today, both in the performance of modern pieces and the iron repertory, Signum Quartett now releases its first PENTATONE recording with an all-Schubert program.  Aus der Ferne illuminates the Romanticism and lyricism of this great master. By combining string quartets with lieder arranged for string quartet, the members of the Signum Quartett aim to show how Schubert’s instrumental and vocal music cross-pollinate each other. The fact that Schubert quotes openly from his own songs in his chamber music underlines the strong connection between the two, and this album takes this connection a step further. The concept for the album grew out of the Schubertiad, where chamber music and vocal works would be heard side by side in an intimate setting. A further idea was to complement one of the late quartets with an earlier one - perhaps lesser-known but not a lesser piece. The B-flat major quartet and...

Cellist Marie-Elisabeth Hecker made her international breakthrough with her sensational success at the 8th Rostropovich Competition in Paris in 2005, where she became the first contestant in the event's history to win the first prize as well as two special prizes. Since then Hecker has become one of the most sought-after soloists and chamber musicians of her generation, recognised for her deep expression and natural affinity for the cello, with Die Zeit describing her playing as "heartbreakingly sad and instinctively beautiful".  After making several discs of chamber music by Brahms and Schubert, the cellist Marie-Elisabeth Hecker now records a large-scale concerto, showing the full range of her talent. Composed between 1918 and 1919, Elgar’s Concerto Op.85 was poorly received at its first performance but has since become established as one of the key works in the cello repertoire. To complete the programme, Marie-Elisabeth Hecker rejoins her chamber mu...

When Brahms played through his First Cello Sonata with its dedicatee, Josef Gänsbacher, the cellist apparently complained that he couldn’t hear himself over the piano. ‘Lucky you,’ muttered Brahms. There’s no such problem on this new disc from Marie-Elisabeth Hecker and Martin Helmchen. As Hecker calmly, eloquently shapes her low-lying opening melody, Helmchen’s off beat piano chords don’t so much drive the rhythm as hang from her line – helped by a recording that places the cello ever so slightly forward. That’s no bad thing. Brahms may have followed Beethoven’s cue in describing these pieces as sonatas for piano and cello, rather than the other way around, but there’s no question that balance can be an issue. Not here; both instruments come through clear and unforced, enabling Hecker to take the lead in shaping a performance of the First Sonata that’s essentially lyrical and poetic. She doesn’t dominate, mind. The booklet-notes make much of the fact that Helmche...

Syntonia stands apart in the world of chamber music. Created in 1999, the ensemble is currently the only piano quintet in France. It is composed of five musicians who lead parallel solo careers yet make the ensemble their priority, thus creating a dynamic, exacting and complicit unit. Graduates of the Paris Conservatoire national supérieur de musique et de Danse in 2000; they won the Tina Moroni prize in the International Competition in Florence and did their first recording as part of the Déclic series (AFAA / Radio France) the same year. They have since performed in many prestigious festivals and concert venues, including : Roque d’Anthéron, Pâques à Deauville, Classique au vert at the Parc Floral, the Passerelle in Saint Brieuc, the Bouffes du Nord, the Cité de la Musique, the Capitole in Toulouse, the Grands Concerts in Lyon… Radio Classique frequently schedules them; France Musique is a partner of their records and has aired several of their concerts. They are al...

Could there be a more perfect pairing than Leonard Bernstein and Lara Downes? Each incarnates the American spirit in resplendent manner, the former in his magnificent writing and the latter in her captivating piano playing. True to her generous nature, Downes has shared the credit for her tribute to Bernstein on the occasion of his hundredth birthday with “friends,” four of who accompany her on four of the twenty-eight tracks. But said credit could be extended beyond those participants to the many composers, among them Stephen Sondheim, Marc Blitzstein, and Ned Rorem, whose own Bernstein tributes appear. One of the more surprising things about the release is that while a generous amount of his own material is included, world premieres written by others appear too. Selection details aside, two things in particular distinguish For Lenny , Downes's always exquisite playing, of course, but also the audacity of Bernstein's lyrical writing and his bountiful melodic s...

