James Ehnes / Andrew Armstrong BEETHOVEN Violin Sonatas Nos. 7 & 10

 

VIOLIN SONATAS Nos. 7 & 10

 

Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra / Andrew Manze VAUGHAN WILLIAMS The Lark Ascending - Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis

THE LARK ASCENDING - FANTASIA ON A THEME BY THOMAS TALLIS

James Ehnes / Andrew Armstrong BEETHOVEN Violin Sonatas Nos. 4, 5 & 8

                                                   VIOLIN SONATAS Nos. 4. 5 & 8

James Ehnes / Andrew Armstrong BEETHOVEN Violin Sonatas Nos. 1-3

                                                        VIOLIN SONATAS Nos. 1-3

James Ehnes / Andrew Armstrong BEETHOVEN Violin Sonatas Nos. 6 & 9 "Kreutzer"

                                                      VIOLIN SONATAS Nos. 6 & 9

Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra / Andrew Manze VAUGHAN WILLIAMS The Lark Ascending - Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis

Andrew Manze is widely celebrated as one of the most stimulating and inspirational conductors of his generation. His extensive and scholarly knowledge of the repertoire, together with his rare skill as a communicator and his boundless energy, mark him out. Manze’s position as Chief Conductor of the NDR Radiophilharmonie Hannover has been extended until 2023.

James Ehnes has established himself as one of the most sought-after violinists on the international stage. Gifted with a rare combination of stunning virtuosity, serene lyricism and an unfaltering musicality, Ehnes is a favourite guest of many of the world’s most respected conductors including Vladimir Ashkenazy, Marin Alsop, Andrew Davis, Stéphane Denève, Mark Elder, Iván Fischer, Edward Gardner, Paavo Järvi, Juanjo Mena, Gianandrea Noseda, David Robertson and Donald Runnicles

James Ehnes JAMES NEWTON HOWARD - AARON JAY KERNIS Violin Concertos BRAMWELL TOVEY Stream of Limelight

This program features the world premiere recordings of three works written for violinist James Ehnes. Familiar to movie fans the world over, James Newton Howard has composed over 120 film scores. Upon being commissioned to write a violin concerto, Howard admitted to feeling, ''thrilled, excited, expectant and ultimately terrified.'' Pulitzer Prize winning composer Aaron Jay Kernis first composed for Ehnes in 2007 and a few years later his Violin Concerto followed. Bramwell Tovey and James Ehnes's musical relationship dates back to 1990, and they have performed together countless times. Stream of Limelight gives James's incredible technique ample opportunity to dazzle, and is a superb finale to this fascinating album of new compositions.

James Ehnes / Andrew Armstrong ELGAR - DEBUSSY - RESPIGHI Violin Sonatas

The shadow of death hovers over Debussy’s Violin Sonata though you would never guess from its generally genial disposition: in 1915, with his creative urges stifled by the slaughter of the Great War (he wrote barely anything during 1914), Debussy discovered that he had cancer of the rectum, his mother died on 23 March, and his mother-in-law six days later. In the summer of 1915 he and his wife rented a house at Pourville on the Normandy coast and he began to compose again. ‘I want to work,’ he wrote to his publisher Durand, ‘not so much for myself, as to provide a proof, however small, that thirty million Boches can’t destroy French thought...’

Among the works produced in this creative outburst were the Sonatas for cello and piano and for flute, viola and harp. These were the first of a planned Six sonates pour instruments divers, par Claude Debussy – musicien français (as he now signed himself). The Sonata for violin and piano to which he turned in 1916 was to be the last of these he completed – and indeed his last major work – before his death. Debussy found its composition difficult, finishing the final movement, Très animé, in October 1916, four months before completing the two preceding movements – Allegro vivo and Intermède (marked Fantasque et léger). The composer himself with the violinist Gaston Poulet gave the premiere on 5 May 1917 in the Salle Gaveau in aid of the charity Foyer du soldat aveugle. He played the Sonata again in September that year at two concerts in Biarritz, concerts which proved to be his last public performances.

