BBC Symphony Orchestra & Chorus / Sir Andrew Davis ARTHUR BLISS The Beatitudes

Commissioned for Coventry’s new cathedral in 1961, Bliss’s cantata The Beatitudes was destined to be overshadowed by Britten’s War Requiem, and the fact that the work’s first performance was relocated to the city’s Belgrade Theatre (instead of the cathedral) did not serve its reputation well. Bliss was, not surprisingly, disappointed and hoped that it would, one day, be heard in the environment for which it was written. This did not occur, however, until the Golden Jubilee of the cathedral in 2012.

A hybrid work, like its forbear Morning Heroes, it consists of the nine Beatitudes from the Gospel of Matthew, interspersed with an anthology of 17th-century poetry by Taylor, Vaughan and Herbert (some of which will be familiar from Vaughan Williams’s Five Mystical Songs), an adapted section from Isaiah and a poem by Dylan Thomas. Not only do these words provide a religious subtext but they also furnish a coherence to the Beatitudes themselves which otherwise, as the composer wisely adduced, might well have caused unnecessary monotony. Indeed, conversely, it is in the choruses of selected texts that the ‘meat’ of the work is to be found (for which the Beatitudes function, for the most part, as tranquil ‘intermezzos’). To hear Herbert’s ‘Easter’ and ‘I got me flowers’ (a beautiful elegy for soprano and chorus) in a quite different and poignant context is deeply moving. Bliss’s unusual style of choral writing, its preponderant homophony dependent so much on harmonic variety and textural variation, contrasts effectively as an instrument enveloped by the composer’s finely graded orchestration. Bliss’s affinity for strong marches emerges in ‘The lofty looks of man shall be humbled’ (Isaiah) and his ability to create moments of rapt beauty is striking in Herbert’s ‘The Call’, a part-song for chorus and orchestra. The orchestral Prelude and central Interlude remind us of the Bliss of Checkmate and Miracle in the Gorbals, an idiom where he excelled, and the Scherzo of this symphonic canvas is manifested in the angry setting of Thomas’s ‘And death shall have no dominion’. The final Beatitudes (5 8) form an exquisite foil to the violent orchestral Interlude but it is in the last part of the work, ‘The Voices of the Mob’ and the closing ‘Epilogue’ using Jeremy Taylor’s ‘O blessed Jesu’, more Passion-like in genre, that the composer is most powerfully eloquent.

Andrew Davis clearly has a peculiar empathy for this music and the clean edges of Bliss’s orchestral palette, complemented by some lovely playing from the BBC SO and the two soloists, Emily Birsan and Ben Johnson. This is also apparent in a most welcome recording of the virtuoso Introduction and Allegro, written for Stokowski (1926; rev 1937), a compelling mélange of serenity and contrapuntal tour de force which builds on the brilliance of the Colour Symphony of 1922. (Jeremy Dibble / Gramophone)

EnAccord String Quartet CAPRICCIO

The string quartet repertoire is an unending voyage of discovery and exploration. The great masterpieces of the repertoire conceal unknown jewels in their shadow; these latter works, however, seldom find their way onto a concert programme. This recording introduces our listeners to our first and highly personal anthology of splendidly varied and short pieces for string quartet. We hope you enjoy them - because there are many more such works still to be discovered and enjoyed. 

“Our CD is a collection of short stories: each piece has its own structure and mood, its own individual world. Schulhoff’s five pieces, each with its own individual character, are perfect examples of this.”
Rosalinde Kluck - alt violin

“The Lekeu piece was a real discovery. Splendid music with great depth. But what a tragedy! How many more masterpieces could Lekeu have composed, if he hadn’t died at such a young age?”
Maike Reisener - cello

“It was an immense pleasure to get to grips with these small masterpieces. Puccini’s Crisantemi is possibly the best of them for me personally. It’s like a scene from one of his operas, with so much emotion and so atmospheric. And of course I’m pleased that there’s also an important work by a Belgian composer on the CD as well…”
Helena Druwé - violin

“To make this CD was a really intriguing experience. I think it’s so amazing to have so many different styles on one CD, because you get to hear all of the different things that our quartet can do. For me, one of the best things in the CD is the Mendelssohn piece, with its warm and impassioned introduction.”
Ilka van der Plas - violin

Christoffer Sundqvist / Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra / Dima Slobodeniouk SEBASTIAN FAGERLUND Isola

Born in 1972, Sebastian Fagerlund was recently described on the website MusicWeb International as ‘yet another obscenely talented young musician from Finland’. The occasion was the release of his opera Döbeln, with a score that the reviewer went on to characterize as ‘both forward-looking and audience friendly’. Composed in 2009, Döbeln is Fagerlund’s first and so far only opera, and on the present disc we hear three orchestral scores. The musicians of the eminent Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra revel in the composer’s striking gift for orchestration, in performances supervised by the rapidly emerging young conductor Dima Slobodeniouk, who has collaborated with Fagerlund on several occasions previously. The clarinettist Christoffer Sundqvist is also well acquainted with Fagerlund’s music, and his playing served as inspiration for the composer as he wrote his colourful and eventful Clarinet Concerto. Following that work here is Partita, consisting of three movements with titles that mirror the composer’s concerns: Cerimonia (Ceremony), Risonanza (Resonance) and Preghiera (Prayer). According to Fagerlund himself, the work is not associated with any specific religion but rather with an inner, spiritual struggle in general; the need for everyone to find his or her own ‘prayer’. Closing the disc is Isola (Island) which sprang from a visit by the composer to an island in the Turku archipelago formerly used to segregate lepers and the mentally ill from the rest of society. On admittance inmates were expected to bring with them the wood for their own coffins, an ‘isle of the dead’ which today is an idyllic holiday location. A similar alternation of darkness and light, of movement and motionlessness, of violence and sensitivity, permeates Fagerlund’s tone poem.

Nils Mönkemeyer / William Youn / Signum Quartett BRAHMS

These CDs feature performances by a Grand Old Man of the viola and one of the instrument’s most celebrated present advocates. Now in his seventies, Rainer Moog can look back on a career that started with a prize at the Munich Competition and included a stint as principal violist of the Berlin Philharmonic, followed by several decades of unassumingly successful work as a teacher in Cologne. Nils Mönkemeyer (b.1978) enjoyed a run of competition successes before inheriting his teacher’s position at the Munich Hochschule in 2011. Both players have made a number of recordings during their respective careers but not many of Moog’s are available on CD, making this, his second recording of the Brahms sonatas, all the more welcome.

Moog’s view of these pieces is the loving result of countless performances and long reflection on the music: his pacing and phrasing feel absolutely natural, and rubato sounds inevitably right. Moog relishes the music’s broad intervals with heartfelt portamentos. Although he keeps mostly to the higher, ‘clarinet’ version of both sonatas, he does make an exception for the beginning of the F minor piece – the warmth of the C and G strings is too good to lose! Moog’s tone may not be as immediately seductive as, say, William Primrose’s

or Yuri Bashmet’s but its sinewy quality fits the music’s autumnal mood like the proverbial glove. Hashiba is a thoughtful partner throughout.

