Sebastian Bohren / Andrei Pushkarev / GKO PROKOFIEV Sonata Op. 80 for Violin & Orchestra

The version of the sonata for solo violin, string orchestra and percussion goes back to the initiative of Sebastian Bohren. It was created by Andrei Pushkarev, percussionist in Gidon Kremer’s ‘Kremerata Baltica’, an accomplished arranger whose arrangements can be found in the reper- toire of numerous musicians. Pushkarev’s version follows the well-known orchestration of Shostakovich’s Violin Sonata op. 134 in the same instrumentation – albeit with vibraphone instead of xylophone – which he produced together with Michail Zinman in 2005 and which was also recorded by Sebastian Bohren in 2018.

Stuttgarter Philharmoniker / Gabriel Feltz GUSTAV MAHLER Sinfonie Nr. 2

Gabriel Feltz and the Stuttgart Philharmonic have previously recorded six of Gustav Mahler's symphonies for Dreyer-Gaido, suggesting the eventual issue of a complete cycle. This 2019 release of the Symphony No. 2 in C minor ("Resurrection"), is likely to be a highlight of such a set, because Feltz and his musicians have taken great pains to bring the score to life while also observing its finest details, particularly in articulation and dynamics, which is no mean feat. Feltz favors brisk tempos, particularly in the violent first movement and the sardonic Scherzo, creating moments of apocalyptic terror that perfectly balance with the quietly elegant Andante moderato, the sublime Wunderhorn song for mezzo-soprano, "Urlicht," and the expansive finale with its choral setting of lines from Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock's ode, Die Auferstehung. To call this symphony a long stretch is perhaps the simplest way to describe it, and only the most dedicated conductors can make it hold together over the course of its 90-plus minutes. Feltz takes into account the underlying unity of the work and lets it tell its story of a hero's death and funeral rites, memories of his life, and his ultimate resurrection on Judgment Day. On its face, the symphony is musically quite eclectic and varied in styles, yet this performance brings it together as a whole, so the trajectory is clear and concentrated, unlike some older traditional performances that draw the mystical second half out too long and deprive it of its drama. Dreyer-Gaido has split the symphony evenly over two discs, so Mahler's intended break between the first and second movements is a casualty, though sticklers for historical accuracy can still hit the pause button. Highly recommended. (Blair Sanderson)

Francesco Piemontesi SCHUBERT Last Piano Sonatas

Swiss pianist Francesco Piemontesi interprets Schubert’s last three piano sonatas (D958-D960) on his PENTATONE debut album, after years of engagement with these extraordinary works. These sonatas continue to fascinate pianists and listeners until this very day. They are arguably among the most existential music ever written for the piano, full of beauty and sadness, celebrating life and at the same time anticipating the composer’s untimely death. Even if Schubert was barely thirty years old when he wrote these works, they reveal the otherworldly and detached nature of what is often described as “late style”, while the music remains highly expressive and personal.

YARDANI TORRES MAIANI Asteria

The harmonia nova series welcomes young artists singled out for their exceptional talents. With his “starlit night,” Yardani Torres Maiani invites us to discover a sensory and aesthetic experiment: in a happy convergence of influences embracing his Gypsy heritage, far-flung travels, classical music training, and a dash of Baroque exuberance, the violinist-composer and his fellow musicians create an environment where the purest expression of flamenco can be revealed in a most unexpected fashion!

Melody Moore / Bradley Moore AN AMERICAN SONG ALBUM

Melody Moore’s ‘An American Song Album’ feels personal and custom-made for her ample lirico spinto instrument. And that’s always a good place to start. She can thunder darkly, she can float, she can spin – she has the full expressive armoury. But, more importantly, the choices here plainly mean something to her and there’s no mistaking the high level of engagement that sets the best of them apart.

I’m going to plunge right in with the most recent of the songs represented, Jake Heggie’s quartet of settings These Strangers (2018). It’s no secret that I’m a huge Heggie fan (as these pages will attest) and there’s a kinship at work here with Moore that easily makes them the star turn of the collection. Heggie’s grateful way with voicing and melodising words is so instinctive. He just knows – with his innate sense of drama – which notes will communicate and unlock both meaning and emotion. There’s a shared humanity and nobility in his setting of Walt Whitman’s ‘To a Stranger’ and better yet is the ‘protest’ song ‘I did not speak out’, to words by Martin Niemöller. The inexorable build of this number is potently theatrical, the quiet self-disgust of each stanza growing in intensity to its devastating pay-off.

I also love Heggie’s Emily Dickinson settings, infused as they are (and so much else here is) with death and dying – not least the solitude of that process in, most notably, ‘The sun kept setting’. There’s further kinship here with the last of Barber’s Hermit Songs, ‘The Desire for Hermitage’, just as there is maternal empathy with ‘The Crucifixion’ and a sexy subtext to the succinct ‘Promiscuity’.

Some things were new to me: Carlisle Floyd (still with us at 93), whose The Mystery: Five Songs of Motherhood is a self evident advance (in terms of harmonic complexity) on his early hit, the perennially popular opera Susannah, not least the impassioned ode ‘To my Husband’, where Moore taps into the operatic imperative of it with thrilling reach. Moore is on stage with it. And there’s more than a touch of Tosca in the mix.

Gordon Getty is the other veteran whose work was unfamiliar to me. I’ve never come across his opera of the much-loved novel and movie Goodbye, Mr Chips (2018) – an oversight which plainly needs addressing. Kathy’s aria, ‘Chips, darling, it’s started’, is a cracker, impassioned and stirring, a three-tissue number. As to Getty’s arrangements of the traditional classics which bring the disc home, the Spiritual ‘Deep River’ takes Moore back to her church roots and is possessed of an inwardness, a deep and abiding weariness, that comes from a very honest place. As does ‘Danny Boy’ – and how else do you sing that but with quiet respect for one of the great tunes?

Bradley Moore (piano, and no relative) is at one with his colleague throughout – and I’ve managed to get through the whole review without punning at how appropriately named the lady is. Well, almost. (Edward Seckerson / Gramophone)

Alina Ibragimova / Cédric Tiberghien MOZART Violin Sonatas K10, K14, K30, K301, K304, K379, K481

Call me a killjoy, but my pulse rate rarely quickens at the prospect of Mozart’s pre-pubescent music. The three childhood works on these discs—essentially keyboard sonatas with discreet violin support—go through the rococo motions pleasantly enough. But amid the music’s chatter and trickle, only the doleful minore episode in the minuet finale of K30 and the carillon effects in the corresponding movement of K14 (enchantingly realised here) offer anything faintly individual. Still, it would be hard to imagine more persuasive performances than we have here from the ever-rewarding Tiberghien-Ibragimova duo: delicate without feyness, rhythmically buoyant (Tiberghien is careful not to let the ubiquitous Alberti figuration slip into auto-ripple) and never seeking to gild the lily with an alien sophistication.

