Isata Kanneh-Mason SUMMERTIME

 

SUMMERTIME

Angela Hewitt LOVE SONGS

 

LOVE SONGS

 

Yoonie Han HOLLYWOOD ROMANCE

 

HOLLYWOOD ROMANCE

 

Patrick Messina / Fabrizio Chiovetta SONGS

 

SONGS

 

Maria Radutu PHOENIX

 

PHOENIX

Sofja Gülbadamova IDYLLE

IDYLLE

Daniel Hope HOPE@HOME

HOPE@HOME

Joshua Bell AT HOME WITH MUSIC

AT HOME WITH MUSIC

WDR Funkhausorchester / Wayne Marshall BORN TO PLAY

BORN TO PLAY

Schumann Quartett CHIAROSCURO

CHIAROSCURO

Xiayin Wang / Royal Scottish National Orchestra / Peter Oundjian AMERICAN PIANO CONCERTOS

                                                  AMERICAN PIANO CONCERTOS

Katie Mahan CLASSICAL GERSHWIN

Steinway & Sons releases Classical Gershwin from pianist Katie Mahan. This album highlights the work of iconic American composer, George Gershwin through a set of classically conceived arrangements of his most beloved songs. These arrangements by pianists Katie Mahan and Earl Wild favor the classical style rather than the improvisatory style we so often hear.

The program selections are bookmarked by Gershwin’s two rhapsodies – Rhapsody in Blue and the Second Rhapsody, showcasing the evolution of Gershwin’s personality and character thorough the eight years of compositional development that separate them. Interspersed are some of the composers most well-loved songs, which highlight Gershwin’s signature lighter side. Although these pieces were primarily composed as popular songs for musicals, they nevertheless contain a wealth of compositional qualities that are enhanced and explored in the two rhapsodies on the album.

Wiener Philharmoniker / Gustavo Dudamel / Yuja Wang 2019 SUMMER NIGHT CONCERT

Central to the programme of the Vienna Philharmonic’s 2019 Summer Night Concert is a musical history of the United States of America: the works that are heard this year were composed in or for the USA, while also constituting links with the Viennese musical tradition. At the same time the concert venue – the historic park at Schönbrunn Palace – is celebrating a double jubilee this year. It was 450 years ago that the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian II bought the land and the buildings on it and a century ago that Schönbrunn became the property of the newly founded Austrian Republic. This is the second time in the orchestra’s history that the Venezuelan conductor Gustavo Dudamel has been in charge of a Summer Night Concert – he first did the honours in 2012. The soloist is the Beijing-born pianist Yuja Wang, who is making her debut with the Vienna Philharmonic in Vienna – she has already appeared with the orchestra on tour.

Shani Diluka ROAD 66

Diluka brings appreciable nuance and delicacy to Adams’s China Gates and Beach’s Young Birches, and infuses the churning minimalist patterns of Glass’s Etude No 9 with more dynamic and colouristic range than one often hears from so-called contemporary music specialists. In most lyrical pieces, however, softer dynamics often recede and wilt to the point of fading away, especially when Diluka makes diminuendos. You hear this in the two Bernstein Anniversaries, Ginastera’s ‘Danza de la moza donosa’ and Grainger’s gorgeous transcription of Gershwin’s ‘Love walked in’. Her spineless performance of Copland’s Piano Blues No 1 lacks the sinew and projection heard from Leo Smit, the work’s dedicatee, although such a style befits Hyung-ki Joo’s noodly, shapeless Chandeliers. 

However, Diluka’s faster-than-usual tempo for Cage’s In a Landscape rescues this music from its usual frozen dream state. Her enervated, flaccid approach to Keith Jarrett and Bill Evans is alien to these jazz icons in both spirit and letter; in fact she misreads Waltz for Debby’s fourth-to-last chord. But Diluka plays the piano part to Raphaël Merlin’s brilliant, harmonically imaginative arrangement of Cole Porter’s ‘What is this thing called love’ gorgeously, abetted by special guest Natalie Dessay’s sultry singing. Had the two paired up for an entire CD’s worth of Merlin-arranged standards, I would have stayed up all night behind the wheel to listen, rather than squirming in the back seat to the tune of ‘Are we there yet? Are we there yet?’ (Jed Distler / Gramophone)

Félicien Brut / Quatuor Hermès / Édouard Macarez LE PARI DES BRETELLES

A native of Auvergne, Félicien Brut shatters the image of the accordion! He discovered at a very young age the instrument and this popular music that characterised it for so long: the musette. Following thorough training at the Jacques Mornet CNIMA (National and International Music and Accordion Centre), he played at numerous dances over the years. In 2009 he went to continue his studies at the Pôle Supérieur de Bordeaux- Aquitaine for, in the meantime, he had also developed a passion for classical music.

