Christoph Denoth / London Symphony Orchestra / Jesús López Cobos NOCTURNOS DE ANDALUCÍA

The ever versatile LSO also features on this exceptional album, where the London-based guitarist Christoph Denoth winningly mixes the familiar and the unfamiliar. His account of Rodrigo’s evergreen Concierto de Aranjuez, with the orchestra winningly conducted by the veteran Spanish conductor Jesús López Cobos, is excellent, and can be highly placed in a competitive field. But the real reason for buying this well filled 68-minute album is the fill-ups. Lorenzo Palomo’s Nocturnos de Andalucía is a substantial 40-minute, six movement piece for guitar and orchestra, which revisits the same Spanish themes and moods that so inspired the great late-19th century Spanish guitar virtuoso/composers.

It’s attractive, without ever being too comfortable, and backward looking. It’s very cleverly scored for large orchestra, and will give much pleasure. There’s also a delightful lollipop at the end, with Denoth’s own arrangement for guitar and orchestra of Joaquín Malats’ Serenata Española—4½ minutes of pure joy. (David Mellor)

Danish String Quartet PRISM I

For its third ECM release, the Danish String Quartet – hailed by the Washington Post as “one of the best quartets before the public today” and as simply “terrific” by The Guardian – inaugurates a series of albums with the overarching title of Prism, in which the group will present one of Beethoven’s late string quartets in the context of a related fugue by J.S. Bach as well as a linked masterwork from the quartet literature. With Prism 1, it is the first of Beethoven’s late quartets, his grand Op. 127 in E-flat Major, alongside Bach’s luminous fugue in the same key (arranged by Mozart) and Dmitri Shostakovich’s final string quartet, No. 15 in E-flat minor, a haunted and haunting sequence of six adagios.

For Prism 1, the DSQ convened at the Reitstadel in Neumarkt, Germany, the group applying its lyricism and spirit of ensemble to this interconnected sound world of Bach, Beethoven and Shostakovich. Bach’s fugue in E-flat Major, BWV 876, was one of five pieces that Mozart transcribed for string quartet from his predecessor’s epochal collection of preludes and fugues, The Well-Tempered Clavier. Like Mozart, Beethoven also revered Bach and studied The Well-Tempered Clavier closely, his playing of its pieces noted in press reports on the young performer. Beethoven’s five late string quartets were his ultimate statement in music; the first three of these late quartets were commissioned by a Russian prince, in 1822. Shostakovich’s 15 string quartets constitute the greatest cycle of such works after Beethoven; the rarified example of the German’s late quartets was surely on the Russian composer’s mind as he completed his final – and longest and most intimate – work in the genre, in 1974, the year before his death.The spacious grandeur of Beethoven’s late quartets and, in particular, their epically hymnal slow movements – including that of the Op. 127, marked Adagio, mon non troppo e molto cantabile – were an obvious, powerful influence on the adagios of Shostakovich’s final quartet. Reflecting on the impact of Beethoven’s late string quartets, the DSQ note that “they changed the game. Every composer after Beethoven had to consider these five works and somehow figure out how to carry on the torch. Beethoven had taken a fundamentally linear development from Bach and exploded everything into myriad colors, directions and opportunities.” (ECM Records)

Silvia Márquez CHACONNERIE

Chaconnerie is a recording that deals with repetition. Chaconnerie illustrates that particular principle of Art that seeks to combine elements over and over again to achieve balance and unity. Chaconnerie encourages us to undertake a voyage in which sounds –through the centuries– build upon an insistently repeated, or imaginatively varied, scheme. Repetition has been a major element of humankind’s artistic manifestations and expressions ever since the time of the moais on Easter Island up to the drawings of Max C. Escher. Repetition is rhythm, pulse, and life, and life overflows in the chaconne, a dance whose origin Lope de Vega attributed to the American Indian (“from the Indies to Seville / it has come by post”) and whose character Miguel de Cervantes describes as lascivious and immoral. With its accent on the second beat and its variations on a harmonic scheme, this dancing base – together with sarabandes, folias, and passacaglias – was conducive to improvisation on chordal progressions, a novelty that had a crucial impact on Baroque music in Europe.

