Music is the key

A native of Munich, Katharina Bäuml studied modern oboe, and baroque oboe and historical reed instruments, finishing both degrees with honors.  Since then she has specialized in myriad areas of early music, but her particular interest has been in wind music of the fifteenth through seventeenth centuries.  This interest led her, in 2005, to found the ensemble "Capella de la Torre," which has become the most important German ensemble for Renaissance music.  The group has produced twenty CDs, and since 2013 has recorded exclusively for Sony. In 2016 Katharine Bäuml won the ECHO Klassik award with Capella de la Torre for their CD "Water Music".  In addition to early music, her interests include contemporary music played on historical instruments, leading to numerous commissions for her ensemble "Duo Mixtura," which have been performed at such prestigious festivals as the Berlin "Ultraschall" festival, among others.  Featuring the ra...

Anne-Sophie Mutter is convinced that Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto exerted a particular influence on the structure of the movements of Dvořák’s concerto, too. “The directness of the violin’s first entry is unusual for this period, but this is just one aspect among many. The mini-recapitulation in the opening movement, followed immediately by the wonderful transition to the songlike Adagio, is very unusual but you find something similar in Mendelssohn. I genuinely hear in this work a kind of successor to Mendelssohn’s concerto, albeit an original piece that certainly does not obey classical concerto form in terms of its overall structure.” Why has Anne-Sophie Mutter waited until this relatively late date to record the Dvořák concerto? “There have been periods when I have been passionate about Dvořák, and the concerto has repeatedly been on my wish list, but other projects have got in the way. With many of the works that have been close to my heart since childhood – Mozart and Beeth...

Onix Ensamble is a recognized and award-winning ensemble of young Mexicans dedicated to spreading the best of the newest trends in contemporary music. All of its members, with the experience and international trajectory of a virtuoso soloist, work together as part of a sound collective that has been acclaimed by the specialized critic as unique in Latin America, exceptional… hypnotic… great expressive and musical intensity. .  Edgardo Espinosa was born in Mexico City in 1963. He studied music at the National Music School of the UNAM with Victor Manuel Cortés, graduating with honors in 1991. As a recipient of scholarships from UNAM and FONCA, he pursued postgraduate studies in London at the London College of Music, with the teacher Richard Markson, and later in Thames Valley University, where he concluded his master’s degree in the year of 1995. He has taken training courses with Ivan Monighetti, Alan Smith, Wolfgang Laufer, Maud Martin Tortelier and Joan Dickson, am...

“In l’istesso tempo” is an important addition to Giya Kancheli’s ECM discography. His ninth album for the New Series consists of “Time… and again” played, for the first time on disc by its dedicatees, Latvian violinist Gidon Kremer and Ukrainian pianist Oleg Maisenberg, plus premiere recordings of “V & V” with Kremer and Kremeratica Baltica, and the Piano Quartet (subtitled ‘In l’istesso tempo’) performed by the Bridge Ensemble. The Kremer/Kancheli connection is long-established. The Latvian violinist was one of the first to play the Georgian composer’s music in the West, and he has always seemed temperamentally attuned to Kancheli’s characteristic compositional gestures – the extreme dynamics, the Spartan textures, the emotional volatility, and the use of limited materials to attain a cumulative expressive power. Russian composer Rodion Shchedrin’s early assessment of Kancheli as "an ascetic with the temperament of a maximalist -- a restrained Vesuvius" i...

Alessandro Scarlatti wrote his oratorio “Sedecia, re di Gerusalemme” during a period in which there was a Papal ban on operas (in 1706 an edict was issued to prohibit “under severe penalty all comedies, revelry and all sort of carnival entertainments”). However the sacred texts of the oratorio were just a thin disguise for the drama, vocal brilliance and intrigue of the opera, qualities Alessandro Scarlatti excelled in, as we know from all his oratorios ánd operas. The oratorio deals with the biblical story of Zedekiah ( from the Book of Kings ) in his wars against the Babylonian kings. The music expresses all the drama of the heroic acts, ending in triumph or tragedy. Performed by one of the leading protagonists of the revival of Alessandro Scarlatti: Estévan Velardi, conductor and scholar, and his instrumental ensemble Alessandro Stradella Consort, playing period instruments.