In a booklet interview, Mönkemeyer claims to play the E flat major Sonata ‘from the clarinet part’ but of course he does no such thing: some telltale double-stops and the odd changed pitch point to the usual viola part, albeit restored (mostly) to the original, higher octave. Conversely, Mönkemeyer keeps to the traditional, ‘low’ version of the F minor Sonata, which suits the piece’s tragic hue but results in anticlimactic octave drops. Mönkemeyer’s tempos are consistently on the broad side and, combined with his suavely sweet trademark tone (and a more resonant acoustic than in Moog’s more closely balanced recording), they make for a very different, to my ears more mannered experience. Youn is a stimulatingly proactive collaborator. Mönkemeyer’s coupling of the Hungarian Dances is lightweight in comparison with Moog’s, who includes Fuchs’s very Brahmsian Sonata and Kiel’s rarely recorded Romances, redolent of late Schumann. (Carlos Maráa Solare)

Juliette Pochin VENEZIA

Having heard Juliette Pochin in concert I know that she can sing more than averagely well. Without such prior experience anyone reading her booklet biography might assume much the same given that it lists collaborations with many well known orchestras and conductors.  Why mention this? Surely her singing on this disc would confirm the fact? Yes and no. She can hold a tune and produce tone with evenness, it’s true. But going by this disc alone one does not learn too much about either her vocal range or her ability to exploit dynamic extremes. Two factors are responsible for this: the recording and the arrangements of the music that are used. 

The recording itself, also produced by Pochin, largely results from several separate sessions that have been mixed together to achieve the end result. Even moderately close listening reveals performances recorded in different acoustics that do not sit too comfortably with each other. Pochin for her part is closely microphoned, thus negating the need for much vocal projection or body behind the tone she produces. The West Kazakhstan Philharmonic play competently but without much individuality. The same could be said for the solo instrumentalists who ‘feature’ on this disc; but the generality of Lloyd-Webber’s might have been avoided somewhat with a recording that conveys nuances more readily. Piece after piece is played at a consistent mezzo-forte that after a few minutes becomes all but unbearable. Has nobody connected with this disc heard of dynamic gradation? What is so wrong with playing pianissimo occasionally, or fortissimo or anything else in between for that matter? Then there’s the tempi – so middle-of-the-road as to be frankly rather dull and quickly very boring. 

Morgan Pochin, the husband and wife team of James Morgan and Juliette Pochin, are responsible for the musical arrangements. One can tell from them that the pair have had a hand in producing film soundtracks and whilst there is nothing wrong with this per se the stock-in-trade predictable syrupy flavour so often found there is out of place in the purely classical context. However this is not a pure classical context, this is crossover: Vivaldi, Bach, Albinoni, Handel, Marcello and Cimarosa are all present but take second place to Morgan Pochin reworkings of their music. Handel, for example, contributes a mere four bars from his cantata Lucrezia which becomes a complete aria following the Morgan Pochin treatment. And not only is the material by these composers negligible at times, but the relationship of some composers to Venice, the theme around which the disc is based, can be tenuous to say the least. Bach is included because he arranged Vivaldi’s works on occasion and Handel finds a place because his opera Agrippina was first performed in Venice. As far as I know he never ventured there personally. 

The major novelty here is the Four Seasons suite. In the Morgan Pochin arrangement of Vivaldi’s evergreen quartet of concertos the sonnets attributed to Vivaldi that accompany each season are sung in the place of the violin line. Given that the sonnets are of varying lengths incomplete versions of each season are performed. It might be vocally challenging to do this but it adds little if anything to the music. Good excuse for a gimmick, however the result should not detain you long. 

It’s an instantly forgettable disc. One thing is for sure though, since this is the first of five discs to come from Juliette Pochin in fulfilment of her £1 million contract we have not heard the last of her. It can only be hoped that future releases might pay more than occasional lip service to serious music and music-making, but I fear this hope may be a forlorn one. (Evan Dickerson)

Signum Quartett SCHUBERT Aus Der Ferne

Hailed as one of the most adventurous and outstanding string quartets of today, both in the performance of modern pieces and the iron repertory, Signum Quartett now releases its first PENTATONE recording with an all-Schubert program. 

Aus der Ferne illuminates the Romanticism and lyricism of this great master. By combining string quartets with lieder arranged for string quartet, the members of the Signum Quartett aim to show how Schubert’s instrumental and vocal music cross-pollinate each other. The fact that Schubert quotes openly from his own songs in his chamber music underlines the strong connection between the two, and this album takes this connection a step further. The concept for the album grew out of the Schubertiad, where chamber music and vocal works would be heard side by side in an intimate setting. A further idea was to complement one of the late quartets with an earlier one - perhaps lesser-known but not a lesser piece. The B-flat major quartet and the Rosamunde Quartet, both featured on this album, share a delicacy and fragility of spirit; convey a longing from afar. These instrumental works gain significance by being accompanied by the lieder arrangements, created by quartet member Xandi van Dijk. These arrangements present quintessential Schubert lieder such as Du bist die Ruh, Wandrers Nachtlied and Lachen und Weinen in a new, fascinating light.

Marie-Elisabeth Hecker / Antwerp Symphony Orchestra / Edo de Waart ELGAR Cello Concerto - Piano Quintet

Cellist Marie-Elisabeth Hecker made her international breakthrough with her sensational success at the 8th Rostropovich Competition in Paris in 2005, where she became the first contestant in the event's history to win the first prize as well as two special prizes. Since then Hecker has become one of the most sought-after soloists and chamber musicians of her generation, recognised for her deep expression and natural affinity for the cello, with Die Zeit describing her playing as "heartbreakingly sad and instinctively beautiful". 

After making several discs of chamber music by Brahms and Schubert, the cellist Marie-Elisabeth Hecker now records a large-scale concerto, showing the full range of her talent. Composed between 1918 and 1919, Elgar’s Concerto Op.85 was poorly received at its first performance but has since become established as one of the key works in the cello repertoire. To complete the programme, Marie-Elisabeth Hecker rejoins her chamber music partners, the violinists Carolin Widmann and David McCarroll, the violist Pauline Sachse and the pianist Martin Helmchen, in Elgar’s Piano Quintet, composed at the same time as the Concerto and premiered in London in 1919.

Marie-Elisabeth Hecker / Martin Helmchen BRAHMS Cello Sonatas

When Brahms played through his First Cello Sonata with its dedicatee, Josef Gänsbacher, the cellist apparently complained that he couldn’t hear himself over the piano. ‘Lucky you,’ muttered Brahms. There’s no such problem on this new disc from Marie-Elisabeth Hecker and Martin Helmchen. As Hecker calmly, eloquently shapes her low-lying opening melody, Helmchen’s off beat piano chords don’t so much drive the rhythm as hang from her line – helped by a recording that places the cello ever so slightly forward.

That’s no bad thing. Brahms may have followed Beethoven’s cue in describing these pieces as sonatas for piano and cello, rather than the other way around, but there’s no question that balance can be an issue. Not here; both instruments come through clear and unforced, enabling Hecker to take the lead in shaping a performance of the First Sonata that’s essentially lyrical and poetic. She doesn’t dominate, mind. The booklet-notes make much of the fact that Helmchen and Hecker are husband and wife, but this is real duo playing, with each player stepping forwards or conceding the musical argument without any grandstanding. That pays rich dividends in the more extrovert and fantastical Second Sonata (a sister work, in spirit, to the Third Symphony). Helmchen’s majestic swell of sound in the centre of the Adagio affettuoso makes as much musical and colouristic sense as Hecker’s forceful pizzicatos.

