Olli Mustonen / Tapiola Sinfonietta BEETHOVEN Complete Piano Concertos

                                              BEETHOVEN PIANO CONCERTOS

David Aaron Carpenter / Tapiola Sinfonietta JOSEPH MARTIN KRAUS Viola Concertos

This new release features the first-ever commercial recording of three newly discovered, substantial viola concertos by German-born Swedish composer Joseph Martin Kraus (1756-1792). Kraus, one of the most innovative composers of his time, was equated by Haydn to W.A. Mozart as the only two geniuses he knew. The featured works are the only known music from the Classical Era to demand the utmost virtuosity from the viola soloist. 

David Aaron Carpenter has emerged as one of the world's most promising young artists and is Recipient of the 2011 Leonard Bernstein Award and of the 2010 Avery Fisher Career Grant. In the words of David P. Stearns of The Philadelphia Inquire, "If there's such a thing as an overnight-star violist, it's David Aaron Carpenter. (...) Carpenter is in a league with the best."

This release follows on the great success of David's earlier recordings, including the Elgar and Schnittke concertos with the Philharmonia Orchestra and conductor Christoph Eschenbach, which was given an ‘Editor's Choice' accolade by Gramophone.

One of the leading chamber orchestras internationally, the Tapiola Sinfonietta has made acclaimed recordings of Classical repertoire, including the Complete Beethoven Piano Concertos with piano soloist Olli Mustonen. (Ondine)

John-Edward Kelly / Tapiola Sinfonietta KALEVI AHO Chamber Symphonies Nos. 1 - 3

The focus of Kalevi Aho’s output lies on large-scale orchestral works, and his work-list includes fifteen symphonies to date, composed between 1969 and 2010. Although the Finnish composer is famously lavish as an orchestrator, and often invites rare guests such as the heckelphone into his orchestra, the scores of Aho’s three chamber symphonies are much more economic in scale. But although composed for some twenty strings in all, and of more modest durations than for instance the 50-minute Eighth Symphony for organ and orchestra, they bear eloquent proof of the composer’s aim of exploiting to the full the expressive capabilities of a string orchestra. Consequently these works are highly demanding for the players; not because virtuosity has been an end in itself, but for reasons of maximum expressivity. For Chamber Symphony No.3, the composer decided to include a solo part for alto saxophone, written for John-Edward Kelly who also performs it here. In his liner notes, Aho describes the piece as ‘a hybrid of chamber symphony and saxophone concerto’ and relates how he was inspired by Arabic music, and more particularly by a certain ‘unique melodic heterophony’ resulting from different musicians playing the same melodic pattern, but each of them with slight differences. Performing these scores are the eminent strings of the Tapiola Sinfonietta, an ensemble which has earned high praise from reviewers around the world for its recordings, ranging from Arvo Pärt to Saint-Saëns and C.M. von Weber. The conductors Jean-Jacques Kantorow and Stefan Asbury are both close collaborators of the orchestra, and the presence of the composer during the recordings vouches for the authenticity of these performances. (BIS Records)

Yevgeny Sudbin / Tapiola Sinfonietta / Osmo Vänskä BEETHOVEN Piano Concertos 1 & 2

Let me lay out information first of all: this is the conclusion of Yevgeny Sudbin’s cycle of the five Beethoven concertos that began, back to front, with an issue of Nos 4 and 5 together (4/11) and continued with a coupling of No 3 in C minor with the Mozart C minor Concerto (No 24), K491 (5/14). Osmo Vänskä has been the conductor throughout, with the Tapiola Sinfonietta here and previously with the Minnesota Orchestra. I note for now that the first CD was received with enthusiasm and was an Editor’s Choice; the next, in which No 3 was paired with the Mozart, fared less well.

It is impossible to hold back from admiration for Sudbin in whatever he plays, thanks to his brilliance and hallmark exuberance. He has much to say and he wants us to listen. You may feel the hyperactive style he brings to the outer movements of these concertos is just what they require. I am not so sure. The exuberance, for me, tips over to a cat-on-hot-bricks manner that too often seems a default position and wearisome. ‘Halt,’ I want to cry, ‘couldn’t you please occasionally calm down a bit?’ Need sforzato accents always be like touches of a whip and scales the length of a piece of string? Vänskä and the orchestra are willing partners. I resist too their bass-heavy sound world, built around microphone placements, which projects a nervy, fidgety view of dynamics in which a level is rarely sustained for its full term. Try the opening of the C major Concerto (No 1) – marked pianissimo until a crescendo leads into the first fortissimo at bar 16 – as an example of what I mean. To me, this is so much more exciting if the very quiet martial energy at the beginning is held taut. It’s the sort of detail a great conductor with a major orchestra and demanding soloist will agree upon and get right.

Oh dear, I’m sounding grouchy. I want the prospect of admiring Sudbin as much in Beethoven as in Scarlatti and Scriabin; but it is not there. He is sparky and generous with impulses and good ideas, but restless. The Largo of the C major Concerto, the longest slow movement in all the concertos, shows how the best of ‘early’ Beethoven is every bit as characteristic as the later, with an appreciation, in this instance, of the clarinet and solo writing for it that he never surpassed. I treated myself to Sony Classical’s box of Sviatoslav Richter’s complete live and studio recordings for RCA and Columbia; seek it out if you can for the performance he gave with Charles Munch and the Boston SO of this concerto in November 1960. Yes, from way back, I know, but incomparable.