Intriguing title? Well some, at least, of Vivaldi’s own French connections are known: the French ambassador to Venice was among his patrons, and he supplied 12 concertos without soloist to an unknown Parisian collector. Adrian Chandler has taken three of these last as a starting-point for a full disc of flute, bassoon and violin concertos in which, he reckons, references to the French style are apparent. But is a dotted rhythm here, a chaconne there and a sprinkling of Rameau-ish moments enough to make Vivaldi sound French? Wisely, Chandler does not claim so, though his concession that “Vivaldi’s style is rarely unrecognisable” puts it mildly; Vivaldi seldom sounds like anyone else, even in the grand overture-like first movement of the Violin Concerto RV211, by some margin the most French-drenched piece on this disc. The chaconnes and melodic frou frous found elsewhere may suggest Frenchness to one as sensitive to the composer’s style as Chandler, but to the average l...

Dieupart is best known today for his Six suittes de clavessin, partly because J.S. Bach copied them out, and was supposedly influenced by them in his English Suites. The suites were probably composed in 1701, whereas these less familiar sonatas are considerably later works, dating from 1717: we don’t know when Dieupart was born, but a contemporary biographer records that he died ‘far advanced in years, and in very necessitated circumstances, about the year 1740.’ Dieupart spent his entire career working in and around London as a harpsichordist and composer: He was a prominent member of the musical establishment in Drury Lane though he later became a founding and popular member of the orchestra in a rivalestablishment, the Queen’s Theatre in the Haymarket. It was probably once he had become a private music teacher in his later years that he wrote this highly attractive set of six sonatas, which are dedicated to Lady Essex Finch (d. 1721), the member of a noble English ...

“A master jeweller. In her subtle, if not to say refined, refined interpretation the composer appeared as a philosophical intellectual, and it is thanks to these pensive and critical interpretations that Polina Osetinskaya proffers that Shostakovich’s music remains topical and even highly relevant art.”  The life of pianist Polina Osetinskaya can be divided into two stages. The first – that of “wunderkind” (a word that Polina herself cannot abide) – was when Polina performed as a girl in huge halls filled with excited sensationalists. The second, which has continued to the present day, is essentially her victory over the first. It is both a reference to serious performing and to exacting audiences.

"L'Amore per Elvira" is the title La Serenissima have given this disc, referring to the fact that the three chamber cantatas it includes deal with the ups and downs of love for a lady of that name. Put together they tell a neat little story; the lover timidly declares his feelings; the lover must go on a journey and makes a tearful farewell; the lover returns for a joyous reunion. Each consists of a pair of recitatives and arias, and while the latter are full of the kind of striking and demanding vocal writing we have learnt to expect from Vivaldi, it is the opening recitatives which seem most determined to grab the attention. From the trembling trills at the start of Tremori al braccio or the slightly overwrought Elvira anima mia to the excitable Lungi del vago volto , each sets the mood for its ensuing cantata with memorable boldness and imagination. Mhairi Lawson brings to them her characteristically bright and powerful tone and strong sense of drama....

Bach was a great transcriber and arranger of both his own works and those of other composers, something that is eloquently demonstrated in his output. For example, there are 6 concertos for organ (BWV 592-597) and 16 concertos for harpsichord (BWV 972-987), all transcribed from works by other composers. Bach generally favoured works by contemporary Italian composers for his transcriptions, including Vivaldi, Albinoni, Alessandro and Benedetto Marcello, Bonporti and others. On this album, the Italian mandolinist Davide Ferella has himself taken four of Bachs concertos for one and two harpsichords and arranged them for one and two mandolins, strings and basso continuo. Davide Ferella handles these transcriptions with both deftness and respect for Bach's originals, sometimes assigning passages to the strings that were originally for the harpsichord, in order not to lose any of the rich contrapuntal texture of Bach's writing.

