Music is the key

Recorded at London’s Abbey Road studios and in Beijing, ‘Piano Book’ is Lang Lang’s very personal playlist for everyone who loves the piano. It’s also the fruits of an astonishing career that has taken him from child prodigy to virtuoso at the very top of his profession. Equally happy playing for billions of viewers at the Olympics or just for a few hundred children in the public schools, Lang Lang is a master of communicating through music and his new album is a testament to that.

The violin was one of Bach’s favourite instruments and inspired his most lyrical outpourings. We know he was greatly influenced by the Italian masters whose work he discovered during his Weimar years – by the power of Frescobaldi, the melodic flexibility of Corelli, the sunny grace of Vivaldi – but he developed his own wonderful artistry in writing music of polyphonic density for the violin and “playing” with its sound palette. His deep understanding of the instrument clearly enabled him to exploit its full potential and to write as well as perform music of the utmost virtuosity.

Lisa Jacobs : Since the first time I performed the Nielsen violin concerto in 2007, I have been overwhelmed from the very first note. Such an incredible connection with the whimsical Nordic nature that is displayed in this music, such a natural use of the violin as both a lyrical and virtuoso instrument and such an originality.’ Fanned by the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm, the longing for pure wilderness and the cultivation of rural life, the Nordic National Romanticism arises. All three composers on this disc are descendants of this Nordic Romanticism. Although they did not all have the same nationality, their lives are intertwined. In their compositions, Svendsen and Halvorsen remain in form and harmony close to the music of their good friend Edvard Grieg and the distinctive Nordic use of melody; Carl Nielsen, however, goes on a voyage of discovery towards a new idiom with a strong desire for renewal on the one hand and a great need for the revival of the pure ar...

“If this music transports you into a haunting, mysterious dream world, don’t worry about it – it’s only doing its job.” (Ingram Marshall) This CD presents the premiere recording of Žibuoklė Martinaitytė’s hauntingly immersive 70-minute "In Search of Lost Beauty…," performed by the prize-winning Lithuanian piano trio FortVio. This major work is composed for piano, violin, cello, electronic soundtrack, and synchronized video projections. Martinaitytė remarks the work “is a sequence of audiovisual novellas on the elusive subject of beauty – an attempt to recreate the experience in which time is slowed down in order to transport us into an alternate dimension.” Ingram Marshall concludes, “Martinaitytė has created a world of hidden beauty in a bridge-like form that begs you to enter.” Described by WQXR as a “textural magician,” Martinaitytė “writes stimulating music that bristles with energy and tension. Her orchestral and ensemble compositions are stratified, ...

In 1999, after twenty years as cellist of the Kronos Quartet, I chose to leave the group and began a metamorphosis of sorts in my musical development as a solo artist. During residencies in Hawaii and San Francisco, I was able to freely explore the directions my interests were leading me at this pivotal point in my career. During this time I continued working with composers. I began to improvise, arrange and compose music myself, as well as research, produce and present muti-media and performance arts. I became interested in not only the visual and conceptual presentation of music but also the sound world my instrument could inhabit. Increasingly I became fascinated with the layering of sound and the versatility of the cello in this exploration. 'Metamorphosis' is much of the music that resulted from this phase, being the soundtrack to the staged musical theatrical production of the same name. (Joan Jeanrenaud)

Nonesuch Records releases Kronos Quartet ’s Music of Vladimir Martynov on January 10, 2012. The album includes three works written or rescored for Kronos by the contemporary Russian composer Vladimir Martynov: The Beatitudes (1998, rescored for Kronos, 2006), Schubert–Quintet (Unfinished) (2009), and Der Abschied (2006). Kronos’ artistic director and founder David Harrington says Martynov’s music “straddles various points of musical history and time; the music seems to me to reflect and absorb humanity in such a beautiful way.” Born in Moscow in 1946, Martynov was the son of a well-known musicologist and writer. He studied music from a young age and attended the Conservatory before expanding his musical pursuits beyond the traditional classical canon and into folk songs, early music, avant-garde, rock, and electronic music. In 1979, he entered the Spiritual Academy at the Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius , where he worked on preserving and restoring traditional Russian Ortho...