Beethoven’s pupil Carl Czerny remarked that the master ‘brings out difficulties and effects on the piano that we could never have imagined’. Yevgeny Sudbin at his best is an artist capable of reminding us of that and there is plentiful evidence in these rondo finales. Don’t get me started on his cadenzas. They ignore all the material Beethoven left for Concerto No 1, which he finds wanting in various ways, playing in the first and last movements cadenzas of his own (‘based on Friedheim’). Suffer them if you can; I couldn’t possibly comment.

There’s a mistranslation in the booklet of the German note which makes a nonsense of where the cadenza comes in the first movement of the B flat Concerto (No 2). (Stephen Plaistow / Gramophone)

Tapiola Sinfonietta / Masaaki Suzuki STRAVINSKY Pulcinella Suite - Apollon Musagète - Concerto in D for Strings

Masaaki Suzuki is renowned for his exceptional BIS recordings with the Bach Collegium Japan of the cantatas of Johann Sebastian Bach, but his repertoire isn't limited to Baroque music. This 2016 hybrid SACD presents Suzuki's performances of three of Igor Stravinsky's liveliest neoclassical works, the suite from Pulcinella, the ballet Apollon musagète, and the Concerto in D for strings, all expertly played by the Tapiola Sinfonietta. The jump from Bach to Stravinsky is a large one, though fans of Suzuki's meticulous conducting style will find in him an ideal interpreter for this emotionally cool but vibrantly colorful music. The orchestra plays with electric energy, and the highly charged performances more than make up for the apparent lack of sentiment in Stravinsky's music. But listeners will note above all else that these performances offer virtuosic brilliance, and the playing has a nearly tactile physicality that accurately reflects Stravinsky's notation. This impression is aided by the phenomenal multichannel sound, which has extraordinary depth and clarity, and the musicians have a close-up presence that is well balanced with the vibrant acoustics of the Tapiola Concert Hall. Highly recommended. (Blair Sanderson)

Batiashvili / Bezaly / Pesola / Leleux NICOLAS BACRI Sturm und Drang

Concerto nostalgico “L’automne” and Concerto amoroso “Le printemps” are the first two panels of Bacri’s work-in-progress Les quatre saisons Op.80, a series of four concertos for oboe and other instruments. The third panel Concerto tenebroso “L’hiver” for oboe, violin and strings was first performed in January 2010. The first performance of the fourth panel Concerto luminoso “L’été” for oboe, violin, cello and strings is to take place in spring 2011.
Concerto amoroso “Le printemps” for oboe, violin and strings is in a single movement in which a long central Notturno is framed by two lively, rhythmically alert outer sections (Mosaïca and Mosaïca II). The outer sections display Neo-classical characteristics whereas the central Nocturne is at times quite intense. The scoring for oboe and cello imbues Concerto nostalgico “L’automne” for oboe, cello and strings with an appropriately autumnal colour. This, too, is in one single movement falling into four sections played without a break. The music unfolds seamlessly from the dark mood of the opening through various contrasting sections (Scherzo alla Fuga and Romanza) before reaching the beautiful, appeased epilogue.
Nicolas Bacri has composed quite a number of concertos or concertante works -some thirty of them up to now (2010). The Concerto for Flute and Orchestra is scored for fairly small orchestral forces (double woodwind, two horns, percussion and strings) and is in three movements. The first movement opens with a slow introduction leading into the main part of the movement Allegro moderato that nevertheless allows for a variety of moods. The second movement Estatico is a Nocturne of sorts - one with some very dark corners. The final movement opens with some energy, but moods vary again until the music reaches its conclusion in a night music à la Bartók in which it eventually thins away calmly.
The short Nocturne Op.90 for cello and strings is in a fairly straightforward arch-form with slow outer sections framing a more animated and tense central one. This compact work is - to my mind - a good example of Bacri’s music-making in that the music says all it has to say with not a single note wasted.
Nicolas Bacri has composed six symphonies so far and his Seventh Symphony will be premiered in autumn 2011. The Symphony No.4 “Sturm und Drang” Op.49 was written for the Orchestre de Picardie of which Bacri was composer-in-residence. The orchestra and its conductor Louis Langrée had dedicated a concert-cycle to “Sturm und Drang” compositions of the late-Classical era and wanted a new work in the same aesthetic. Bacri, however, wanted to write his own music while paying homage to some older beloved composers. The four movements of the Fourth Symphony are thus meant as homage to composers of the early 20th century (Richard Strauss, Stravinsky, Schoenberg and Weill respectively) although the music never directly quotes from or alludes to their music. The work as a whole is also a tribute to a number of other 20th century composers such as Ravel, Prokofiev and Walton. The Fourth Symphony is Bacri’s Classical Symphony paying homage to the musical past without a single hint of pastiche or parody.
One of the more endearing characteristics of Nicolas Bacri’s music is that he never outstretches or overworks his material thus achieving some remarkable concision. This is never at the expense of expression and communication. As early as 1983, when his music was still fairly adventurous, Bacri inscribed a phrase from Tristan Tzara on one of his scores: “I know that I carry melody within me and I am not afraid of it”. The works recorded here - as so much else in Bacri’s output - clearly “carry melody and are not afraid of it”.
All these performances are excellent and superbly recorded, and the whole - Martin Anderson’s detailed and well-informed insert notes included - is up to BIS’ best standards. This is a very fine release by any count. (Hubert Culot, MusicWeb International)