Music is the key

“Another Timbre celebrate the sixtieth anniversary of the publication of John Cage's influential work "Silence" by releasing  "Four 4", a work written in 1991, the year before Cage died. It was written for four percussionists, but the composer in his typical way, chose to let the musicians decide which instruments to use! By selecting the general instrumentation, while still allowing players to choose the specifics freely, Cage showed that he does not really lack interest in how the music should sound, he gives up only on the detail of the choices.  So his ego drew back, but - paradoxically - that doesn’t mean that he allowed that it should sound like just anything. Cage was not a pronounced friend of improvisation, or rather, he saw it only as one of many methods. These days the elements of silence, style and repetition are often used within improvisation.  Without thinking about it, improvised musicians work with soun...

Star violinist Christian Tetzlaff performs Béla Bartók’s (1881–1945) two masterpieces in a new recording with Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Hannu Lintu. This recording continues both artists’ highly successful series of recordings on Ondine. ‘The two violin concertos of Béla Bartók (1881–1945), completed thirty years apart in 1908 and 1938 respectively, celebrated relationships with two Hungarian violinists: the first romantic, with Stefi Geyer and the second artistic, with Zoltán Székely. Bartók’s 1 st Violin Concerto was published posthumously after the composer’s death in 1956, but Bartók reused the opening movement as the first of his Two Portraits for orchestra. He remarked in a letter written in late 1907 or early 1908 that ‘I have never written such direct music before’. Bartók completed two movements that portray the character of Stefi Geyer to whom the work was written to. Completed towards the end of 1938, Bartók’s three-movement 2 nd Violin ...

Prompted by a commission from a London publisher, Haydn took up the composition of piano trios, that is, sonatas for keyboard accompanied by violin and cello, on a grand scale in 1784.  By that time, piano trios had become extremely popular with ‘amateurs’ (Liebhaber) – non-professionals from the aristocracy and the upper bourgeoisie – and their composition promised financial success. The piano carries the main burden of the compositional substance in these works and always forms the centre of the instrumental texture, around which the violin and cello are grouped. The tasks assigned to the stringed instruments are less structural than colouristic, although Haydn frequently allows the violin to break free from the piano part, entrusting it with independent ideas and sometimes allowing it to engage in dialogue with the piano. Since forming in the late ’80s, Trio Wanderer have—with only one change of personnel—become one of the finest piano trios on the concert ...

Admirers of the Arcanto Quartet will lap this disc up, and it deserves to be a spur to anybody who has not yet been alerted to this ensemble’s expertise, panache and interpretative perception. Previous discs of Brahms and Bartók have shown how the players, while possessing personalities of their own, coalesce and strike sparks off one another, instinctively sensing opportunities for crisp, collaborative counterpoint, for quick reactions, for rich, lyrical togetherness and for poetic eloquence as well. On this disc the landmark French quartets of Debussy and Ravel are combined with a later-20th-century classic by Henri Dutilleux , his Ainsi la nuit , completed in 1976. The playing throughout is masterly, and also thoroughly involving in terms of both technique and expressiveness. The interpretation of the Debussy Quartet has sinew and propulsion, with that apt shading of dynamics and subtlety of nuance that have become hallmarks of the Arcanto’s distinctive and disting...

The Consort Brouillamini is an unusual formation which gather five recorder player from the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse of Lyon (CNSMDL). During these studies, the formation received a high quality education, provided by internationnal renamed teacher such as : Pierre Hamon, Pierre Boragno, Peter van Heyghen and obtain a master degree of chamber music with distinctions in 2010. Based on the study of former treaties, Consort Brouillamini aim to bring up to date the caracteristic musical practice of XVIe and XVIIe century. They propose their own retranscriptions of masterpieces from the baroque repertory and from the classical one , in order to always demonstrate original and various programms which may help the spectator to travel through the music. The formation is also focused on modern pieces and had the opportunity to work with french composer Jean-Marc Serre in 2009, which composed five original pieces for the consort gathered under th...