For their first album "Sospiri d'amanti" with Spanish soprano Nuria Rial the Early Music ensemble Artemandoline was highly praised: "Here the mandolins sing that it is a pleasure" (Opernwelt). With their second album they take their listeners on a musical journey to 18th century Naples. Whether in the opera house, in the theaters or conservatories - music was omnipresent in Naples. It played an important role in the numerous salons and palaces where the clergy, music lovers and patrons of the arts met. So it is not surprising that not only the famous opera style of the Neapolitan School, but also a "Neapolitan Mandolin School" with its own sound and specific techniques was developed. For the first time, the ensemble Artemandoline has recorded five Neapolitan concertos on original instruments as world premiere recording, showing unusual but highly interesting aspects of Italian instrumental music. These Baroque concertos by composers such...

Brahms - Opus 38 & 99 – a completely new and extraordinary interpretation by the inspiring duo with cellist Claudio Bohórquez and Péter Nagy. The new recording will raise a new star in the Brahms music heaven just today on the occasion of the lunar eclipse of the century. The sonatas for piano and cello by Johannes Brahms, Opus 38 and 99 are masterfully played and interpreted by two musical personalities who make the sonatas shine in a new light: The German-born cellist Claudio Bohórquez with Peruvian-Uruguayan roots, who is one of the best in his field, makes the virtuosity of the cello sound as Brahms himself would have loved it. For his favourite instrument he has written many moving melodies and compositions, some of which are played on this recording. In the Hungarian pianist Péter Nagy, Bohórquez has the perfect partner at his side who captures the timbre of his homeland with feeling. This becomes particularly clear in the Hungarian dances, which are contra...

Mookie Lee-Menuhin and Jeremy Menuhin already proved on their debut Genuin album that they are a great piano duo. And now the composer Jeremy Menuhin presents himself in that light for the first time on a recording as well: The duo's new Genuin release exclusively features world premiere recordings. There is a baroque suite, but it plays elaborately with our expectations and listening habits, and there are "transformations" of individual movements of the two string sextets by Johannes Brahms: real ear-openers! Also, there are colorful variations on a theme and a virtuoso fantasy that unites the styles: brilliantly played, true expansions of the repertoire! “As if entirely of one mind” (Primephonic) captures the essence of every performance by the dynamic Menuhim Duo. Whether performing on two pianos or side by side at the same keyboard, Mookie and Jeremy play as one, interpreting the classical repertoire with devotion and joy. The unique sou...

Born in Bergamo in 1822, Carlo Alfredo Piatti was to the cello what Nicolò Paganini was to the violin: a musician who extended the possibilities of his instrument in performance and who inspired countless composers to do the same in writing for it. His remarkable talent was immediately evident, to the extent that by 1843 he was already travelling throughout Europe on concert tours, accompanied by his father. It was Franz Liszt who described him as ‘a Paganini of the Cello’, presenting him with an Amati instrument as a token of his admiration. Piatti’s concert-tours culminated in a visit to London, where he settled in 1846. In the mid-1800s, musical life in the British capital was full of energy and opportunity. When Verdi learnt that it would be Piatti leading the cellos in the first performances of his new opera, I Masnadieri, he wrote a Prelude consisting of a cello solo with an orchestral accompaniment, which he dedicated to the great cellist. In his own compositio...

Originally released in 2001 but unavailable for almost two years, Glossa has designed gorgeous new packaging for this most important of Paolo Pandolfo’s projects, possibly a milestone in the recording history of Bach’s music. Everybody seems to know these discs – despite almost no marketing effort, they are perceived with such benchmarks as Glenn Gould’s or Gustav Leonhardt’s renderings of the Goldberg Variations or Anner Bylsma’s performances of the original cello suites. The fact that these suites sound so well on the viola da gamba is of course to a great extent due to Pandolfo’s magic touch. The rich sonority of the viola da gamba truly seems to enrich these pieces and Pandolfo’s remarkable transcription gives weight to his theory that Bach originally composed them with this instrument in mind. (GLOSSA)

American mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato is currently one of the undisputed stars of the contemporary operatic scene, with frequent appearances in the world's premier venues. Her liquid coloratura vocal palette has left critics gasping for superlatives. She is the Barbican’s Artist Spotlight awardee for the 2014-5 season, and has curated this performance for herself as the finale of her residency.  American composer Jake Heggie, a friend of DiDonato’s, is the most distinguished contemporary creator of the art song cycle. His Camille Claudel: Into the Fire has been written specifically for DiDonato. It tells the story of the titular sculptor. For many years she was both model and lover to Auguste Rodin, before coming into her own as one of the most important French artists of the early twentieth century. In 1913, her poet brother committed her to an asylum, where she remained for the remaining 30 years of her life, despite the insistence of her friends that she was well.  The...

Cellist Yoon-Kyung Cho was born in Seoul and has performed as a soloist and chamber musician at major venues across the Europe and South Korea. She has been accepted to the "Classe d'excellence de violoncelle"(2014-2015) of Gautier Capuçon in cooperation with Louis Vuitton Foundation in Paris. Also, Yoon-Kyung has been selected from the prestigious audition for a Musicians' Company Concert 2015/16 series and she will give her Wigmore Hall recital debut next year. She also won Second Prize at the Johannes Brahms International Competition in Pörtschach (Austria) and the Concerto Competition at Royal College of Music and performed Shostakovich Cello Concerto No.1 with RCM Philharmonic Orchestra with Martin André in London. Not only this, Yoon-Kyung has won numerous competitions including Silver Medal at the prestigious KBS-KEPCO Music Competition in Seoul and First Prize in the Busan Times Competition, the Seoul Soloists Cello Ensemble Competition , the Korea Times Musi...

Most of the Handel pieces on this release are "hidden" in that if you go to the editions of the operas from which they are taken, you won't find them. Many of them were "insertion arias," written for revivals of Handel operas where the new singers wanted something tailor made. Two were written for insertion into the opera of someone else, namely Alessandro Scarlatti, and there are several miscellaneous rarities and rather odd instrumental pieces for interludes. It might sound like an excursion into the dustier corners of the Handel repertory on the part of the historical-instrument group Il Complesso Barocco and their conductor Alan Curtis, who has been at this kind of thing since most of the current crop of Baroque opera conductors were toddlers and who presumably has earned the right to do what he wants. No fewer than nine of the pieces are claimed to be world premieres. Yet this music is generally first-rate. It is by its very nature difficult...

"I’ve always loved this music. In the early 1980s I began performing and recording Scottish music, since there is a written repertory of Scottish tunes written out for the lute in a number of manuscripts dating from the 17th century. But alas, there is no repertory of Irish lute music. Yet there is an obvious sympathy between the music of Ireland and Scotland, so I undertook to make arrangements of some of my favorite Irish and Scottish tunes that had never quite made it into the historical lute repertory. (An oversight, I’m sure.) The harp music of Turlough O’Carolan often fits the lute amazingly well, and the traditional Scottish and Irish dance music can also be a good fit, though one needs to choose the tunes with care. The arrangements of Scottish music found in the Balcarres Lute Book (compiled around 1700) make a great example of how to arrange popular melodies and dances for the lute. I used that as my model when I started out on this project." "The Kid on...

The programme presented by Ann Hallenberg (Deutsche Harmonia Mundi) is a homage to the historical roman figures of Agrippina, one of the earliest historical women to inspire the fantasy of librettists and composers. Ann Hallenberg and her husband Holger Schmitt-Hallenberg, musicologist, researched the musical archives to unearth all surviving operatic manuscripts containing the figure of Agrippina (two sisters and one daugther). Twelve the arias are WORLD PREMIERE RECORDINGS. Apart from Handel’s famous opera ‘Agrippina’ and Telemann’s ‘Germanicus’, all music on this album has been recorded for the first time. This album is also a fascinating journey through the history of baroque opera. The earliest piece, Legrenzi’s ‘Germanico sul Reno’ dates from 1676 and is a typical example of early baroque style. The latest work, Graun’s ‘Britannico’ from 1752 , was written only four years before the birth of Mozart, at the very end of the musical baroque period. The Swedis...

