Quatuor Voce BEETHOVEN

Since its inception in 2004, the Quatuor Voce has been recognised internationally as one of the most fascinating string quartets among the young generation, performing worldwide alone or alongside outstanding artists such as Yuri Bashmet, Gary Hoffman, Nobuko Imai, Bertrand Chamayou, David Kadouch, Juliane Banse, to name but a few.

In only a few years the quartet received the highest prizes from renowned international competitions, including Geneva, Cremona, Vienna, Bordeaux, Graz, London and Reggio Emilia, and since then has been committed to championing the great repertoire for string quartet, seeking guidance from some of its leading exponents (the Ysaÿe Quartet, Günter Pichler, Eberhard Felz).

Their recordings of Schubert and Beethoven string quartets and the complete Mozart’s Flute Quartets (with French flautist Juliette Hurel) were met with high critical acclaim by the international press (The Strad, Télérama, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Diapason, Strings and Bow and Klassieke Zaken) as was their CD of Brahms and Mozart’s string quintets with violist Lise Berthaud in 2015.

...they know the architecture of the music from the inside out. (David Threasher / Gramophone)

Raoul Steffani / Gerald Huber DEEP IN A DREAM

Baritone Raoul Steffani undertakes his CD debut, accompanied by Gerald Huber, with a collection of early songs by some major Lieder composers: Schumann, Grieg, Sibelius and Berg.

Many songs on this album have one thing in common: they are mainly early compositions, in some cases even the first songs these composers wrote. They all have a certain spontaneity and freshness which shows that the young men who composed them were still at the beginning of their careers, full of dreams and hopes for the future. Thus, not surprisingly, many of the songs are also about dreams, totally in the spirit of the true romantic soul. 

Dutch baritone Raoul Steffani, born in 1992, has quickly established himself as one of the leading singers of his generation. He was already awarded several prizes and undertaken masterclasses with Lieder masters such as Thomas Hampson, Christa Ludwig and Elly Ameling. Steffani won the Dutch Grachtenfestival award 2018 and will be Artist in Residence during the Grachtenfestival in 2019.

JOEP BEVING Conatus

Streaming sensation Joep Beving today releases Conatus, an album of new reworks by acclaimed and up & coming artists, such as iconic synth legend Suzanne Ciani and renowned Amsterdam DJ Tom Trago. The album features reworks of pieces from Solipsism and Prehension, as well as already foreshadowing Joep's next solo album with a rework of one of the new tracks.

The album follows on from three singles released over the past few months: 'Sleeping Lotus' - Tom Trago’s Sixtine Remix, 'Hanging D', which received a rework from the acclaimed Cello Octet Amsterdam and Joep's own new piece 'Prelude'.

Conatus is a selection of reworks and a further expansion of Joep Beving's desire to create a simple soundtrack to accompany our complex human emotions. Its title comes from the philosophical concept of conatus – an innate inclination of a thing to continue to exist and enhance itself. “If you see music as a living organism, then it’s something that will always adapt to new circumstances in order to stay present. This project is not about me. It is about the conatus of my music and for this album I’ve put their lives in other people’s hands.”

Beving invited a range of artists he knows and admires – Cello Octet Amsterdam, Suzanne Ciani, Tom Trago, Eefje de Visser, Colin Benders, Andrea Belfi, CFCF and Thomas Bloch – to rework his music in their own way. The results are not remixes in the club sense, therefore, but new and original interpretations of tracks by Beving, woven together on Conatus to form a coherent album. As well as approaching legendary American electronic music pioneer Ciani, Beving was also keen to involve other musicians from his native Netherlands: “They’re all people I think easily hold their own on the international scene.” (Deutsche Grammophon)

Quatuor Voce ITINÉRAIRE

“After many years of performing, and with a whole range of experiences nurtured by many different new encounters, we have conceived Itinéraire as a journey with sixteen strings, freely inspired by the trailblazing example of Béla Bartók and Zoltán Kodály. At the dawn of the 20th century these two young musicians, their remarkable futures still lying ahead, toured the villages of central Europe, gathering, transcribing and recording hundreds of melodies and folk songs. 

This ethnomusicological work gave birth to uniquely coloured new masterpieces, and we want to add our own contribution to the treasury of the string quartet repertoire by exploring afresh the possibilities of interaction between music of the oral tradition and the art of the string quartet. 

And so we have chosen five superb artists from a range of diverse backgrounds – Kinan Azmeh, Vincent Peirani, Kevin Seddiki, Vincent Segal and Gabriel Sivak – giving each one a commission inspired by musical worlds with which they have a close relationship. 

In view of the novelty of the ideas involved, we have enlisted the acute hearing and expertise of Vincent Segal, a unique practitioner of the cello, who has accompanied us in our instrumental and musical research. 