The late Jóhann Jóhannsson was already a familiar face within the Reykjavik music scene when his compatriot Hávar Sigurjónsson approached him to compose for Englabörn , his latest play. The musician had played in countless guitar bands since the mid-1980s, as well as collaborating with other like-minded souls, and he was also the mastermind behind Kitchen Motors, an art collective and record label with an electronic and experimental bent. So widespread were Jóhannsson’s interests, in fact, that the same year as Englabörn he released the debut by his latest band, Apparat Organ Quartet. The two couldn’t have been more different: while Apparat Organ Quartet traded in playful instrumental keyboard pop, performed on refurbished vintage instruments alongside a drummer, Englabörn sounded like little anyone had ever heard. A peaceful, graceful intermingling of style, form and content, it was sometimes agonisingly desolate, sometimes gloriously uplifting, but never less than ...

Ismo Eskelinen’s Bach on guitar is beautiful but safe, and not too exciting. The sonorities are lute-like and gallant, like tiny minuets played by music boxes, and may suit the taste of those who like their Bach thoughtful and relaxed, without mannerism. Of course, there is a time and place for anything, so if, after a tiring workday, I will need a mental relaxation, a warm bath in the shimmery harmonies – and for some reason I don’t have my beloved Angela Hewitt set around – I may well turn to this album. The E major suite starts with a talkative Prelude . Instead of an Allemande we have an airy, gallant Loure ; then enter a humorous Gavotte and two minuets, both rather decorative; a lively, openhearted Bourrée leads into the rhythmical swing of the sunlit, smiling Gigue . The G minor suite – here transcribed to A minor – is darker and colder. Its structure is more standard for Bach’s suites. The Prelude has a slow, misty-eyed introduction that sounds gray and ancient an...

Sebastian Fagerlund has been described as ‘a composer who commandingly bridges tradition and modernity’ (Klassik-Heute.de) while his music is ‘modern and unorthodox, opulent and strange, masterfully composed and orchestrated’ (MusicWeb-International). Previous acclaimed recordings on BIS include the chamber opera Döbeln, as well as orchestral works and concertos for clarinet, violin and bassoon respectively. Another concertante work froms part of the present programme: Transit for guitar and orchestra, written for Ismo Eskelinen who also performs it here. He is partnered by the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra and Hannu Lintu who have previously championed Fagerlund’s music: the orchestra has commissioned several works, including the guitar concerto as well as Drifts, the opening work here. The disc takes its title from the third composition, Stonework , named after those man-made stone structures that are found all over the world, serving a range of purposes, from lan...

In their “brilliantly inventive” (The New York Times) live recording, clarinetist David Krakauer and cellist Matt Haimovitz’s AKOKA lift Messiaen's transcendent 1940-41 work Quartet for the End of Time out of the polite context of a chamber music performance, placing it in a dramatic 21st century setting that drives home its gravity and impact. AKOKA was inspired by the wartime experience of Jewish clarinetist Henri Akoka, who premiered the Quartet for the End of Time with Messiaen himself at the German prisoner-of-war camp in which they were both interred. Henri Akoka's vibrant personality and the story of his survival, with all its twists and turns, is the inspiration for this recording, which brings out the human aspect of this composition, seen through the eyes of one individual caught up in terrifying events beyond his control. Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time is bookended by Akoka, Krakauer’s highly improvisational, Sephardic-tinged piece, and Mean...

Mozart’s brilliance at the keyboard is well known, but it was his joy in playing the viola – and the musical dialogue and kinship of playing with friends – that led the composer to write his music for string trio. Mozart’s Divertimento remains one of the pinnacles of chamber music history. Haydn had already established the string quartet genre, but there was nothing like the richness and craft of this string trio before Mozart. The equality and variety of roles, the grand form spanning six movements, the constantly shifting couplings – all create a fully satisfying sonic texture from the spiritual and symbolic number, three. All for one, one for all, the three players share a bond, fraternal brothers connected by Mozart’s imagination.  It brings me happy memories to look back a dozen years to when this recording was made in the marvellous acoustic of Église Saint- Augustin near Mirabel, Quebec. My friends and colleagues Jonathan Crow and Douglas McNabney join me on this Moza...