Say what you will about the 75-year-old Wilhelm Kempff's "old school" Goldberg Variations, with its unembellished Aria, seeming surface plainness, and avoidance of virtuosic sheen. However, I say that this 1970 recording remains among the most beautiful and heartfelt piano versions of Bach's keyboard tour-de-force. Within Kempff's straight-laced, intimate parameters you encounter the most subtle nuances, changes of color, dynamic gradations, and accents. I've rarely heard Variation 9's lines (the canon at the fourth) sing out so calmly and naturally, or the three minor-key variations emerge with comparable ease, fluidity, and melodic cogency. Yet in Variation 27 (the canon at the ninth) Kempff also reveals how well he can deliver rapid, detaché playing when so inclined. Observing the A-section repeats, Kempff doesn't embellish them so much as he refocuses voicings and balances between hands, to convincing effect . ( Jed Distl...

Where to begin listing the virtues of this gorgeous double-CD release by mezzo-soprano Ann Hallenberg? Perhaps with the unique programming concept, re-creating the operas staged during Carnival season in the year 1729 in Venice, a special year because all the big stars of Italian opera had come back home after disagreements with their impresario, Handel, in England. The arias, written for the likes of the castrato Senesino and the soprano Faustina Bordoni, have all the technical fireworks of the Handel operas of the 1720s that have gained popularity. And consider that the music is virtually unknown, with much of it here receiving its premiere on recordings; much of the research was done by Hallenberg herself, along with her husband, with performers once again leaving musicology in the dust. Is it second-order opera? Hardly, and here you can rely on the opinion of Handel himself, who dropped in to hear this remarkable stretch of music and took some of it back to London to...

The young pianist Yukeong Ji has already had an impressive career. However, despite all the prizes and hymns of praise from the critics, she does not lose her footing. Her debut CD, featuring extremely rare repertoire by Uzong Choe, Toru Takemitsu, Bertold Hummel, Maurice Ravel and Olivier Messiaen, proves this. These are fascinating reflections in music, shedding new light on the works. Yukeong Ji plays crystal clear and with broad phrases. She breathes life into sophisticated literature and captivates the listener.

Cellist Inbal Segev’s debut release for Avie features the lush and romantic sonatas by Chopin and Grieg, and the Fantasiestucke by Robert Schumann. She is joined by Finnish pianist Juho Pohjonen, a fitting partner for the pianistic Chopin and the virtuosic Grieg. In Schumann’s own transcription of his “Fantasy Pieces,” originally for clarinet, the lyrical quality shines through on Inbal’s 1673 Ruggieri cello. Inbal Segev reaches thousands of people across continents through her influential YouTube video masterclass series Musings with Inbal, teaching core repertoire, cello technique and new works. Her many honors include top prizes at the Pablo Casals, Paulo and Washington International Competitions. She began playing cello in Israel at five and at sixteen was invited by Isaac Stern to continue her studies in the US. She holds degrees from The Juilliard School and Yale University. “first class… richly inspired… very moving indeed…” (Gramophone) “Her playing i...

Three major masterpieces—sonatas for cello and piano by renowned French composers—make up this passionate, turbulent, tender, exuberant, and optimistic album. Debussy’s forward-looking sonata is one of the best examples of the master’s late style. The transcription of Franck’s violin sonata for cello will make you wonder if the piece wasn’t originally planned for cello and piano (there is some evidence that it was). And Chopin’s sonata represents a rare foray into chamber music by everyone’s favorite composer of piano music. For good measure, Ravel’s short Cuban dance piece is included. Cellist Dmitry Kouzov and pianist Peter Laul deliver breathtaking interpretations of these towering masterpieces.

The British-American violist Helen Callus has an intensely lyrical tone that instantly grabs your attention in the excerpts from the 1934 Suite for viola and orchestra of Vaughan Williams, a pastoral work in the truest sense. One of the few questionable moves here is that the work is presented in excerpted form, although there isn't room for the whole thing on a single CD, and it's hard to make a case for omitting any of the other works. The mood deepens and darkens in Herbert Howells' Elegy for viola, string quartet, and string orchestra, Op. 15, written in memory of a young musician killed in action in World War I. Callus applies the same lyrical approach to the Walton Viola Concerto in A minor, which comes in zippier renderings, but the consistent passion here is impressive. And it effectively sets up the less common Viola Concerto in C minor, Op. 25, of York Bowen, composed in 1907. This is a neglected gem of the viola repertory, a broad, Brahmsian work w...

