Jodie Devos / Nicolas Krüger AND LOVE SAID...

 

AND LOVE SAID...

 

Esmé Quartet TO BE LOVED

                                                    BEETHOVEN - BRIDGE - CHIN

Carolyn Sampson / Joseph Middleton THE CONTRAST

                                                      ENGLISH POETRY IN SONG

Richard Yongjae O'Neill DUO

He may be a classical star on his own but for violist Richard Yongjae O’Neill, his latest album “Duo” shows the power two musicians can create. 

“If I am a soloist on a stage, it’s like I am an actor delivering a monologue, and that’s very wonderful. You think of all monologues in Shakespeare, they are very profound and complete. But most stage drama has to have at least two characters,” he said during a press meeting in Seoul on Monday to promote the album. “I think this album is a great example. I think an album like this really gets to listeners. (The listeners) can really can get to know each one of us individually as well as together.” 

Mastering for the album was completed on March 11, and it was released Monday, featuring classical and contemporary duets performed with musicians from Korea, cellist Mun Tae-guk, violist Lee Soo-min and violinist Shin Hyun-su, also known as Zia Shin.

“I think this album is an interesting look at how some of the great composers have showed how virtuosic they are. It’s very soloistic album because listeners can hear everyone’s voice very clearly throughout the album. The viola is sort of in the middle of everything. I am sort of the hinge between all of the duos,” O’Neill added.

Included in the album are Halvorsen‘s Passacaglia in G minor for Violin and Viola, Mozart’s Duo for Violin and Viola in B flat Major K. 424, Franz Anton Hoffmeister’s Duo Op. 19 No 2 for Violin and Viola, Beethoven’s Duo in E flat Major for Viola and Cello, WoO 32, Paul Hindemith’s Scherzo for Viola and Cello, Frank Bridge’s “Lament for 2 Violas” H. 101/2 and George Benjamin’s “Viola, Viola.” (Shim Woo-hyun)

Dame Sarah Connolly / Joseph Middleton COME TO ME IN MY DREAMS

I had a pretty good time at the Royal College of Music in the mid-1980s. As a joint first study student, while I loved singing in Sir David Willcocks’s chamber choir, I probably saw myself principally as a pianist, hooked on song repertoire. 

The cocoon-like basement library (where I spent at least half of each week sprawled on the cerise carpet among sheaves of music) houses an astonishing collection of British songs. It also keeps a wonderful discography from which I learned what makes a song come alive, particularly from Ben Luxon, Peter Pears and Britten, Janet Baker, and Kathleen Ferrier. For this disc I have attempted to create a snapshot of over 120 years of song, tracing the lineage from Stanford to Turnage. I tried to find suitable songs by Coleridge-Taylor and Elizabeth Maconchy but no luck this time. However, two beautiful early compositions by Muriel Herbert and Rebecca Clarke stand proudly alongside songs by Frank Bridge, Thomas Dunhill, and Gustav Holst. 

I am thrilled that Colin Matthews and the Britten Estate gave permission to Joseph 20 Middleton and me to record the world premiere of two unknown songs that Benjamin Britten had composed for but in the event excluded from A Charm of Lullabies. 

Mark Turnage very kindly wrote me a song to bring the programme right up to the present day. 

As he knew that Michael Tippett’s ‘Full fathom five’ would be on the disc, I sense that Mark was inspired by similar ghostly chimes: 

Hark! now I hear them, – 

Ding-dong, bell. (Dame Sarah Connolly)

David Aaron Carpenter DREAMTIME

Dreamtime features the titular solo viola work by Robert Mann (1920), founding member of the Juillard String Quartet and its first violinist for 52 years, as well as Frank Bridge's Lament. Frank Bridge (1879-1941) is one of the most outstanding composers for viola. The longest work on the disc is Brahms's Clarinet Quintet Op. 115 in the version for viola and string quartet.
The starting point for this release was an invitation David Aaron Carpenter received from the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra to perform a chamber music concert with some of their soloists. Brahms's Quintet and Bridge's Lament are live recording from this concert in February 2013.
David Aaron Carpenter was featured on the cover of The Strad magazine in August 2013 and, a few months earlier, was the subject of a three-page article in the New York Times. He is thrilled to release this latest recording with members of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. "Making music with these incredible musicians," he says, "has been one of the inspiring highlights of my career."
David Aaron Carpenter's first recording, released in 2009 and featuring his own viola arrangement of the Elgar Cello Concerto (after Lionel Tertis) and the Schnittke concerto with Eschenbach was an international success, winning the coveted ‘Editor's Choice' accolade from Gramophone. Further releases on Ondine include Berlioz's Harold in Italy and Paganini's Sonata per la Grand Viola with Vladimir Ashkenazy and the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra as well as a world premiere recording of the recently rediscovered Viola Concertos of "the Swedish Mozart" Joseph Martin Kraus. (Ondine)