Natalia Prishepenko / Dina Ugorskaja PROKOFIEV - SHOSTAKOVICH Violin Sonatas

VIOLIN SONATAS

 

Jonian Ilias Kadesha / Vashti Hunter A JOURNEY FOR TWO

A JOURNEY FOR TWO

Tanja Tetzlaff BACH - ENCKE

BACH - ENCKE

Julian Steckel KODÁLY

KODÁLY

Noga Quartet AQUARELLES

AQUARELLES

Dina Ugorskaja FRANZ SCHUBERT Sonata D 960 - Drei Klavierstücke D 946 - Moments Musicaux D 780

SONATA D 960

Duisburger Philharmoniker / Axel Kober RICHARD WAGNER Siegfried

SIEGFRIED

Dina Ugorskaja J.S. BACH The Well-Tempered Clavier I & II

THE WELL-TEMPERED CLAVIER I & II

WDR Funkhausorchester / Wayne Marshall BORN TO PLAY

BORN TO PLAY

Beethoven Trio Bonn BEETHOVEN Gassenhauer Trio - Symphony No. 6

GASSENHAUER TRIO - SYMPHONY No. 6

Augustin Hadelich / Hannu Lintu / Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra SIBELIUS - ADÈS Violin Concertos

                                                            VIOLIN CONCERTOS

Beethoven Trio Bonn BEETHOVEN Trio Op. 70, 2 - Symphony No. 2

                                                 TRIO Op. 70, 2 - SYMPHONY No. 2

Přemysl Vojta / Fabrice Millischer / Haydn Ensemble Prague / Martin Petrák MICHAEL & JOSEPH HAYDN Horn Concertos

It is difficult to ascertain how many horn concertos Joseph Haydn and his younger brother Michael actually wrote. Certain works are lost; others are erroneously ascribed, or their authenticity is at least doubtful. One of the concertos has even been ascribed by different musicologists to Joseph and to Michael Haydn, but it may have been written by another person entirely. The two brothers wrote most of their concertos for the widest variety of solo instruments, but usually in the same type of situation: i.e. once they had assumed important posts at the head of renowned court orchestras. Joseph Haydn became Kapellmeister for the Ezterházy princes in 1761, and Michael became concertmaster of the Salzburg archdiocese court orchestra in 1763.
The court musicians in both orchestras were virtuosos in their own right, and one of the tasks of a Kapellmeister consisted in composing new works that permitted them to display their outstanding abilities in the presence of their sovereigns. (Excerpt from the liner notes by Dr. Arnim Raab, Haydn-Institut)

Danjulo Ishizaka / When-Xiao Zheng / Silke Avenhaus / Rick Srotijn / Lena Neudauer SCHUBERT TROUTS

World Premieres for the exciting TROUT PROJECT: Silke Avenhaus had wanted to record Schubert’s Trout Quintet for a long time. Now five European composers were additionally asked to quasi-casually prolong Schubert’s ambivalences into the present by supplying their own variations. The commission called for works that were to be limited in length, and each composer was asked to focus his attention on a particular instrument. Although all of their pieces are based on the Trout theme, the resulting works vary utterly in terms of character and tempo. As Avenhaus puts it, this is a “godsend”. The new compositions can be grasped as individual movements of a contemporary Trout quintet,but one can also combine them in several different ways. 

Is this a “sunny piece”? Cheerful? Carelessly babbling like a brook? It tends to be exclusively associated with positive images, but pianist Silke Avenhaus, the initiator of the “Trout Project”, contrasts all of this with the work’s fundamental ambivalence. In Schubert’s quintet she finds a mixture of lightness and melancholy. The first movement’s insouciance, for instance, is almost casually obliterated in the second one. Schubert does not hold fast to any mood or attitude for long: ambivalence continues to hold sway, and it is a trait she particularly appreciates.

The double bass and the cello form a strong bass section in this particular piano quintet. The line-up may have been unusual and difficult to score in terms of timbre, but Schubert skillfully made best of the situation by expanding the range of different sonorities to the maximum. The low strings fathom the underground. Conversely, the piano, often playing in octaves for long stretches in the upper range, carries out the assigned role of shining brightly on the mountain peaks. The middle range is tenderly filled out by the other strings. The resulting musical texture seems to float in midair. (from the lines notes by Elgin Heuerding)

Andrè Schuen / Daniel Heide SCHUBERT Wanderer

This collection of Schubert Lieder is Andre Schuen's third album for CAvi. Together with accompanist Daniel Heide, Schuen has chosen songs on the theme of wandering.

Andrè Schuen: "This time, as a point of departure, we chose the idea of "wandering", of a "journey", a "path", and tried to come up with all possible variants. Three major themes emerged. On the one hand, we have Romantic "wandering" per se, which plays an important role in Schubert (as in Der Wanderer on a poem by Schlegel). Secondly, the path to the beloved as in Auf der Bruck as well as in Willkommen und Abschied. The third theme is the journey to the afterlife or to death, as in Totengräbers Heimwehand Im Abendrot. In my view, these three principle themes imbue our programme with a kind of ambivalence, reflecting a general ambivalence that is omnipresent in Schubert. 

Daniel Heide: The overwhelming quantity of songs that are often slow and address themes of sadness and yearning is actually one of the core issues in Romantic Lied repertoire ? indeed, why do they have to be so plodding, so sorrowful, so full of longing? Where is the cheerfulness? Is there any life-affirming element to be found? 