Debussy died aged just 55 on 5 March 1918. Just two days earlier in Bologna, Ottorino Respighi with his old violin teacher Federico Sarti had given the premiere of his new Sonata in B minor. Completed within months of Debussy’s, it was composed shortly after Fontane di Roma, the first triptych of Respighi’s great trilogy of Roman tone poems which shot the composer to international fame, and contemporary with his most popular work, La Boutique fantasque (the ballet, based on Rossini’s music, written for Diaghilev’s Ballets russes).

Respighi had, in fact, written a violin sonata prior to the B minor masterpiece – the Sonata in D minor completed in 1897. The influences of Schumann, maybe Franck and certainly Brahms are readily discernible in this assured student work. Respighi, whose own instruments were the violin, viola and piano, had then gone on to study composition with Giuseppe Martucci and afterwards Rimsky-Korsakov. Yet the B minor Sonata, while naturally more confident and individual, still retains a Brahmsian flavour. Witness the first movement, Moderato, with its constantly changing meters and soaring lyrical line which leads to the Andante espressivo second movement in E major, rising to a passionate climax. The finale, Allegro moderato ma energico, was inspired by the last movement of Brahms’s Fourth Symphony, a passacaglia. Interestingly, instead of a conventional eight bar phrase, the theme is ten bars long. It is repeated eighteen times within the movement through various modulations before a muscular, intense coda brings the work to a conclusion with its final bars (Largo) marked ffff.

Some five and a half months after the premiere of Respighi’s Sonata – on the morning of 20 August 1918 to be precise – Sir Edward Elgar noted laconically, ‘Wrote some music’. The music was the preliminary sketch for what was to be his Violin Sonata in E minor op.82. Having produced virtually nothing in the previous twelve months, a sudden burst of energy saw Elgar’s three great chamber works – the Sonata, String Quartet op.83 and Piano Quintet op.84 – composed at Brinkwells, his Sussex home, between that August morning and early 1919.

Like the violin sonatas by Debussy and Respighi, Elgar’s has three movements (Allegro, Andante, Allegro non troppo) but here, while it has an important and busy part, the piano plays the more traditional role of accompanist than in the French and Italian works. W.H. Reed, who gave the first public performance with Landon Ronald (Aeolian Hall, 21 March 1919) thought that the Andante, with its central section anticipating the third movement of the Cello Concerto, was ‘utterly unlike anything I have ever heard in chamber or other music: it is most fantastic, and full of subtle touches of great beauty’. Elgar himself described the finale as ‘very broad and soothing like the last movement of the 11nd Symphy’ [sic].

There is nothing in the work to hint of the existence of composers like Bartók and Schoenberg but, as the critic L. Dutton Green wrote of the Sonata, ‘[it] seems like a protest against the far-fetched devices of the ultra- moderns – it seems to say: See what can be done yet with old forms, the old methods of composing, the old scales: if you only know how to do it your work may yet be new, yet original, yet beautiful.’

Jean Sibelius gained a comprehensive knowledge of the violin, having studied the instrument at Helsinki Conservatory in his youth. The Violin Concerto displays to the full a formidable grasp of the instrument’s capabilities, and Sibelius toyed with the idea of a second violin concerto during the period of the sixth and seventh symphonies. However, like the mystical eighth symphony these plans came to nothing. What we do have however, is a wonderful collection of shorter works for violin and piano which unaccountably have remained in relative obscurity. Opus numbers 78 to 81 date from the years of World War I. Finland’s communications with the rest of Europe during the conflict were almost cut off, and for Sibelius this period of isolation was one of financial and spiritual hardship. The short works for violin and piano provided a way to make ends meet as Scandinavian publishers were happy to take less challenging fare during this period. The charming Berceuse op.79/6, the last of a set of six pieces, is a calm, melancholy lullaby. (Jeremy Nicholas / October 2015)