Seven Days Walking is the title of the new album by Ludovico Einaudi, set to be released on March 15, 2019, three and a half years after Elements and a triumphal world tour. “I remember that in January 2018 I often went for long walks in the mountains, always following more or less the same trail. It snowed heavily, and my thoughts roamed free inside the storm, where all shapes, stripped bare by the cold, lost their contours and colors. Perhaps that feeling of extreme essence was the origin of this album.” Seven Days Walking is divided into seven episodes, seven albums (Day One, Day Two, etc. until Day Seven), which will be released at monthly intervals. Each episode is focused on several main themes, which are recurring in different form: seven variations following the same imaginary itinerary. Or the same itinerary, retraced in seven different moments. “The idea first came to me as I was listening to the recordings of the first sessions: each version seemed to me t...

This recording transports us to Rome’s Chiesa Nuova, the Oratory Church where in 1600 the premiere took place of the first spiritual opera, La Rappresentatione di Anima e di Corpo by Cavalieri. That pioneering spirit has inspired this programme devised by InAlto . Among the manuscripts in the church’s library is an anonymous source, probably dating from the very beginning of the 17th century, containing a complete cycle of settings of those seven psalms that ever since the time of Saint Augustine have been called the ‘ Penitenial Psalms ’. This Roman score is absolutely unique of its kind, being monodic, and composed in the early operatic melodic narrative style of recitar cantando . InAlto presents here a completely original approach, one that puts this early 17th-century repertoire in its context by recreating, in the tradition of the Oratorian spiritual exercises, an imaginary ritual that might unfold in the days preceding Holy Week, one in which each of the penitenti...

The Amsterdam-Berlin string trio consists of Susanne Niesporek (violin, KCO member), Eric van der Wel (viola, former KCO member) and Anja-Susann Hammer (cello, Berlin). All three have a great love for chamber music. Finally arrived fresh from the press shop: Our recording of the Goldberg Variations by Johann Sebastian Bach (BWV 922) on CD!   Our recording shows all the emotions life has to offer: joy, liveliness, sadness . The three string instruments have a completely different sound to hear than in original recordings with harpsichord or piano. A listenable recording!

Recorded live at Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall, London on 3 October 2014 (The Isle of the Dead) and 14 December 2016 (Symphony No. 1). “Jurowski drove The Isle of the Dead forward... drawing exceptional intensity from the LPO.” - The Guardian, 2014 The performance of The Isle of the Dead was widely critically acclaimed. Bachtrack noted Vladimir Jurowski’s “hypnotic” conducting, noting particularly that “the clarity and control he exercised in [The Isle of the Dead] were very fine. He drew a sonorous cello sound, later matched by lower woodwinds, and the harp and pizzicato strings... brought an eerie chill to the Festival Hall.” Rachmaninoff’s youthful Symphony No. 1 is not frequently performed or recorded. This is the first time it has been released on the label. This is the second recording of The Isle of the Dead on the LPO’s own label. It was recorded live as part of the opening concert of the London Philharmonic Orchestra’s highly praised 2014-15 season...

Recorded live at Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall, London on 24 November 2004 (Symphony No. 3) and 27 November 2004 (Symphony No. 5). This recording features former Principal Conductor of the London Philharmonic Orchestra Kurt Masur, who conducted more than 150 performances in London and internationally during his tenure. Masur inaugurated the launch of the LPO’s own label in 2005 with live performances of Shostakovich’s Symphonies Nos. 1 and 5. Kurt Masur was renowned for conducting Beethoven with insight and cohesion; these concert performances were conducted from memory. He sadly passed away in December 2015; this captivating pair of concert recordings from 2004 pays tribute to his musical legacy. The concert performances of these symphonies were praised at the time. The Daily Telegraph said of the Fifth Symphony “it was the joyous conclusion of the Fifth, with all Beethoven’s guns blazing, that left the packed audience in a euphoric mood… Masur shaped the...

