Andreas Ottensamer BLUE HOUR - MENDELSSOHN EDITION

 

BLUE HOUR - MENDELSSOHN EDITION

 

Rosanne Philippens MYTH

What a surprise it was when my friend the pianist Julien Quentin introduced me to the music of Szymanowski several years ago. A world full of myths opened up, a landscape with fast streaming rivers where frightened nymphs timidly glanced back at lascivious satyrs with goat hooves. And full of colourful stories about the shepherd’s boy seduced by a princess, and the firebird hiding in the bushes. In the three myths I recognised Ovid’s Metamorphoses. I managed to track down the poems of Szymanowski’s countryman Tadeusz Micinski, which inspired him. In pursuit of the composer’s roots, I visited his villa Atma, where I heard the wonderful music of the mountains of Zakopane, which had moved him as well. And so ‘Myth’ came into being, an issue imbued with the Polish soul, and including, from further afield, some Russian myths as well.

Rosanne Philippens / Julien Quentin DEDICATIONS

It began with a piece which I fell in love with: Eugène Ysaÿe’s Poème élégiaque. You have to tune the bottom violin string a tone lower. That explains the dark character, which you hear particularly in the middle, which is a funeral march. Ysaÿe dedicated it to Gabriël Fauré. And so the idea for this CD was born: violin music by composers who honoured and inspired one another. I found out, for example, that Fauré often visited the famous singer Pauline Viardot’s salon. It was there that he premiered the Romance. At first it sounds like a rather sweet Fauré, but passions rise high in the middle. Fauré was briefly engaged to a daughter of Viardot. The Russian writer Ivan Toergenjev, Viardot’s lover, used the affaire in his short story Le chant de l’amour triomphant, on which, in turn, Ernest Chausson based his Poème, with its dreamy music and a tragic ring. Chausson dedicated it to Ysaÿe and drew inspiration from his Poème élégiaque, as one hears in the high violin trills at the end of both pieces.

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.