In the course of this Itinéraire, there will be a halt at ‘Escalay’ (‘The Water Wheel’) – by Hamza El Din – with a brief nod in the direction of our illustrious elder brethren, the Kronos Quartet.”

Violaine Cochard DUPHLY

My starting point for this programme was nine of my favourite pieces by Jacques Duphly. Why him? First of all because he writes such lovely tunes, starting with the Allemande which begins his First Book. There are also pieces like Les Grâces, of infinite beauty, the Rondeau in D minor, infused with a gentle melancholy, and La Boucon, with its almost romantic surges of feeling. Alongside that tenderness, Duphly is also capable of unleashing tumultuous power, as in Médée, for example. This selection paints the portrait of a composer who was heir to a French art of harpsichord-playing, the heir of Couperin and Rameau. That is why there are no pieces from the more Italianate Second Book, or from the more gallant Fourth Book, which prefigures the fortepiano.

There are already several complete recordings of Duphly’s works. I wanted to do something different, to record only the pieces which move me, my particular favourites. Although it is possible to listen to the pieces singly, of course, I imagined them as a continuous whole.

I conceived it as a concert programme, an exploration of 18th-century French harpsichord music, a dialogue between Duphly and some of hiscontemporaries who share aspects of his sound-world. I thought it would be interesting to contrast Duphly, who devoted his whole life solely to the harpsichord, with composers who had other interests, such as Royer, who wrote several operas, Forqueray, who also played the viol, and the organists Dandrieu and Balbastre. (Violaine Cochard)

Yuan Sheng TCHAIKOVSKY The Seasons

Yuan Sheng has a deep understanding and command of harpsichord and early pianos that has resulted in many well-received historically informed performances and recordings. In reviewing his all-Beethoven recital on an 1805 Kathönig piano, the Boston Intelligencer remarked that ‘Sheng had absorbed this music so thoroughly that a listener might easily have imagined the composer at the keyboard.’ 

Sheng made his debut on Piano Classics with a 3CD album of Chopin (the complete Nocturnes, Preludes, Ballades and Impromptus, PCL0049) played on an 1845 Pleyel. For this new recording of Tchaikovsky’s evergreen musical diary, he has returned to the reliable refinements of a modern Steinway, yet the nuances of his performance reflect concerns to grasp and convey the styles of phrasing and articulation that would have been second nature to Tchaikovsky. 

As a cycle of salon pieces, The Seasons has never ceased to afford pleasure both to listeners and to amateur pianists since it was first published in 1885, though Tchaikovsky had compiled its contents over several years. It is here complemented by works dating from different periods of Tchaikovsky’s career, similarly undemanding in style: the very early Romance (1868) and two Morceaux (1871-2) and the much later Dumka (1886), composed for his Parisian publisher Félix Mackar as a ‘rhapsody’. 

In 1875 Tchaikovsky was commissioned to write a series of piano pieces for the St. Petersburg musical magazine Nuvellist, each piece to be published in the monthly issue. Although Tchaikovsky frequently composed on commission (he sometimes described it casually as “tossing musical pancakes") he took it seriously and he even warmed to the task during composing. His 12 compositions are called “The Seasons” and describe each individual month of the year, either by mood or by a particular occasion or activity (January: By the Hearth, February: Carnival, July: Song of the Reaper etc). the music is relatively simple (no octaves thundering like in his 1rst piano concerto), affectionate, intimate and often hauntingly beautiful: a series of 12 musical gems!
In addition to the cycle The Seasons Yuan Sheng recorded some smaller piano pieces by Tchaikovsky, including the ever popular Dumka. 

Café des Chansons / Charlotte Haesen DU BOUT DES YEUX

'Du bout des yeux' is the first album by string quartet Cafe des Chansons featuring vocalist Charlotte Haesen. The repertoire is taken from the wealthy musical period of post-war France. The chansons tell a range of stories of melancholy and humour, as well as of intense and inconsolable sorrow. Charlotte Haesen, born in Amsterdam in 1987 and raised in the French-speaking part of Belgium, studied jazz singing in Amsterdam University of the Arts. She was discovered by viola player Odile Torenbeek whilst performing French chansons at Amsterdam's Noordermarkt. Odile and Charlotte decided to put together a chanson programme anchored in a string quartet ensemble. Leading arrangers then arranged the chansons around Charlotte's own particular sound. The next step was founding Cafe des Chansons: Charlotte Haesen plus four musicians from the Netherlands Philharmonic orchestra. They perform gems of the repertoire including the great French classics by artists such as Barbara, Gainsbourg and Piaf.
Known to be active in various musical genres, Charlotte Haesen reaches the listener with her authentic and intimate performance, her unmistakable timbre and her remarkable musicality. She has won the EuJazz Award, the public prize at the 28th Concours de la Chanson Alliance Francaise and received several rewards for her videoclips. Being a uniquely versatile artist, Haesen has performed with different formations at festivals and on stages in over 15 countries worldwide.