Any new recording of these two sonatas is up against competition ranging from du Pré and Barenboim to Alban Gerhardt and Markus Groh, and 53 minutes of music is not exactly generous (others offer Brahms transcriptions or Schumann cello music). But if you’re after a thoughtful and musicianly pairing of these two works alone, you won’t be disappointed. (Richard Bratby / Gramophone)

Syntonia DVORÁK / SUK Piano Quintets

Syntonia stands apart in the world of chamber music. Created in 1999, the ensemble is currently the only piano quintet in France. It is composed of five musicians who lead parallel solo careers yet make the ensemble their priority, thus creating a dynamic, exacting and complicit unit.

Graduates of the Paris Conservatoire national supérieur de musique et de Danse in 2000; they won the Tina Moroni prize in the International Competition in Florence and did their first recording as part of the Déclic series (AFAA / Radio France) the same year. They have since performed in many prestigious festivals and concert venues, including : Roque d’Anthéron, Pâques à Deauville, Classique au vert at the Parc Floral, the Passerelle in Saint Brieuc, the Bouffes du Nord, the Cité de la Musique, the Capitole in Toulouse, the Grands Concerts in Lyon… Radio Classique frequently schedules them; France Musique is a partner of their records and has aired several of their concerts. They are also regular guests on many radio programs.

Their 2007 disc devoted to Schumann and Franck’s quintets was the fruit of a common vision that had been developed over time and was awarded the ‘Diapason découverte’, as well as 4 stars from MDLM. In September 2010, their version of the Franck quartet caused a stir by winning the Tribune des Critiques on France Musique. Their new Dvořák & Suk's piano quintets CD was released early 2014, and is also acclaimed by both press and public. They share their love for chamber music with a number of regular and occasional collaborators, including : Richard Galliano, Jean-Marc Phillips-Varjabedian, Henri Demarquette, François Salque, le Quatuor de Crémone…

Lara Downes & Friends FOR LENNY

Could there be a more perfect pairing than Leonard Bernstein and Lara Downes? Each incarnates the American spirit in resplendent manner, the former in his magnificent writing and the latter in her captivating piano playing. True to her generous nature, Downes has shared the credit for her tribute to Bernstein on the occasion of his hundredth birthday with “friends,” four of who accompany her on four of the twenty-eight tracks. But said credit could be extended beyond those participants to the many composers, among them Stephen Sondheim, Marc Blitzstein, and Ned Rorem, whose own Bernstein tributes appear. One of the more surprising things about the release is that while a generous amount of his own material is included, world premieres written by others appear too. Selection details aside, two things in particular distinguish For Lenny, Downes's always exquisite playing, of course, but also the audacity of Bernstein's lyrical writing and his bountiful melodic sensibility. In her hands, his songs sing.

A mere scan of the set-list reveals one of the project's greatest strengths: rather than exclusively feature well-known Bernstein material, Downes instead chose less familiar pieces, seven of them “Anniversaries” he wrote for family and friends on their birthdays, Aaron Copland, Lukas Foss, and Sondheim among the latter. In an imaginative move, that gesture's returned in kind by figures such as John Corigliano, Daron Hagen, Shulamit Ran, Theo Bleckmann, and Eleonor Sandresky, whose personal Bernstein tributes were written in some cases during his lifetime and in others were newly composed for this project. Such an inspired programme is the kind of thing we've come to expect from Downes, a justly admired artist whose discography includes homages to another great American artist, Billie Holiday, as well as America itself.

As mentioned, four pieces feature guests: Kevin “K.O.” Olusola (a member of the a cappella group Pentatonix) beatboxing on “Something's Coming”; clarinet prodigy Javier Morales-Martinez (whom Downes discovered through the national Young Artists program she founded at the Mondavi Center, UC Davis) on “Cool”; and roots singer Rhiannon Giddens and baritone Thomas Hampson on “So Pretty” and “A Simple Song,” respectively. Each collaboration is memorable in its own way, Olusola's for the fresh spin his treatments bring to one of Bernstein's better-known songs and the vocalists' for the contrast their radiant presence adds to an otherwise instrumental collection. While all four pieces would no doubt have impressed had they been performed by Downes alone, the inclusion of the extra colours the guests provide is hardly objectionable.

Most of the twenty-eight pieces are miniatures (only three edge past the four-minute mark), but they never feel slight; Downes's urbane execution and bright articulation make even the most fleeting piece seem substantial. Bernstein's own material ranges from saloon-styled blues (“Big Stuff”) and playful reveries (“Anniversary for Craig Urquhart”) to chromatically adventurous explorations (“Anniversary for Nina”); the tributes likewise differ in tone, many of them, including those by Corigliano, Urquhart, Sandresky, and Sondheim heartfelt, tender, and wistful; the ones by Stephen Schwartz and Michael Abels, on the other hand, are declamatory, emblematic of Bernstein's high-spirited side (Abels's is even titled “Iconoclasm/for Lenny”).

Among the standouts are poignant renderings of justly beloved Bernstein settings such as “The Story of My Life” and “Some Other Time” and Ricky Ian Gordon's “What Shall We Remember?”; never is Downes's artistry more evident than during her debonair treatments of such elegiac fare. One would have to be hard-hearted indeed not to be inspired and galvanized by her example. At a historical moment when an abundance of ills makes despair a not unreasonable choice, her music-making symbolizes an unwavering belief that the world and its people have the capacity to make things better. Such an infectious and life-affirming stance makes resignation seem like a cowardly choice.(Textura / March 2018)

JÓHANN JÓHANNSON Englabörn & Variations

The late Jóhann Jóhannsson was already a familiar face within the Reykjavik music scene when his compatriot Hávar Sigurjónsson approached him to compose for Englabörn, his latest play. The musician had played in countless guitar bands since the mid-1980s, as well as collaborating with other like-minded souls, and he was also the mastermind behind Kitchen Motors, an art collective and record label with an electronic and experimental bent. So widespread were Jóhannsson’s interests, in fact, that the same year as Englabörn he released the debut by his latest band, Apparat Organ Quartet. The two couldn’t have been more different: while Apparat Organ Quartet traded in playful instrumental keyboard pop, performed on refurbished vintage instruments alongside a drummer, Englabörn sounded like little anyone had ever heard. A peaceful, graceful intermingling of style, form and content, it was sometimes agonisingly desolate, sometimes gloriously uplifting, but never less than astonishing.

These days, of course, it’s almost impossible to imagine a world without music like Jóhannsson’s. Alongside composers like Max Richter – whose debut, Memoryhouse, had appeared only a few months earlier – he helped blur the lines between classical and electronic music, giving birth inadvertently to a genre now known somewhat disingenuously as ‘new’ or ‘neo-classical’. Over the years that followed, he composed some of the greatest film scores of the contemporary age, and others since – including Ólafur Arnalds and A Winged Victory For The Sullen – have joined him in bringing this new, strangely indefinable sound into the mainstream. Back then, however, this delicate mesh of digital and analogue, of traditional and radical, of old and new, was considered exceptional, in every sense of the word. Moreover, it displayed everything that would set Jóhannsson’s work apart, even if it took time for the world to recognise how the simplicity of its beauty matched the purity of his premise. But catch up they eventually would.

Englabörn – the album – isn’t the original score to Sigurjónsson’s play. Instead, that blossomed into a free-standing album, its sixteen sublime miniatures steeped in austere melodic elegance and profound melancholy. “The music took on a life of its own,” Jóhannsson recalled during preparations for the reissue. “It wasn’t intended to be my first album as a solo artist. Like a fine example of Taoist serendipity and ‘doing without doing’, this material simply demanded to exist as a work in its own right. And, as someone who embraces chance and letting go, and who tries to listen to what the music I compose wants to be – rather than what I want it to be – I was happy to oblige and spend the time required to make it into its own independent work.”