Julia Lezhneva, Franco Fagioli and Diego Fasolis: three stars of the Baroque unite to record Vivaldi’s most popular choral work. Julia Lezhneva – “a serene, sleek voice, beatific in timbre, with a bell-like resonance” (Financial Times) – adds the glorious solo motet Nulla in Mundo Pax Sincera. Franco Fagioli – “one of today's great vocal technicians” (The Guardian) – records the Nisi Dominus with its haunting ‘Cum Dederit’. Diego Fasolis and I Barocchisti are today’s Vivaldi interpreters par excellence.

Whenever I listen to performances by the French violinist Renaud Capuçon, I'm unfailingly won over by both his beautifully sweet tone and his impressive virtuosity, and so it has been an absolute pleasure to get to know his new recording of the two violin concertos by Béla Bartók, accompanied by the London Symphony Orchestra under François-Xavier Roth. Although neither published nor performed until more than a decade after his death, Bartók's first concerto was actually written while he was in his twenties, and stylistically speaking is quite different from the much later second concerto. It begins with just a single line for the soloist alone, gradually joined by more and more members of the orchestral strings, and then eventually the woodwind enter with the same melodic phrase that began the concerto. It's a magical opening, and the interplay between Capuçon's melancholic sound and the counterpoint of the LSO string section is a marvellous thing to b...

Pianists Martha Argerich and Sergei Babayan have recorded two selections from Prokofiev’s music for stage and screen in magnificent two-piano transcriptions by Babayan. Prokofiev for Two , captures for posterity the sense of mutual inspiration felt by these kindred spirits, palpable in their live performances together. The upcoming album features Babayan’s twelve-movement transcription of numbers from the ballet Romeo and Juliet and his seven-movement suite transcribed from Prokofiev’s incidental music for Hamlet and Eugene Onegin , film score for The Queen of Spades and opera War and Peace . Martha Argerich and Sergei Babayan first met in Brussels in 1991 when, on a whim, he looked her up in the phonebook and, to his own surprise, found her name and telephone number listed. His call from a phone box in the city started a strong friendship that led to numerous joint appearances in Europe and America. After one performance of Rachmaninov’s “Suite No.2” and other works ...

England in the 17th century was a country marked by civil war, a war fought between Crown and Parliament, with Catholic royalists ranged against Puritan republicans. These were politically turbulent times and yet from a musical point of view it was an astonishingly fruitful period. In general the fine arts suffered badly at least in the public arena and above all in the 1650s, when the Stuart dynasty was overthrown by the austere regime of the self-styled Lord Protector, Oliver Cromwell. But this public neglect was more than made up for by the way in which chamber music flourished in the salons of well-to-do burghers and of members of the nobility. Writing in 1706, the English lawyer, biographer and music theorist Roger North noted that “many chose rather to fiddle at home, than to goe out, and be knockt on the head abroad”. The preferred instruments for this “private Musicke” were the harp, various types of recorder and, last but not least, the viol. From the Renaissance onwards, ...

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Born in 1969 in Aachen, Dorothee Oberlinger studied recorder in Cologne, Amsterdam and Milan. After successfully making her debut in 1997 by winning the first Price in the international competition SRP / Moeck UK in London's Wigmore Hall, Dorothee Oberlinger has been a regular guest at major festivals and concert series throughout Europe, America and Asia. As a soloist, she plays with the Ensemble 1700, founded by her in 2002, as well as with renowned baroque ensembles and orchestras such as the Sonatori de la Gioiosa Marca, Musica Antiqua Cologne, the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin, London Baroque, the Academy of Ancient Music or Zefiro. As "Instrumentalist of the Year 2008", she was awarded the prestigious German "Echo" music award award for her CD recording "Italian Sonatas", followed by an ECHO Klassik for her album "Flauto Veneziano" in 2013. In addition to her intensive involvement with the music of the 17th and 18th c...

For its authentic instrumental timbres, exquisite period interpretations, superbly engineered sound, and, above all, the sheer genius of the music, this album of Handel's recorder trios and sonatas is guaranteed to please connoisseurs of Baroque chamber music, and should catapult Dorothee Oberlinger and her handpicked Ensemble 1700 into international celebrity. A debut release for these exceptional musicians, this remarkable CD reveals both their scrupulous scholarship and enthusiastic participation, and the combination is winning. Oberlinger plays the recorder with a lucid but modest tone, never upstaging the other players but creating an impression of domestic intimacy that surely attended amateur performances in the eighteenth century. Yet these are not fragile or rarefied renditions, for Oberlinger and her companions are quite vigorous in the Allegro movements; the long, lyrical lines in the Larghettos and Adagios are always solidly supported through the soloist...