Toyohiko Satoh VIENNESE LUTE MUSIC

On this release, lutenist Toyohiko Satoh plays music from the court of Vienna from around the year 1700. A special discovery included on this album is the suite by Adam Franz Ginter, who was a famous castrato singer in that time, but also composed some pieces for the lute. This recording is a tribute to this largely forgotten musician who most probably had a short and rather sad life. The following suite by Saint-Luc contains a “tombeau for Francois Ginter” and was composed to lament the early death of this extraordinary singer, lutenist and composer. At Rikkyo University in Tokyo, Satoh studied music history with Tatsuo Minagawa and guitar with Kazuhito Ohosawa. He gave his first guitar recital in the Tokyo Bunka Kaikan concert hall in 1965. At Rikkyo, he also began his studies of the lute. Praised for his “intensity and sense of drama” and “electric tension and rhythmic spring,” he has performed and recorded both solo and with many chamber ensembles, and has been actively composing since 1981.

Christoph Denoth TANGUERO

The tango, which Piazzolla liberated from dance, is both extended and tamed by the classical guitar. That’s partly what the Swiss guitarist Christoph Denoth is getting at when he writes that ‘these present recordings aim to express today’s broader definition of tango and exploit the acoustic range of the guitar in order to integrate the tango and its untamed beauty into classical music’.

In all these miniatures – some arrangements, some written for the instrument – there are folkloristic echoes amplified by compelling rhythmic variations, extended harmonies and songlike melodies. Somewhere among this seductive sound world, Denoth finds room for his own style by finding pleasure in the play of opposites – especially the tension between European classicism and the folk traditions of South America.

Denoth’s recital opens with some of Piazzolla’s most widely arranged works, many of which have theatrical origins. The composer’s own favourite, Adios nonino, so full of subtle changes of mood, sits at the centre of a set which alternates between the urgency of pieces like Libertango and Verano porteño and those of a more reflective nature, such as Oblivion and the exquisite Milonga del ángel.

These contrasts are maintained throughout the rest of the programme, with works by other tango legends such as Gardel and those exploring different national styles, like Antonio Lauro with his Venezuelan take on the waltz, and Gismonti’s saudade-saturated Agua y vinho and Dyens’s cheeky ‘fake tango’ Tango en Skaï.

There is little here that hasn’t been recorded before by the likes of John Williams et al. What makes Denoth’s offering a must-have is a musical sensitivity exemplified as much by his curation as by his playing. (William Yeoman / Gramophone)

Vocal Concert Dresden / Cappella Sagittariana Dresden / Peter Kopp FLORILEGIUM PORTENSE

Florilegium Portense - this is the title of a collection of sacred motets from Italy, Germany and the Franco-Flemish region, first printed in Leipzig in 1618. It contains motets by the most famous composers of the time in Europe, such as Hieronymus and Michael Praetorius, Hans Leo Hassler, Orlando di Lasso, and Andrea and Giovanni Gabrieli. It's dissemination was so successful that almost all church choirs, school choirs and court orchestras between Eisenach and Breslau came into contact with it. The motets were compiled by Sethus Calvisius, the cantor of Schulpforte and later Thomaskantor of Leipzig, and edited by Erhard Bodenschatz, his successor in Schulpforte. Exactly 400 years after going to press, the Vocal Concert Dresden and the Cappella Sagittariana under the direction of Peter Kopp honor this important cultural monument with a recording of selected motets and hymns, including several premiere recordings.

Ensemble Marguerite Louise / Gaétan Jarry MARC-ANTOINE CHARPENTIER Les Arts Florissans

At that time, the custom was to allow great exibility in matters of orchestration, which was linked to whatever vital forces were available and depended on when the performance of the works was programmed. Charpentier’s genius lies in the fact that that he had the ability to conceive his scores, even the most minimalist of them as works of a major stature. 

Les Arts Florissants and La Couronne de Fleurs are an unquestionable example of this: the two operas became known as much for their subtlety and their intimacy in their original form (small ensemble and chorus of soloists), as for their depth and their density in their augmented form (use of an orchestra and a full choir). 

We have therefore chosen to explore the “augmented form”, and thus allow the works to offer a more varied orchestration, to benefit from the full choir), and also offer various theatrical effects such as the use of percussion instruments. Expanded in this way, these miniatures rehabilitate a Charpentier who was denied during his time of the great financial means from which only Lully was able to benefit. 

The extracts chosen from the Couronne de Fleurs present the pastoral as a sort of logical epilogue to the Arts Florissans, necessarily joining the springtime of the Arts inspired by Louis to that of Nature. (Gaétan Jarry)