Sony Classical announces the release of the new album by exceptional American organist Cameron Carpenter, with both his first orchestral recording and his first live-concert recording. This release features an original version of Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, recorded live at Berlin’s Konzerthaus, paired together with Poulenc’s popular Concerto for Organ, Strings and Timpani. This world-premiere version of Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody demonstrates Carpenter’s extensive musical skills: he arranged the original piano part for organ himself. The album programme is completed with Vierne’s Organ Symphony No. 1, recorded live as the concert encore. Carpenter is joined by the Konzerthausorchester Berlin under renowned conductor Christoph Eschenbach, and all works were performed on his innovative International Touring Organ. The album represents the culmination of Carpenter’s 2018 season as Artist-in-Residence at the Konzerthaus Berlin and is also a testament t...

Everything is possible on stage. At least that’s our impression upon hearing the members of the young, award-winning brass ensemble 10forBrass. On their new GENUIN release , no woodwind run is too fast for them and no string pianissimo too soft: they are both witches and kings, mermaids and jesters, angels and huntsmen. From Carl Maria von Weber to Sergei Prokofiev, no music theatre work is safe from the brass virtuosi – whatever isn’t bolted to the floor is fair game for the sizeable brass ensemble. Each opera scene is more beautiful than the next: simply ravishing!

"Some of the most beautifully played and appealing contemporary chamber and piano pieces you're likely to hear", said American Record Guide about the album Mezzotints – Chamber Music by Ståle Kleiberg. And now there is a follow-up: a new string quartet, two trio constellations and the song cycle Do You Believe in Heather?, which has given the album its title.  Ståle Kleiberg is often called a "modern romantic" , and for good reason. We encounter a distinctive and highly individual alloy of modern and romantic elements in his music, whether it is characterized by a still, meditative lyricism or an energizing vitality. His String Quartet no. 3 encompasses this entire range of expression. The music speaks of summer. It is imbued with joie de vivre, and was composed with a full command of the genre and with considerable virtuosity.  The flute-viola-harp ensemble is less common, but by no means unknown. Following Debussy's Sonata, several trios have been c...

“They have to be heard to be believed,” said the Washington Post of piano duo Christina and Michelle Naughton. The twin sisters pay tribute to their homeland with the album American Postcard. It offers music by four US composers: John Adams (his Roll Over Beethoven, a work the Naughtons premiered in 2016), Aaron Copland, Conlan Nancarrow and Paul Schoenfield. As the sisters explain, “These pieces show the diversity and variety of American music . But one thing that ties them together is an exuberance that, to us, feels deeply American.”

Described in The Times as 'One of the most exciting cellists to have emerged for a decade', former BBC New Generation Artist Andrei Ionita draws together some of the greatest music ever written for solo cello. Ionita gives the world-premiere recording of Australian composer Brett Dean s 11 Oblique Strategies, from which the album takes its name. Dean s work was inspired by the Oblique Strategy cards invented by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt to spark creativity. In J.S. Bach s exquisite Cello Suite No.1 a sense of harmony is created using a single melodic line, with mesmerising results. Kodály's pioneering Sonata (1915) is another giant of the solo cello repertoire, and the album concludes with Black Run (2001) by contemporary Swedish polymath Svante Henryson.

The musical richness of Scarlatti’s sonatas has already produced memorable performances at the harpsichord as well as at the piano, and both options will remain open for sure in the future. Eva Badura-Skoda, in her recent 2017 book The Eighteenth-Century Fortepiano Grand and Its Patrons, underlines once more the option to consider both the harpsichord and the piano, even the modern piano, as suitable instruments to play Domenico Scarlatti’s sonatas . Just like Johann Sebastian Bach’s works for keyboard, Scarlatti’s pieces, Badura-Skoda says, can sound convincing in any instrument, provided that each performer may have the training, the taste and the sensitivity to recreate the proper language, sound and aesthetic for that music. Alberto Urroz, one of the most brilliant pianists of his generation, faces in this recording the challenge to explore his own selection and version of some of Domenico Scarlatti’s sonatas, inviting us to enjoy a repertoire that is always attrac...