Claude Debussy and the Second Viennese composers followed different paths of philosophical development, inspired by the trends of art and literature in their age, but they were aligned by a common embrace of sensuality in music. Theirs was a strongly shared language, and my interest as a pianist is to explore fields of intersection between these two musical worlds often thought to be opposite in character. Writing for the piano, an instrument equally wide-ranging and intimate, helped all these composers to explore decadent dimensions of harmony, form, and sound color. For this recording, Debussy’s two books of Préludes and selected individual pieces offer a chance to view the music of Arnold Schoenberg’s school, assumed to be arid and formalist, through a tinted lens. The Préludes , influenced by otherworldly Symbolist poetry and the aesthetic of ancient classical art, give snapshots of places, objects, natural phenomena, and fleeting moods. Small musical forms bely...

« What we have here is new music. Free music. Ellington and Armstrong were right in not wanting to call it anything else but Music. Why put it in a sub-category? This belongs with the best of any new music, period. And this new music is created (with the assistance of Swell’s scores and direction) by an ensemble that knows how to both play and listen geometric and mystical constructions: some preconceived by the skillful pen of Steve Swell and some spontaneously shaped and formed. Lean in. Listen again. And swim upstream and down with the band – it’s completely worth it. » (Ann Arbor, July 2017)

With its epic sweep and grandeur and compelling drama, there has rarely been such a spine-tingling and vivid depiction of nature as found in Richard Strauss’s magnificent tone poem, An Alpine Symphony. Calling for gargantuan orchestral forces, this lavishly illustrated journey is Strauss’s crowning orchestral achievement. Using a vast musical canvas packed with vivid and exquisite details, it’s a bold, optimistic and passionate work, unleashing ecstatic blazes of orchestral colour alongside moments of awestruck contemplation in a continuous narrative of 22 sections, which Strauss threads together with his usual mastery and aplomb. The work is performed by the Frankfurt Radio Symphony conducted by podium sensation Andrés Orozco-Estrada. It marks their fourth release in a critically acclaimed series for PENTATONE . Their performance of Strauss’s Salome earned Gramophone magazine’s Editor’s Choice (January 2018). Gramophone also praised their Ein Heldenleben “...the play...

 “As a young composer I wanted to be a Modern among the Moderns. Now I don’t want to shock anyone - I want to please, to stir, to delight, to move and to invigorate.” ( Robin Holloway) An introspective, brooding work, it's compellingly played by young violist Henrietta Hill. Performances throughout are excellent, with wind soloists Oliver Pashley and Rees Webster outstanding in the two trios. Holloway’s own sleeve notes are informative and unpretentious. ( The Arts Desk, July 2018)

This disc of pieces played by the pianist Polina Osetinskaya brings together the music of Giovanni (“Nino”) Rota and Leonid Desyatnikov. An odd combination? – actually, no, Rota (1911-1979) lived entirely in the 20th century; Desyatnikov was born in 1955; but what these composers have in common is not just the century they lived in but the way their work challenges what academic music had become. Neither Rota nor Desyatnikov has ever been part of any musical movement and they have written no theoretical tracts, as was all the rage in the 20th century but we can still see their music as a riposte to contemporary isolationism, arrogance and fear of the listener. At the conservatoire in Rome the student Rota was groomed to become the next Puccini. At the age of 12 this wunderkind wrote an oratorio which was instantly performed in Rome and Paris but by the middle of the 20th century, with the triumphant avant garde on one side and bloodless traditionalism on the other, the...