The musette is celebrating its centennial, so this is the occasion to bring back, at the centre of a creative project, this style so characteristic of France and the esprit français from the beginning of the 20th century. 

Musette is perhaps the most multicultural musical style there is, born of unprecedented international encounters. Indeed, at the beginning of the last century, France, and especially Paris, experienced large waves of immigration. Italians, Spaniards, Portuguese, Eastern Europeans, and Latin Americans arrived in large numbers, settling in the capital. At the same time, France was undergoing a very intense rural exodus. Inhabitants of the provinces were leaving their countryside and also converging on Paris. Natives of Auvergne were amongst the most numerous and moved into the Bastille district with their favourite instrument: the musette, a sort of small bagpipe, of which the air bag is inflated with a bellows.

Duo Kermani - Gentili ODE AND DIE RHAPSODIE

"Rhapsody" is the theme of fabulous duo debut album featuring clarinetist Kymia Kermani and pianist Alba Gentili-Tedeschi. With great intensity, the young musicians plunge into the music of the twentieth century – music that, in the improvisational tradition of singers and bards, searches formally for new ways as if born in the moment. The piano and clarinet sound equally free on this recording: the trills rejoice and the glissandi sob in works by Debussy, Gershwin, Borris, Boutry and others – four world premiere recordings are offered on this exceptional album. This is truly a stroke of luck, not only for curious chamber music fans, but for fans of all quality music!

Ray Chen THE GOLDEN AGE

Recognized as a musician of “phenomenal talent” by The Washington Post, Chen has handpicked a selection of works for his new album which celebrates the ‘golden age’ of the violin – not only in terms of repertoire, but also in performance style and ingenuity. The centrepiece is Max Bruch’s Violin Concerto which was recorded in August last year with the London Philharmonic Orchestra and conductor Robert Trevino.

The album opens with a piece for string quartet which has already garnered over 50,000 hits on Chen’s YouTube channel. Titled, “A New Satiesfaction”, it features “Gymnopédie No.1” by Erik Satie with an allusion to Rossini’s “William Tell Overture”. Performed by Chen and his Made in Berlin quartet, the arrangement of “A New Satiesfaction” is done by the group’s cellist, Stephan Koncz. The other violinist in the quartet is Noah Bendix-Balgley while Amihai Grosz plays viola. All of Chen’s collaborators in the group are members of the Berlin Philharmonic and they recorded together in the city last November.

The album also features compositions and arrangements by such legendary violinists as Fritz Kreisler and Jascha Heifetz, which Chen performs with pianist Julien Quentin. Among them are Kreisler’s “Syncopation and Schön Rosmarin” and Cyril Scott’s “Lotus Land”, plus Heifetz’s transcriptions of “Estrellita” by Manuel Ponce and George Gershwin’s “Summertime”. Stephan Koncz has also arranged Debussy’s Clair de lune and the traditional Australian favourite “Waltzing Matilda” (Ray hails from Australia and Taiwan).

Chen teased The Golden Age with a custom-built computer game: http://umusic.digital/goldenviolin/. “This album acknowledges the various styles of the past, but also retains one important philosophy: as long as we keep inspiring and producing, perhaps what we create now will one day be deemed worthy of being named a golden age,” says Chen.

Chen is among the most compelling young violinists today. He has performed with many of the world’s leading musicians in concert halls across the globe and he has also amassed a huge online following (including more than 2 million fans on SoundCloud) through quirky, self-made videos and engaging social media posts.

Houston Symphony / Andrés Orozco-Estrada MUSIC OF THE AMERICAS

Having demonstrated their musical excellence with three well-received recordings on PENTATONE of orchestral works of Antonin Dvořák, Houston Symphony and Andrés Orozco-Estrada now present an album that comes closer to their cultural roots than ever before. Dance rhythms, jazzy harmonies, bright colours, city sounds; everything one associates with The Americas can be heard on this recording. With George Gershwin’s 1928 piece An American in Paris, Silvestre Revueltas’s Sensemayá (1938), Leonard Bernstein’s Symphonic Dances from West Side Story (1961) and Ástor Piazzolla’s Tangazo (1970), it brings together composers from across the twentieth century, all connected by their belonging to the Americas. Moreover, all of these composers reconfigured the barriers between classical and popular music, combining them to produce a sound that illustrates their home region. In choosing these particular works, Houston Symphony and Andrés Orozco-Estrada have aimed not to cover the entire continent but rather to provide ‘impressions’ of America and to ‘illuminate’ as many colours in the music as possible. 