Giovanni Benedetto Platti was born in northern Italy and spent some of his youth in Venice, where his father was a violetta player at St Mark's, before he received his court appointment as an oboist and violinist at the court chapel of Würzburg in 1722. Two years later, the music-loving and cello-playing count of Schönborn, Rudolf Franz Erwein, had managed to secure him as a musician for his own household at his small residence in the county of Wiesentheid. Platti composed - in addition to his ordinary ouptut for worldly and spiritual occasions - for the cello, the Count's favourite instrument: a dozen sonatas, 28 concerti, 6 duets and over 21 trio sonatas in which the two melodic instruments are not playing at the same height. The music collection of the counts of Schönborn-Wiesentheid very probably consists of Erwein's personal music library and is today an important historical music archive. Radio Antiqua present in partly world premiere six trio sonatas...

Together with the string quartet, the Sonata for Violin and Piano has been one of the standard works of classical chamber music since the 18th century. The violinist Elisa van Beek and her piano accompanist Giorgos Karagiannis show the development of the violin sonata with contributions by Mozart, Brahms and Bartók. Elisa van Beek was born into a musical family in Germany. At the age of six she received her first piano lesson with Birgit Helber at the Music School in Trossingen. She also took lessons from her father and won first prize at the regional Jugend Musiziert music competition. At the age of eleven she discovered her passion for the violin while taking lessons with Rudolf Rampf and later with Riza Yildiz at the Diapason Music Academy in Karlsruhe. She went on to study at the Folkwang University of the Arts and the State Academy of Music in Trossingen. She is currently engaged as a permanent substitute at the State Theatre in Hanover, Germany.

Gentle and haunting spirits from distant spheres meet in a surging world of dreams and lullabies in 'The Girl and the Angel, a musical narrative'. This work interweaves a new story by bestselling author Cornelia Funke with expressive new compositions by Luna Pearl Woolf and familiar and popular songs by Irving Berlin, Lennon / McCartney, Jake Heggie, Engelbert Humperdinck, Gordon Getty and others. Cornelia Funke herself captures her story with rousing songs by Frederica von Stade, Daniel Taylor, Lisa Delan and Zhen Cao, accompanied by the lush cellos of Matt Haimovitz and his Uccello ensemble. Exquisite images from the award-winning creative studio Mirada visually shine the story. The Girl and the Angel was originally released in 2013 under the title Angel Heart with accompanying concerts in Los Angeles and New York's Carnegie Hall, first released internationally in 2018, and now appears in a German-language version. The New York Times described The Girl and...

Formed in 1989, the Artemis Quartett fist came to widespread international recognition after they won the ARD International Music Competition almost eighteen years ago. Since then, the quartet has gone on to play at all of the major concert venues around the globe. Their many recordings include string quartets by Beethoven, Mendelssohn and Schubert. Born in Latvia, Vineta Sareika is one of the quartet's two remarkable violin players. She was a founding member of the well-respected Trio Dali and was appointed as the principal concertmaster of the Royal Flemish Philharmonic in 2011. The other violinist in the quartet is Gregor Sigl who studied at the Albert Greiner Music School in Augsburg before going on to the Mozarteum in Salzburg. Sigl is now a professor at the University of Fine Arts in Berlin. The team of four prestigious musicians is completed by Friedemann Weigle, on viola, and cellist Eckart Runge. Weigle joined the quartet in 2007 and holds the post of g...

After 'Inventions', 'Revelations' is the second volume in a complete set of the Beethoven quartets that breaks new ground: it aims to regroup the works according to their position within the three broad creative divisions of the composer's life - the formative years, the 'heroic' period and the late period. This programme assembles the 'median quartets', in other words the works that prolonged and consolidated the stylistic innovations outlined at the beginning of each of these creative periods. ' It'll be fascinating to hear the next instalment ' (Gramophone).

The Sonatas for piano & violin, K. 378, 454 and 526 represent the pinnacle of Mozart’s creativity for keyboard and string ensemble. Their composition is inscribed in the artistic and personal life of Mozart and mark a stage in his development at decisive moments of his life: remarkably, they were not specially commissioned. They were composed in a free style yet the music speaks of the musician’s internal tension at the time when he decided to break free from his links to Salzburg and from the burdensome tutorship of his father to take control of his own creativity.