The players likewise bring the crucial Mozartian gift of simplicity and lightness of touch (Ibragimova’s pure, sweet tone selectively warmed by vibrato) to the mature sonatas that frame each of the two discs. It was Mozart, with his genius for operatic-style dialogues, who first gave violin and keyboard equal billing in his accompanied sonatas; and as in their Beethoven sonata cycle (Wigmore Hall Live), Tiberghien and Ibragimova form a close, creative partnership, abetted by a perfect recorded balance (in most recordings I know the violin tends to dominate). ‘Every phrase tingles,’ I jotted down frivolously as I listened to the opening Allegro of the G major Sonata, K301, truly con spirito, as Mozart asks, and combining a subtle flexibility with an impish glee in the buffo repartee.
Tiberghien and Ibragimova take the opening Allegro of the E minor Sonata, K304, quite broadly, emphasising elegiac resignation over passionate agitation. But their concentrated intensity is compelling both here and in the withdrawn—yet never wilting—minuet. Especially memorable are Ibragimova’s chaste thread of tone in the dreamlike E major Trio, and Tiberghien’s questioning hesitancy when the plaintive Minuet theme returns, an octave lower, after the Trio.
In the G major Sonata, K379, rapidly composed for a Viennese concert mounted by Archbishop Colloredo just before Mozart jumped ship, Tiberghien and Ibragimova are aptly spacious in the rhapsodic introductory Adagio (how eloquently Tiberghien makes the keyboard sing here), and balance grace and fire in the tense G minor Allegro. In the variation finale their basic tempo sounds implausibly jaunty for Mozart’s prescribed Andantino cantabile, though objections fade with Tiberghien’s exquisite voicing of the contrapuntal strands in the first variation. I enjoyed the latest of the sonatas, K481, unreservedly, whether in the players’ exuberant give-and-take in the outer movements or their rapt, innig Adagio, where Ibragimova sustains and shades her dulcet lines like a thoroughbred lyric soprano. Having begun this review in grudging mode, I’ll end in the hope that these delightful, inventive performances presage a complete series of Mozart’s mature violin sonatas, with or without a smattering of childhood works. (Gramophone)

Herbert Henck JEAN BARRAQUÉ Sonate pour piano

"Whole slabs of sound crumble and vanish between the all-engulfing ocean of silence, until only the twelve notes of the row remain, and even those are plucked off, one by one." André Hodeir's poetic characterization of Barraqué's Sonate as a work in which music finally loses an heroic battle against encroaching silence is better-known, perhaps, than the piece itself. Barraqué's Sonata has remained one of the toughest pianistic challenges in modern composition, a much-discussed and seldom played piece. With its oblique trajectory and staggered dying fall, its asymmetric and sometimes apparently irrational rhythms, and its buried or "negative" tone-rows, it remains a veritable Matterhorn of abstraction. Only a handful of pianists have faced up to it, among them Yvonne Loriod, Claude Helffer and Roger Woodward – whose 1972 recording of the sonata was considered, for a very long time, to be as far as any interpreter could get with this intentionally recalcitrant, secretive material. Musicologist Richard Toop has drawn attention to Barraqué's sympathy for Debussy's standpoint on the question of musical accessibility: "Music should really have been a hermetic science, hedged around by texts whose interpretation would be so long and difficult as to surely discourage that troop of people who make use of music as nonchalantly as one uses a pocket handkerchief."

"The Sonata defies real analysis,”  Hodeir had insisted in 1961, "It is unclassifiable, incomparable and, to some degree, still incommunicable." And yet even then, a handful of players had a sense of its worth. Composer Bill Hopkins was smitten by the Sonata, and listened to it "repeatedly, intently, with an overwhelming apprehension of living greatness. If music meant anything today, only here was that meaning fully grasped..." Barraqué himself was prepared to wait for these sentiments to be expressed more universally, estimating, in Propos Impromptu, that "it will take fifty years to establish if I am the musician others – including myself – think I am." His early death in 1973, at the age of 45, left his most ambitious undertaking, the sprawling cycle La Mort de Virgile, uncompleted, and deprived him of the opportunity to witness the beginnings of a revival of interest in his work, when the Piano Sonata would repeatedly be compared with the Boulez sonatas and with Beethoven's "Hammerklavier"  sonata op. 106.

Echo Collective JÓHANN JÓHANNSSON 12 Conversations with Thilo Heinzmann

Since his death in February 2018 aged 48, the Icelandic composer Jóhann Jóhannsson seems to have spawned a posthumous catalogue to rival Tupac Shakur’s. In the last 18 months, we’ve seen five film soundtracks that were completed shortly before his death, an expanded version of his debut album Englabörn, and an epic seven-disc Retrospective of early film soundtracks, including several previously unreleased scores (Retrospective II will follow soon). Also being unearthed from the archives is an album of fractured synth-pop that he recorded in 1999 under the name Dip, featuring assorted Icelandic indie royalty including Sugarcubes drummer Sigtryggur Baldursson, Jónsi from Sigur Rós and Emiliana Torrini.

Revisiting it now, Jóhannsson’s music seem oddly preoccupied with death. Sometimes, as with the soundtrack to Sicario, or the TV score to Trapped, his electro-acoustic soundscapes have the harrowing feel of a public execution. But generally, his music has an elegiac quality that seems tragically poignant in the months since his death. Nowhereis this more evident than on 12 Conversations, a suite inspired by the work of the German painter Thilo Heinzmann. Premiered with a British quartet in London three years ago (and since reworked by the Brussels-based Echo Collective, in line with Jóhannsson’s wishes), it was his first writing for a string quartet and sometimes sounds a little incomplete – there are moments where you expect to hear Jóhannsson’s trademark synth drones, or an arpeggio on a heavily dampered piano. But the spartan setting often enhances the grave, stately beauty, particularly when Jóhannsson starts to invokes early music. Shell resembles a Bach partita played in ultra-slow-motion; Low sounds like a Gregorian chant transcribed for strings; Lacrimoso is a heartbreaking, Vivaldi-like canon. There are a few moments where Jóhannsson hints at complexity – the baroque waltz Danse sees him shifting time signatures to disconcerting effect – and it’s tempting, if a little depressing, to imagine how he might have developed and matured in this setting. (John Lewis / The Guardian)

Dong Hyek Lim / BBC Symphony Orchestra / Alexander Vedernikov RACHMANINOV Piano Concerto No. 2 - Symphonic Dances

Lim Dong-hyek, the South Korean pianist, released his Rachmaninov Piano Concerto No. 2 album on Warner Classics. Four years ago, he put on a collaboration concert with BBC Symphony and Alexander Vedernikov and issued a Chopin Preludes album, which was chosen as one of the Gramophone Magazine’s Editor’s Choice recordings, and this marks Lim first concert recording. The pianist also played Rachmaninov’s Symphonic Dances for four hands with his teacher and sponsor Martha Argerich for his album. 

Piano Concerto No. 2 is one of Rachmaninov’s most popular works. His skills as the best contemporary technician are well demonstrated, with long and rich melodies and the sentimentality unique to the Russian composer deeply resonating.

Lim still boasts the intelligent and clinical precision that he showed off as teenager. The ability to interpret both lyrical and realistic sides of the work and mix them together with subtlety is his unique forte. In this aspect, Lim is much like his teacher Argerich. And the new album shows such a feature. In the second theme of the first movement, he drops the speed of his piano. This offers a detailed glimpse into Lim Dong-hyek's rubato. The diminishing dynamics causes an uncanny tension. This intelligent interpretation makes the conversation with the strings even more vibrant, accentuating Rachmaninov’s sentimentality. The same holds true in the slow theme of the third movement.

Symphonic Dances is the number that earned Lim and his teacher a standing ovation in their performance last Tuesday at Seoul Arts Center for “Beppu Argerich Festival in Seoul.” After playing this in Hamburg, Germany last year, Argerich said her best lifetime performance of the Symphonic Dances was with “Limichenko,” a nickname Argerich gave to Lim Dong-hyek.”

