Camille Thomas / Beatrice Berrut A CENTURY OF RUSSIAN COLOURS

 

A CENTURY OF RUSSIAN COLOURS

Flanders Symphony Orchestra / Kristiina Poska BEETHOVEN Symphonies Nos. 1 & 7

 

SYMPHONIES NOS. 1 & 7

 

Philharmonie Zuidnederland / Dmitri Liss / Christianne Stotijn HENDRIK ANDRIESSEN Miroir de peine HECTOR BERLIOZ Symphonie fantastique

MIROIR DE PEINE - SYMPHONIE FANTASTIQUE

Hélène Desaint / Louis Lortie / Nathanaël Gouin / Ronald van Spaendonck ROBERT SCHUMANN - GYÖRGY KURTÁG

Hélène Desaint, Laureate of the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel, presents a recital with two facets that are an admirable illustration of her personality: ‘This disc was born of my fascination with Schumann. Everything about him captivates me: the tormented human being, the great reader fascinated by the fantastical and the supernatural, the brilliant and introverted composer, the poet who goes where words cannot go, the music, powerfully evocative at once of human characters or tableaux and of complex states of mind. In 1990, György Kurtág composed a trio in homage to Schumann – a way of straddling the centuries and opening up a dialogue between two styles, of reviving the imaginary figures and short contrasting forms with which we are familiar in Schumann. So it seemed an obvious idea to build a programme around these two composers. The comparison seems all the more interesting to me because I find in their music the same interiority, the same concentration (in Kurtág’s work, this density goes so far as to permeate every note), the same concision.’ (Hélène Dessaint)

Lore Binon / Yves Saelens / Pierre-Yves Pruvot / Tijl Faveyts / Angélique Noldus / Camille Bauer / Inge Spinette / Jan Michiels CLAUDE DEBUSSY - MARIUS CONSTANT

“Debussy is the most difficult of all composers to grasp or define [...]. A listener, on hearing one of his Préludes, cannot know the precise emotion that the landscape or object concerned aroused in Debussy; he can only experience a more or less successful reproduction, a translation into sound of the landscape or object. For the listener, it seems that the object or landscape has been given musical form and, even more worryingly, that he has, in a way, become the composer. Debussy is neither the painter nor the painting: he is the subject itself. He is both the music that is innate in the subject and the musician who gives it audible form.” (Harry Halbreich)

William Sabatier / Quatuor Terpsycordes PIAZZOLLA - PIAF

The fusion between the string quartet, the perfect expression of the European ‘classical’ tradition, and the bandoneon, the musical embodiment of Argentina, is presented here in two quite different works. The Five Tango Sensations were originally written for Lutz Mommartz’s experimental film Tango durch Deutschland. In 1989, Piazzolla resurrected five of the original seven pieces in response to a commission from the Kronos Quartet, renaming them Five Tango Sensations. This work occupies a special place in the ocean of Astor Piazzolla’s music for two reasons: it is his only suite for bandoneon and string quartet, and it departs from the standard Piazzollian framework in both form and language. The suite Les Hommes de Piaf was originally a series of arrangements for string quartet and bandoneon based on tunes from the repertoire of Edith Piaf. But the composer’s pen trumped the arranger’s, imposing a texture in which the songs no longer play the leading role. Neither descriptive nor abstract, the suite Les Hommes de Piaf is merely a fantasised expression of states in which love can be by turns paradoxical, destructive, idealised, impossible or sensory, through a kaleidoscopic ‘Piaf filter’.

Ekaterina Mechetina SERGEI RACHMANINOV Variations on a Theme of Corelli - Piano Transcriptions

One harrowingly difficult set of variations by Rachmaninoff and a variety of his best-known transcriptions: this is not debut material for the pianistically faint-of-heart. But then, Ekaterina Mechetina is anything but faint-hearted. This collection was shrewdly chosen to emphasize some of her more spectacular qualities, and in general, it succeeds well.

