Alice Sara Ott / Francesco Tristano SCANDALE

The disc’s title and raison d’être escape me: ‘Scandale’ says the cover in shocking pink. The ‘Rite of Spring’ premiere is presumably the eponymous ‘scandale’, but Rimsky-Korsakov’s Sheherazade? Ravel’s La valse? Rimsky’s widow objected fiercely to Diaghilev using the former as a ballet and Ravel never spoke to the impresario again after he refused to turn it into a ballet. Hardly scandals. The booklet bleats about both performers being ‘keen to return to a starting point that is free from expectations and in doing so they allow themselves – scandalously so – to create something entirely new’.

Better to ignore such waffle and enjoy these dance pieces at face value, the performances and recording of which are terrific. If it is hard to forget Stravinsky’s orchestration, the sections of motoric rhythm in his two-piano version of The Rite seem made for the percussive character of the instrument, while some of the slower passages reveal more so than in their original garb the challenging harmonic language that so provoked the first audiences. ‘The Kalender Prince’ by Stravinsky’s teacher in his own duet version provides lyrical contrast before La valse, deftly, brilliantly executed, the final pages more dogged and relentless than the increasingly frantic view taken by the thrilling Argerich and her many different waltzing partners. The final piece is the world premiere of Tristano’s A Soft Shell Groove which, with its foot-tapping (literally) rhythm, is bound to find many friends among listeners and other two-piano teams. (Gramophone)

Vilde Frang MOZART Violin Concertos 1 & 5 - Sinfonia Concertante

Norwegian violinist Vilde Frang made her orchestral debut to great acclaim at the age of just 13, with the Oslo Philharmonic and Mariss Jansons. On that occasion, she chose Sarasate's Carmen Fantasia, and in the fifteen years that have followed she has taken on the great Romantic and moderns, the Nordics and Russians: Sibelius and Prokofiev concertos for her debut album, followed by Tchaikovsky and Nielsen. 

Now, at 28, this young but serious star violinist at last commits Mozart concertos to disc, in lively, intimate readings with English chamber orchestra Arcangelo, led by Jonathan Cohen. 

The impetus for this album was a 2012 orchestral tour of Asia conducted by Cohen in which Vilde Frang performed Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 5. The vibrancy of their musical collaboration was something both artists were keen to repeat and commit to disc. 

Jonathan Cohen writes: “This was an important project for us to do with Vilde. Her poetic and sensitive playing and her beautiful silvery sound really serves Mozart and she was looking to collaborate with an ensemble such as ours well versed in the style and culture of Viennese classicism." 

As complement to Mozart's First and Fifth Violin Concertos, Frang chose the beloved Sinfonia Concertante, enlisting Ukrainian viola virtuoso Maxim Rysanov as her duo partner. 

"She and Maxim I think have produced a very special Sinfonia Concertante, which is a particularly extraordinary composition," says Cohen. 

The album has already been praised for the lightness and warmth, elegance and playfulness of the dialogue between soloist and ensemble. "The solo concertos are terrific. The First is often seen as slight, but Frang, with an endlessly varied palette of colours, delights in showing us how wrong we are," declares Sinfini Music. "She melds eloquently with the ensemble and manages to convey an artless simplicity."

Rolando Villazón / London Symphony Orchestra / Antonio Pappano MOZART Concert Arias

In recent years, Rolando Villazón’s career has become inextricable from the world of W.A. Mozart. The tenor has begun recording a cycle of Mozart’s seven mature operas, live from the Baden-Baden Festspielhaus. The cycle began with Don Giovanni in 2011 and continued with Così fan tutte last summer. Next up is Die Entführung aus dem Serail in the summer of 2014 – the cycle is an ambitious undertaking which Rolando curated and for which he serves as artistic consultant. His latest album with Deutsche Grammophon, Mozart Concert Arias, recorded with the London Symphony Orchestra under Sir Antonio Pappano, explores a lesser-known side of the composer. This collection of arias was penned under the radar: for the operas of other composers, at the service of individual singers, for stage works of his own which never came to fruition – works that have rarely been recorded. Villazón set out to uncover rare musical gems and, in the process, discovered a friend: Mozart.