James Ehnes / Andrew Armstrong ELGAR - DEBUSSY - RESPIGHI Violin Sonatas

After a rapturous critical reception for their Franck & Strauss Violin Sonatas, James and Andrew turn their attention to three violin sonatas all composed around the years of World War I. The Sibelius 'Berceuse' also dates from the war years when Finland was isolated from the rest of Europe. Sibelius was short of money and busy writing the 6th and 7th symphonies, and planning his 8th: the six short pieces of Op. 79 were attractive to publishers who were wary of large scale works with little chance of commercial return during the hostilities. Debussy would die in 1918 and had, like Elgar, composed very little during the conflict. 'I want to work,' he wrote to his publisher Durand, 'not so much for myself, as to provide a proof, however small, that thirty million Boches can t destroy French thought'. Elgar told a friend 'I cannot do any real work with the awful shadow hanging over us' he said. Suffering from ill health, Elgar wrote the sonata in Sussex where a copse of gnarled lightning-ravaged trees, near his house on the South Downs, inspired him to embark on three late great chamber works. Respighi s sonata inhabits a heroic late romantic almost Brahmsian world, seemingly unscathed by the devastation of the War to end all wars . (Presto Classical)

Neeme Järvi / Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra TCHAIKOVSKY The Sleeping Beauty

This two-album set marks the beginning of a new project devoted to Tchaikovsky’s ballet scores. We start the survey with the complete score of The Sleeping Beauty, recorded on SACD. Swan Lake and The Nutcracker will follow in 2013 and 2014, respectively. 

Tchaikovsky was approached by the Director of the Imperial Theatres in St Petersburg, Ivan Vsevolozhsky, in 1888 about a possible ballet adaptation of Charles Perrault’s La Belle au bois dormant (The Sleeping Beauty). The vision was to stage the production in the style of Louis XIV, allowing the musical fantasy to run high and melodies to be written in the spirit of Lully, Bach, and Rameau. This proposal for a fairy-tale ballet rooted firmly in both the rococo and baroque periods appealed to Tchaikovsky, and The Sleeping Beauty was premiered in 1890, with choreography by Petipa, the principal choreographer of his day.
Elaborately constructed, the ballet places its focus undeniably on the two main conflicting forces of good (the Lilac Fairy) and evil (Carabosse). Each has a representative leitmotif, which runs through the entire ballet, serving as an important thread to the underlying plot. Tchaikovsky’s use of what, at the time, were considered new and unorthodox instrumental combinations went on to inspire a new generation of composers, among them Stravinsky, who declared The Sleeping Beauty to be Tchaikovsky’s chef d’œuvre. 
The Sleeping Beauty is here performed by the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra under Neeme Järvi, who is celebrating two major milestones this year: a thirty-year recording career with Chandos Records, and his own seventy-fifth birthday. Orchestra and conductor are joined by the pre-eminent violinist James Ehnes, one of the most dynamic and exciting performers in classical music today. (CHANDOS)

Neeme Järvi / Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra TCHAIKOVSKY Swan Lake

This is the second instalment in our series devoted to Tchaikovsky’s three great ballets. Neeme Järvi and the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra initiated the project last year with the complete score of The Sleeping Beauty. Here they present another, equally well-loved work: Swan Lake. Once again they bring us the complete uncut version of the score, with the pre-eminent James Ehnes lending his magic to the violin solos. The complete score of The Nutcracker will follow in 2014.

In Swan Lake, the Swan Queen takes her melancholy, oboe-led place among the composer’s many heroes and heroines destined never to know lasting fulfilment in love. The story tells of Odette, a princess turned by an evil sorcerer’s curse into a swan, and thus caught between the human and supernatural worlds, until she is finally released from the spell, and united in death with her true love.

This was Tchaikovsky’s first full-length ballet, but its premiere in 1875, staged at Moscow’s Bolshoy Theatre, was by no means a resounding success. According to most accounts, the choreography was inept, the shabby sets and costumes were borrowed from other productions, and the orchestral playing was poor.

As such, most ballet companies today base their productions on the 1895 revival by the pre-eminent choreographer Marius Petipa, staged for the Imperial Ballet at the Mariinsky Theatre in St Petersburg. For this revival, Tchaikovsky’s score was revised by the composer Riccardo Drigo, also the chief conductor of the St Petersburg Imperial Theatre. Although these amendments may have served the conventional 1890s notion of ‘danceability’, one may argue that the overall cuts and reordering ultimately destroyed Tchaikovsky’s ground-plan of drama and tonality.

In this recording, we present Tchaikovsky’s original score of twenty-nine numbers and four acts, written for the Bolshoy Theatre, along with several supplementary numbers provided not long after the initial 1875 premiere. (CHANDOS)