Chamber recordings of major repertory on modern instruments is becoming increasingly rare on recordings, but Russian-born oboist Alexeï Ogrintchouk shows there's still considerable life in the genre with this selection of Mozart works for oboe. The underperformed Oboe Quartet in F major, K. 370, is a real highlight here. This work blends sparkling melody and virtuosity (it was composed for a famed oboist of Mozart's time) in a way that clearly looks forward to, and is nearly on a par with, the clarinet masterpieces of Mozart's last years, and Ogrintchouk plays it to the hilt in a performance that remains relaxed despite the very high technical demands placed on the soloist. The Oboe Concerto in C major , K. 314, probably better known in its D major version for flute and orchestra, is very nearly as good. There was no reason for BIS' engineers to mike Ogrintchouk quite so closely in the large Lithuanian National Philharmonic Hall, picking up a good number of...

Viktor Ullmann arrived in Theresienstadt on 8 September 1942. He was 44 years old, a Jew and a former officer of the Austrian army. Being an accomplished composer, well known for his organizational skills, he was immediately solicited by the Freizeitgestaltung to organize concerts and conferences, to write musical reviews (he authored 26 such texts), and to compose. In fact, during the two years before his transport to Auschwitz, he wrote several instrumental and vocal works, including song cycles for baritone and piano , one sonata for violin and piano, his third string quartet, three piano sonatas (numbers 5, 6 and 7) as well as an opera in one act on a libretto by the young poet Peter Kien Der Kaiser von Atlantis oder die Tod-Verweigerung (The Emperor of Atlantis, or the Disobedience of Death). Ever since his arrival in the ghetto, Ullmann seems aware of the precariousness of his future, as is shown in the quite openly ironic remark on the manuscript of his piano sona...

Beethoven's cello sonatas were among the first works to explore the potential of the cello as a solo chamber instrument. French cellist François Salque catches the nature of this status in his splendid recordings of the early Op. 5 sonatas on this two-disc Sony set: it's a lively recording in which the cello seems to grow into its new role. Sample the unexpectedly massive (16-minute) opening movement of the Cello Sonata No. 1 in F major, Op. 5, No. 1, a sort of extended essay in the development of new sonorities for cello and piano; in Salque's hands the cello seems constantly to be stepping to the forefront in unexpected ways. Salque and pianist Eric Le Sage deliver suave readings in a classic French tradition, and their approach works wonderfully in the Op. 5 sonatas, less well in the middle-period Cello Sonata No. 3 in A major, Op. 69, and once again excitingly in the late fourth and fifth sonatas, which also were stylistically transitional works and among th...

The Vivaldi recordings by Adrian Chandler and his British period instrument ensemble La Serenissima, named after the nickname of the Venetian Republic and specializing in its music, are breaking new ground. Give this one a try if you haven't heard the group before: it's wonderful. Chandler focuses on double concertos, which Vivaldi produced in profusion for his players as the Osepale della Pietà, but which have been largely neglected on recordings. Chandler digs up unusual and interesting pieces; there isn't an overplayed item in the bunch. And the big news is his overall style: 180 degrees removed from muscular Italian Vivaldi approaches derived from operatic styles. For Chandler, the Vivaldi concerto is a playful, subtle affair, with soloists neither blending into the ensemble, as in some small-group readings, nor standing up to it in big contrasts. Instead, Chandler's soloists react flexibly to the orchestral tutti, catching the variety in Vivaldi's sol...

Polina Osetinskaya started to play on stage at the age of six. At eight, she performed with an orchestra (at the hall of the Vilnius Philharmonic Society). She finished the lyceum school of the St. Petersburg Conservatory where she studied with the famous teacher of the Leningrad piano school Marina Wolf (she attended her class at the conservatory as well) and then took a course in Moscow with professor Vera Gornostayeva. The pianist believes that period of her life and studies in St. Petersburg, when she matured both musically and spiritually, was a true beginning of her artistic career. Today, Polina Osetinskaya is a winner of a Triumph award and active concert musician. She performs in Russia and overseas and regularly takes part in prestigious international festivals. She has performed with some leading orchestras and collaborated with well-known European conductors, including Saulius Sondeckis, Teodor Currentzis, Tugan Sokhiev, Vassily Sinaisky, Thomas Sanderling an...