This disc is advertised as ‘transcriptions pour piano par les auteurs’. Question: what is the difference between a transcription, an arrangement, a reduction and a concert version? Answer: it seems to be a grey area. And in this case the greyness could easily mislead buyers into thinking they are getting something that they are not.  Stravinsky made the rationale behind the Trois mouvements for piano as clear as could be: ‘I tried to make of this Petrushka an essentially pianistic work using the resources of that instrument and without assigning it in any way a role as imitator’ (a lecture in 1935). Even though the piano was already integral to the work’s original conception, Stravinsky was careful to choose those parts of the ballet that would come off in the solo piano medium, and then felt free to play around with the text. Ravel’s piano score of Daphnis , variously described here as a ‘transcription’ and a ‘version de concert’, is in fact, as I understand the...

John Holloway’s “violinist’s journey” through great works of the 17th and 18th century, begun with his acclaimed New Series recordings of Schmelzer, Biber and Muffat, reaches a new stage with his account of the sonatas of Francesco Maria Veracini (1690-1768). The present recording - introducing a new ensemble, as Dutch cellist Jaap ter Linden joins British baroque violinist Holloway and Danish harpsichordist Lars Ulrik Mortensen – offers fascinating insights into the work of a composer whose musical achievements are still often undervalued, or overshadowed, in contemporary accounts, by the idiosyncrasies of his personal life. In his liner notes, Holloway says of Veracini: “With his combination of brilliant technical and compositional innovation firmly rooted in the best music of the previous generation, Veracini earns an honoured place in the short list of truly great violinist-composers which includes Biber and - from a much later generation – Ysaÿe .... and, of course,...

Two particularly spectacular personalities of the Baroque period, which was not short of exciting figures: Antonio Veracini, violin virtuoso, teacher and composer in Florence. Although he was a highly respected musician and teacher in his own time, only few of his works have survived. His nephew Francesco Maria, to whom he taught violin and composition, was a completely different type. Hotheaded, eccentric, ingenious – as he was described by his contemporaries. This character is reflected today in his works, which attest to an extraordinary freedom from conventions. On this CD the soloist Rüdiger Lotter finds a celebrity partner in the recorder player Dorothee Oberlinger . The Continuo part very well cast also promises an adventurous listening experience through the contrasting soundscapes of the Veracinis.

“The early 20th century is a period that fascinates me. The prevalent musical aesthetic was disrupted by a new generation of composers who maintained their roots in tradition, but felt a great desire to expand music’s horizons: they formed a multitude of currents and embarked on a number of different paths, all driven by the idea of transfiguring everything they had previously known. For this disc I have chosen to retrace the path originally taken by Arnold Schoenberg. Born in Vienna in 1874, Schoenberg had an atypical career. Upon his father’s death, he had to leave school as the eldest sibling at the age of sixteen to take up a profession. As an autodidact he learned the essentials of composition by sight-reading great repertoire and by playing chamber music on the cello and the violin. Married to the sister of Alexander Zemlinsky, Schoenberg took some counterpoint lessons from that composer and soon started teaching ha...

From an early age, the pianist Tatiana Chernichka was among the most promising talents of her generation. Born in Novosibirsk, Russia, she was awarded the First Prize in the International Chopin Competition in Göttingen, Germany when she was only 10 years old. Two years later, she gave her first solo recital and made her debut with the Novosibirsk Symphony Orchestra, performing the Piano Concerto No. 1 in Eb major by Franz Liszt. Tatiana Chernichka has since been successful in numerous competitions. She was awarded the Third Prize in the 58th Ferruccio Busoni International Piano Competition in Bolzano, Italy, as well as in the 60th Maria Canals Competition in Barcelona. She was also a finalist in the renowned Concours Reine Elisabeth in Brussels. As a prize winner in the Busoni Competition, she was given the opportunity to participate in three master classes with the legendary Alfred Brendel, in Essen, Bolzano and Reykjavik. The young pianist has since performed in Ge...

