Timothy Ridout / Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne / Jamie Phillips BRITTEN | VAUGHAN WILLIAMAS | HINDEMITH | MARTINU

BRITTEN | VAUGHAN WILLIAMAS | HINDEMITH | MARTINU

Benedict Kloeckner / Danae Dörken ZWISCHEN NOSTALGIE UND REVOLUTION

ZWISCHEN NOSTALGIE UND REVOLUTION

Bridget Bolliger / Andrew West TIMELESS

Australian flutist Bridget Bolliger, known as the artistic director of the Sydney Chamber Music Festival, presents a diverse range of works on this recital album. Of particular interest is the world premiere recording of Jim Coyle’s “Paradise of Birds” suite for flute and piano – a tribute to Bolliger’s home continent, and the perfect link between Europe (where all other music on this recording comes from) and Australia, where all Europeans long to spend their winter months. Australian-Swiss flautist Bridget Bolliger was born in Sydney, where she distinguished herself early, studying under Jenny Andrews, Jane Rutter and Vernon Hill and performing the Ibert Flute Concerto with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra at the age of 15. She graduated from the Sydney Conservatorium High School and was awarded the ASCM with Merit by New South Wales Conservatorium of Music. She went on to study in Switzerland at the Basel Music Academy, and has attended master classes with the world’s most famous flutists. She has been principal flute with the St. Gallen Symphony Orchestra and the Sinfonica de Sao Paolo.

Orchestre d'Auvergne / Roberto Forés Veses DVORÁK String Serenade JANÁCEK Suite for Strings MARTINU Sextuor

A string orchestra widely respected for its musical quality, the Orchestre d'Auvergne nurtures artistic excellence, the only way to maintain pleasure and satisfaction for its musicians and hence its audiences! 

This motivation of the 21 musicians and their successive musical directors Jean-Jacques Kantorow, Aarie van Beek and Roberto Forés Veses, has resulted in many concert tours and regular recordings.

Faithful to its region, the orchestra plays regularly for audiences in the Auvergne and Clermont Ferrand, bringing music to everyone.

The orchestra has a teaching mission, helping audiences better understand classical music, to take pleasure in discovering new and subtle sensations.

The French Orchestre d'Auvergne, widely respected beyond its regional borders, devotes itself for a program in the colors of Bohemian Czech composers Dvořák, Janáček et Martinů. The melancholy of Dvořák's Serenade for Strings radiates a warm, dusk light that is reflected in the works of his two compatriots.

Viola Wilmsen / Kimiko Imani OBOE & PIANO

What types of musical character do we associate with the oboe? We imagine long, lyrical phrases, mournful, fragile melodies, agile musicianship, and a folk-like character. During my time as principal oboist in the orchestra of the Deutsche Oper Berlin, it felt as if I died “a thousand deaths” every evening until the main character on stage had finally breathed his/her last sigh and the sobbing oboe had sung its plaintive melody to the end. On the other hand, have you ever heard an oboe sonority that is fierce, conquering or threatening? 

The 20th century produced a number for works for oboe and piano in which the woodwind instrument adopts an almost “furious” character. In this program we would like to demonstrate the oboe’s variety of tone colour and great versatility. Our basic idea is centered on the oboe as a “singing voice”, with its tremendous ability to phrase long cantilenas: hence, this program is closely associated with the human voice. We have selected three works originally written for oboe, along with two brief vocal works we have arranged for the instrument. Unpretentious works from the youth of a composer such as Martinů stand alongside dramatic late works such as Pavel Haas’s Suite, which he originally conceived for voice but later arranged for oboe. Here we combine the original sources of inspiration –Moravian folk songs – with a series of works heavily influenced by Moravian folk music: the Suites by Pavel Haas and Klement Slavický, as well as Leoš Janáček’s opera Jenufa. 

Oboists are increasingly performing Klement Slavický’s Suite in view of its many qualities: a series of technical challenges, a pastoral, quasi-improvised first movement, and attractive bravura passages in the Scherzo as well as in the fourth movement.……….. With the exception of Leoš Janáček, all the composers on this CD were of Jewish faith, and shared the bitter experience of having been forced to flee their homeland or at least to give up their profession. Perhaps in times such as ours, when nationalism and racism are on the rise, these musicians’ destinies can inspire serious reflection and serve as a warning to us all. (Viola Wilmsen)