On their second GENUIN album, Christian Mattick (flute) and Mathias Huth (piano) transport us to the world of the Blue Flower, the era of Romanticism. What could be more Romantic than the polished gem of the Lied with piano and the smaller, wordless forms influenced by the vocal genre? This is precisely what we can look forward to on this release by the two exceptional artists featuring classy arrangements for their combination of instruments. Songs with and without words, in eloquent yet sensual interpretations: from Schumann’s Märchenbilder to Schubert’s Taubenpost, from the Violin Sonatina to the variations on Trockene Blumen . An enchanting and magical journey!

Isn’t it true that the sounds of the harp soar directly up to heaven? The program idea of the splendid young French harpist Agnès Clément , who won the ARD competition in 2016, is absolutely compelling: a production featuring music that renders homage to the birds. On her first GENUIN album, she gazes at the nightingale, quarrels with the cuckoo, and flies with the swallow into the spring, as love truly takes wing in the exciting artist’s debut release. We hear Francis Poulenc alongside François Couperin, Franz Liszt together with Paul Hindemith – in the original and in arrangements. This album is perfectly balanced to the last detail.

It’s rare for the kiss of the muses to reach us in such pure and unadulterated form as it does on this album featuring treasures for flute and guitar. On their GENUIN debut release, Noemi Gyori (flute) and Katalin Koltai (guitar) present above all their own arrangements of classical works: originally written for piano, these pieces by Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven flow so clearly and naturally from the speakers that the Viennese composers seem to have been mistaken in their choice of instrument. The arrangements feature beautiful flute melodies and crystal-clear accompaniment in the guitar. If only this joy of listening would never end!

On March 15, Deutsche Grammophon released “Celebrating John Williams”, a double album recorded during the four concerts of Williams music conducted by Gustavo Dudamel between January 24 and 27 at the Walt Disney Concert Hall. The album includes the first official release of ‘Adagio for Strings from The Force Awakens ‘, a new concert arrangement of music from the seventh Star Wars score premiered by Williams in 2018.

After the double album of the violin and harpsichord sonatas with Kristian Bezuidenhout, a bestseller in 2018, here is the next instalment in the Bach recording adventure that began nine years ago with a set of the sonatas and partitas now regarded as a benchmark. Isabelle Faust and Bernhard Forck and his partners at the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin have explored patiently a multitude of other works by Bach: harpsichord concertos, trio sonatas for organ, instrumental movements from sacred cantatas... All are revealed here as direct or indirect relatives of the three monumental concertos BWV 1041-43. This fascinating achievement is a timely reminder that the master of The Well-Tempered Clavier was also a virtuoso violinist.

Hugely prolific as well as widely acclaimed, Kalevi Aho has composed 30 concertos to date. Many of them are available in recordings from BIS, and the present release features two works from the past decade. The Concerto for Trombone and Orchestra was commissioned for Jörgen van Rijen, who also performs it here. The concerto is actually Aho’s second concertante piece for the trombone – his Symphony No. 9 (1994) included a substantial and very virtuosic solo part for the instrument. In that work, and even more so in the concerto, the composer’s aim has been to extend the expressive and virtuosic possibilities of the trombone. Composed around the same time, the Trumpet Concerto is scored for the wind section of a medium-sized symphony orchestra, plus two saxophones, baritone horn and percussion. It was given its premiere by the same musicians that perform it here, the Antwerp Symphony Orchestra under Martyn Brabbins supporting its principal trumpet Alain De Rudder in wh...

"Get to hear Hans Zimmer s greatest hits as you ve never heard them before! Sony Classical releases the double-album The World of Hans Zimmer A Symphonic Celebration in spring 2019. The album features the music from the Zimmer-curated World of Hans Zimmer international concert tour by Semmel Concerts. For The World of Hans Zimmer A Symphonic Celebration Hans Zimmer has newly arranged his greatest hits and made them into electrifying concert suites for orchestra, choir and an impressive list of soloists. Each concert suite features the most recognisable parts and melodies of a film score in the cohesive form of a new symphonic work. The album features such legendary scores as The Dark Knight , The Da Vinci Code , Lion King , Pirates of the Caribbean and M:i-2 Mission: Impossible 2 . A band of famous soloists and singers adds to the excitingly new listening experience. Amongst these accomplished musicians are several of Zimmer s long-time musical collaborators such as...