Marking their concert in Seoul, the album was released first in South Korea on Tuesday. Global release is scheduled in mid-September. Last year, a constellation of young pianists such as Daniil Trifonov, Yevgeny Sudbin, and Denis Matsuev, presented their interpretation Rachmaninov’s concerto album. Lim’s new album will certainly make a different voice among many.

Christian Tetzlaff / Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin / Robin Ticciati BEETHOVEN - SIBELIUS Violin Concertos

What we have here is by my calculations Christian Tetzlaff’s third recording of Beethoven’s Violin Concerto, the first two under Michael Gielen and David Zinman respectively. Having reviewed the latter in these pages back in June 2006, I noted then that ‘the main stumbling-block on so many rival recordings of this work is a sort of romantic reverence, a trend challenged by Zehetmair, Kremer and others. For all its many moments of profound repose, Beethoven’s Violin Concerto is a forthright, heroic piece, with boldly militaristic first movement tutti and a rollicking finale which Tetzlaff invests with numerous added colours. Following on the heels of Zehetmair, Kremer and Schneiderhan, [he] performs the violin version of the cadenza that Beethoven wrote for his piano transcription of the work, a playful excursion and a snug fit for his overall interpretation.’ This choice of cadenza has apparently been Tetzlaff’s preferred option from the age of 15.

Little has changed during the intervening years, at least in principle. Listening to Tetzlaff flying side-saddle through the Concerto last November (when this superbly engineered recording was made at Berlin’s Philharmonie), often with the utmost agility, reminded me that at the work’s premiere the composer’s violinist colleague Franz Clement – who was sight-reading Beethoven’s hastily finished solo part – is said, by some, ‘to have interrupted the concerto between the first and second movements with a solo composition of his own, played on one string of the violin held upside down’. Now do hear me out on this point. Tetzlaff may at times excitedly rushes his fences, but in collaboration with Robin Ticciati and his alert Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, he transforms aspects of what so many have treated as a sort of Holy Grail (ie loftily reverential) into a beer tankard, the sense of unhinged inebriation gaining most froth in the outer movements’ playful cadenzas, which run wild in the first movement and ratchet up extra excitement for the finale. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever heard a more excitable account of that closing Rondo. Here, as Tetzlaff himself says in a fascinating booklet interview, ‘the seriousness or solemnity sometimes surrounding the work is [also] completely suspended’. Of course, viewed as a whole the Concerto still emerges as the mighty edifice that it is, but it’s good to have a dose of typically Beethovenian rough-and-tumble thrown in as ballast.

The first movement’s serene central section (played in tempo) allows for a welcome spot of repose and elsewhere Tetzlaff’s sweet, delicately spun tone contrasts with, or should I say complements, Ticciati’s assertive, occasionally bullish accompaniment. The Larghetto is beautifully done, its effect underlined through the sheer energy and character of the outer movements. There’s never any doubt that what you’re listening to is a real concerto, a battle of wills, more in line with Zehetmair and Brüggen (who use Wolfgang Schneiderhan’s cadenza with timpani) or Kremer and Harnoncourt (a cadenza incorporating piano) than with the likes of Perlman, Zukerman or Kennedy. Who knows: maybe this is roughly what Beethoven originally had in mind? It’s possible, even probable. One thing’s for sure: never before has this indelible masterpiece sounded more like a profound precursor of Paganini.

If Beethoven’s Concerto emerges as uncompromisingly provocative, Tetzlaff’s Sibelius also errs on the side of danger. As risk-taking performances go, this one will have you clinging to the sides of your seat. Comparing it with his Virgin recording with the Danish National Symphony Orchestra under Thomas Dausgaard is especially instructive: in the finale’s opening, the ever-attentive Ticciati follows Sibelius’s wishes by cueing a gradual diminuendo before Tetzlaff enters, whereas Dausgaard carries on pounding at full throttle. Then again, in the passage leading to the second subject (from around 0'44"), under Ticciati Tetzlaff sounds as if he’s clinging on for dear life. Sibelius throws down the gauntlet by requesting a very fast tempo and Tetzlaff rises to the challenge. I shan’t pretend that the effect is entirely comfortable (the Dausgaard option sounds marginally safer) but it’s undeniably exciting. The Concerto’s opening is candidly emotional, with imaginatively deployed varieties of attack (a Tetzlaff speciality) and Ticciati again engaging his soloist with the utmost intensity, lunging fearlessly at Sibelius’s dynamic writing, whether the deafening growl at 7'07" or the movement’s fiercely driven close. As with the Beethoven, Tetzlaff is at his lyrical best in the Adagio. Both performances sidestep interpretative convention without either offending or displacing their finest rivals. In many respects, a real knock-out. (Rob Cowan / Gramophone)

LUDOVICO EINAUDI Seven Days Walking - Day Seven

Einaudi’s journey reaches its end. The embers of the campfire gently glow, the cold wind sheds its bite, golden butterflies flutter in the early morning light, the low mist dissolves into memories. 

The pianist performs utterly alone, without strings, on this beautiful seventh and final volume, as he treads the frozen Bavarian landscape for the last time. 

The music hardly rises above a whisper, piano hammers barely striking, each movement tranquil, hushed. A closing trilogy of movements—“Cold Wind Var. 2”, “Low Mist Var. 2” and “Campfire Var. 2”—reflect on the natural world and its fragility as Einaudi descends back to civilisation once more.

Chamber Orchestra of Europe / Yannick Nézet-Séguin MOZART Die Zauberflöte

“So many people”, notes Yannick Nézet-Séguin, “when they think ‘Mozart opera’, think of The Magic Flute. Since the beginning, since its creation, this work has always reached different kinds of audiences. It’s just one greatest hit after another”. Each of his cast’s singers owns the rare blend of vocal shading, dramatic presence and psychological insight needed to bring Mozart’s magical characters to life.

The conductor himself was praised by mundoclasico.com for conducting an “excellent” concert production of The Magic Flute at Baden-Baden with his “characteristic precision, musicality, expressive power and energy”, and for treating every nuance and every tiny but meaningful and performance-enhancing detail with “attention, love and dedication”. The same review also hailed Rolando Villazon’s first foray into the baritone repertoire, noting that “his vocal and dramatic gifts lent themselves perfectly to the comic role of Pagageno”. 

Villazón conceived the idea for Deutsche Grammophon’s Mozart cycle in 2011 while performing Don Giovanni at the Festspielhaus Baden-Baden with the COE and Maestro Nézet-Séguin. He developed the project in partnership with the conductor and DG, brought ROLEX on board as generous supporters, and has served as its joint artistic consultant from its inception. Four of the five recordings released so far have received Grammy nominations, with Le nozze di Figaro winning a prestigious Echo Klassik Award in 2017.

“This is my most ambitious artistic project to date”, recalls Villazón. “I’ve never fallen in love with any composer like this before!” Since launching the enterprise eight years ago with Don Giovanni, he has performed in each release, embracing everything from Ferrando in Così fan tutte to the title-role in La clemenza di Tito.

The Magic Flute was first performed at the Theater auf der Wieden, outside the ancient city walls of Vienna, in September 1791, barely two months before Mozart’s premature death. The show ran for over 100 performances within its first season and soon became a hit throughout Europe and beyond. It mixes music and spoken dialogue, humour and pathos, mystery and mankind’s search for wisdom. The opera balances earthy comedy with an exploration of the nature of individual freedom, fraternity, enlightened leadership and unconditional love, all expressed in music of simplicity and beauty. “I very much like the perspective of doing The Magic Flute now,” Nézet-Séguin reflects, “because it throws light on all the operas we’ve already recorded.”