At the time, though it received some positive international coverage, Englabörn’s seamless blend of classical and electronic instruments – released by London’s experimental Touch label – remained something of a hidden gem. Slowly, however, word seeped from his homeland, far out in the North Atlantic, to the world beyond. “There weren’t many composers combining classical instruments with digital processing in this way then,” Jóhannsson said, “but people were ready.” That it’s ended up being reissued sixteen years later by Deutsche Grammophon confirms how far the world has now come.

Ismo Eskelinen BACH

Ismo Eskelinen’s Bach on guitar is beautiful but safe, and not too exciting. The sonorities are lute-like and gallant, like tiny minuets played by music boxes, and may suit the taste of those who like their Bach thoughtful and relaxed, without mannerism. Of course, there is a time and place for anything, so if, after a tiring workday, I will need a mental relaxation, a warm bath in the shimmery harmonies – and for some reason I don’t have my beloved Angela Hewitt set around – I may well turn to this album.

The E major suite starts with a talkative Prelude. Instead of an Allemande we have an airy, gallant Loure; then enter a humorous Gavotte and two minuets, both rather decorative; a lively, openhearted Bourrée leads into the rhythmical swing of the sunlit, smiling Gigue.
The G minor suite – here transcribed to A minor – is darker and colder. Its structure is more standard for Bach’s suites. The Prelude has a slow, misty-eyed introduction that sounds gray and ancient and leads into the fast fugal part. Eskelinen plays the Allemande very slowly, so it becomes quite static, disjoint and hard to follow. The Courante does not run smoothly, due to minor imperfections of the tempo; I would prefer more lightness in its course. The Sarabande is also very deliberate; it is not a dance anymore, nor any memory of a dance; the sounds just happen and hang in the air, creating echoes, reflections and reminiscences. From this meditation emerges the cool and melodic Gavotte. This is a memorable piece, gallant and serious and a little sad; the performance is again on the slow site, which loses some of the lightness of step. The Gigue sounds antique, like a Dowland galli

ard, more like an epilog than the usual boisterous finale. Overall, the suite sounds very coherent. This is a pensive, unhurried, philosophical reading.Between the Suites and the formidable Chaconne from the second Violin Partita, Eskelinen inserted another piece for meditation: a minuscule transcription of Christ lag in Todesbanden. It is very thoughtful and a bit disjoint. I liked the glassy sound of the highest register.

In the 14.5-minute reading of the Ciaccona, the guitarist declares his intentions from the very beginning: it is grandiose and heavy like a cathedral. The lines are singing, the music is well paced and sounds very natural on a guitar, but weighty, as if the original was not for a violin but for a cello. This steady, poised progress is very appropriate. Some variations receive an unexpected Spanish hue when dressed in the guitar clothes.
The recording is done beautifully; the acoustics are deep and spacious. The guitar sound is captured in its full radiance. There are occasional squeaks and hisses of the fingers moving over strings, but not at the level when it becomes a nuisance.
Listening to this album is like spending a day with your uncle. He keeps teaching you things that seem to be right, but why is this constant teaching so tedious? Another thing about uncles: you miss him when you don’t see him for a long time, but when you spend a day together, you start thinking why did you miss him at all. Something like that happens to me with this disc. I don’t play it on Repeat; but from time to time I find myself in the mood to put it on to listen. It has a mystery appeal. Eskelinen’s approach works well, his intonations are very alive, never even, never repetitive, the music breathes. This set is profound, like a long deep massage. (Oleg Ledeniov)

Ismo Eskelinen / Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra / Hannu Lintu SEBASTIAN FAGERLUND Stonework - Drifts - Transit

Sebastian Fagerlund has been described as ‘a composer who commandingly bridges tradition and modernity’ (Klassik-Heute.de) while his music is ‘modern and unorthodox, opulent and strange, masterfully composed and orchestrated’ (MusicWeb-International). Previous acclaimed recordings on BIS include the chamber opera Döbeln, as well as orchestral works and concertos for clarinet, violin and bassoon respectively. Another concertante work froms part of the present programme: Transit for guitar and orchestra, written for Ismo Eskelinen who also performs it here. He is partnered by the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra and Hannu Lintu who have previously championed Fagerlund’s music: the orchestra has commissioned several works, including the guitar concerto as well as Drifts, the opening work here. The disc takes its title from the third composition, Stonework, named after those man-made stone structures that are found all over the world, serving a range of purposes, from landmarks and navigational aids to burial monuments.

David Krakauer / Matt Haimovitz & Friends AKOKA

In their “brilliantly inventive” (The New York Times) live recording, clarinetist David Krakauer and cellist Matt Haimovitz’s AKOKA lift Messiaen's transcendent 1940-41 work Quartet for the End of Time out of the polite context of a chamber music performance, placing it in a dramatic 21st century setting that drives home its gravity and impact. AKOKA was inspired by the wartime experience of Jewish clarinetist Henri Akoka, who premiered the Quartet for the End of Time with Messiaen himself at the German prisoner-of-war camp in which they were both interred. Henri Akoka's vibrant personality and the story of his survival, with all its twists and turns, is the inspiration for this recording, which brings out the human aspect of this composition, seen through the eyes of one individual caught up in terrifying events beyond his control. Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time is bookended by Akoka, Krakauer’s highly improvisational, Sephardic-tinged piece, and Meanwhile… a re-mix by hip-hop/klezmer artist Socalled, who joins the ensemble on electronics. As the forces of fundamentalism, intolerance and violence intensify in today's world, this mounting of Messiaen’s great work is all the more timely.

Jonathan Crow / Douglas McNabney / Matt Haimovitz MOZART Divertimento

Mozart’s brilliance at the keyboard is well known, but it was his joy in playing the viola – and the musical dialogue and kinship of playing with friends – that led the composer to write his music for string trio. Mozart’s Divertimento remains one of the pinnacles of chamber music history. Haydn had already established the string quartet genre, but there was nothing like the richness and craft of this string trio before Mozart. The equality and variety of roles, the grand form spanning six movements, the constantly shifting couplings – all create a fully satisfying sonic texture from the spiritual and symbolic number, three. All for one, one for all, the three players share a bond, fraternal brothers connected by Mozart’s imagination. 

It brings me happy memories to look back a dozen years to when this recording was made in the marvellous acoustic of Église Saint- Augustin near Mirabel, Quebec. My friends and colleagues Jonathan Crow and Douglas McNabney join me on this Mozartean journey, all of us at the time professors at the Schulich School of Music of McGill University. (Matt Haimovitz)

Julia Lezhneva / Franco Fagioli / Diego Fasolis VIVALDI Gloria

Julia Lezhneva, Franco Fagioli and Diego Fasolis: three stars of the Baroque unite to record Vivaldi’s most popular choral work. Julia Lezhneva – “a serene, sleek voice, beatific in timbre, with a bell-like resonance” (Financial Times) – adds the glorious solo motet Nulla in Mundo Pax Sincera. Franco Fagioli – “one of today's great vocal technicians” (The Guardian) – records the Nisi Dominus with its haunting ‘Cum Dederit’. Diego Fasolis and I Barocchisti are today’s Vivaldi interpreters par excellence.

Renaud Capuçon / London Symphony Orchestra / François-Xavier Roth BARTÓK Violin Concertos Nos. 1 & 2

Whenever I listen to performances by the French violinist Renaud Capuçon, I'm unfailingly won over by both his beautifully sweet tone and his impressive virtuosity, and so it has been an absolute pleasure to get to know his new recording of the two violin concertos by Béla Bartók, accompanied by the London Symphony Orchestra under François-Xavier Roth.