There is a certain femininity and sensitivity in Schubert’s works, as well as an ability to wait and endure. This femininity and heightened sensitivity are destined to die. Yet this suicide is to be found at such a profound depth, stifled, with no outward expression of the tragedy of loss, that it remains invisible and inaudible in the major mode, like a peaceful and carefree river which ows without any counter-movement, taking with it a white night dress that was once worn and has since been abandoned.  In an age where everything seems accessible and diversity a given, the profound depth in shades and singularities, the existence of contrasts and contradictions in a human being seem strangely difficult to perceive. This is not a tragedy but rather a dilemma. A strong woman is difficult to accept and finds it difficult to accept herself because of the vulnerability that she reveals. Nevertheless, the strength of a woman is her complexity. While the ability to wait is consid...

Listening to music by Icelandic composer Jóhann Jóhannsson reminds me of optical illusions, those little diagrams where you can't believe this line is really the same length as that line, or you're amazed that the swirling circle isn't really rotating. Our brains are complex computers but it doesn't take much to short the circuits. We're constantly constructing patterns based on context. Virðulegu forsetar is a long piece in four parts that depends heavily on juxtaposition. Over the course of an hour it continues to repeat a single phrase on trumpets, french horns, and tubas. Though simple, it's a bold little cluster of notes with an inherent grandeur, and the brassiest voicing early in the piece suggests a fanfare before a great announcement. But Jóhannsson invests the refrain with a host of different meanings by slowing it down, shifting the pitch, putting it beside all sorts of interesting drones, and making it disappear completely for minute...

This recording represents a selection of some of the most well-loved works for the horn. As our repertoire is relatively small, it seemed an ideal opportunity to select a programme of music from most European countries. The romantic horn was a fairly obvious title, given that all the works highlight the lyrical side of the horn—which is, essentially, what the instrument does best. I have always had a soft spot for Hunter’s moon —Gilbert Vinter being a leading figure in the light music movement, at its height in the 40s and 50s, but sadly now out of fashion. Finally, this project was the perfect opportunity to celebrate my collaboration over many years with Julius Drake, my friend and colleague with whom it has been the greatest privilege and honour to work. (Richard Watkins)

Placeless is the first collaboration between Kronos and Iranian singers Mahsa and Marjan Vahdat . Recorded in Oslo’s Kulturkirken Jakob in November 2018, the album features 14 songs composed by Mahsa Vahdat to classical poems by Hafez and Rumi and the works of contemporary Iranian poets Forough Farrokhzad, Mohammad Ibrahim Jafari and Vahdat’s husband Atabak Elyasi. Composers Sahba Aminikia, Aftab Darvishi, Jacob Garchik and Elyasi arranged the songs for string quartet. Despite spanning a period of 800 years, even the oldest poems are still surprisingly relevant, showing how the human heart is always the same, regardless of time, place and culture. The album title Placeless references a well-known poem by Rumi from the 13th century: I am not from the East, nor from the West I am not from the land, nor from the sea I am not from the world, not from beyond My place is placelessness. My trace is tracelessness. “ This recording is a milestone for us ,” says Mahsa Vahdat....

Project W began as Chicago Sinfonietta’s year-long initiative to highlight contemporary, diverse, women composers through four commissioned works by Clarice Assad, Reena Esmail, Jennifer Higdon, and Jessie Montgomery culminating in the recording of the orchestra’s 16th album. Innovation, imagination, passion and dynamism are the hallmarks of conductor Mei-Ann Chen. Music Director of the 2016 MacArthur Award-winning Chicago Sinfonietta, she is acclaimed for infusing the orchestra with energy, enthusiasm and high-level music-making, and galvanizing audiences and communities alike. In December 2015, Musical America, the bible of the performing arts industry, named Mei-Ann Chen one of its 2015 Top 30 Influencers. A sought-after guest conductor, Ms. Chen’s reputation as a compelling communicator has resulted in growing popularity with orchestras both nationally and internationally.   This gender representation gap is not for lack of talented composers and great mu...