The circulation of artists and sovereigns between France and England in the seventeenth century resulted in the establishment of highly original genres in the latter country: the first recitatives, large-scale airs from masques and dramatic ‘scenes’ provided fertile ground for experimentation and prepared the way for the birth of semi-opera. Sébastien Daucé explores this English vocal art in a programme tailor-made for one of today’s most fascinating voices: Lucile Richardot, in the exquisite setting provided by Ensemble Correspondances , subtly blends music, love, night and melancholy.

Nonesuch releases a new recording of John Adams's Grawemeyer Award–winning Violin Concerto (1993) with his frequent collaborators violinist Leila Josefowicz, conductor David Robertson, and the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra on April 27, 2018. The album was recorded at Powell Symphony Hall in St. Louis in 2016. Adams's Violin Concerto was co-commissioned by the Minnesota Orchestra, the London Symphony Orchestra, and the New York City Ballet. It was described by the Boston Globe as having "the qualities of intelligence, craftsmanship, and quirkiness that have always marked the composer and his work; this time Adams also mingles virtuoso show with soul, popular appeal with the staying power that comes from intellectual interest." The premiere recording of the work, featuring violinist Gidon Kremer and the London Symphony Orchestra led by Kent Nagano, was released by Nonesuch in 1996. Josefowicz said of the concerto in an interview with the St. Louis Post...

Irina Muresanu writes of this release: “It all started when I tackled Mark O’Connor’s “Cricket Dance.” It is a short, straightforward tune that requires the skills of an intermediate player, and yet it took me an absurdly long time to learn. To put things in context: I was capable of learning whole violin concertos in a matter of weeks, so why was the O’Connor piece so hard to get under my fingers? Could it have been because it was written in a musical style completely different than my classical training? And if so, how many more different languages were there outside of the traditional/standard repertoire? With this idea, I started my exploration of works reflecting the ways the violin (including its ancestors and relatives) is employed in musical settings worldwide. What resulted is Four Strings Around the World , a celebration of diverse cultures refracted through the unifying voice of solo violin, a project which immersed me in sounds and colors I didn’t even real...

After the success of their album of music by Francesco Cavalli, the same performers now return in a programme devoted entirely to works a voce sola by Claudio Monteverdi, from the famous Lamento d’Arianna to the sublime (and much less well-known) Voglio da vita uscir. Mariana Flores embodies here the most touching personalities of this section of Monteverdi’s output.

‘My aim with this recording is not only to realize a beautiful dream, to conquer the stage and to touch people’s hearts, and to lead my listeners on a journey of great emotions in the world of music. I would like to uncover the dreams that lie dormant in all of us and that are yearning to be brought into the open – desires which often reveal themselves in our dreams, where they seem tangible and achievable. Dreams of love, and phantasies of the world we would like to live in.’ (Carolina López Moreno)

Annika Treutler grew up in Detmold and is now based in Berlin. She studied with Prof. Matthias Kirschnereit at the Rostock College of Music and Drama and Prof. Bernd Goetzke at the Hanover College of Music, Drama and Media. The young artist won third prize at the Montreal International Piano Competition in 2014 and reached the semifinals of the ARD International Music Competition in Munich that year. Annika Treutler has appeared as a guest soloist with such orchestras as the Konzerthaus Orchestra of Berlin, the Cologne Gürzenich Orchestra, the German Symphony Orchestra of Berlin, the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra and the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal. On this release, she presents beautiful solo piano works by Johannes Brahms.

Athanor. A mysterious name to designate, in alchemy, the long-combustion furnace that produces the philosopher’s stone. This matrix, which symbolises the quest of one who seeks to the Absolute, is a metaphor of Liszt’s approach. With the patience of the alchemist who pursues the perfection of the material, the virtuoso composer and pianist has long matured the genesis of his two Piano Concertos and of the Totentanz: in fact, more than 20 years separate the first sketches of their publication. These three major works are each crossed by a powerfull and captivating leading theme, and driven by a logic of transformation: the Totentanz uses the theme and variations form while the concertos are unifyed by a unique theme that nourishes the whole musical flow through its metamorphoses. Pianist Beatrice Berrut, who was already venturing on the Lisztian paths in her previous record, testifies here to the infinite invention of the composer: she performs the first Concer...