Although neither published nor performed until more than a decade after his death, Bartók's first concerto was actually written while he was in his twenties, and stylistically speaking is quite different from the much later second concerto. It begins with just a single line for the soloist alone, gradually joined by more and more members of the orchestral strings, and then eventually the woodwind enter with the same melodic phrase that began the concerto. It's a magical opening, and the interplay between Capuçon's melancholic sound and the counterpoint of the LSO string section is a marvellous thing to behold.

Shaping every single phrase to perfection is conductor François-Xavier Roth, whose care over even the smallest facets of Bartók's dynamic markings is really remarkable: there's a moment in the first concerto where the solo violin and the orchestral first violins play the sameforte throughout whilst the orchestra are instructed to begin pp with a crescendo. You can actually hear the shift in balance as the first violins catch up in volume with the soloist, until Capuçon is finally absorbed into the orchestral sound. It's the tiniest of details, but it makes such a difference.

line, but the soloist is marked

There are all sorts of examples of this in the second concerto too, where Bartók frequently makes extensive use of layered dynamics. This is most prevalent in his woodwind writing, where for instance a piano clarinet solo might receive an interjection from a pianissimo flute, with horns playing ppp underneath! It’s a credit to Roth that he pays such meticulous attention to these markings, and also a testament to both the LSO and the excellent recording quality that such minute gradations are actually audible!

The second concerto is also full of intriguingly unusual timbres and performance techniques, such as asking the cymbals at one point to be played on the edge with the blade of a penknife, or requesting that a particular triangle roll be performed with a thin wooden stick rather than the usual metal beater. All of these moments are brought out wonderfully by the orchestra. Similarly, there's always an especial satisfaction to be had on hearing the hearty thwack of the Bartók pizzicato (where the string is plucked so hard that it snaps back and hits the wood of the instrument, so-named after his use of it in various pieces).

One of my favourite passages in the second concerto is near the end of the first movement, where eerie phrases for murky bass clarinet and bassoons, accompanying the solo violinist playing with quarter tones, lead into an outstandingly splendid cadenza from Capuçon, with double stops aplenty. Elsewhere there is real tenderness, particularly the start of the second movement, an affectingly poignant melody for solo violin with harp, timpani, and strings, which is sublime.

I must admit when I first put it on, I wasn't expecting to be quite so knocked out by the quality of the performances, but for me this is a stunner of a disc. With commanding musicianship from Capuçon, extremely intelligent and attentive conducting from Roth, and the LSO on the very best of their always magnificent form, this is undoubtedly one of my top discs of the year so far! (James Longstaffe)

Martha Argerich / Sergei Babayan PROKOFIEV FOR TWO

Pianists Martha Argerich and Sergei Babayan have recorded two selections from Prokofiev’s music for stage and screen in magnificent two-piano transcriptions by Babayan. Prokofiev for Two, captures for posterity the sense of mutual inspiration felt by these kindred spirits, palpable in their live performances together. The upcoming album features Babayan’s twelve-movement transcription of numbers from the ballet Romeo and Juliet and his seven-movement suite transcribed from Prokofiev’s incidental music for Hamlet and Eugene Onegin, film score for The Queen of Spades and opera War and Peace.

Martha Argerich and Sergei Babayan first met in Brussels in 1991 when, on a whim, he looked her up in the phonebook and, to his own surprise, found her name and telephone number listed. His call from a phone box in the city started a strong friendship that led to numerous joint appearances in Europe and America. After one performance of Rachmaninov’s “Suite No.2” and other works for two pianos, Babayan told Argerich of his dream to transcribe pieces from Romeo and Juliet for their next duo date. “She was very inspired by the idea,” he recalls. “It was the greatest pleasure – and an honour – to create something that we would play together.” Babayan’s take on Prokofiev, coupled with a suite of rarities from the composer’s stage and film music, can be heard in Prokofiev for Two.

The freshly transcribed Prokofiev score received its premiere performance as part of the Martha Argerich Project at the 2013 Lugano Festival. Argerich and Babayan have since performed this work together with the revised Romeo and Juliet suite several times, most recently in concert at Stuttgart’s Liederhalle last November.

Martha Argerich is already renowned for her interpretations of Prokofiev’s music. The Argentine-born artist, hailed as one of the greatest pianists of all time, included the composer’s turbulent “Toccata” in her Deutsche Grammophon recital debut album, recorded in 1960. She reinforced her international reputation seven years later with a landmark recording for the yellow label of Prokofiev’s “Third Piano Concerto” with the Berliner Philharmoniker and Claudio Abbado. “I have loved Prokofiev ever since I can recall,” notes Argerich. “And people think he loves me too sometimes! I love the way Sergei [Babayan] plays Prokofiev and many other things. The first solo recital of his I heard was Bach’s Goldberg Variations and I was incredibly impressed by it. I very much liked his proposal that we should play his transcription of Romeo and Juliet and feel very honoured that he dedicated it to me.”

Babayan’s love for Prokofiev, like Argerich’s, is deeply rooted, dating back to his childhood in Armenia and student days at the Moscow Conservatoire. Having left the USSR for the first time in 1989, he settled in the U.S. Time and again, Babayan has paid tribute to Prokofiev, playing several of his piano concertos with Valery Gergiev including at the 2015 BBC Proms in a monumental concert with the London Symphony Orchestra featuring all five of the works.

His new Prokofiev transcriptions are both dedicated to Martha Argerich. “This project happened because of my love for Prokofiev, my love for Martha and my love for the ballet Romeo and Juliet,” reflects Babayan. The idea of transcribing Romeo and Juliet first arose decades ago while he was studying Prokofiev’s colourful instrumentation in close detail with an orchestra. Already aware of Argerich’s playing, he was further inspired after hearing a pirate recording of her 1981 Carnegie Hall performance of the “Ten Pieces Op.75” from Romeo and Juliet. “I listened and was immediately drawn to learn the cycle. But I felt that Prokofiev used chamber-like numbers for his selection of music for his transcription for solo piano. If you first became acquainted with the ballet through this piano score, you would never guess or understand the whole tragic, violent, and dark nature of the original work. Of course, the ballet contains lyrical, romantic music; music filled with humour and dance movement. But it also contains music for the “Death of Tybalt” – music of love and hate.”

Believing it would be impossible for music of such powerful emotion to be conveyed by two hands, and aware of Prokofiev’s own fondness for transcription, Babayan felt driven to exploit the full expressive force and tonal richness of two pianos. His created version contains what Martha Argerich, with a wry laugh, calls “difficult and demanding” technical and musical challenges. Both musicians, however, agree that transcription is “an act of love” and Babayan’s experience with Romeo and Juliet soon led him to explore some of the composer’s lesser-known works and create the second suite on this album. As he points out, this music will be new to most listeners. For example, only fragments of the film score for The Queen of Spades have ever been performed or recorded. He underlines its imaginative and innovative qualities, adding, “I’m sure if Prokofiev had lived longer he would have used the material for The Queen of Spades for a new movie, symphony, quartet or maybe even a piano duo. This music stayed on the shelf and it was my luck to hear it.”

Prokofiev for Two is driven by the passion and power of an ideal keyboard partnership. Martha Argerich considers playing in duo with Babayan to be “a thing of alchemy – a discovery”. For his part, Babayan says the experience of performing with Argerich is like joining a conversation with a divine being, one in which “you cannot be mundane or ordinary … Martha will somehow pull out the best from you.”