MAX RICHTER Sleep Remixes

The remixes that are presented here are varied and add perfectly to the canvas that has been left behind to sonically daub on. The immediate interest here are the Mogwai and Clark one remixes. They are the acts that historically will deliver the more abrasive take on the tracks and subsequently the more subversive. Both acts do not disappoint. Conversely, the ‘short edits’ available here are far more interesting and accessible that the full remix tracks. To be brutal, there is very little difference between certain lengthy mixes and shortened mixes. The edited re-mixer track gets to the point quicker and by-passes the repetition of the outstanding sublime content of the SLEEP originals. This CD works perfectly well with the ‘short’ edited 7 mixes of the same track submitted by Mogwai, Clark, Digitonal’s Theo In Dreamland and Jürgen Müller. These additions are invaluable to the finished product.

In defense, all of the tracks and mixes offer much in terms of a unique, modern composer that is an obvious influence on contemporary composers such as Clint Mansell and John Murphy.

Max Richter is very much a name to be looking out for in the field of contemporary composers who are able to transcend the field of ‘popular’ music to create another usable product.

Alina Ibragimova / Cédric Tiberghien MOZART Violin Sonatas K11, K12, K302, K380, K526, K570, Variations K359

This revelatory series from Alina Ibragimova and Cédric Tiberghien benefits from offsetting works of Mozart’s middle-period and maturity with some of his earliest compositions. One of the joys of this set, expertly played and annotated (by Misha Donat), is the way these outstanding artists subtly shade the two early sonatas of 1764, fully endorsing Mozart’s original instruction that they ‘can be played with the accompaniment of a violin or transverse flute’. Accordingly, Ibragimova moves in and out of the textures as though applying deft touches of colour and shading to Tiberghien’s musical canvas. Both players keep everything perfectly in scale, voicing the eight-year-old genius’s inspiration with a poetic radiance that captures the ingenuous mood to perfection.

K302 in E flat major (1778) combines thematic intensity—complete with pseudo-orchestral skyrocket crescendos over a recurring figuration—with a heart-warming lyrical glow. Tiberghien shapes Mozart’s sighing figurations and passing chromaticisms with a lilting temporal sensitivity, while Ibragimova uses vibrato sparingly, preferring to colour her tone with micro-inflected bow strokes of infinite subtlety. Their combined musical imagination feels so intertwined that it emerges seemingly as the natural extension of a single interpretative personality.

This sense of gentle ecstatic communion is nowhere more acutely sensed than in the sonata many consider the finest of the series: K526 in A major of August 1787. Once again, so keenly attuned are Tiberghien and Ibragimova to each other’s musical proclivities, that at the point of contact it is difficult to imagine this score being played any other way. (Julian Haylock / BBC Music Magazine)

Alina Ibragimova / Cédric Tiberghien MOZART Violin Sonatas K8, K13, K26, K28, K303, K377, K378, K403, Variations K360

Such was Mozart’s creative genius that even when, as here, sonatas composed 17 years apart are juxtaposed against one another, one barely experiences a creative jolt. It also underlines how successfully Alina Ibragimova and Cédric Tiberghien immerse themselves in Mozart’s earliest published boyhood works as compared to the bracing genius of the music that poured forth during his mid-twenties. Those listeners used to the air of ‘greatness’ and expressive high-projection brought to the later works by Henryk Szeryng (Philips/Decca) and Itzhak Perlman (DG), in their very different ways, may initially feel a shade short-changed. Yet it is the Hyperion team who time and again demonstrate that a more intimate approach works wonders in capturing the essence of these exquisitely melodious and immaculately structured scores.

In the earliest work featured here, K8 in B flat, it feels as though centuries of interpretative accretion has been removed as Ibragimova and Tiberghien take flight in the opening Allegro with a bracing sense of forward momentum that creates the uncanny impression of floating on air. The tricky Minuet finale also goes like a dream, with no self-conscious pointing of the dance rhythms or furrowed-brow introspection when the music turns towards the minor key. By the time he composed the C major Sonata, K403, Mozart was interspersing major and minor modes with infinite more subtlety, and here the exquisite finesse of this cherishable team put them in a class apart. (Julian Haylock / BBC Music Magazine)

Alina Ibragimova / Cédric Tiberghien MOZART Violin Sonatas K27, K31, K296, K306, K454, K547

This seasoned duo's two-disc-for-one Mozart package takes in six works spanning more than 20 years from the two juvenile essays (K27, K31) of 1766 to his final sonata, K547 ('For Beginners'), of 1788. It is true to its 'for keyboard and violin' billing, because pianist Cédric Tiberghien's contribution sounds consistently more prominent than that of his partner. Such a recorded imbalance may be intentional, given the overall lesser significance of the violin part in most of these works; but it is a miscalculation in the more equitably matched K454, where Ibragimova seemingly underplays the grandeur of its introductory Largo and is too distant in its playful Allegro and jovial rondo. Even in the expressive, more violin-centric Andante, one begs a more balanced listening experience.

Nevertheless, these two outstanding Mozartians give characteristically intelligent, individual and invigorating accounts on modern instruments. They demonstrate unanimity of intent, refined musicianship, alert, vital phrasing and excellent timing; sample the buoyant rhythms and crisply articulated passagework of the outer movements of K296 and the honeyed cantilena of its Andante sostenuto. They bring out the full quirkiness of the two early sonatas, Ibragimova introducing some playful interpolations into the Allegro of K31. Both players skilfully characterise its Tempo di menuetto variations.

Their reading of K547 is persuasive, Ibragimova adding subtleties of nuance and rubato and occasionally taking some of the limelight. Her silky-toned, lyrical playing in the expressive central movement of K306 is an aural delight, and both protagonists revel in the humour, drama and sheer invention of the ensuing operatic finale. (Robin Stowell / The Strad)

Alina Ibragimova / Cédric Tiberghien MOZART Violin Sonatas K6, K7, K9, K15, K29, K305, K376,K402

Alina Ibragimova is, in many ways, an ideal interpreter for this double disc of (mainly) early Mozart sonatas. Ibragimova's interest in 'modern' as well as 'period-instrument' playing is reflected in a sensitive reading (here on modern instruments) and her sense of period taste conforms very much to current expectations of Mozart performance—the sound, delivered with immaculate cleanliness, is well-balanced and translucent, with sparing vibrato, intelligent, small-scale phrasing, and some fastidious pianism by Cédric Tiberghien.

The performances are extremely consistent technically and musically, but one might draw out, for example, the lively, clean voicing of the first movement of K402 and a thoughtful fugal second movement. The D major Sonata K7 includes a prescient slow movement, full of proto-Romantic gestures. The final A major Sonata ends the set with a well-known and loved work, delivered with aplomb.