Carolyn Sampson and Joseph Middleton have turned to Verlaine settings for their new album for BIS, drawing inevitable comparisons with ‘Green’ (Erato, 4/15), Philippe Jaroussky and Jérôme Ducros’s two-disc Verlaine survey. Wisely, perhaps, they take a very different approach. Where Jaroussky and Ducros focus on multiple settings of individual texts, Sampson and Middleton concentrate on song-cycles, bookending their recital with Fêtes galantes and Ariettes oubliées , and placing La bonne chanson at its centre. Notable among the remaining songs are those by Régine Wieniawski (‘Poldowski’ was the pseudonym she adopted), and d’Indy’s pupil Déodat de Séverac, whose plainchant-inflected ‘Paysages tristes’, one of many discoveries here, forms the disc’s unforgettable epilogue. Sampson and Middleton are very much at home in this repertory, frequently functioning as an indivisible unit with sound and sense beautifully fused. Occasionally – in the opening ‘En sourdine’ f...

If you want a recording of Mozart’s Quintet on a conventional clarinet, Jörg Widmann and the Arcanto Quartet are up there with the best. Using a basset clarinet, with its treacly extra low notes, Romain Guyot or Matthew Hunt (with Ensemble 360) bring more Papageno-ish fun to the finale. But few performances I know rival Widmann and the Arcanto for mingled refinement, imagination and sensitive give and take. In the first two movements the players balance autumnal lyricism with more than a hint of period-style astringency. Tempi – not least in the flowing Larghetto – are on the brisk side, textures crisp and lucid, with sparing string vibrato, dynamic contrasts unusually wide. In the Minuet’s second Trio, Widmann creates two distinct characters, yodelling blithely, then digging with a vengeance into his deep, chalumeau arpeggios. The whole performance combines illuminating detail with an unerring sense of the music’s larger shapes, whether in the mounting harmoni...

"Piano, Violin, Viola, Cello" (often abbreviated to "PVVC") was Morton Feldman's final composition, receiving its premiere on July 4th 1987, less than two months before the composer's death from pancreatic cancer on September 3rd. This recording of the piece dates from January 2017 at Henry Wood Hall, where it was recorded by Simon Reynell. The quartet of Mark Knoop on piano, Aisha Orazbayeva on violin, Bridget Carey on viola and Anton Lukoszevieze on cello had performed "PVVC" the previous September at Café Oto, on a night that stuck in the minds of musicians and audience, alike, for being one of the year's hottest.   Having come through that night successfully, the January recording afforded the quartet a valuable opportunity to apply what they had learnt from the Oto performance and the audience's reaction to it. As Knoop has commented, "I always like returning to things after a first perfo...

A double Second Prize winner at the Tchaikovsky International Piano Competition in 2011 (To my ears she gave the more exciting interpretation of the mandatory Tchaikovsky First Piano Concerto: a blistering reading that left me gasping. I would have given her gold, not silver’ The Times, London) and at the 13th Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in 2009, Yeol Eum Son’s graceful interpretations, crystalline touch and versatile, thrilling performances have caught the attention of audiences worldwide. Praised for her widely eclectic concerti repertoire, ranging from Bach and all Mozart to Shchedrin and Gershwin, her recent concerto highlights include appearances with the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France and Mikko Franck, Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra under Valery Gergiev, Seoul Philharmonic and a European tour with KBS Symphony Orchestra. In the 2017-18 season, Yeol Eum makes her UK debuts in Birmingham with the CBSO (Mozart Piano Concerto No 21) and Lon...

1996-1998 I had been focusing on solo music or, as i would call it now: music for solo situations, exploring in what ways solitude (as opposed to loneliness) can be reflected and experienced meaningfully in a musical situation. 1998 my musical exploration of  “being two”, of the duo, started and is still continuing. you certainly noticed, that a lot of my music is duo music, or: music about “being two”, or, more radically, about love. I strongly believe, that of all the arts, music, the art of sounds appearing and disappearing, the art of approximation (in tuning, timing, sound balancing …), can be the most reminiscent, commemorative, resonant of the single most important event, that human beings may experience in their lives: love. And if music can be this, it should be this. Especially in the constellation that is by itself closest to a love relationship: the duo.   2003, very much inspired by Alain Badiou’s book Number and Numbers , ...