Baritone Andrè Schuen has been regularly invited to appear in Salzburg Festival productions since 2009, collaborating with conductors Ingo Metzmacher, Riccardo Muti, and Ivor Bolton ? most recently in the role of Morales in Carmen with Sir Simon Rattle as conductor. From 2010 to 2014 he was a member of the ensemble of soloists at Graz Opera, where he covered roles including Prince Yeletzky (Queen of Spades), Belcore (L'elisir d'amore), Ford (Falstaff), Papageno (Magic Flute), Heerrufer (Lohengrin), and Roi Alphonse (La favorite). At the Theater an der Wien (Vienna) he was invited to perform under the baton of Nikolaus Harnoncourt in the title roles of Don Giovanni and Nozze di Figaro, as well as in the role of Guglielmo in Cosi fan tutte; he has likewise sung Don Giovanni in Perm (Russia) with Teodor Currentzis conducting. The Theater an der Wien has invited him back for further role debuts including the title role in the world premiere of Anno Schreier's Hamlet and the Count in Richard Strauss's Capriccio; he also covered Marcello in La Boheme for the Grand Theatre de Geneve. In parallel, Andre Schuen pursues a widespread career on concert podiums, collaborating with conductors such as Daniel Harding, Philippe Herreweghe, Riccardo Muti, Jukka-Pekka Saraste, Paavo Jarvi, and Trevor Pinnock.

Hartmut Rohde JOSEF TAL Works for Viola

When the Berlin Academy of the Arts asked if I would agree to participate in a recital along with Josef Tal and learn his two works for viola and piano under his guidance, I was thrilled. At the Berlin University of the Arts I knowingly and willingly place myself in the tradition of the most influential musicians of the 1920s: for me as a violist, Paul Hindemith, Tal’s teacher, is always present as one of our greatest composition teachers. In 1995 we organized a large-scale international Hindemith Festival, during which almost all of Hindemith’s compositions featuring the viola were performed.

This made me want to become better acquainted with works by Hindemith’s pupils and his entourage. Tal was one of Hindemith’s most well-known students, and one of those who most consistently took the master’s ideas a step further. He also became a committed, fascinating trailblazer in the field of electronic music (in which Hindemith had already started experimenting in the late 1920s at the Hochschule für Musik in Berlin, the forerunner of our University of the Arts). Josef Tal initiated the Centre for Electronic Music in Israel in 1961 at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem; at that time, he was one of the country’s leading, most well-known composers.

I met Josef Tal when he was 94 years old. Our encounter was like a journey into an unsettling past, marked by a great number of hardships and upheavals he had personally endured. It also offered a revealing glimpse into the outlook of composers in Israel, as well as previously in Germany – even into compositional approaches from many eras he did not live through himself.

Throughout our collaboration, Josef Tal proved to be a great thinker: not just an analyst, but also an interpreter who consistently sought to bring out the emotional aspect in music. He ascribed a decisive role to that which lies “between the notes”. I like to call such an approach Durchhören, i.e. “hearing through the music”. It can open many marvelous avenues for the performer, particularly in music which does not seem emotional or Romantic at first glance. (Hartmut Rohde)

Tamar Beraia BEETHOVEN LISZT

It is an enormous pleasure for me to introduce my second solo CD album, featuring works by Beethoven and Liszt. These two composers have exerted a strong influence on me throughout my life and played a paramount role in forming me as a musician. I could be wild and unlimited in expression in Liszt, sincere and firm when playing Beethoven. The two, in tandem, always helped me convey my complex individuality.

I was 17 years old when I experienced my first encounter with the most sublime works these two composers ever wrote. Beethoven‘s Hammerklavier Sonata in B flat Major, Op. 106 and Liszt’s Sonata in B Minor introduced me to new worlds of imagination, sounds, forms, and shapes. I was riveted by their intensity of expression, by the contrasts and the poetry they contain. It felt like diving beneath the surface of the ocean to discover a completely different universe with new colours, shapes and unusual movements, or like being catapulted to the cosmos, surrounded by infinite space and time, exposed to the wonder and mystery of the Universe... (Tamar Bereia)

Sheila Arnold ÉCOUTEZ!

Claude Debussy left a profound mark on music history when he dissolved functional harmony under the influence of the music of the Far East. 

Tōru Takemitsu had to distance himself from his own culture in order to listen to Japanese music with the ears of a Western-trained musician – adopting, for instance, the approach of John Cage. He came to realize that Japan’s venerable musical tradition had long been highlighting individual notes as complex sonorities in their own right, instead of treating them as part of a series of several notes. 

From the human need for sound as well as silence, John Cage drew the most extreme conclusions. The concept of a “beautiful” sound was never static in music history: it has changed over the centuries, and it differs from one culture to another. Western musical aesthetics tend to differentiate between “noises” and “notes”: the latter feature well-ordered harmonics. The concept of “dissonance” has also changed throughout different musical periods. What is more, musicians and their audiences have always felt the need to “savor” a dissonance – to listen to it consciously, to experience it – before it is resolved. 

On the other hand, time plays a truly fundamental role in how a work is conceived and structured, and each individual listener experiences musical time in a different way. Ideally, the performer and the listener share the same time system: they enjoy passages in a similar way, they hear a piece with the same depth of focus. Music resonates inside the instrument, in our bodies, in the space that surrounds us. Each note is in motion. When several notes vibrate simultaneously, they make up an ocean of concomitant vibrations. If we add the sounds and noises from our surroundings, then we are dealing with an incredible concentration of sonic events within a very short period of time. 

What happens then? 

We become more aware of the way we perceive things. If we are lucky, this kind of conscious musical listening starts to affect how we pay attention to other people, whether they are speaking or not. And lending an ear to one another has become more necessary than ever. Wouldn’t you agree? (Sheila Arnold)

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)

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)