Dorothee Oberlinger / Vittorio Ghielmi THE PASSION OF MUSICK

England in the 17th century was a country marked by civil war, a war fought between Crown and Parliament, with Catholic royalists ranged against Puritan republicans. These were politically turbulent times and yet from a musical point of view it was an astonishingly fruitful period. In general the fine arts suffered badly at least in the public arena and above all in the 1650s, when the Stuart dynasty was overthrown by the austere regime of the self-styled Lord Protector, Oliver Cromwell. But this public neglect was more than made up for by the way in which chamber music flourished in the salons of well-to-do burghers and of members of the nobility. Writing in 1706, the English lawyer, biographer and music theorist Roger North noted that “many chose rather to fiddle at home, than to goe out, and be knockt on the head abroad”. The preferred instruments for this “private Musicke” were the harp, various types of recorder and, last but not least, the viol. From the Renaissance onwards, viols had been built in families from the bass to the soprano register, and they tended to be played as a group in the form of a “consort”. By the first half of the 16th century a consort of recorders is known to have existed at the court of Henry VIII. But in England there was also a great fondness for viols and especially for the typically English lyra viol, which, with its special tuning, was well suited to playing chords. As the writer on music Thomas Mace observed in 1676, with such an instrument “you have a Ready Entertainment for the Greatest Prince in the World”.

Dorothee Oberlinger / Ensemble 1700 TELEMANN Suite in A minor & Double Concertos

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Dorothee Oberlinger TELEMANN 12 Fantasias

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Dorothee Oberlinger / Ensemble 1700 TELEMANN

Born in 1969 in Aachen, Dorothee Oberlinger studied recorder in Cologne, Amsterdam and Milan. After successfully making her debut in 1997 by winning the first Price in the international competition SRP / Moeck UK in London's Wigmore Hall, Dorothee Oberlinger has been a regular guest at major festivals and concert series throughout Europe, America and Asia.

As a soloist, she plays with the Ensemble 1700, founded by her in 2002, as well as with renowned baroque ensembles and orchestras such as the Sonatori de la Gioiosa Marca, Musica Antiqua Cologne, the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin, London Baroque, the Academy of Ancient Music or Zefiro.

As "Instrumentalist of the Year 2008", she was awarded the prestigious German "Echo" music award award for her CD recording "Italian Sonatas", followed by an ECHO Klassik for her album "Flauto Veneziano" in 2013. In addition to her intensive involvement with the music of the 17th and 18th centuries, Dorothee Oberlinger is still devoted to contemporary music, thus contributing to the latest CD "Touch" of the Swiss pop duo 'Yello'. 

Since 2004, Dorothee Oberlinger is professor at the University Mozarteum in Salzburg, where she is also heading the Institute for Early Music. Since 2009, she is the artistic director of the traditional Arolsen Baroque Festival.

Dorothee Oberlinger / Ensemble 1700 G.F. HANDEL Sonatas for the Recorder

For its authentic instrumental timbres, exquisite period interpretations, superbly engineered sound, and, above all, the sheer genius of the music, this album of Handel's recorder trios and sonatas is guaranteed to please connoisseurs of Baroque chamber music, and should catapult Dorothee Oberlinger and her handpicked Ensemble 1700 into international celebrity. A debut release for these exceptional musicians, this remarkable CD reveals both their scrupulous scholarship and enthusiastic participation, and the combination is winning. Oberlinger plays the recorder with a lucid but modest tone, never upstaging the other players but creating an impression of domestic intimacy that surely attended amateur performances in the eighteenth century. Yet these are not fragile or rarefied renditions, for Oberlinger and her companions are quite vigorous in the Allegro movements; the long, lyrical lines in the Larghettos and Adagios are always solidly supported through the soloist's unerring ornamentation; and the accompaniment is fully realized and strongly characterized, distributed throughout the works to a variety of basso continuo instruments. The illustrated booklet includes an informative essay on the recorder's history and Handel's music by Gerhard Braun, and the recording is absolutely clear in details and natural in reproduction. This disc is highly recommended. (Blair Sanderson)

Claire-Marie Le Guay STRAVINSKY Petrouchka RAVEL Daphnis et Chloé

This disc is advertised as ‘transcriptions pour piano par les auteurs’. Question: what is the difference between a transcription, an arrangement, a reduction and a concert version? Answer: it seems to be a grey area. And in this case the greyness could easily mislead buyers into thinking they are getting something that they are not. 

Stravinsky made the rationale behind the Trois mouvements for piano as clear as could be: ‘I tried to make of this Petrushka an essentially pianistic work using the resources of that instrument and without assigning it in any way a role as imitator’ (a lecture in 1935). Even though the piano was already integral to the work’s original conception, Stravinsky was careful to choose those parts of the ballet that would come off in the solo piano medium, and then felt free to play around with the text.

Ravel’s piano score of Daphnis, variously described here as a ‘transcription’ and a ‘version de concert’, is in fact, as I understand these terms, neither. Nor is it the version referred to in the booklet as the piano score completed on May 1, 1910, since this did not include the definitive ending, which is played here. What Claire-Marie le Guay does play – and with at times breathtaking virtuosity – is no more than the piano score prepared by Ravel for the use of the choreographer Fokine during the 1912 rehearsals. In my view it is a piano reduction, with most of what that word implies. Not to beat about the bush, the atmospheric moments in the score simply don’t work, and the slow chords of the choral link into the Dawn Scene, frankly, sound silly. I was interested to see Bryce Morrison (11/03) confronting a similar problem in Biret’s recording of the Firebird piano score – and also coming up against the arrangement/transcription question. 

I first came across le Guay playing the Dutilleux Sonata, in a performance I admire very much (as, rather more importantly, does the composer). She throws off the Petrushka pieces with enormous élan and does her considerable best at every point in the Ravel. But I’m afraid the latter brought to mind images of women preachers and dogs walking on their hind legs. In the enthusiasm to find ‘new’ pieces by the great composers this is, in my view, a ballet too far. (Gramophone)

John Holloway / Jaap ter Linden / Lars Ulrik Mortensen VERACINI Sonatas

John Holloway’s “violinist’s journey” through great works of the 17th and 18th century, begun with his acclaimed New Series recordings of Schmelzer, Biber and Muffat, reaches a new stage with his account of the sonatas of Francesco Maria Veracini (1690-1768). The present recording - introducing a new ensemble, as Dutch cellist Jaap ter Linden joins British baroque violinist Holloway and Danish harpsichordist Lars Ulrik Mortensen – offers fascinating insights into the work of a composer whose musical achievements are still often undervalued, or overshadowed, in contemporary accounts, by the idiosyncrasies of his personal life.

In his liner notes, Holloway says of Veracini: “With his combination of brilliant technical and compositional innovation firmly rooted in the best music of the previous generation, Veracini earns an honoured place in the short list of truly great violinist-composers which includes Biber and - from a much later generation – Ysaÿe .... and, of course, Bach”.

That the Italian was one of the outstanding virtuosi of the 18th century was clear enough to his contemporaries. There are numerous reports of the clarity and forcefulness of his playing cutting through the sound of an orchestra. Even the great violinist Giuseppe Tartini is said to have been so overwhelmed by Veracini’s playing that he took time off from public performance to hone his own skills.

Veracini was one of the first musicians of his time to prefer the existence of a freelance soloist to a career as an employed court musician. From 1714 on, he enjoyed his success in London as well as in various other musical centers of Europe. He was a ‘star’ par excellence, brilliant eccentric, with no doubts about his own abilities, frequently asserting that there was only one God, and one Veracini!