There are few limitations here that can be voiced reasonably, although a little more fire might energise the rhetorical gestures in the B flat major Sonata's first movement. This really is splitting hairs, though, and such aspects create a more human connection with performances hat are otherwise almost too perfect to be fully relatable. Overal, however, this is a very enjoyable pair of discs. (David Milsom / The Strad)

Alina Ibragimova / Cédric Tiberghien BRAHMS Violin Sonatas

‘Such a well-established and often inspirational musical partnership that I inevitably had high hopes for their Brahms sonatas, and I’m so happy to report that they were in no way disappointed. Right from the start (the first movement of the G major sonata), there’s a confessional intimacy that allows them to steadily build over the entire ten minute span of the first movement to a properly ecstatic conclusion rarely achieved as well as it is here. No extreme tempos, an unerring sense of give and take—you might be surprised how many estimable players don’t seem to know when to allow the other party to take the limelight. The climaxes are telling, without hectoring. They allow the music to speak eloquently, conversationally, surprisingly gently sometimes, and the recording is as well balanced as the playing. I have a handful of favourite recordings of the Brahms violin sonatas that will now have to shuffle up to make space for this one.’ (BBC Record Review)

Jan Lisiecki / Academy of St Martin in the Fields BEETHOVEN Complete Piano Concertos

Getting a head start on the impending Beethoven 2020 festivities, Canada's Jan Lisiecki has today surprised us with Beethoven: Complete Piano Concertos, his fifth album for the Deutsche Grammophon label.

The three-CD set was recorded in December 2018 at Berlin's Konzerthaus, one of the stops on Lisiecki's tour with the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, when he was filling in for an indisposed Murray Perahia.

"The substitution for Murray Perahia was presented to me as a proposal to play any two Beethoven concertos," Lisiecki explained to CBC Music recently. "When I understood the concept of the tour, I requested that if I am indeed to substitute, the original structure would be upheld and I would play all five concertos on tour and in Berlin."

The recording, produced in a matter of a few days, was quickly chosen by Lisiecki's label, Deutsche Grammophon, to launch its Beethoven 2020 rollout. "The recording is entirely live, we could only record the rehearsal and the concert; no touch-up sessions were available. The final result, I hope, is a reflection of a very successful and dynamic live cycle of these concertos."

As with his February 2019 Mendelssohn release with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, for this set of Beethoven concertos Lisiecki and the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields performed without a conductor.

"I love working with a conductor, and I also thoroughly enjoy working directly with the orchestra musicians," he notes. "The vigour, the focus, the musicianship are all heightened by the direct contact between the musicians and the soloist, and we do everything as one. It is often said that all orchestral performances are an enlarged form of chamber music, but I think this holds true especially in such a compressed setting."

Elizaveta Frolova CENTURIES OF PIANO

Elizaveta Frolova belongs to the up coming new generation of pianists. Born in Moscow on July 14th in 1990, she received her first piano lessons at the age of six. In 2005 she entered the Academic Music College under the Moscow State Tchaikovsky Conservatory in the class of Vera Choroshina, who had herself been a student of the Heinrich Neuhaus. In 2009 she graduated with distinction from the College and joined the class of Jacques Rouvier at the National Superior Conservatory of Paris for Music and Dance. Elizaveta participated in master-classes with many world-renowned professors, including Dmitriy Bashkirov, Dominique Merlet, Emanuelle Krasovsky, Giovanni Bellucci.

Elizaveta is a winner of various international piano competitions such as Maria Yudina International Piano Competition (Russia), Yakov Flier International Piano Competition (Russia), International Piano Competition in Monrond-les-Bains (France), Nicolai Rubinstein International Piano Competition (France). She won the first prize at Alexander Scriabin International Piano Competition (France), Berlin International Piano Competition (Germany), International Piano Competition in Vulaines-sur-Seine (France), Mayenne International Piano Competition (France), International Piano Competition Citta di Airola (Italy). 

In recognition of her artistic and scholarly accomplishments Elizaveta was awarded several scholarships. In 2008 she obtained the Grant of the President of Russia Vladimir Putin. Elizaveta also enjoys chamber music collaborations. In 2008 she was a prizewinner of the International Duo Competition in Sweden. In 2011 Elizaveta entered the chamber music class in Paris Conservatory (Prof. Philippe Bernolde) with Raphael Severe and Ji young Yun. Elizaveta is frequently invited to classical music international festivals. Her performances have been broadcast on television and radio in Russia, Italy, France, Poland and Sweden.

Choir of Trinity College Cambridge / Stephen Layton FINZI

What a beautifully crafted disc this is – not just in its quality (and it really is Trinity at their absolute best) but also in its shape and programming. An all-Finzi recital sounds straightforward enough; but in opening with the Magnificat and closing with the monumental anthem Lo, the full, final sacrifice, Stephen Layton transforms it from a collage into a cycle. We move from birth to death, Incarnation to Crucifixion, from the anticipation of the Annunciation to the fulfilment of the Eucharist.

The composer’s secular music is also carefully folded into this sacred narrative. The fragility and brush-away slightness of Finzi’s Robert Bridges settings and the part-song ‘White-flowering days’ come into their own here – portraits of a world already receding into the distance, the Calvary Cross rising up in the foreground.

He may have given us concertos and anthems, cantatas and chamber music but Finzi is, above all, a song composer. Trinity and Layton never let you forget that in performances in which 30 voices sing as one, where collective statements become private, lyric utterances. There’s a lightness to the unisons (a recurring Finzi gesture) and an organic, blossoming quality to the counterpoint that gives these choral works a first-person immediacy. Which makes it all the more startling when the congregation does burst in, reminding us where we are.

You have to hear the filmy, rhapsodic lightness of the Henry Vaughan setting ‘Welcome sweet and sacred feast’ to really startle at the arresting opening of ‘God is gone up’ (where the choir are joined by Trinity Brass, led by no less than David Blackadder on trumpet) – a trick Layton plays again by cutting from the brilliance of the lithe, ecstatic ‘Wherefore tonight so full of care’ into the sober, muttered darkness of Lo, the full, final sacrifice.

Finzi’s Magnificat famously lacks either a Gloria or an answering Nunc dimittis. Rather than use Holst’s familiar setting of the latter, Layton instead gives us David Bednall’s graceful 2016 setting. It’s a work with too much of its own voice for straight pastiche, but which is absolutely steeped in Finzi’s language – an affectionate, serious musical homage that takes the composer as a jumping-off point for its own lovely invention. Along with the beautiful cover art – an image of Gloucester Cathedral’s Finzi Memorial Window – and excellent booklet notes by Francis Pott, it’s just another bonus from this outstanding release. (Alexandra Coghlan / Gramophone)

Ann Hallenberg / Stile Galante / Stefano Aresi THE FARINELLI MANUSCRIPT

With The Farinelli Manuscript Ann Hallenberg, accompanied by Stefano Aresi and Stile Galante, offers a scintillating reading of the music known to have been sung by the castrato Carlo Broschi during his 23-year stay in Spain (and sent as a present to the Empress Maria Theresa). Described as “a force of nature”, displaying flawless coloratura and a purity of timbre, the Swedish mezzo follows her previous appearance on Glossa with Aresi (a disc devoted to music associated with the later castrato Luigi Marchesi) with a spirited demonstration of the musicality which so attracted Farinelli to listeners at the Spanish court.

Enticed to Madrid at the height of his powers in 1737 Farinelli provided regular concerts for the Spanish queens, Elisabetta Farnese and Maria Barbara de Bragança and their respective husbands, Felipe V and Fernando VI, singing some 8 or 9 arias at these soirées. According to present-day attributions, amongst the compositional hands discernible in the manuscript is the work of musicians active in Madrid: Niccolo Conforto, Giovanni Battista Mele and Farinelli himself. The music of other prominent Italian composers of the time – Giay, Latilla and Giacomelli – also appear in the manuscript.

Hallenberg sings the written-out ornaments and da capos appearing in Farinelli’s manuscript, with Aresi providing others and following the precise instrumentation and ensemble layout as detailed in court archives. Aresi also contributes an essay for the booklet which continues the debunking of historical misinformation surrounding Farinelli’s time in Madrid.