“I think the big challenge is that it’s new for all of us. In that it is different from singing ‘Il mio tesoro’, of which we’ve heard so many great interpretations by so many great tenors, under so many great conductors,” he says.

Although he had already fallen in love with Mozart during recording sessions of Don Giovanni and Così fan tutte, the tenor forged an even deeper connection through this project. “No composer has spoken to me as directly. I feel like I have found a dear companion in him. In these pieces, just as in everything he wrote, Mozart demands the personality of the artist. He wants you to give yourself.”

The selection of ten arias covers a wide range of emotion and historical territory. For Villazón, numbers such as Se al labbro mio non credi, composed for the celebrated tenor Anton Raaff – who would sing the title role of Mozart’s Idomeneo – deserve to be heard more often: “Se al labbro is worthy of a place alongside Mozart’s best-known arias.” The most mature work on the album, Müsst ich auch durch tausend Drachen, dating to around 1783 and the only German-language track, was most likely intended for a comic opera that Mozart never completed. At the other end of the spectrum, Va’, dal furor portata was written when the composer was only nine years old.

“It’s fantastic to compare the very young Mozart with the mature Mozart and track his development,” says the tenor. “Who knows what he would have left to us had he lived a bit longer.”

As fate would have it, Villazón stumbled upon the music while sifting through scores at a shop in Munich. “I was actually looking for Don Giovanni and Così fan tutte, when I discovered this edition of concert arias for tenor,” he recalls. “I went through it and said: ‘This is it. This is a project.’” In 2011, while singing the title role in Massenet’s Werther at the Royal Opera House in London, he approached Pappano about making a recording. 

For the conductor, some arias resemble entire scenes in their dramatic structure. “It’s quite a challenge because a lot of these pieces are from a very young Mozart. They’re not the Mozart we know. They have an identity all their own. There’s a tremendous energy to them, and the singer and orchestra have to go at them with so much fire: you have to find the freedom, the newness and the youth of the music.”

Villazón notes that the recitative Misero! O sogno and following aria Aura che intorno spiri demand the full gamut of technical skills from a singer: “Bravura, interpretation, how to manage the text. And the high notes! But the beauty of Mozart is that it’s not suddenly, ‘Bang! A high note.’ It’s simply another note that you need to go through to maintain the melody.” The tenor found an ideal partner in the London Symphony Orchestra. “These are players who listen, who search and work together with the singer and the conductor. It felt wonderful, as if I was suspended from the gorgeous line that the orchestra was playing. From every point of view this music has been a treat to perform.”

Pappano, who has been recording with the orchestra since 1997, praises the musicians’ energy and intuition. “They create an environment where the singer can be alive and inhabit the character, an essential element in opera, where the exchange of energy is so important.” This is also no small feat given Mozart’s high demands on the orchestra to create its own drama in exchanges with the singer. “They want the best and will follow you to achieve a certain expression,” says the conductor. “The sound is gleaming, full of youth and shine. That is what I really love.”

And he found it a joy to hear Villazón indulge himself in comic numbers such as Con ossequio, con rispetto, written for Salzburg performances of Niccolò Piccinni’s opera, L’astratto, ovvero Il giocator fortunato, in 1775. “The character is paying compliments in one voice, while expressing what he feels in the asides – under his breath, so to speak,” explains Pappano. “That gave Rolando the opportunity to show his feeling for comedy. And I’ve experimented a little bit by changing the colours in the orchestra. When he’s insulting, I have the violins use a chatter-like articulation, and then at the end, a more nasal, snarly sound. Somehow I think Mozart would have approved. People need to laugh and enjoy.”

Villazón observes that even in humorous moments, Mozart’s music can convey the most profound insight – allowing his affinity for the composer to constantly grow. “There are moments performing this music when you are suddenly in heaven,” he says. “Mozart makes you laugh but also, perhaps most importantly, makes you dream. Somehow the fun qualities co-exist with the serious. This almost impossible combination is what makes him unique.”