Although he wrote secular and spiritual cantatas, concertos, oratorios and operas, Veracini’s significance as a composer rests on his four collections of violin sonatas, which, composed or published in 1716, 1721, 1744 and the late 1750s, span virtually his whole creative career. For the present CD, John Holloway has chosen one characteristic example of each – music that speaks for itself while allowing us to trace Veracini’s development as an artist.

The twelve "Sonate a violino, o flauto solo" with their strict use of four-movement sequences follow the sonata da chiesa form, but have no fugues. Yet the twelve sonatas published as Opus I in Dresden in 1721 represent a significant step forward, coming closer to the ambitiously contrapuntal German style. The first sonata on the present CD begins with a French overture in dotted rhythms, revealing ‘experimental’ traits in sound and technique.

But his grip on his craft was very firm. Some of his pieces, including the Sonate accademiche, were orginally composed not for the general public but for learned societies of music lovers. This was highly erudite music reminiscent of late Bach, but formal concerns and a “wild and flighty” quality coexist in the best of Veracini’s music.

“It is tempting to look for the bizarre in Veracini’s music and over-emphasise it", John Holloway remarks. "I think this would be to underestimate him. The quality of his music lies not only in the learned counterpoint, or in the outstanding writing for the violin: there is throughout a feeling for melody and harmony which display a remarkable and very personal expressivity.” (ECM Records)

Rüdiger Lotter / Lyriarte THE ENIGMATIC ART OF ANTONIO AND FRANCESCO MARIA VERACINI

Two particularly spectacular personalities of the Baroque period, which was not short of exciting figures: Antonio Veracini, violin virtuoso, teacher and composer in Florence. Although he was a highly respected musician and teacher in his own time, only few of his works have survived. His nephew Francesco Maria, to whom he taught violin and composition, was a completely different type. Hotheaded, eccentric, ingenious – as he was described by his contemporaries. This character is reflected today in his works, which attest to an extraordinary freedom from conventions. On this CD the soloist Rüdiger Lotter finds a celebrity partner in the recorder player Dorothee Oberlinger. The Continuo part very well cast also promises an adventurous listening experience through the contrasting soundscapes of the Veracinis.

Cathy Krier PIANO - 20th CENTURY

“The early 20th century is a period that fascinates me. The prevalent musical aesthetic was disrupted by a new generation of composers who maintained their roots in tradition, but felt a great desire to expand music’s horizons: they formed a multitude of currents and embarked on a number of different paths, all driven by the idea of transfiguring everything they had previously known. For this disc I have chosen to retrace the path originally taken by Arnold Schoenberg. Born in Vienna in 1874, Schoenberg had an atypical career. Upon his father’s death, he had to leave school as the eldest sibling at the age of sixteen to take up a profession. As an autodidact he learned the essentials of composition by sight-reading great repertoire and by playing chamber music on the cello and the violin. Married to the sister of Alexander Zemlinsky, Schoenberg took some counterpoint lessons from that composer and soon started teaching harmony and counterpoint himself, from 1903 on. His teaching activity remained central throughout his life, both in Europe and after having immigrated to the US. Profoundly aware of the continual evolution of Art as a historical necessity, Schoenberg introduced an important change into composition at the beginning of the 20th century. He took it over the brink into the unknown by dissolving the classical functions of harmony, then by eliminating all familiar points of melodic and thematic reference. Schoenberg’s Op. 11 is the first truly atonal work for piano ever written….” (Cathy Krier)

Tatiana Chernichka FRÉDÉRIC CHOPIN 24 Etudes

From an early age, the pianist Tatiana Chernichka was among the most promising talents of her generation. Born in Novosibirsk, Russia, she was awarded the First Prize in the International Chopin Competition in Göttingen, Germany when she was only 10 years old. Two years later, she gave her first solo recital and made her debut with the Novosibirsk Symphony Orchestra, performing the Piano Concerto No. 1 in Eb major by Franz Liszt.
Tatiana Chernichka has since been successful in numerous competitions. She was awarded the Third Prize in the 58th Ferruccio Busoni International Piano Competition in Bolzano, Italy, as well as in the 60th Maria Canals Competition in Barcelona. She was also a finalist in the renowned Concours Reine Elisabeth in Brussels. As a prize winner in the Busoni Competition, she was given the opportunity to participate in three master classes with the legendary Alfred Brendel, in Essen, Bolzano and Reykjavik.

The young pianist has since performed in Germany and abroad, throughout Europe and Russia. She has been a guest artist at such festivals as the “Armonie sotto la Rocca” in Italy, “Musikal Kremlin” in Moscow and the “Ruhr Piano Festival” in Essen. She also took part in the Tel-Hai Piano Master Classes in Israel.

Tatiana Chernichka has played with such orchestras as the Mozarteum Orchester Salzburg, the Israel Symphony Orchestra, the “Musica Viva” Orchestra, the Orchestra of the Gustav Mahler Academy and the Polish Chamber Orchestra “AUSKO.”

Matt Haimovitz / Christopher O'Riley BEETHOVEN Period

Cellist Matt Haimovitz prefaces his period-instrument Beethoven cycle with an absorbing essay, writing that ‘the consideration is no longer the modern-day “how can the cello cut through the multi-voiced powerhouse of a concert grand piano”, but “how can it make room for the nuances of the 19th-century fortepiano?”’ Good engineering also helps, and Pentatone’s vividly resonant production captures the music’s wide dynamic range with comparable clarity and heft to the two Bylsma editions, and surpasses the slightly dry and close-up Isserlis/Levin cycle.

More significantly, Haimovitz and pianist Christopher O’Riley play the living daylights out of these works. They lap up Beethoven’s combative style like hungry lions anticipating raw steak, relishing the composer’s frequent subito dynamics, unpredictable placement of accents and over-the-bar-line phrase groupings. Rarely has Op 5 No 1’s first-movement introduction come alive with such rhythmic character, while the rollicking yet relaxed repartee of Op 5 No 2’s Rondo underlines the music’s kinship to the Fourth Piano Concerto’s finale. Similar attention to detail adds intensity and colour to the off-beat accents in Op 69’s Scherzo, and the Allegro vivace’s playful demeanor (complete with scrupulously observed staccatos) makes for a brash contrast to the eloquence and nobility one normally encounters. If the duo pile into Op 102 No 1’s Allegro vivace too aggressively for certain pitches to register, the joyous, uplifting mood conveyed by their briskly paced Op 102 No 2 final fugue’s transparency and sophisticated phraseology is worth this release’s total price.

Terrific performances of the variation sets prove more than merely filler. If you want a HIP counterpart to the Maisky/Argerich cycle, look no further. (Jed Distler / Gramophone)

Matt Haimovitz ORBIT

Orbit maps my musical journey since the turn of the millenium, a path travelled with my partner in life and music, composer Luna Pearl Woolf. Initially released on Oxingale Records as five thematic albums – Anthem (2003), Goulash! (2005), After Reading Shakespeare (2007), Figment (2009), and Matteo (2011) – Orbit encompasses nearly all of the solo contemporary works on these albums, along with two newly recorded tracks: Philip Glass’ “Orbit” and a new arrangement by Luna of the Beatles’ “Helter Skelter.” All but these two tracks were produced by Luna, and all have now been remastered for SACD HD surround sound. More than twenty composers are represented in the set, fifteen of them still living. Ten works receive their world premiere recording here. 