Marie-Nicole Lemieux / Orchestre National Bordeaux Aquitaine / Paul Daniel MER(S)

 

MER(S) brings together three sumptuous late-19th century works for female voice and orchestra: Chausson’s Poème de l’amour et de la mer, Elgar’s Sea Pictures and, in a world premiere recording, an ‘ode-symphonie’ by Victorin Joncières entitled La mer. Following her triumphant performance as Cassandre in Berlioz’s Les Troyens, Marie-Nicole Lemieux embarks on this musical sea voyage in the company of the Orchestre et choeurs nationaux Bordeaux Aquitaine under their music director Paul Daniel.

I Bassifondi / Simone Vallerotonda ROMA '600

A journey through seventeenth-century Rome, the rough and magnificent city where Caravaggio and Stradella lived. Strict counterpoint and learned polyphony in the lute and keyboard pieces by Kapsberger, Pasquini and Frescobaldi mingle with light dances and popular songs for guitar. Improvisation is the feature linking both sound-worlds: the high culture of church chapels and noble palaces, and the lore of streets and taverns. A careful study of the original sources guided our choices as to instruments and interpretation. According to historically informed practice, the celebrated Antidotum Tarantulæ and further early specimens of tarantella, as written down by the Jesuit scholar Athanasius Kircher, are played on bagpipes, drums and guitars.

While on their first album ‘Alfabeto Falso’ I Bassifondi refreshed the image of the Baroque guitar and its harmonic extravaganzas, with ‘Roma 600’ the ensemble brings the music of seventeenth century Rome back to life with inspired and imaginative improvisation. Soprano Emőke Barath and violinist Enrico Onofri are the distinguished guest artists who join I Bassifondi in this new adventure.

Patricia Kopatchinskaja / Camerata Bern TIME & ETERNITY

Time and Eternity. Always in search of powerful musical experiences, the violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja and Camerata Bern – of which she has just taken over the artistic direction – here juxtapose Hartmann’s Concerto funebre, composed in 1939 to express his indignation at the Nazis’ terror, and the Polyptyque for violin and orchestra that Frank Martin wrote in 1973 for Yehudi Menuhin, a work inspired by six scenes from the Passion of Christ painted by Duccio di Buoninsegna around 1310. The Kyrie from Machaut’s Messe de Nostre Dame, composed half a century after the altarpiece and heard here in an arrangement for strings, is interspersed between the movements, along with Bach chorales, ‘as an invocation of eternal consolation’. A Polish folksinger interprets the Jewish song ‘Eliyahu hanavi’, which expresses the hope of salvation and which Hartmann quotes in his concerto. Six hundred years of music to ‘make the victims’ voices heard’, says Patricia Kopatchinskaja. The album opens with Kol Nidrei by John Zorn (born 1953), in response to the eponymous prayer spoken by a representative of the Jewish community. A Catholic priest and an Orthodox priest also say a short prayer.

Magdalena Kožená & Friends SOIRÉE

Soirée captures the atmosphere of informal, domestic music making. Czech star mezzo-soprano Magdalena Kožená offers an intimate and highly personal collection of international songs together with an outstanding group of musical friends, including Sir Simon Rattle, who makes his recording debut as a pianist. The German lied is represented by Brahms (Two Songs, Op. 91 and Five Ophelia Songs, WoO 22) and Strauss (Morgen!), the French chanson by Chausson (Chanson perpétuelle) and Ravel (Chansons madécasses), and 20th-century avant-gardism with Stravinsky’s Three Songs from William Shakespeare. In between these explorations, Kožená revisits her musical roots with a selection of Dvořák songs, arranged by Duncan Ward, as well as Janáček’s Nursery Rhymes.
Soirée is the second release of Magdalena Kožená’s exclusive collaboration with PENTATONE, after having presented the baroque cantatas recital album Il giardino dei sospiri in 2019.

Daniel Barenboim / Michael Barenboim / Kian Soltani MOZART Piano Trios

Deutsche Grammophon releases Daniel Barenboim’s latest album, Mozart: Piano Trios, featuring Kian Soltani (cello) and Michael Barenboim (violin).

In the album’s program notes, Artistic Director of Mozartwoche and acclaimed tenor Rolando Villazón shares:

“There is a delicious combination of mastery and innocence in their interpretation, the music is Mozart’s, they have stolen it from him with great respect, and now it is theirs.”

Céline Moinet / l'arte del mondo / Werner Ehrhardt BACH Oboe Concertos

Céline Moinet is often asked why she decided to become an oboe player. She was adamant: she did not want to play a brass or stringed instrument or even a piano – it had to be woodwind. After having begun, as most children do, with the recorder, she turned at age 7 to the oboe, which had captivated her from the word go. On her new album she takes a look at Johann Sebastian Bach: "Here, the oboe becomes the narrator."

Together with the prizewinning instrumental ensemble l’arte del mondo under Werner Ehrhardt she combines a historically-informed orchestral sound with her modern Marigaux oboe. The musicians have recorded Bach's three oboe concertos: BWV 1059, 1053r and 1055 as well as the sinfonias to the cantatas "Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen" and "Ich hatte viel Bekümmernis" in which the solo oboe is the focus. "Bach's cantatas were my first port of call. They are a rich, sophisticated source of literature for oboists; one might say they are the quintessence of his music," says Moinet. Following on from her last album centred on Schumann's Romances she enters a very different sound world this time round, though not one that is a stranger to her: she heard Alessandro Marcello's oboe concerto very early on, the second movement of which Bach ornamented. "I have strong childhood memories of the work."

On her new album "Bach: Oboe Concertos" Céline Moinet takes a look at Johann Sebastian Bach. Together with the instrumental ensemble l'arte del mondo, which plays on historical instruments, she dedicates herself to the three oboe concertos BWV 1059, 1053 and 1055 by Bach as well as the symphonies of the cantatas "Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen" and "Ich hatte viel Bekümmernis", in which the solo oboe is in focus. "Here the oboe becomes the narrator," says Moinet.

Brian Thornton / Afendi Yusuf / Spencer Myer DEBUSSY Cello Sonata BRAHMS Clarinet Trio

For his latest album on the Steinway & Sons label, cellist Brian Thornton continues his exploration of great sonatas, this time opening his album with Debussy’s Cello Sonata, which marked the composers first return to chamber music since the String Quartet of 1893. While Debussy was greatly interested in Baroque music, his love for cutting edge musical trends led him to combine many early music elements with harmonies and playing techniques that were modern in his day. One notable example of this can be seen in the second and third movements of the piece, which are played without pause. They feature whimsical mood changes and a variety of special techniques used by the cellist. The last movement alternates between an animated first theme and bursts of dreamy free rhythm sections that juxtapose new and old musical styles.

The second half of the album is devoted to Brahms’ Clarinet Trio, Op. 114. Thornton and Myer, who recorded the composer’s Cello Sonatas for the Steinway label in 2017, are joined here by clarinetist and Thornton’s fellow Cleveland Orchestra member Afendi Yusuf. During a period where Brahms was considering retiring from composition, the revered composer found new inspiration in the clarinet, which he had never used in a chamber work before. In 1891, Brahms met Richard Mühlfeld, principal clarinet in Meiningen, and was immediately entranced. He wrote four major works for the instrument within a short period of time, including the Clarinet Trio featured on this record. According to Peter Laki’s liner notes, the combination of cello, clarinet, and piano in the Clarinet Trio “emphasizes the lower, darker register, which suits the emotional character of the work” and allows each instrument to play off the other in the special way that only Brahms knew how to evoke.

