Alisa Weilerstein BACH

                                                                         BACH

Gili Schwarzman / Guy Braunstein / Susanna Yoko Henkel / Amihai Grosz / Alisa Weilerstein OLD SOULS

                                                                     OLD SOULS

Inon Barnatan / Academy of St. Martin in the Fields / Alan Gilbert BEETHOVEN Piano Concertos - Part 1

One of the most admired pianists of his generation, Inon Barnatan kicks off his complete Beethoven piano concertos cycle with this double album, together with the Academy of St Martin in the Fields and maestro Alan Gilbert. Ranging from the classical First and romantic Third to the experimental Fourth Piano Concerto, and closing with the festive Triple Concerto, Barnatan and his colleagues display the exceptional expressive range and stylistic diversity of Beethoven’s musical language. For the Triple Concerto, Barnatan joins forces with violinist Stefan Jackiw and cellist Alisa Weilerstein. This recording project bears the fruit of longstanding and profound musical friendships, and – surprisingly – offers the first integral recording of Beethoven piano concertos by the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, one of the most-recorded ensembles in the world of classical music.
Inon Barnatan is one of the most admired pianists of his generation (New York Times), now making his PENTATONE debut, to be followed by another Beethoven piano concertos album in 2020. The Academy of St Martin in the Fields has built a consistent repertoire with the label throughout the years, whereas Alisa Weilerstein presented the first result of her exclusive collaboration with PENTATONE in 2018 with Transfigured Night. Stefan Jackiw and Alan Gilbert make their PENTATONE debut.

Alisa Weilerstein / Trondheim Soloists TRANSFIGURED NIGHT

Transfigured Night brings together two outstanding composers associated with Vienna: Joseph Haydn and Arnold Schoenberg. The former is often seen as the oldest representative of the “First Viennese School”, whereas the latter founded the “Second Viennese School”, using the classicism of his predecessors to explore new, atonal musical paths into the twentieth century. By combining Haydn’s two cello concertos (in C-major and D-major) and Schoenberg’s symphonic poem Verklärte Nacht – in the 1943 edition for string orchestra – this album sheds a new, fascinating light on both Viennese masters.

The connection between the stylistically contrasting pieces on this album is further enhanced by the inspired playing of American cellist Alisa Weilerstein and the Trondheim Soloists. For Weilerstein, this album is not only a fascinating exploration of the rich Viennese musical heritage, but just as much a confrontation with the dark history of a city her grandparents had to flee in 1938. Transfigured Night is Weilerstein’s first album as an exclusive PENTATONE artist, as well as the first album recorded with the Trondheim Soloists since her appointment as Artistic Partner of the ensemble in 2017. (PENTATONE)

Mari Samuelsen / Håkon Samuelsen JAMES HORNER Pas de Deux

Pas de Deux is not a James Horner score for an unknown film but a freestanding composition, being billed as his first foray into classical music since the 1980s. Leaving aside the question of whether film scores qualify as classical music, it seems pretty clear that those who like Horner in general will like this work. Here and elsewhere, he does one thing well -- lush romanticism -- and does it very, very well. His economy of gesture, which makes one wonder why neutral arpeggios are having such an emotional impact, is fully in evidence here, and the configuration of forces, with lots to do for the two soloists, produces film score-like textures. The Norwegian violin-and-cello duo of Mari and Håkon Samuelson commissioned Pas de Deux, and though it is being promoted as the first major double concerto for violin and cello since Brahms, Horner himself has described the piece as a composition for violin and cello with orchestral accompaniment rather than as a true concerto. For all that, Pas de Deux does not really resemble Horner's film scores musically. It has elements that suggests what might have happened had Vaughan Williams somehow lived long enough to become enamored of minimalism, and it shows that Horner has been keenly aware of contemporary crossover directions. The work is performed here by the Samuelsens and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic under Vasily Petrenko, the forces that premiered the work in 2014, and it's safe to say that their work reflects the composer's intentions. The album is filled out with works by Arvo Pärt (the protean Fratres), Giovanni Sollima, and Ludovico Einaudi, whose Divenire also features the violin-cello combination. Horner can hold his own with any of them, and listeners who imagine sun-drenched meadows while listening to Pas de Deux will have a very good time with it. (James Manheim)