Catalan soprano Núria Rial is a specialist in Renaissance and Baroque music, particularly in the works of Monteverdi and Handel, and she is well-versed in European art songs. She attended the Municipal Conservatory of Barcelona, where she earned diplomas in voice and piano, and advanced to the City of Basel Music Academy, where she studied with Kurt Widmer and received the solo vocalist diploma. In 2003, she received the Helvetia Patria Jeunesse Foundation Prize from the European Foundation for Culture. Rial has performed with many period ensembles and chamber orchestras in repertoire that encompasses Baroque and Classical opera, and the vocal music of France, Germany, Spain, and her native Catalonia. She has appeared as a guest artist at many festivals in Europe and South America, and sung in operatic productions at the Innsbruck Theatre, La Monnaie in Brussels, the Staatsoper Unter den Linden in Berlin, the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris, and the Grand Théâtre in Geneva. Rial ...

The songs on this album are not as well known as other works by these three composers, but this more intimate form of expression often goes straight to the heart and soul of their work. Tchaikovsky wrote songs throughout his life, and it is easy to find autobiographical parallels in his chosen themes of love and longing. Rimsky-Korsakov’s songs are characterized by tender lyricism, while Rachmaninov’s wordless Vocalise has become one of his most famous melodies. Margarita Gritskova was born in 1987 in St. Petersburg. She is a prizewinner of the Luciano Pavarotti Competition in Modena, and the Concurso Internacional de Canto ‘Villa de Colmenar Viejo’ in 2010. She has performed in Carmen under the direction of Mariss Jansons in St. Petersburg, and appeared at world renowned festivals across the globe.

This project of commissioning new music for Baroque cello began with the birth of a new instrument. I had commissioned a five-string cello – made in Montréal in 2012 by Francis Beaulieu – and wanted to expand my use of the five- string instrument beyond its few famous pieces (J.S. Bach’s sixth suite, for example).  This led to a new work by Scott Godin and then to pieces from Isaiah Ceccarelli and Ken Ueno. In a sense, I had the same desire to expand my use of the (now more standard) four-string Baroque cello, an instrument that I was using to perform mostly Early Music until this commissioning project took flight. When modern composers write a new piece for “Baroque” cello (whether four- or five-string) it becomes an instrument of today, helping to expand the sound worlds of both the cello and new music audiences. For the works written for four-string Baroque cello by Linda Smith, Maxime McKinley, and Lisa Streich, I also used a new instrument, made by Karl Dennis in 2018, ...

On her first PENTATONE album, Tamara Stefanovich presents a highly personal selection of solo works by Bach, Bartók, Ives and Messiaen. “Influences” shows how these extraordinarily original and idiosyncratic composers let themselves be inspired by the exterior world, thereby demonstrating how authenticity comes from looking outside as well as inside. The repertoire spans from Bach’s embrace of Italian musical elements in his Aria variata alla maniera italiana, Bartók’s incorporation of folk elements in his Improvisations on Hungarian Peasant Songs, and Messiaen’s use of Hindu rhythms in Cantéyodjayâ to the collage of marching bands, sounds of trains and machinery, church hymns, ragtime and blues in Ives’ first piano sonata. In all cases, the exterior influences lead to deeply original and personal sonic galaxies. In that respect, the pieces presented here underline how identity results from a constant dialogue with our surroundings, ever changing and enriching our per...

Chilly Gonzales wrote the "Olga - Gigue" for her, Sven Helbig did a piano - arrangement of his "Pocket Symphony - Am Abend" for her. Vivan and Ketan Bhatti wrote "Memories of Mussorsky" also for piano solo for Olga. This work, performed by Olga will also be a part of the new programm of the break dance group "Flying Steps". More works by Frederic Chopin , Aphex Twin, Ludwig van Beethoven, or Mozart / Volodos are on this album, which reflects the musical world as it is, without genre - borders.

Born in 1989, Andreas Ottensamer comes from an Austro-Hungarian family of musicians and was drawn to music early, receiving his first piano lessons when he was four. At the age of ten he began studying the cello at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna, then changed to the clarinet under Johann Hindlerin in 2003. Andreas Ottensamer gained his first orchestral experience as a deputy in the orchestra of the Vienna State Opera and the Vienna Philharmonic and as a member of the Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester. In 2009 he interrupted his Harvard studies to become a scholar of the Orchestra Academy of the Berlin Philharmonic.  He is now the principal clarinettist of the Berlin Philharmonic. A highlight of this season will be the Europakonzert of the Berlin Philharmonic, in which Andreas Ottensamer will perform Carl Maria von Weber’s Clarinet Concerto No.1 under Mariss Jansons.