Miyako Arishima TAKEMITSU - SZYMANOWSKI - CHOPIN - SEROCKI Works for Solo Piano

Steinway & Sons releases the debut album from up-and-coming Japanese pianist Miyako Arishima. The album blends two vastly different, yet kindred worlds: the Romantic, embodied by the music of Frédéric Chopin, and the twentieth century, represented by the works of Toru Takemitsu, Karol Szymanowski, and Kazimierz Serocki. 

Although the record heavily features Polish repertoire, Rain Tree Sketch by Toru Takemitsu, arguably the greatest Japanese composer of the twentieth century, kicks off the album. This piece, written in 1982, reflects the essence of Takemitsu’s composition style, blending Western themes with Japanese cultural roots. Although the piece is short, it focuses on the relationship between meticulously produced notes and silence.

There are two pieces by Polish composer Karol Szymanowski featured on this record: Métopes, Op. 29: Nausicaa, and 2 Mazurkas, Op. 62. The first of the two, Nausicaa, was written while the composer was under the sway of aesthetic impressions from Doric temple friezes at the Palermo museum, and as a result was heavily inspired by Greek mythology. The second, 2 Mazurkas, are later works which form the final opus of Szymanowski, and are distinct from the composer’s earlier works in their softer rhythmic contours and distinct arabesque character.

Three works by Frédéric Chopin, including 4 Mazurkas, Op. 33, the sixth of the composer’s mazurka sets, showcases the signature liveliness of the mazurka, a traditional Polish dance set in triple time, through nostalgic, popular melodies and elaborate minor-mode settings.

Rounding out the recording is the seven-part Suite of Preludes by Kazimierz Serocki, who would later become a radical representative of the Polish avant-garde. This piece is notable for its unorthodox incorporation of Arnold Schönberg’s famous twelve-tone serialism, and its blend of the Chopin-era and post-Chopin musical traditions.

Frankfurt Radio Symphony / Andrés Orozco-Estrada RICHARD WAGNER Overtures & Preludes

Energy, elegance and spirit - this is what especially distinguishes Andrés Orozco-Estrada as a musician. In 2014/15, he took over the position as Chief Conductor of the Frankfurt Radio Symphony and became Music Director of the Houston Symphony Orchestra. In the 2020/21 season he becomes also Principal Conductor of the Vienna Symphony Orchestra.

Born in Medellín (Colombia), Andrés Orozco-Estrada began his musical studies on the violin. At the age of 15 he received his first conducting lessons and in 1997 he moved to Vienna in order to study at the University of Music and Performing Arts with Uroš Lajovic, himself a pupil of the legendary Hans Swarowsky. Orozco-Estrada lives in Vienna.

Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin / Bernhard Forck HANDEL Concerti grossi Op. 6 (1-6)

The Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin kickstarts their Handel trilogy with this recording of the first six concerti grossi op. 6. Originally designed as attractive interludes to English oratorio performances, Handel’s concerti grossi soon gained fame as the most appealing orchestral music of the baroque era. Written in London in 1739, towards the end of his career, Handel paid tribute to the immensely popular concerti grossi of Corelli while simultaneously proving his mastery incorporating all musical styles of his times. Led by their concertmaster Bernhard Forck, the players of the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin demonstrate why many consider them the best baroque ensemble of today. This first installment will be followed by the last six concerti grossi op. 6, as well as a recording of the concerti grossi op. 3. The ensemble’s first PENTATONE album, Cantata (2018) with countertenor Bejun Mehta, won a Diapason d’or.

ChangYong Shin BEETHOVEN - LISZT - CHOPIN

On July 5, 2019, the Steinway & Sons label releases a new album from ChangYong Shin, whose 2018 Steinway recording of Bach, Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven was named among the best releases of the year by WQXR. Shin is the winner of multiple competitions, including the 2018 Rencontre Internationale des Pianistes "Prix Zygmunt Zaleski,” the 2017 Seoul International Piano Competition, the 2016 Hilton Head International Piano Competition, and the 2018 Gina Bachauer International Artist Piano Competition.

The album, titled Beethoven, Liszt, Chopin, features works by all three composers performed with the brilliant technique that is a hallmark of ChangYong Shin. Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 30 in E major was written after the formidable Hammerklavier Sonata and provides a more intimate listening experience. The work is characterized by a decidedly original approach to the traditional sonata form, with a marked focus on different variations of the theme in the third movement. Franz Liszt’s Bénédiction de Dieu dans la solitude, which translates to “The Blessing of God in Solitude,” is a selection from his 1847 piano cycle, “Harmonies poétiques et religieuses,” or “Poetic and Religious Harmonies.” This piece acts as a meditation on the blessings that can be found when one is alone with God. Three Waltzes from Chopin follow, providing a light, joyous riot of sound to round out the record.

Tasmin Little / John Lenehan CLARA SCHUMANN - DAME ETHEL SMYTH - AMY BEACH

The renowned violinist and exclusive Chandos artist Tasmin Little returns with a line-up of three women composers whose lives share some features but also significant differences that illustrate the complex lives of female musicians.

Clara Schumann, Dame Ethel Smyth, and Amy Beach all came from families that encouraged their musical interests but balked, in varying degrees, at professional training and engagement. All three composers draw on the influence of Robert Schumann and Brahms; Beach and Smyth, in particular, were fond of metrical and motivic manipulation.

Tasmin Little plays this music, so close to her heart, with her usual warmth and dexterity. The manuscript of Clara Schumann’s final chamber work, Three Romances, declares it ‘for piano and violin’, an ordering reflected in the relative complexity of the parts, the florid passagework here played beautifully by Little’s long-term collaborator, John Lenehan.

PHILIP GLASS Music in Twelve Parts. Concert à Paris,1975

Glass originally wrote Part I of Music in Twelve Parts in early 1971: ““The first movement was originally intended to stand on its own and the ‘Twelve Parts’ in the title referred to twelve lines of counterpoint in the score,” he explained. 

“I called it Music in Twelve Parts because the keyboards played six lines, there were three wind players involved, and I had originally planned to augment the ensemble to bring in three more lines, for a total of twelve.

I played it for a friend of mine and, when it was through, she said, ‘That’s very beautiful; what are the other eleven parts going to be like?’ And I thought that was an interesting misunderstanding and decided to take it as a challenge and go ahead and compose eleven more parts.”

The previously unreleased concert from 1975 features the Philip Glass Sextet performing five tracks at La Maison de Radio Paris – part 1, 2, 3, 11 and 12. The group was composed of Philip Glass, Jon Gibson, Dickie Landry, Michael Riesman, Joan La Barbara and Richard Peck.  (Gabriela Helfet)

Danish String Quartet PRISM II

The Danish String Quartet’s Grammy-nominated Prism project links Bach fugues, late Beethoven quartets and works by modern masters. In volume two of the series, Bach’s Fugue in Bb minor from the Well-Tempered Clavier (in the arrangement by Viennese composer Emanuel Aloys Förster) is brought together with Beethoven’s String Quartet Op. 130 and Alfred Schnittke’s String Quartet No.3 (composed in 1983). As the quartet explains, “A beam of music is split through Beethoven’s prism. The important thing to us is that these connections be experienced widely. We hope the listener will join us in the wonder of thee beams of music that travel all the way from Bach through Beethoven to our own times.” Recorded in historic Reitstadel Neumarkt and produced by Manfred Eicher, the album is issued as the Danish String Quartet embarks on a tour with dates on both sides of the Atlantic, climaxing with a run of Prism concerts on the West Coast of the U.S. The Quartet plays the full Prism cycle at La Jolla Music Society over five concerts in late November.