With the solo cello as our pilot, we steer headlong into the great musical debates of the past half-century: maximalist vs. minimalist; folk-rooted vs. abstract, absolute vs. narrative, tonal vs. atonal. In many ways, we live in a golden age of music, with a perspective rich in history and reference. We can look back at the 20th century’s Tower of Babel. We can embrace its boldness, diversity, complexity, and its return to the natural order of harmony. Leonard Bernstein’s words from his Norton Lectures, The Unanswered Question, ruminating on Noam Chomsky’s linguistic theory of universality, the collective wiring that connects us across borders and between far-reaching lands, resonates more than ever. He writes, “I’m no longer quite sure what the question is, but I do know that the answer is Yes.” (Matt Haimovitz)

Cathy Krier LEOS JANÁCEK The Piano

"Cathy Krier—born, trained, performing, and recording in Luxembourg—appears to be about 16 in the photos, but her playing reveals a mature, sophisticated artist. So do her interview comments: “… finely nuanced structures in miniature, punctuated by several distinct changes of mood within one piece. Those changes can be abrupt, occasionally giving rise to a certain form of brutality. Janácek’s scores are the only ones I know that contain the indication con durezza , ‘with harshness’.”  

Although Janácek was already a part of her repertoire, Krier spent three months researching his piano music. Then she waited a few weeks “to re-establish a healthy distance between Janácek and myself.” She had intended to record the complete piano works, but she rejected some “mere exercises or sketches” as not worthy of the composer. Her playing is more than just mature; it is phenomenal in both technique and musical understanding. Krier can create atmosphere in a brief span of three or four notes: ominous portent, gaiety, profundity, yearning. She breathes life into Janácek’s music: several of these pieces—the Allegro from the “Paralipomena, Korycanský troják” of the Moravian Dances , the Variations for Zdenka , the rough, awkward 1892 Ej, danaj! —come alive as never before. In her range of tonal color, Krier exceeds even such masters of Czech music as Radoslav Kvapil and Ivo Kahánek; she nearly matches the former’s intensity and the latter’s brilliance.  

Nor are the big “important” pieces immune to Krierization. She leans on the sustaining pedal in “Foreboding,” the first movement of the Sonata. Is it overkill? I don’t think so; this is not just a sonata, it is a recounting of a murder, and dramatic gestures are totally within the pale. Krier’s In the Mists is not as drenched in fog as Kvapil’s memorable account; her gentle sections are beautifully simple, her abrupt changes wild and spellbinding. In her hands, the final Presto is a four-minute summary of everything Janácek. But others have also made as much of these two great works; it is in the smaller pieces, so often played as if just to get through them, that Krier’s vision, imagination, and executive excellence shine most brightly. Disc two ends with the Moravian Folksongs , a piece somewhat removed from Janácek’s usual style; Krier’s daring, imaginative reading sounds odd at first, but she soon convinces us that what she has to say is very worthwhile. It seems thoroughly folk-like, although I am no expert on Moravian culture.  

We are not told what instrument is being played; it has a lovely, consistent tone. The recording was made in early 2013 at Philharmonie Luxembourg; the acoustic is warm and the recording first rate. Krier was 27 or 28 at the time. I find it somewhat distasteful (and certainly misleading) that she is being marketed as a sweet young thing; this is a master pianist at work. Her own website does portray her as an adult. This marvelous recital prompts the question: can Krier do as well with the music of other composers? Her debut recording, from 2007, includes music by Scarlatti, Haydn, Chopin, Alexander Müllenbach (a Luxembourg contemporary), and Dutilleux. Once again Krier’s playing displays extraordinary technical fluency and her written comments mature comprehension. Her Dutilleux Sonata is lucid and coherent; her Haydn F-Minor Variations has all the elements but does not quite jell. That disc would evoke a “promising young artist” conclusion. Everyone should have Janácek piano music in his or her library; Krier’s is the set to have." (FANFARE / James H. North)

James Gilchrist / Philip Dukes / Anna Tilbrook VAUGHAN WILLIAMS Songs of Travel

In his absorbing booklet essay, Stephen Connock draws attention to Vaughan Williams’s very special and deeply personal identification with the viola, justly mentioning in particular Flos campi, Suite for viola and small orchestra, and the slow movement from A London Symphony. (For my own part, I’d also cite the principal viola’s devastatingly intimate ‘alleluia’ towards the end of the Fifth Symphony’s Romanza slow movement.) Viola player Philip Dukes and pianist Anna Tilbrook make a lovely thing of the Six Studies in English Folksong (originally for cello and piano, and given in May Mukle’s 1927 transcription), and they generate a comparably stylish, keenly communicative rapport in the ravishing Romance found among the composer’s papers after his death (most likely intended for the great Lionel Tertis). The delights continue as the tenor James Gilchrist joins his colleagues for urgently expressive renderings of both the wondrous Four Hymns (1912 14) that RVW inscribed to Steuart Wilson (a performance that all but matches the lofty eloquence of Ian Partridge’s classic version with David Parkhouse and Christopher Wellington from the Music Group of London) and Richard Morrison’s fetching 2016 arrangement of ‘Rhosymedre’ (the second of the Three Preludes founded on Welsh Hymn-tunes for organ).

Elsewhere, Gilchrist and Tilbrook draw upon the reserves of experience that come with two decades of performing together to lend delectably wise advocacy to the Songs of Travel (1901 04). These nine inspired settings of Robert Louis Stevenson never seem to pall and here really do come up as fresh as the day they were conceived; this splendid partnership’s tenderly unaffected delivery of ‘Whither must I wander?’ stops me in my tracks every time – and did RVW ever write a sweeter melody? That just leaves a sequence of four songs composed between 1902 and 1908, with ‘The Sky above the Roof’ and ‘Silent Noon’ enjoying especially idiomatic treatment.

Chandos’s Potton Hall sound is agreeably airy but just occasionally not ideally focused. Don’t let that tiny niggle deter you, though; this is a strongly recommendable issue. (Andrew Achenbach / Gramophone)

BERNSTEIN ON BROADWAY

Bernstein's most popular and best-loved melodies from West Side Story, Candide & On the Town. Featuring the composer as conductor in West Side Story, one of the greatest musicals of all time, and in Candide, a visionary work with a dazzling score. Bernstein protégé Michael Tilson Thomas conducts On the Town. Featuring all-star casts, with artists including José Carreras, Kiri Te Kanawa, Marilyn Horne, Thomas Hampson, Christa Ludwig, Frederica von Stade, June Anderson, and Jerry Hadley. 

Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990) was a man of many roles – composer, conductor, pianist, musical educator – a man hailed by pianist Arthur Rubinstein as a “universal genius”. A charismatic communicator, he had few equals when it came to enthusing others about music. Whether at festivals such as Tanglewood in the US or Schleswig-Holstein in northern Germany, in a TV studio or in a university lecture hall, Bernstein’s presence, passion and unquestioned commitment to his art were palpable.

That same intensity also characterised his work as a performer. A number of his recordings still have reference status – his Mahler cycle, for instance, or Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue with Bernstein himself at the piano. The son of a Ukrainian immigrant, he knew no musical boundaries: he played jazz, engaged with Jewish folk traditions, and was as at home on Broadway as he was in Europe’s venerable opera houses. In his own music seriousness stands cheek by jowl with satire, musical with Mass, the modern with the traditional. His reinterpretation of Beethoven’s Ninth as an “Ode to Freedom” in Berlin, shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall, was simply unforgettable. Less than a year later, he died of cancer.