One of the first female students of the iconic Russian pianist Lazar Berman at the Accademia Pianistica in Imola, Italy, Chung has won numerous awards for her performances of Liszt’s music, including the B minor Sonata that features on this programme. Lucille describes in her introduction to the programme how Berman “... for a time doubted that a diminutive lady with hands spanning a 9th (although I can now stretch a 10th on a good day) would ever succeed in playing Liszt well ... Mr Berman came around. ” Renowned for her “ blazing gutsy performance[s] ” (The Washington Post), Lucille Chung has been acclaimed for her “ stylish and refined performances ” by Gramophone magazine, “ combining vigour and suppleness with natural eloquence and elegance ” (Le Soir).

My acquaintance with the piano music of Sergei Lyapunov has, until recently, been confined to the recording of the Transcendental Études by Konstantin Scherbakov on Marco Polo 8.223491. Then, in the space of a month, Louis Kentner’s 1949 recording of the Études came along, followed by this latest disc from Ars Produktion in Florian Noack’s Lyapunov series. The more I listen to the piano music of this composer, the more I fail to comprehend its unjust neglect. For me it’s an amalgam of the Russian nationalism of his mentor Balakirev and the virtuosity of Liszt. Undoubtedly much of it is technically challenging, yet its intense lyricism and rhapsodic narrative is positively compelling. Three of the pieces here are receiving their premiere recording. Lyapunov purloined Schumann’s title Novelette for his Op. 18, closely following the structure of the second of the older composer’s Op. 21 set of eight. Clearly Schumann’s influence lurks in the background, but the piece als...

The young Belgian pianist Florian Noack devotes Volume 1 of what promises to be the complete solo piano music of Sergey Lyapunov (1859-1924) to dance forms. Each of the three Valse-impromptus are placed judiciously between the eight Mazurkas grouped in pairs. He opens with Valse pensive , Op 20, whose influence is audible to the extent that, notwithstanding Lyapunov’s independent voice, there is in almost every piece what sounds like a thematic reference to Islamey : a figure of a quaver triplet/two quavers/crotchet appears almost like a leitmotif. The shortest work is the Second Valse-impromptu , a feather-light confection à la Moszkowski (‘a bibelot of exquisite craftsmanship’ says the booklet) with some delightfully casual canonic episodes that Noack invests with great charm. Here and elsewhere he gets to the heart of this music, responding to such instructions as quasi flauto and then quasi piccolo in the middle section of the Fifth Mazurka with finesse. The T...

Without any prior information, the first thing listeners will notice about Jos van Immerseel's 2008 recording of Hector Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique is the umistakable period instrumentation, with the sheen of the strings and the distinctive sound of early 19th century woodwinds and brass, obvious at the outset. The second thing discriminating listeners will notice is the great care Immerseel takes with connecting notes, not only in the straightforward handling of melodic phrases, but also in linking secondary figures in the accompaniment, so that this chord progression or that isolated pitch makes sense within the larger scheme of things. This is where the performance either rises or falls, depending on what one wants to get out of this work. To the extent that Berlioz created Symphonie fantastique to show off his innovative orchestration, this recording goes as far as any historically informed and scholarly version to make sure that everything is heard clearl...

This is the final volume in Jean-Efflam Bavouzet’s much acclaimed series of the solo piano works of Debussy. The disc consists of the composer’s piano transcriptions of the three ballet scores Khamma , Jeux and La Boîte a joujoux . Jean-Efflam comments: ‘In my opinion the transcriptions can offer greater clarity and organisation of musical discourse. Young conductors have told me that they understand the score of Jeux better after hearing the version for two pianos [recently prepared by Bavouzet]… for those who do not know these three ballets in their original orchestral versions, this disc may give them the curiosity to explore the works further .’ With Jeux , Jean-Efflam condensed his own published arrangement for two pianos, which resulted in this being ‘one of the most difficult works that I have played’.