Brian Thornton / Spencer Meyer ROBERT SCHUMANN Works for Cello & Piano

Cellists like to bemoan the paucity of repertory for their instrument, but somehow they overlook the pieces on this fine release by cellist Brian Thornton and pianist Spencer Myer, both musicians associated with the musically rich but underrated Cleveland, Ohio, area. True, two of the main attractions, the Adagio and Allegro, Op. 70, and Fantasiestücke, Op. 73, are better known in other versions, for horn and clarinet, respectively, but Schumann explicitly said that either could be played by a cello and indeed they arguably gain from such treatment. Sample the first of the Fantasiestücke, where the intensity resulting from the cello's prolonged residence in its upper register parallels, and is probably preferable, to an inferior horn performance. Another attraction is the set of Fünf Stücke im Volkston (Five Pieces in Folk Style), which perhaps have been ignored because of their seeming simplicity. In fact this is deceptive; although formally simple, the pieces combine subtle treatment of register, passionate melodies, and a full measure of Schumann's pictorial skill. They get superb, strong performances here from Thornton and Myer, who avoid the temptation to tone the music down and make it cute. Another strong point of the recording is the sound. Steinway's engineers abandon their usual northeastern haunts for a studio at Ohio's Oberlin College with fine results; the intimate but not overbearing sound makes it easy for you to put yourself in the shoes of the music's original hearers. American chamber playing at its best. (James Manheim)

Mahan Esfahani BACH The Toccatas

Bach's first biographer, Johann Forkel, dubbed BWV910 - 916 ‘Jugendübungen’, but the toccatas are decidedly more than 'youthful exercises. In them the emerging composer cut his teeth in the flamboyant, improvisatory ‘phantasticus' style, and delved into improbably extended fugal writing (the C minor’s spreading luxuriantly across ten pages in the Bärenreiter Urtext). They overflow with the passions and excesses of youth, and, consumed end-to-end, can make for a daunting listen. But under Mahan Esfahani’s fleet fingers, and even fleeter imagination, they positively fly—invigorating vehicles for his custom-built harpsichord complete with thunderous 16-foot stop whose bottom Ds in BWV913 sound like heralds of the apocalypse.

If his fondness for the 16-foot beast can occasionally become a little wearying, and the instrument’s hearty resonance in a closely recorded sound picture sometimes obtrudes, these are readily forgotten as Esfahani continually finds more in the music than the page might suggest. (There’s a section in the F sharp minor where Bach surrenders to a sequence that goes round and round like a piece of forlorn luggage abandoned on an airport carousel!) Fugues that in other performances outstay their welcome simply don’t. Esfahani perfectly understands the toccatas’ architecture, yet celebrates their quirkiness and, interrogating every note, is generous with expressive pauses. Perhaps the D major’s first Allegro is a tad brusque, but the über-phantasticus opening to the D minor is relished to its Gothic hilt; the pacing of the epic C minor fugue is masterly; and its G minor cousin’s all-consuming swagger is irresistible. (Paul Riley)

Shani Diluka / Orchestre de Chambre de Paris / Ben Glassberg TEMPÉRAMENTS

Shani Diluka has given us some unusual programmes on the Mirare label in the past, including Schubert’s final great sonata with an assortment of other short pieces by the master, and Road 66 with American composers. So what are we to make of this assortment of C.P.E. Bach solo works, plus one concerto, a couple of pieces by Mozart and a change of instrument in the last 10 minutes?
Quite a lot as it happens. Diluka’s way with C.P.E. Bach is deeply poetic and involving in the opening Andante con tenerezza, with the sharpest of contrasts in the spectacular Solfeggietto that follows. The weight here is somewhat in favour of Bach over Mozart, and we are kept in anticipation as to “the filial, even spiritual relationship” between these two composers. The Variations sur le thème de la Folia has just about everything, from tender reminiscence to extrovert showmanship that at times looks as much towards Beethoven as anything else. Diluka’s touch is pearlescent in the quieter music, with plenty of colour and steely edge when the mood changes.

The Concerto in D minor might seem like a centrepiece, but in many ways feels more like a continuation of the wide expressive palette to which we’ve been treated until now. The Orchestre de chambre de Paris is given an early music finish with harpsichord continuo adding spice to the refined string sound and the modern piano is a hefty machine against this backdrop, but the music and musicianship are both superb, with Bach’s declamatory drama presented with emphasis in the opening Allegro. The central Poco andante is more Mozartean, with simple textures and expressive lines exchanging between soloist and orchestra, the final Allegro assai drawing on dramatic techniques that connect us with Vivaldi as well as propelling us into the explosive extremes of C.P.E. Bach’s personal idiom. The link with Mozart is given some added brushstrokes in well-placed cadenzas by Shani Diluka that refer to Mozart’s Concerto D. 466, one that shares its D minor tonality with this work.
Bach’s Abschied von meinem Silbermanischen Klaviere in einem Rondo is another special choice in the context of this programme, given that we’re comparing period with modern instruments as well as composers. Full of contemplative reflection and “nourished by the imagination of lost sounds” this is both a reminiscence and an exploration, with some striking moments which demand repeated hearing. Having become attuned to C.P.E. Bach, Mozart’s Sonata in A minor K.310 does indeed take on a new aspect. Diluka doesn’t change her touch particularly between composers, so there is an almost seamless transition and we hear Mozart’s contrasts in the light of what has gone before. It is only as the form develops and Mozart’s individual shaping of his musical paragraphs roll out that we sense a different imagination at work. Mozart’s dramas are less fleeting in this work, though the contrasts are in many ways no less extreme. Diluka doesn’t force the point in the opening Allegro maestoso, but she doesn’t really have to. Mozart’s operatic side comes more to the fore in the central Andante cantabile con espressione, the notes gathering into vocal ensembles as much as they can be aria-like. C.P.E. Bach is more cabaret than opera with these kinds of mood, surprising us with quick changes and variety, where Mozart reaches out with longer arcs, the diversions from which are given time to take on more concrete identities. I really like Diluka’s touch in this piece; not overdoing things, but delivering each emotive high point with the right kind of weight.
There is an inevitable disturbing drop in pitch between the modern piano and the 1790 Walter fortepiano, reportedly Mozart’s favourite type of piano, in a faithful copy by Chris Maene. Mozart’s Fantaisie in D minor K.397, one of his most C.P.E. Bach-like pieces, sounds superb on this instrument. Silky softness contrasts with metallic edges to maximise the sort of effect Mozart must have been after, Diluka proving her skill in keeping things together on an instrument with a fragility to its sound that only adds to the intensity of the experience.
The programme ends with a reprise of the Andante con tenerezza on this fortepiano, which makes for an interesting comparison between instruments. The lack of sustain makes for a less lyrical performance, but by no means a less interesting one. Diluka gets to the heart of this music and takes us with her very effectively. This programme might seem a little eccentric at first glance, but all is justified by the time you reach the end and have the feeling you’d want to hear it all over again straight away. With excellent recorded sound and wonderful playing, this is a path strewn with gems you just want to pick up and take home to keep. (Dominy Clements)