Alisa Weilerstein / Pablo Heras-Casado / Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks SHOSTAKOVICH Cello Concertos 1 & 2

Alisa Weilerstein signed an exclusive contract with Decca Classics in 2011. Her first recording under the agreement, a coupling of the concertos by Elgar and Elliott Carter, with Barenboim conducting the Berlin Staatskapelle, was released in January 2013. At the 2014 BBC Music Magazine Awards it scooped the Recording of the Year Award as well as the Concerto Award. The New York Times acclaimed “the soloist’s superb control keenly matched by the conductor’s insightful support”. In April 2014 Decca issued her new recording of the Dvořák Cello Concerto, with Jiří Bělohlávek conducting the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra. Huffington Post reviewed it is “…as if Dvořák were sending her the still-wet-inked score, straight from his head to her heart and hands”, and the Daily Telegraph described it as “spine-tingling” and “irresistible”.

Alisa is very excited to announce the upcoming release of Shostakovich: Cello Concertos 1 & 2, coming from Decca Classics on September 23. Alisa worked on both cornerstones of the cello repertory with the legendary cellist Mstislav Rostropovich, for whom both concertos were written, and who was a great friend of the composer. Here, she performs the intense but emotionally suppressed first concerto, in contrast with the sarcasm and isolation of the second, with conductor Pablo Heras-Casado and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra.

Alisa Weilerstein / Inon Barnatan RACHMANINOV - CHOPIN Cello Sonatas

There is no shortage of recordings of Rachmaninov's Cello Sonata in G minor, Op. 19, and Chopin's Cello Sonata in G minor, Op. 65, but there aren't so many that put the two works together. Doing so reveals the degree to which Rachmaninov took Chopin as his model in his 1901 work: the big, contrapuntal opening movement with fascinating harmonic tipping points, the brisk scherzo and relatively short, songful slow movement, followed only by a more sweeping finale from Rachmaninov. Cellist Alisa Weilerstein and pianist Inon Barnatan offer something other than the rafter-ringing approach that is so often brought to Rachmaninov: the power is held in reserve for the climaxes. These two artists are not an ad hoc team, but are closely attuned to one another, and their restrained way with these works is especially effective in the Chopin: they tease out the contrapuntal details and respect the intricacy and relative intimacy of this work in a way that few other pairs do. The virtuoso display is left for the two Chopin encores that are often paired with the Cello Sonata: the arrangement of the Etude in C sharp minor, Op. 25, No. 7, by the sonata's original player, August Franchomme, and the early Introduction et Polonaise brillante for cello and piano. Op. 3. With superb sound from Berlin's Teldex studio, this is a Chopin recording that will reward many listens. (James Manheim)

Alisa Weilerstein SOLO

The long-awaited solo album from Decca’s star cellist sees Weilerstein revealing and revelling in her technique. The American cellist has attracted widespread attention worldwide for her combination of natural virtuosic command and technical precision with impassioned musicianship. The intensity of her playing has regularly been lauded, as has the spontaneity and sensitivity of her interpretations. Committed to expanding the cello repertoire, Alisa is a fervent champion of new music and this release is her first solo album.

Calling for left hand pizzicato as well an alternative tuning of the cello’s lower strings, Kodaly’s Sonata was far ahead of the time in which it was written and explored every facet of the cello, revealing what could be done with this instrument.

Many of Kodaly’s works are based upon Hungarian folksongs & dances, and this theme inspires the rest of the album, with works from the in-vogue Argentinian composer Osvaldo Golijov, across the world to the Chinese composer Bright Sheng.

Sheng’s work is based on seven tunes from China (Seasons, Guessing Song, The Little Cabbage, The Drunken Fisherman, Diu Diu Dong, Pastoral Ballade, Tibetan Dance). Golijov’s Omaramor is a musically playful fantasia inspired by Carols Gardel (the Argentine tango specialist); and Gaspar Cassado’s Suite, consisting of three dance movements, quotes the Kodaly work.