Here Jean-Efflam Bavouzet presents his fourth volume of Debussy’s piano music, which comprises the Images Series 1 and 2 and the twelve Études Books 1 and 2. Comments for previous releases in the series include, ‘Bavouzet commands all the shading, nuance and timbral sensitivity one expects in Debussy, together with virtuoso flair and characterful spontaneity’ ( Gramophone ) and ‘…there is a balance of clarity and lyricism that immediately distinguish the pianist’s work’ ( International Piano ). This is a very personal project for Bavouzet who comments, ‘Debussy compels us to listen to his music in a very private, intense and nearly religious manner’. Volume 2 of this series has just been voted Record of the Year by Diapason d’Or magazine in France.

This is the third volume in Bavouzet’s complete series of the piano works by Debussy. The music now moves to a more playful strand in Debussy’s compositional career , with generally shorter pieces of the salon genre, including the two famous collections Children’s Corner and Suite bergamasque . In addition there are several rarities, including La plus que lente and Élégie . The previous two volumes have been very well received both critically and commercially. The LA Times wrote of Volume 2, ‘In what may turn out to be the greatest completed recorded survey of the composer’s piano music yet, Jean-Efflam Bavouzet… plays with such bracing clarity that hearing the early Romantic pieces, one feels like jumping into an icy pond after an hour in the sauna’.

This is Jean-Efflam Bavouzet's second volume of Debussy's piano music and includes Images (oubliées), Estampes and L'Isle joyeuse , all representing a perhaps more reflective vein in Debussy's compositional output. Bavouzet is a supreme interpreter of Debussy's music , as The Sunday Times notes: 'Bavouzet has taken his time before committing his interpretations to disc but here he announces himself a peerless Debussyite... Bavouzet's command of touch, colour, and rhythmic vitality are all that one could ask for.'

This recording marks the debut of Jean-Efflam Bavouzet on Chandos. Ralph Couzens was immediately impressed by Bavouzet's brilliant technique coupled with an acute sensitivity. Bavouzet was keen to record the complete piano works by Debussy and this first volume covers Books 1 and 2 of the famous Préludes together with the short, late prelude entitled 'Les soirs illuminés par l'ardeur du charbon', only rediscovered in 2001 and thought to have been written by Debussy as a gift for his Parisian coal merchant who managed to find him some coal during the particularly cold winter of 1917. Bavouzet will record the second volume in this series in July.

Debussy suddenly seems to be on the front line of the period-instrument movement's steady advance through music history. This disc from Jos van Immerseel and his Belgian orchestra arrives just a few months after Simon Rattle's London performances of La Mer and Prélude à l'Après-Midi d'un Faune with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, and John Eliot Gardiner's Proms account of Pelléas et Mélisande with the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique. For this recording, Anima Eterna Brugge's woodwind, brass, percussion and harps were French-made instruments of Debussy's time; they're generally more abrasive and pungent than their modern counterparts, and they combine with the gut strings to produce a more open sound than we are used to today. Van Immerseel's approach can seem a bit too deliberate; there's something ponderous about Prélude à l'Après-Midi, while in La Mer he seems determined to emphasise the work's symphonic...

Jos Van Immerseel returns to chamber music and the accompaniment of young talents, two absolute priorities for him. In Chouchane Siranossian he has found a worthy partner, as gifted on the modern violin as she is on the Baroque instrument, a pupil of Tibor Varga, then of Zakhar Bron, as well as a disciple of Reinhard Goebel, whose first recording, on the Oehms label, attracted great attention (winning a ‘Diapason Découverte’). Here it is the Baroque violinist who engages in dialogue with the harpsichord of Jos Van Immerseel in a Franco-Italian program juxtaposing the music of the ‘ Angel’ Leclair and the ‘Devil’ Locatelli , not forgetting Tartini’s famous ‘Devil’s Trill’ Sonata . . . Indeed, all this music is ‘devilishly’ difficult to play, but the Franco-Armenian violinist shows perfect mastery of it, combined with great inventiveness.