Sensemayá showcases the highly original combination of native elements from the pre-colonial indigenous past with avant-garde techniques that characterizes the music of Mexican composer Revueltas. Leonard Bernstein’s West Side Story, from which a suite of Symphonic Dances is featured on this album, belongs to the most popular and famous American music ever. Bernstein illuminates the story of two rival gangs in New York by juxtaposing a jazz-blues ‘American’ idiom with a more ‘Latin American’ Puerto Rican sound, in which the Cuban mambo and cha-cha, and the Mexican huapango are also integrated. Ástor Piazzolla’s Tangazo (grand tango) incorporates neo-classical elements such as a fugue into the national Argentinian dance music par excellence, realizing a reconciliation between native influences and trends in contemporary classical music. In Gershwin’s jazzy symphonic poem An American in Paris, city sounds temporarily give way to a sorrowful, homesickness blues, but the piece ends in regained excitement. (PENTATONE)

Barbara Hannigan / Ludwig Orchestra CRAZY GIRL CRAZY

“On this stunning label debut on Alpha Classics, Canadian soprano Barbara Hannigan takes multi-tasking to new levels. Not only does she sing and conduct Berg’s technically and emotionally demanding Lulu Suite, as well as performing Luciano Berio’s dazzlingly virtuosic Sequenza III for solo voice. She has also (together with Bill Elliott) arranged a marvellous new suite from George Gershwin’s Girl Crazy, brilliantly orchestrated by Elliott. Furthermore, she and the Ludwig Orchestra (a flexible Dutch ensemble collective) succeed triumphantly in presenting a coherent programme that binds these seemingly disparate works together.”

“Berio originally composed Sequenza III (1965) for the legendary Cathy Berberian, but Hannigan steps out boldly from under that long-reaching shadow, transposing the work up (as allowed by Berio’s score) to tap into a girl-like image of the imagined 15-year-old Lulu. Hannigan negotiates the huge challenges of this avant garde score – with its vocal clicks, breathless vowels, enigmatically fractured text, and wide dynamic and pitch ranges – with seeming effortlessness (in fact, it must reflect many hours of hard work). She is by turns playful, coquettish, wistful and reflective, and the result is as absorbing and convincing as it is challenging.
And it makes for a brilliant curtain-raiser (in the manner of an imagined prequel) to the Lulu Suite itself. Here Hannigan – who has portrayed Lulu on stage to great acclaim – is completely at one with the Ludwig players, and a clearly happy working relationship is reflected in performance of remarkable emotional openness, lyricism and sensuousness.”

“These are sophisticated, witty arrangements, rounded off with an exuberant, jazzy, big-band version of ‘I got rhythm’: it’s the cherry on the cake of a tremendously entertaining disc which explores real emotional depths as well as delighting the ear.
Add to all this a classy recording from the Alpha team, attractive presentation and a bonus 20-minute behind-the-scenes DVD, and this wonderfully crazy disc deserves every success.” (Disc of the Week
Europadisc, September 2017)

Xiayin Wang / Royal Scottish National Orchestra / Peter Oundjian AMERICAN PIANO CONCERTOS

The young Chinese-born pianist Xiayin Wang, now resident in the USA, has been enthralling audiences worldwide and gaining ever greater international acclaim with her winning combination of consummate technical brilliance, fine musicianship, and personal verve. Equally renowned as a recitalist and chamber musician, she is here the soloist in three great piano concertos by the American composers George Gershwin, Aaron Copland, and Samuel Barber, performed with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra under Peter Oundjian.

The Concerto in F by Gershwin, composed in 1925, represents one of his finest syntheses of the classical and jazz traditions. His extraordinary skill as a tunesmith is heard in full force within the concerto’s three movements, the work expressing his ‘unabashed delight in the stridency, the gaucheries, the joy and excitement of life as it is lived right here and now’. Xiayin Wang has already shown her natural affinity with Gershwin’s music in her previous Chandos release, playing Earl Wild’s Gershwin transcriptions with ‘verve, brilliance and sheer delight’, as American Record Guide put it.

Copland’s Piano Concerto from 1927 is another work influenced by jazz. At the time of its premiere, comparisons were inevitably drawn between this and Gershwin’s Concerto but Copland dismissed the influence of Gershwin. Rather, his style reflects the jazz elements used by composers living in Paris in the 1920s, such as Milhaud and Stravinsky. The work’s two distinct sections reflect what Copland believed to be the two basic moods of jazz, ‘the slow blues and the snappy number’.

Barber’s Pulitzer Prize winning Concerto for Piano dates from 1962. Like the other two works on the disc it shows the diversity of influence in American music in the twentieth century. Moments of harmonic ambiguity and muscular dissonance reflect Barber’s interest in Russian music, a subtle jazz influence enriching the musical language, especially in the rhythms of the compact finale. The music manifests a dramatic and rhetorical style, however, that is deeply rooted in a romanticism which pervades all of Barber’s output.