Alisa Weilerstein / Staatskapelle Berlin ELGAR - CARTER Cello Concerto

In 1972, Virgil Thomson wrote that Elliott Carter was America’s “most admired composer of learned music and the one most solidly esteemed internationally,” an appreciation that was still accurate when Carter died, last month, at the age of a hundred and three. It is in the realm of chamber music that Carter’s work will most likely endure, not only because of its inherent excellence—his cycle of five string quartets is perhaps the finest since Bartók’s—but because his orchestral pieces are expensive to rehearse and challenging for an audience to digest: the complexity of his musical language is best experienced on an intimate scale. But the Cello Concerto (2000), a fabulously inventive product of Carter’s astonishing Indian summer, may be an exception, an impression confirmed by the rapidly rising cellist Alisa Weilerstein’s new album, “Elgar / Carter: Cello Concertos” (Decca), recorded with the Staatskapelle Berlin orchestra, conducted by Daniel Barenboim.

For many listeners, the entry point will be the Elgar, and, while this is a dramatic, big-boned performance, connoisseurs won’t be tossing away their copies of the work’s greatest recording, which the phenomenal Jacqueline du Pré and the conductor John Barbirolli laid down for EMI in 1965. Barbirolli came at the piece through the prism of Italian opera and the English pastoral tradition, and the result shivers with life. Barenboim—who once recorded the piece with du Pré, to whom he was married—approaches the concerto by way of his beloved German classics: any passage that hints at Wagner is boldfaced and underlined, with sometimes leaden results.

Weilerstein is an exuberant performer in public, but she seems muted here; not so in the Carter, where she relishes the composer’s bristling passagework and insistent personal voice. The work’s first recording (on Bridge), by Fred Sherry, with Oliver Knussen conducting the BBC Symphony Orchestra, will always be the reference version; Sherry worked intimately with Carter for decades, and the crystalline purity of his interpretation seems incised for the ages. But Weilerstein and Barenboim’s generously expressive alternative makes this craggy and mysteriously compelling piece seem vulnerably human. Thomson, going out on a limb, once linked Carter’s working method to that of Poe, a comparison that, in a recording like this, seems apt: the piece is a clearheaded exploration of the “grotesque and arabesque,” the warring spaces of the human soul. (Russell Platt / The New Yorker)

Alisa Weilerstein / Czech Philharmonic Orchestra DVORAK

American cellist Alisa Weilerstein, described by BBC Music Magazine as “one of the most extraordinary” soloists of her generation, follows her critically acclaimed Decca debut recording of Elgar’s Cello Concerto with a vital new interpretation of Dvorák's Cello Concerto, coupled with some of his best- known melodies.
This Dvorák recording casts visionary light on the Czech composer’s epic concerto, connecting directly with its passionate heart. Alisa Weilerstein’s all-Dvorák program includes the haunting melody from his “New World” Symphony, popularly known as Going Home; his song Lasst mich allein, the beautiful Silent Woods and more... This album captures the essential spirit of one of the greatest of all Romantic composers, reflecting Dvorák’s deep-rooted love for his homeland.
Alisa Weilerstein joins forces with the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra and its Czech Music Director, Jirí Belohlávek in a terrific and deeply authentic musical partnership. This radiant performance of the Cello Concerto was recorded in Prague’s Rudolfinum, where Dvorák himself conducted the Czech Philharmonic’s inaugural concert in 1896. Other works on the album recorded in the USA – Dvorák’s adopted second homeland – include Rondo in G minor, Songs My Mother Taught Me and Slavonic Dance No. 8.
“[Weilerstein] played her parts with exquisite tone, agile fingering, graded filigree and layer upon layer of nuance, at the same time, she entwined her phrases around various instrumental solos, joining them, weaving in and over them, clinging to the orchestral fabric, yet standing distinct – as if Dvorák were sending her the still-wet-inked score, straight from his head to her heart and hands .” – Huffington Post, reviewing a concert performance of the Dvorák concerto. (Arkiv Music)