The fourth New Series album from Russian composer Alexander Knaifel may be his most wide-ranging to date, voyaging from the sacred to the secular and back again via several inspired detours. It includes two Prayers to the Holy Spirit , movingly performed by the Lege Artis Choir. The composer’s wife, Tatiana Melentieva, sings Bliss, based on Alexander Pushkin’s poem, and the great Russian poet is cross-referenced with St Ephraim the Syrian in O Lord of All My Life (A Poem and a Prayer) sung by Piotr Migunov. Oleg Malov, one of Alexander Knaifel’s closest associates for more than thirty years, accompanies both singers and is called upon to internalize texts - playing as if singing, a Knaifel speciality - in four further solo piano pieces. A mad tea party lives up to its title, with a surreal Alice in Wonderland spirit. This Child (after the Gospel of St Luke), A Confession and title piece Lukomoriye (both after Pushkin) are luminously quiet, and quietly magical. The ...

The third ECM album pioneering Alexander Knaifel’s highly personal œuvre after “Amicta Sole” and “Svete Tikhiy” (released in 2003 and 2005, respectively) offers an important addition to the label's wide-ranging spectrum of Post-Soviet music. Two starkly contrasting yet spiritually interrelated compositions – both of them, according to Knaifel, following the same path and forming a "united way" – are presented in exemplary interpretations from some of his long-standing collaborators, especially from cellist and conductor Ivan Monighetti. "In my opinion this recording is one of the best ones we ever did", says the composer who took part in all production stages. While the heavy chords in “Lamento” for solo cello tend to evoke an almost orchestral density of sound, the subtle sonic hues of “Blazhenstva” for soloists , orchestra and choir often verge to silence. The 18-minute cello piece, a central example of Knaifel’s expressive early style, depicts...

Classical pianist Son Yeol-eum has returned to the limelight with her first album in eight years, “Modern Times.” It  features a wide range of music from jazzy razzmatazz swing tunes to sounds that remind listeners of a dark and desolate night.  “This musical theme is something I have always wanted to pursue because I think this style of music represents such important and influential times in our history,” said Son, during a press conference held at the Stradeum concert hall in Seoul. “All of the music selected from the album are from the early 20th century, an era in which I think saw a big shift in both world history and music culture,” she added.  Son’s new four-track album features Alban Berg’s “Piano Sonata op. 1 ,” Sergei Prokofiev’s “Toccata in D minor, op. 11,” Igor Stravinsky’s “Trois Mouvement de Petrouchka” and Maurice Ravel’s “Le Tombeau de Couperin La Valse.”  The album is a far cry from other recent releases by her local pianist p...

For his second Warner Classics album, David Aaron Carpenter - "a star violist" in the words of the Los Angeles Times - brings together concertos by Dvořák, Bartók, Walton and a dance cycle by contemporary composer Alexey Shor. Carpenter identifies a connecting theme of "a longing for the homeland … a reverence for native musical folk tunes and language ." He is accompanied by the London Philharmonic Orchestra under three distinguished conductors: Kazushi Ono, Vladimir Jurowski and David Parry.

There is no shortage of recordings of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, but this one really is different. First of all, it is played on the viola, not on the violin – by David Aaron Carpenter. He has been described by the German newspaper Die Wel t as “a new star at the forefront of violists”, by the Helsinki Times as playing “like a young god” and by Gramophone as a player of “superlative assurance and magnetic conviction". When he made his debut at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall in in 2007, the New York Times praised his “seductively rich sound … forceful interpretive personality and remarkable control of his instrument,” and his mentors have included such distinguished musical figures as Pinchas Zukerman, Yuri Bashmet and Christoph Eschenbach. Secondly, Vivaldi’s Baroque concertos are placed in a new light, since they are programmed alongside far more recent works inspired by the cycle of spring, summer, autumn and winter: Cuatro Estaciones Porteñas (Four Seasons of ...

