Bruno Delepelaire / Stephan Koncz / Deutsche Radio Philharmonie / Reinhard Goebel REICHA - ROMBERG Concertos for Two Cellos

                                               CONCERTOS FOR TWO CELLOS

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)

Andreas Ottensamer BRAHMS The Hungarian Connection

This album explores Brahms’s lifelong fascination with Hungarian idioms. The programme, following the Quintet, comprises a series of arrangements by the group’s cellist Stephan Koncz, which gradually loosen the strict discipline of a classical chamber group, moving towards the freely expressive style of a Hungarian restaurant band. The arrangements are marvellously well done, and the sequence ranges from the comfortable warmth of Brahms waltzes to the distinctly exotic sound of the Transylvanian medley. (Listeners will find some of these melodies familiar; they appear in Bartók’s Romanian Dances.) The Leó Weiner pieces, originally for clarinet and piano, transmit an atmosphere of peasant music, while the Hungarian Dances are arranged to give the impression of a gypsy band, with spectacular solo contributions from clarinet, violin and cimbalom.

The performance of the Quintet is a fine one, with lovely clarinet tone, excellent overall sound and a deep understanding of the work’s varied character. Andreas Ottensamer appreciates the need for some rhythmic freedom, not least in the elaborate Hungarian music in the Adagio, but I don’t find his rubato as convincing as Reginald Kell’s in his wonderful 1937 recording with the Busch Quartet – Kell is better at keeping the listener aware of the underlying rhythmic framework. And in the finale, I feel there’s a miscalculation in slowing up for the third and fourth variations; this takes away from the tragic effect of the poco meno mosso marked when the first movement’s theme is recalled. But it’s a fascinating issue, with playing of mastery and versatility. (Gramophone)