With this new series entitled ‘Salon de musique’, Alpha presents recordings made by artists who have enlivened the Festival of Salon de Provence for some years now: the pianist Eric le Sage, who has made many recordings for Alpha, the clarinettist Paul Meyer etc… with cellist Claudio Bohórquez, they have now put two Beethoven trios on disc. By 1798, the year Ludwig van Beethoven composed his Trio for piano, clarinet and cello op.11, he was already well-known in Vienna as a remarkable improviser and an ambitious young composer. the piece was clearly aimed at the enlightened aristocracy, as well as competent musical amateurs. This did not prevent the critics, though universally positive, from judging the score to be over-complex in places. Dedicated to the Empress Marie-Theresa of Austria, the Septet was published in 1802 by Hofmeister, and on being well-received it was then rearranged for various combinations. Beethoven himself made a version for clarinet, cello and ...

Bach’s Goldberg Variations consists of an aria and 30 dazzling variations. The opening aria is a highly ornamented Sarabande . Melodic contour is wonderfully crafted as Bach explores a descending five-note pattern in a typically French style. However, from the first variation it becomes clear that melody is not the theme. Instead Bach produces variations on the bass line and its chord progression. In other words, it is a harmonic universe that Bach explores. The thirty variations are generally divided into three groups: dance, canon and arabesque. Every third variation in the set is a canon that increases by its intervallic answer, beginning at the unison until Variation 27 which is a canon at the ninth. This final canon is particularly impressive as Bach leaves out the bass line, leaving a ‘pure’ canon between the upper voices. Such a feat is in itself a contrapuntal exercise in genius; more so as these variations are not heavy with cerebral skill, but instead, dance...

Art tends to elude direct expression.  Or, rather those ideas appealing to artistic language are scarcely ever plain and direct. Therefrom a musical statement grows metaphorical.  Yet what elements – language and style – are inherent to this statement? And what integral challenges emerge for the artist and interpreter?  At first we take a metaphor as somewhat complex, deliberately ambiguous, however, when the statement engenders new degrees of comprehension the metaphor takes root, appearing conventional and natural - similar to a math proposition, proven and evolved into a world-renowned theorem... Then a new rank metaphors stems from the previously established layer... Presumably, the artist may again face the alternative? Whether to plunge into the metaphorical language evolution? Or withdraw to supposedly well-known tools yet creating a completely new context?  The author, indubitably, opts for the latter.  Ultimately, his music remains unprot...

Divine Art Records continues its series of recordings with American organist Carson Cooman, who is organist at the Memorial Church at Harvard, as well as being a teacher, writer, speaker, music critic and incredibly prolific composer. Following three recordings including organ works by German composers Andreas Willscher and Raimund Schächer, Cooman has recorded an album of music by the Italian composer Carlotta Ferrari (b.1975) . Ferrari’s compositions have been performed frequently around the word and appear on many recordings including six all-Ferrari CDs. She is currently professor of music composition at the European School of Economics in Florence, Italy. Ferrari has written many works based on historical figures, and the five works on this album are all inspired by the lives and works of famous women, lending to the album’s title, ‘Women of History’. She writes in a distinctive modal style, utilising the modal harmonic system of ‘Restarting Pitch Space’...

With an unique personal narrative beginning in Fairbanks, Alaska, and an international career now spanning more than two decades, mezzo-soprano Vivica Genaux beguiles audiences and critics alike with her charisma, dedication, and astounding vocal technique. After noting that she 'has stage presence in spades,' Clive Paget wrote in Australia's Limelight Magazine that Vivica 'demonstrated complete mastery with her exemplary phrasing and effortless vocal dexterity. Add to that a voice of great richness, easy at the top, yet with an ability to plunge at will into a beefy bottom register, and you have what can only be described as the real deal.'  During 2018, Vivica's concert and recital itineraries take her to Europe, Asia, Mexico, and the USA. Duelo Barroco partnered her with Ann Hallenberg in performances in Spain of music by Händel and Vivaldi. Concerts featuring music made famous by Farinelli and Senesino, the latter's music being interpreted by Sonia ...