The third ECM New Series recording by Italian sisters Natascia and Raffaella Gazzana focuses primarily on French music, by César Franck, Maurice Ravel and Olivier Messiaen, and also pays tribute to Hungary’s György Ligeti, with a premiere recording of his Duo for violin and piano. Where 20th and 21st century music was explored on their two previous discs – the first with music of Takemitsu, Hindemith, Janáček and Silvestrov and the second with Poulenc, Walton, Dallapiccola, Schnittke and, again, Silvestrov – this time Duo Gazzana also reaches back a little further in music history. The album begins with two pieces composed at the end of the 19th century, Ravel’s Sonate posthume, written in 1897, and César Franck’s monumental A-major Sonata for piano and violin of 1886. “If you speak of French music, the first association is probably with music where atmosphere and mood are emphasized,” the Gazzana sisters note. “But the Franck sonata is something really solid as wel...

Here are all four of Arvo Pärt’s symphonies, newly recorded with the NFM Wrocław Philharmonic under the direction of one of Pärt’s most trusted colleagues, conductor Tõnu Kaljuste. Each of the symphonies, as the great Estonian composer has noted, is a world unto itself. Heard in chronological order, they also tell us much about Pärt’s musical and spiritual odyssey, and the very different ways in which he has exercised his craft. Forty-five years separate his Symphony No. 1 (“Polyphonic”) written in 1963 while he was still a student of Heino Eller, from his Symphony No. 4 (“Los Angeles”) written in 2008, by which time he was the world’s most widely-performed contemporary composer, and one whose now famous “tintinnabuli-style” has become an immediately identifiable artistic signature. In presenting the works together, Tõnu Kaljuste considers them as “if they were a single grand symphony. I perceive Arvo Pärt’s creations as a biographical narrative, and hope that with th...

The eagerly-awaited new Pärt: Released 25 years after the Estonian composer started ECM’s New Series (“Tabula Rasa”, 1984), “In Principio” offers six compositions of different scale and instrumentation written between 1989 and 2005 thus allowing for an impressive overview of Pärt’s recent stylistic development. The dramatic 25-minute “In principio” for mixed choir and large orchestra sets the famous opening of the gospel of St. John, “In principio erat Verbum”. In its five movements, “tintinnabuli”-diatonicism is contrasted with sophisticated harmonic procedures, massive brass chords are juxtaposed with almost stoic calm in the choir. With most of Pärt’s more recent works, the score (2003) was written in response to a major commission.  The purely orchestral “La Sindone” (The holy shroud), mirroring the textile’s symbolic shine-through effects in delicate string-textures, was premièred in Turin during the 2006 Winter Olympics whereas “Caecilia, vergine romana” fo...

This programme represents a retreat from the remote cloister where for so long Arvo Pärt invited us to join him‚ a definite shift from the aerated tintinabuli. The purity remains‚ so do the spare textures and‚ to a limited extent‚ earlier stylistic traits. Pärt’s voice is always recognisable. And yet who‚ years ago‚ could have anticipated the tempered tumult that erupts in the third movement of Como cierva sedienta‚ a half­hour choral drama commissioned by the Festival de Mœsica de Canarias and premièred in Tenerife in 1999. I remember hearing an imperfect taped copy of that first performance‚ which both fascinated and perplexed me‚ but this new recording subscribes to ECM’s well­tried aesthetic where clarity‚ fine­tipped detail and carefully gauged perspectives are familiar priorities. The texts come from the 42nd and 43rd Psalms‚ opening with ‘As the hart panteth…’ (Psalm 42). Even in the first few seconds‚ after chorus and bell have registered‚ vivid instrumental colo...

Haydn’s reputation as a competent pianist but no wizard is surely correct; he appears never to have stepped forwards to present himself as a performer of his own solo pieces, and that probably accounts a good deal for the fact that they still live in the shadow of Mozart’s. Yet the piano was at the centre of his life, the instrument at which he improvised and tested all his ideas as part of his morning routine, and in writing music for it he was interested in the expressive possibilities that the developing fortepiano was opening up. The 60-odd sonatas represent some of the most ambitious keyboard music of their time, and virtuosity was always an element of it. I’ve always loved it and have been admiring of Jean-Efflam Bavouzet’s Chandos series for promoting – in his description – ‘the boundless treasures of this sublime music’. He has done so at a level of technical perfection allied to insight, rigorous intellectual curiosity and the probing instincts of a distingui...