Sol Gabetta / Bertrand Chamayou THE CHOPIN ALBUM

On her new album, cello superstar Sol Gabetta teams up with one of the best young artists, French pianist Bertrand Chamayou. Gabetta and Chamayou have played together on many occasions and quickly became both friends and artistic partners. They collaborated on the album concept and will tour this repertoire in Europe throughout 2015. The Chopin Album contains a selection of pieces by well-loved composer Frédéric Chopin (1810-1849) as well as music by his close friend, the composer and cellist Auguste-Joseph Franchomme.

The centrepiece of this album is Chopin's striking sonata for cello and piano in G minor, op. 65, written in 1846; one of the rare pieces Chopin wrote for a solo instrument other than the piano. The duration is over 30 minutes and was written for and dedicated to Chopin's close friend Franchomme. The cello sonata was the last work published during Chopin's lifetime before he died in October 1849.

The Grand Duo concertant in E major, B. 70 was written jointly by Chopin and Franchomme in 1832. Chopin had initially been contracted by his publishers to write a work for piano based on Meyerbeers opera ‘Robert le diable’. He had attended a performance and liked the work, but was disinclined to write a ‘fantasia’ on another composer's music. Franchomme persuaded him to jointly write a piece for cello and piano, using themes from the opera. Chopin delivered the general structure of the piece and wrote the piano part and Franchomme wrote the cello part. The piece was published under both their names, and was favourably reviewed by Robert Schumann.

Chopin's Polonaise brillante in C major, op. 3 for cello and piano is one of Chopin's first published compositions and was written in October 1829, dedicated to the Austrian cellist Joseph Merk. Chopin composed the famous Nocturne in F major, op. 15, no.1 for piano in 1832. The transcription for cello and piano on this album was done by Franchomme.

Auguste Franchomme was one of the best and most celebrated cellists and persons of the musical life in Paris of his time. He also worked as a composer and published around 50 works for cello, among them his Nocturne for Cello and Piano, op. 15, no.1 which Gabetta and Chamayou selected for this album. Chopin's Étude, op. 25, no.7 (1836) for piano solo is part of the famous 12 etudes op. 25 and was arranged by composer Alexander Glazunov for cello and piano. (Presto Classical)

Zehetmair Quartett BÉLA BARTÓK - PAUL HINDEMITH

 Five years after their widely acclaimed recording of Béla Bartók’s fourth string quartet the Zehetmair quartet (in new line-up) play the Hungarian’s masterly fifth quartet, written in 1934, coupled with Paul Hindemith’s fourth from 1921 which is marked by a neo-classicist return to elaborate polyphony and baroque forms: landmarks of 20th century chamber music in interpretations of analytical clarity and emotional intensity.

The Zehetmair Quartet was founded in 1994. After its first tour in spring 1998 it received invitations to return from every concert organizer. Its annual European tours have been augmented by concerts in the United States (2001 and 2003) and Japan (2002). Highlights of 2004 were guest appearances at the Edinburgh Festival, the Helsinki Festival, and the Schleswig-Holstein Festival and in spring 2006 a highly successful tour took it to Vienna, Berlin, Cologne, Zurich, Madrid, Lisbon, Manchester, and other capitals. The four musicians also made guest appearances in Japan in February 2007.
In 2000 the Quartet made its ECM début with Bartók’s Fourth and Karl Amadeus Hartmann’s First, an album that won the quarterly German Record Critics’ Prize. Their 2004 release of Schumann quartets received Gramophone’s Record of the Year Award, the Diapason d’Or, the Edison Classical Music Award (Netherlands), and two Belgian awards: the Caecilia Prize and the Klara Prize for the year’s best international release.
Second violinist Kuba Jakowicz and cellist Ursula Smith joined the quartet in 2005. (ECM Records)

