David Fung TRANSCENDENT BEETHOVEN

TRANSCENDENT BEETHOVEN
 

Tippet Rise OPUS 2017 Daydreams

Tippet Rise OPUS 2017 is the second compilation album to emerge from the summer music season at Montana’s Tippet Rise Arts Center, which features performance spaces of acoustic perfection amidst a sculpture-laden terrain of awe-inspiring beauty, nestled against a backdrop of the Beartooth Mountains near Yellowstone National Park. From the PENTATONE Oxingale Series, Tippet Rise OPUS 2017 inhabits the sphere of Daydreams, a sculpture by Patrick Dougherty where natural saplings organically emerge out of an eroding schoolhouse.

In this whimsical, imaginary world, composers open a visionary portal to the past and future. In the jazz-infused FIRST CLUB DATE, a world premiere by Aaron Jay Kernis and a Tippet Rise commission, cellist Matt Haimovitz and pianist Andrea Lam illuminate the musical playground of a boy on the cusp of manhood. The new work is dedicated to Haimovitz and the composer’s cellist-son Jonah, with double-entendre movement titles like “Puppy Love” and “Matt’s Monkish Machinations.” Violinist Caroline Goulding and pianist David Fung embody the youthful spirit of George Enescu’s Impressions from Childhood, while a pastoral mood reigns in Eugène Bozza’s Image for solo flute, performed by Jessica Sindell. An epic expansiveness saturates Red Arc / Blue Veil by John Luther Adams, featuring electronics and a wide array of sounds from pianist Vicky Chow and percussionist Doug Perkins. Opening the album is Jeffrey Kahane’s hopeful America the Beautiful, performed on piano by the composer himself, while works by Chopin and Bach, performed by pianists Yevgeny Sudbin and Anne-Marie McDermott, anchor the program with their sheer beauty and virtuosity. (PENTATONE)

Francisco Fullana THROUGH THE LENS OF TIME

The Spanish violinist Francisco Fullana will release his debut recording in March 2018 with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. Entitled Through the Lens of Time, the recording brings together four modern perspectives reimagining the Baroque tradition: a dialogue that prompts both composers and performers to explore musical giants of the past and place them in their own lives. ​ 

The recording begins with Max Richter’s daring reworking of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, which Fullana first performed in 2016 under Venezuelan conductor Carlos Izcaray, who also conducts this debut recording. Fullana comments: “Richter’s Four Seasons Recomposed awoke a renewed commitment to my musical approach focused on instinct and emotion. It brought me back to my own beginnings, as The Four Seasons was one of the few cassettes that my family would play in the car when I was a young boy. During the performance, Carlos Izcaray and I found that we both shared the same energetic approach to music making. It became clear that we both loved performing this piece too much not to do so again.

” ​ The recording continues with three other works that provide unique takes on the Baroque tradition. The Korean-German Isang Yun’s Königliches Thema pays homage to Bach's Musical Offering, conflating Baroque and modern styles in one densely rich composition that magically surveys Western musical tradition through the lens of Eastern philosophies. Meanwhile, Schnittke’s Suite in the Old Style presents a combination of different aspects of the Western tradition from Baroque onward, and is heavily influenced by the musical aesthetic of the composers’ own time. As such, the writing represents a sort of time capsule, portraying what “Baroque style” meant to performers 
in the 1970s, with exaggerated gestures, verticality, and highlighting the sense 
of drama to the point of becoming ceremonial. ​ 

Finally, Salvador Brotons’ Variations on a Baroque Theme hearken to the roots of Fullana's career, and to his first performance before the public as a nine-year-old prodigy soloing in Mozart's Turkish A Major Concerto, under Broton's baton. The one-time mentor composed his set of variations specifically for this project, completing a circle by basing the work on a popular aria from the zarzuela, Acis Y Galatea, by a third Spaniard, the 18th Century Mallorcan composer Antoni Lliteres. (Orchid Classics)