Cellist Matt Haimovitz prefaces his period-instrument Beethoven cycle with an absorbing essay, writing that ‘the consideration is no longer the modern-day “how can the cello cut through the multi-voiced powerhouse of a concert grand piano”, but “how can it make room for the nuances of the 19th-century fortepiano?”’ Good engineering also helps, and Pentatone’s vividly resonant production captures the music’s wide dynamic range with comparable clarity and heft to the two Bylsma editions, and surpasses the slightly dry and close-up Isserlis/Levin cycle. More significantly, Haimovitz and pianist Christopher O’Riley play the living daylights out of these works. They lap up Beethoven’s combative style like hungry lions anticipating raw steak, relishing the composer’s frequent subito dynamics, unpredictable placement of accents and over-the-bar-line phrase groupings. Rarely has Op 5 No 1’s first-movement introduction come alive with such rhythmic character, while the...

Orbit maps my musical journey since the turn of the millenium, a path travelled with my partner in life and music, composer Luna Pearl Woolf. Initially released on Oxingale Records as five thematic albums – Anthem (2003), Goulash! (2005), After Reading Shakespeare (2007), Figment (2009), and Matteo (2011) – Orbit encompasses nearly all of the solo contemporary works on these albums, along with two newly recorded tracks: Philip Glass’ “Orbit” and a new arrangement by Luna of the Beatles’ “Helter Skelter.” All but these two tracks were produced by Luna, and all have now been remastered for SACD HD surround sound. More than twenty composers are represented in the set, fifteen of them still living. Ten works receive their world premiere recording here.  With the solo cello as our pilot, we steer headlong into the great musical debates of the past half-century: maximalist vs. minimalist; folk-rooted vs. abstract, absolute vs. narrative, tonal vs. atonal. In many ways, we live in a ...

"Cathy Krier—born, trained, performing, and recording in Luxembourg—appears to be about 16 in the photos, but her playing reveals a mature, sophisticated artist. So do her interview comments: “… finely nuanced structures in miniature, punctuated by several distinct changes of mood within one piece. Those changes can be abrupt, occasionally giving rise to a certain form of brutality. Janácek’s scores are the only ones I know that contain the indication con durezza , ‘with harshness’.”   Although Janácek was already a part of her repertoire, Krier spent three months researching his piano music. Then she waited a few weeks “to re-establish a healthy distance between Janácek and myself.” She had intended to record the complete piano works, but she rejected some “mere exercises or sketches” as not worthy of the composer. Her playing is more than just mature; it is phenomenal in both technique and musical understanding. Krier can create atmosphere in a brie...

In his absorbing booklet essay, Stephen Connock draws attention to Vaughan Williams’s very special and deeply personal identification with the viola, justly mentioning in particular Flos campi , Suite for viola and small orchestra, and the slow movement from A London Symphony . (For my own part, I’d also cite the principal viola’s devastatingly intimate ‘alleluia’ towards the end of the Fifth Symphony’s Romanza slow movement.) Viola player Philip Dukes and pianist Anna Tilbrook make a lovely thing of the Six Studies in English Folksong (originally for cello and piano, and given in May Mukle’s 1927 transcription), and they generate a comparably stylish, keenly communicative rapport in the ravishing Romance found among the composer’s papers after his death (most likely intended for the great Lionel Tertis). The delights continue as the tenor James Gilchrist joins his colleagues for urgently expressive renderings of both the wondrous Four Hymns (1912 14) that RVW inscrib...

Bernstein's most popular and best-loved melodies from West Side Story, Candide & On the Town. Featuring the composer as conductor in West Side Story, one of the greatest musicals of all time, and in Candide, a visionary work with a dazzling score. Bernstein protégé Michael Tilson Thomas conducts On the Town. Featuring all-star casts, with artists including José Carreras, Kiri Te Kanawa, Marilyn Horne, Thomas Hampson, Christa Ludwig, Frederica von Stade, June Anderson, and Jerry Hadley.   Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990) was a man of many roles – composer, conductor, pianist, musical educator – a man hailed by pianist Arthur Rubinstein as a “universal genius”. A charismatic communicator, he had few equals when it came to enthusing others about music. Whether at festivals such as Tanglewood in the US or Schleswig-Holstein in northern Germany, in a TV studio or in a university lecture hall, Bernstein’s presence, passion and unquestioned commitment to his art were p...