The Parley of Instruments DOWLAND Lachrimae or Seaven Teares

There have only been  two occasions when English composers have profoundly affected the course of European musical history. The first was in the early fifteenth century when the motets, Mass movements and chansons of John Dunstable and his contemporaries became the models for subsequent developments in Flanders and Burgundy. The second was two centuries later, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, when a number of English composers and instrumentalists found work at northern European courts. They went abroad for three main reasons. Some, like Peter Philips and Richard Dering, were religious refugees, in flight from Queen Elizabeth’s persecution of Catholics. Some, such as William Brade and Thomas Simpson, were probably attracted by the lucrative opportunities available in the prosperous small courts and city states of northern Europe. Others were associated with the English theatre companies that began to tour the Continent in the 1580s and ’90s following the 1572 Act of Parliament that restricted the activities of ‘common players in interludes and minstrels’. Henceforth, actors were forbidden to work in England unless they were under the patronage of the Queen or a prominent courtier. 

John Dowland probably had mixed motives for leaving England in 1594. He had just been turned down for a post as a court lutenist, but he also had Catholic sympathies. He worked first at Wolfenbüttel and Kassel, and in 1598, after a second attempt to obtain a court post, he joined the group of English musicians in the service of Christian IV, King of Denmark. He remained in Copenhagen until 1606, though he visited London in the summer of 1603 ‘on his own business’, as a Danish court clerk put it. By 1603 he was one of the most famous lutenists in Europe and could reasonably have expected a court post in the wake of Queen Elizabeth’s death in March of that year, for the wife of the new King James I was Anne of Denmark, sister of Christian IV. In the event, it still eluded him, perhaps, as Peter Warlock once suggested, because Anne did not wish it to be thought that she had poached one of her brother’s musicians. When he finally became one of James I’s lutenists in 1612 he had long left the Danish court. Dowland probably hoped to attract Anne’s attention by dedicating Lachrimae, or Seaven Teares to her. In the dedication he states that he had ‘access to your Highnesse at Winchester’ (the court was there in September and October 1603), and that he had twice tried to sail back to Denmark but had been compelled to winter in England ‘by contrary windes and frost’. 

Dowland broke new ground with the publication of Lachrimae. At the time, dance music was usually written or printed in sets of separate quarto parts, but Lachrimae is a folio volume and has the parts for each piece distributed around each side of a single opening, so that in theory they could be performed around a table from a single copy. Dowland may have adopted this format, the one he used for his lute songs, because he included a lute part in tablature, which could not easily be accomodated in a small set of part-books. Lachrimae is certainly the first English collection of five-part dance music, manuscript or printed, to include a lute part, though lutes often appear in contemporary pictures of violin bands accompanying dancing. (Peter Holman)

Garrick Ohlsson SCRIABIN Complete Poèmes

Initially idolised by a small coterie, Scriabin was also vilified by those who placed reason above passion, clarity above obscurity. Today he enjoys a near classic status and Garrick Ohlsson’s disc of the complete Poèmes provides ample food for thought. Having notched up a huge array of recordings combined with an intensive concert career, his playing now reflects rich experience and musical quality. True, those accustomed to Horowitz’s incandescent response to Scriabin’s neurosis may feel themselves short-changed by Ohlsson’s restraining hand, by a more settled view of an unsettled genius. But there are admirable compensations in playing that can contain even Scriabin’s wilder, least accessible outpourings.

At the same time, even Ohlsson cannot entirely erase evidence of writing of such self-conscious liberation that it finally and ironically becomes caged in its own conventions. Whether frantic or remote, one poème becomes much like another and many of the composer’s more bizarre titles and instructions (Désir, Caresse dansée, Festivamente, fastoso, Etrange, capricieusement, etc) come to seem like a form of desperation, of special pleading in the face of public and critical bafflement. But whether in the Scherzo, Op 46 (jocular in an ironic sense), in the gazelle-like leaps of the Poème ailé, Op 51 No 3, or in the one substantial offering, Vers la flamme, you feel grateful for Ohlsson’s refusal to indulge or over-reach. Finely recorded, his empathy with so many fragmented dreamscapes is lucid and sensitive. (Gramophone)