Mechetina is an aggressive player and a superb technician, facts that immediately become apparent in the Corelli Variations. She plays with complete mastery of the music at any tempo, and seems especially to relish the challenge of the faster, more complex variations—such as the furious seventh, marked vivace, with its giant bell in the bass never obscuring the theme and avalanche of figurations riding above it, or the quicksilver 10th variation, with its extremely clean and even articulation. The late Romantic rhetoric of the fourth and 15th variations find her warm and committed, with a natural rubato and long-breathed phrasing. Similarly, she doesn’t lose her way in the freer passages of the 14th, cimbalom-like variation; while the arpeggiated runs that twice erupt during its length coruscate. The way the pianist plays the opening theme demonstrates yet another useful virtue, all too rare these days: the ability to perform slowly, solemnly, without any trace of nerves or need to push ahead.

Many of the same features are shown elsewhere on this release. The Bach selections are bright and cleanly articulated, with an assertive attack that the pianist softens well. Not that this is soft playing, however, but vibrant, angular, and often rich, in keeping with the personal and deliberately non-authentic nature of these piano transcriptions. I did find a couple of passages in the Gavotte hard in tone, however. It points to the one fault in Mechetina’s rendition of this music: a certain want of color. She’s certainly not steely-fingered on this recording, but tends to deploy the panoply of techniques used to control this aspect of pianism (dynamics, fingering, pedaling, etc) far more discreetly than she does the others. As a result, the Mendelssohn and Rimsky-Korsakov lack gossamer, though they have all the point, clarity, and accuracy at caffeinated tempos one could desire. Her versions of Lilacs and the Cradle Song are persuasively lyrical, but the two Kreisler numbers are just a bit too prosaic despite their virtuosity to be completely convincing. (Barry Brenesal)

TrioFenix LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN String Trio in E flat major, Op. 3 - Serenade in D major, Op. 8

In 2006, Shirly Laub (violin), Tony Nys (viola) and Karel Steylaerts (cello) founded TrioFenix to bring to a wider public through concert performance the seldom-played repertoire for string trio. As well as the great masterpieces, TrioFenix explore and perform lesser-known and contemporary works written in this genre. From the start, they have had the support of Klara, the Flanders Festival, the Ostbelgian Festival and the Musiques en Ecrins Festival among many others.

Their first CD was recorded in 2010 on the Fuga Libera label. The well-known Divertimento KV 563 and the six Adagio and Fugues KV 404a by W.A. Mozart became their musical calling card and a significant step for TrioFenix. In 2012 they recorded the Serenades Opus 8 by Ludwig Van Beethoven and Opus 10 by Ernst Von Dohnany for the television channel Canvas.

Their new CD dedicated to Beethoven string trios will be released in April 2016 (Fuga Libera). Shirly Laub studied violin at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Brussels with Clemens Quatacker and furthered her studies in Utrecht with Viktor Liberman and Philippe Hirschhorn. From 1998 to 2005 she was Co-Principal Violin of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in London. As such, she is regularly invited to play with various eminent orchestras in Europe and Asia. As first violin of the Oxalys Ensemble she plays at the most prestigious international venues. She is professor at the Conservatoire Royale de Musique de Bruxelles. 

Tony Nys studied at the Koninklijk Conservatorium Brussel with Clemens Quatacker and Philippe Hirschhorn. As a violist in the Danel Quartet from 1998 till 2005 he played worldwide in numerous festivals, recordings and performances of newly composed pieces. Since 2005 he has regularly worked as a freelance musician with ensembles such as Prometheus, Ictus, Ensemble Modern, Explorations. He is currently member of the String Trio & Quartet Malibran. As an orchestra musician, Tony Nys has been viola solo in La Monnaie Symphony Orchestra since 2007 and in that position he was also invited by the Frankfurt Rundfunkorchester. He teaches viola and chamber music at the Koninklijk Conservatorium Brussel and at the Fontys Muziekhogeschool in Tilburg.

Karel Steylaerts studied at the Brussels Conservatoire with Carlo Schmitz and then at the Hochschule für Musik of Cologne with Maria Kliegel. He was a prize winner of the 1990 Tenuto competition. He has been Principal Cellist of the Beethoven Academie for many years. Karel Steylaerts is currently Principal Cellist at the Brussels Philharmonic.