Daniel Hope / Zürcher Kammerorchester HOPE

 

HOPE

Alice Sara Ott ECHOES OF LIFE

 

ECHOES OF LIFE

Chor des Bayerischen Rundfunks / Münchner Rundfunkorchester / œsterreichisches ensemble fuer neue musik / Howard Arman ARVO PÄRT Miserere

 

MISERERE

PAT METHENY Road to the Sun

 

ROAD TO THE SUN

Ars Nova Copenhagen / Paul Hillier ...AND...

 

...AND...

 

Jeroen van Veen THE BEST OF MINIMAL PIANO MUSIC

 

THE BEST OF MINIMAL PIANO MUSIC

 

Khatia Buniatishvili LABYRINTH

LABYRINTH

 

Melanie Pappenheim / School House 6 Ensemble / Howard Moody / Sophie Harris JULIAN MARSALL Out of the Darkness

OUT OF THE DARKNESS

 

Wim Van Hasselt / Koen Plaetinck IMAGINARY MIRROR

 IMAGINARY MIRROR

Onutė Gražinytė / Lithuanian National Symphony Orchestra / Modestas Pitrėnas ARVO PÄRT Lamentate

LAMENTATE

voces8 AFTER SILENCE I. REMEMBRANCE

AFTER SILENCE I. REMEMBRANCE

SWR Vokal Ensemble / Marcus Creed BALTIKUM

BALTIKUM

Gloriæ Dei Cantores / Richard K. Pugsley ARVO PÄRT Stabat Mater

STABAT MATER

Allar Kaasik TIMELESS LIGHT

                                                                TIMELESS LIGHT

Choir of Clare College, Cambridge / The Dmitri Ensemble / Graham Ross ARVO PÄRT Stabat

                                                                          STABAT

Martina Filjak LIGHT & DARKNESS

                                                              LIGHT & DARKNESS

Khatia Buniatishvili MOTHERLAND

Khatia Buniatishvili has been described by The Independent as “the young Georgian firebrand”. At the age of only 26 years, this Tblisi-born pianist has already achieved an exceptional maturity of interpretation and a distinctive artistic approach that make her playing unmistakable. Khatia’s warm, sometimes sorrowful playing may reflect a close proximity to Georgian folk-music, which, she attests, has greatly influenced her musicality. Critics emphasize that her playing has an aura of elegant solitude and even melancholy, which she does not feel to be a negative attribute. “The piano is the blackest instrument,” she says, a “symbol of musical solitude… I have to be psychologically strong and forget the hall if I want to share it with the audience.” Khatia Buniatishvili speaks five languages and lives in Paris.

The CD is an intimate quest encompassing solo piano works from Bach to Pärt and from Brahms to Kancheli, in which the themes of longing for home, the merriment of a folk dance and the eternal cycle of growth and decay are apparent. Spanning a broad stylistic and historical range, the album celebrates the works that have accompanied Khatia Buniatschvili’s personal path in life, including pieces from her Georgian homeland. Motherland juxtaposes the happy lightness of a ‘Slavonic Dance’ by Dvorak and the melancholy of Grieg’s lyrical ‘Homesickness’, and contrasts the elegant gaiety of Mendelssohn’s ‘Song without Words’ (op. 67/2) with the graceful introspection of Liszt’s ‘Lullaby’. Classics of the Romantic piano repertoire such as Chopin’s Étude in C-sharp minor (op. 25/7) and Brahms ‘Intermezzo’ (op. 117/2) are embedded between Bach’s cantata ‘Sheep May Safely Graze’ and Arvo Pärt’s musical dedication ‘For Alina’. 

Fenella Humphreys / Covent Garden Sinfonia / Ben Palmer THE FOUR SEASONS RECOMPOSED

I would love to record the original Four Seasons one day. I think that of any work in the violin repertoire Vivaldi gives you so much scope for creativity and colour, particularly through his written descriptions and sonnets, that you could never come to the end of the possibilities contained within the music. I never learnt them as a kid and then avoided them for years, partly because I’d become so accustomed to hearing them in the background that I didn’t realise how brilliant they really are. When I was finally booked to perform them a few years ago, and forced to learn them, I was actually really pleased to be coming to them fresh and without preconceptions.

For this project we would have been quite pushed to fit both sets of Seasons (Vivaldi and Richter) on a single disc. Richter’s Seasons deserves to be heard on its own terms, rather than in a direct comparison like that, and it felt right for this disc to put his music in a different context. (Fenella Humphreys)

Le Nuove Musiche / Krijn Koetsveld ARVO PÄRT Magnificat - Stabat Mater

Arvo Pärt (born 1935) is without doubt one of the best-known and –loved composer of today. His highly personal style, influenced by Gregorian Chant, is based on slowly shifting patterns, tintinnabuli (little bells), creating a meditative and hallucinatory effect, a visionary world of spiritual contemplation. Pärt’s sacred choral works enjoy a huge popularity with both the traditional classical audience as well as an open- minded new generation.

This new recording presents two of Pärt’s choral masterworks: the Stabat Mater and Magnificat, as well as the Maria-Antifonen and the Nunc Dimittis, all dealing with the complex emotions of Maria, Mother of God, in deepest sorrow and bliss.

Excellent performances by Le Nuove Musiche, conducted by Krijn Koetsveld, who delivered a remarkable achievement in recording the complete Madrigals by Monteverdi for Brilliant Classics. Their experience in performing Renaissance vocal music is paying off in these deeply felt performances of 20th century choral masterworks.

Anna Gourari ELUSIVE AFFINITY

In this imaginatively shaped and sensitively played album – her third for ECM -  Russian pianist Anna Gourari explores musical connections and influences extending across the arts.  Three suites of contemporary music are heard here.  Alfred Schnittke’s Five Aphorisms (1990) draw impulses from the poetry of his friend Joseph Brodsky.  Rodion Shchedrin’s Diary - Seven Pieces (2002) dedicated to Gourari and inspired by her playing, reflects the life of a pianist and composer.  Wolfgang Rihm’s sequence of tombeaux, Zwiesprache (1999) pays tribute to musicologists Alfred Schlee and Hans Heinrich Eggebrecht, conductor Paul Sacher, and art sociologist Hermann Wiesler. Threaded between the cycles are two Giya Kancheli miniatures drawn from theatre and movie music, as well as Arvo Pärt’s early tintinnabuli-style Variations for the Healing of Arinuschka (1977).  Gourari’s investigation of artistic affinities is framed with Bach’s transcriptions of Venetian composers Antonio Vivaldi and Alessandro Marcello: “Anna Gourari makes these Bach slow movements, too, ours,” Paul Griffiths writes in the liner notes. “And the newer music is cherished and invigorated.”