In his program notes for the Cello Concerto Salonen writes, “I have never — not even during the quite dogmatic and rigid modernist days of my youth — felt that the very idea of writing a solo concerto would in itself be burdened with some kind of dusty, bourgeois tradition. A concerto is simply an orchestral work where one or several instruments have a more prominent role than the others.” The Cello Concerto, however, does follow the traditional three-movement layout. But within the piece, Salonen develops remarkably diverse and contrasting landscapes of orchestral coloration, rhythmic intensity, and instrumental by-play. The opening movement emerges, like the dawn, with shadows in the low strings accented by pure pitched glimmers from the celesta and glockenspiel. When the cello makes its entrance, establishing itself as a middle voice, the effect is like a gracefully evolving aria, evoking the brooding atmosphere of Debussy’s Pelléas and Mélisande.  “I like t...

“Beyond the great musical interest that Cavalli offers, his operas are notable for their richness and modernity, and for the diversity and complexity of their characters,” says countertenor Philippe Jaroussky. “Stage directors and opera houses are increasingly keen to stage his works. His operas are full of fantasy, craziness, humour and emotion. They offer a variety we don’t find in the opera seria of the 18th century.” Francesco Cavalli (1602–76) is an important figure in the history of opera and his works, which first experienced a revival in the 1960s, have been growing in currency in recent years. The most prominent successor to Monteverdi, Cavalli was active in Venice at a time when opera was moving out of aristocratic palaces and into public theatres. Musically, his operas are notable for the fluid expression of their recitar cantando (“acting in song”), and dramatically for their variety of tone, combining noble, mythical or tragic drama with teasing or bawdy c...

As I said in a review of another Philip Glass recording “you know in advance what you are going to get with Philip Glass”. Even more so in the case of this recording, where some of the works - The Hours, Mishima and Company - are already quite known.  The French-Canadian string ensemble La Pietà - all female, in case you hadn’t guessed - and their leader Angèle Dubeau present what is essentially a sampler of the accessible, more recent Glass. Does that mean it will only appeal for someone wishing to hesitantly dip their toe into the Glass pool and be of no interest to the Glass aficionado? Definitely not - the works are all complete as long as you count overtures and opening credits as individual pieces. Some lesser known pieces are included and the performances and acoustics are excellent.  The overture for the “multimedia opera project” La Belle et al Bête (Beauty and the Beast) for piano and strings is the most dramatic and up-tempo music on th...

Anoushka Shankar’s 20-year career as a sitar player and composer has explored a wide enough expanse of musical territory that “Reflections,” a compilation album released last week, could have gone in any number of different directions. “As you can imagine, I put a few versions together,” Shankar, a six-time Grammy nominee, says by phone from her home in London. “Usually, I really only look at any one particular album at a time when I’m making it. I’ve never really sat and looked at the journey through all of my albums to see if I could find a thread through them. It was difficult because, obviously, you could make very different stories and moods in a compilation.” She made one, she says, that was mellow and meditative, then another that was upbeat and energetic. “Finally, I just tried to find the right balance,” she says. That balance required that she pay attention to the various aspects of her career: the intricate, improvisatory Indian classical music taught t...

Recorded live in concert, this album features works by Ludovico Einaudi, Max Richter, Philip Glass, Ennio Morricone, George Enescu, Joe Hisaichi, Camille Saint-Saens and Srul Irving Glick. Angèle Dubeau writes of this release: “’Music must not be the prerogative of the elite, it belongs to everyone.’ These words by Telemann have been my motto for a very long time. I like to think that music should be shared with as many people as possible, and it was in this spirit that I developed the concert program “One Last Time”, performed 33 times in Canada in the fall of 2017 and then on tour in Latin America in the winter of 2018. This album, recorded live at Quebec City’s Palais Montcalm in November 2017, features some of the most striking works that La Pietà has performed during its 21 years of existence . I gave my first concert at the age of five, and 51 years later, I would like to say “thank you,” because after all these years, what fills me with joy is knowin...