The estimable Florestan Trio completes its 'cycle' of Schubert Piano Trios with this recording of the, a performance as wonderfully incisive as its earlier rendition of the trio in B-flat major. While the present recording was made in late December 2001, a full year after the first, Hyperion still managed to secure the services of the same engineer (Tony Faulkner) to work his magic with these terrific players, so there is a uniformity to the sound that is comforting and will smoothly pave the way for a two-disc set at some point. In the meantime, anyone who loves this work may still want to shell out full price for this disc, as it represents Schubert performance at the highest level.
While the Florestan members play with impeccable unity, pianist Susan Tomes still stands out slightly, thanks largely to her amazingly graceful phrasing. Listen to the way she manages a pianissimo in the feather-light background triplets in the development of the first movement while gradually increasing the intensity of the bass line. Of course, her partners are no slouches either. Violinist Anthony Marwood's playful, lilting phrasing of the main theme in the Andante negates any sense of lethargy, and cellist Richard Lester's observance of dynamics (especially in the opening of the first movement) is letter-perfect. Besides the group's over-arching feel for this music, the unanimity of attack and the fastidious, carefully measured attention to dynamics marks their performance as being truly special and consistent with their fine account of the B-flat trio, offering a sort of reference model for avid score readers. For instance, in the second movement, they reserve enough power to distinguish the double- and triple-forte passages in a way that indicates without doubt the climactic moment, even if there is a tendency to want to bang out the earlier accented parts with some abandon. As a filler item, the Florestans offer the first version of the finale, which was cut by Schubert most likely at the urging of performers and publishers concerned about the length of the work (itself already more than 43 minutes with all the repeats, as presented here).
Sleo-Ensemble Pour 1 Nouvelle Aventure. Que claire ftouve une nouvelle forme. I'envie de se reffouver ensemble auou d'une manifestation. Couverture TMC pour UK. Full text of 'Histoire litt. Prov Actualite Full. Que se passe- t- il si je. Mais cela, c’estdetoutefa. Et si vousprenez l’habitude de ren- dre votre d. Apr 22, 2018 - I just came across NRBQ “High Noon: A 50-Year Retrospective” (on 5 CD's by Omnivore Recordings) and was looking around for their older.
Ninety-eight bars in the development section have been restored, representing two cuts and adding about two minutes of music starting at 6:00 on track 5. Some of it is repetitive (the staccato eighth-note 'cimbalom' passages) and while the rest adds some drama to the whole event, it doesn't alter the overall view that its exclusion makes little difference. A case against performing this original version at all is found in the liner notes, quoting a letter from Schubert to his publisher exhorting performers (and the publisher) to 'scrupulously' observe the cuts in the last movement. So, to justify this full-price release, the Florestans perhaps had to push their luck and buck their muse's wishes.
(Michael Liebowitz, ClassicsToday.com). Her own music has been inspired by that of Johann Sebastian Bach in more ways than one, with the result that it seemed obvious for Anne-Sophie Mutter to record two of Bach’s concertos alongside her worldpremiere recording of Gubaidulina’s most recent violin concerto, a piece dedicated to Mutter. “There is a profound spiritual affinity between Gubaidulina and Bach,” says the violinist. “Like Bach, she too draws not only a great deal of strength from her faith in God, but ultimately also a musical language all of her own.”.
Written in 2006 – 07, the violin concerto is the first piece by the Russian composer that. “I knew about Paul Sacher’s commission and have been waiting patiently for ‘my’ work since the 1980s.
Not that this means that I haven’t taken every opportunity to follow Sofia Gubaidulina’s career very closely, although I got to know her personally only just before the first orchestral rehearsal in Berlin, when I played In tempus praesens for her. It was a very moving moment for me. She is undoubtedly one of the most fascinating of all composers, in that every note reveals such great depths of emotion. She truly lives to compose and doesn’t compose to live.”. Sofia and (Anne-)Sophie – the similarity between the two names inspired Gubaidulina.
“During this whole time, I was accompanied by the figure of Sophia – divine wisdom. It was all entirely spontaneous: our names are the same – it was this that provided the basis for this association,” the composer explains. For Gubaidulina, Sophia is the figure revered by orthodox Christianity, the personification of wisdom who has laid the foundations for all creativity and intellectual effort in the history of creation, preparing the way for all that develops organically in the world.
She is the fountainhead of art and of the artist’s engagement with the lighter and darker sides of human existence. (Selke Harten-Strehk).
This delightful disc offers a selection from the wealth of piano transcriptions of Bach's music. The Bach revival that gathered momentum during the nineteenth century created a climate for many composer-pianists to interpret his works through their own piano transcriptions, whether of chorale preludes, organ works or other instrumental music.
Much of Bach's music was made domestically available via such arrangements (and the tradition continued well into the twentieth century, even after Bach originals were well known). Indeed, the practice of such transcriptions was widely used by Bach himself, who freely adapted his own and others' music for different instrumental settings. One of today's finest Bach pianists, Angela Hewitt concentrates primarily on those arrangements of Bach that keep pianistic elaboration and virtuosity in proportion: whatever instrument his music is played on, Bach should still sound like Bach. Eugen d'Albert's magnificent transcription of the C minor Passacaglia and Fugue for organ, BWV582, is included, as are five beautiful transcriptions by Wilhelm Kempff, and a number of arrangements by English composers that were included in A Bach Book for Harriet Cohen (a collection compiled for the pianist Harriet Cohen, who knew many English composers of the early twentieth century). Angela Hewitt also includes three transcriptions of her own. A fascinating companion to, this ravishing disc will appeal to lovers of Bach as much as connoisseurs of the piano.
Stockhausen works with three layers in “In Freundschaft”. He calls his method here “horizontal polyphony”, and indicates that it requires “a special art of listening”.
This is surely true, but you can also dip into the flow and enjoy without any special preparations. Any set of sensitive ears hooked up to a sensibly sensible brain and mind will open up the world of “In Freundschaft” to the splendor of Stephens’ garlands of spiraling clarinet tones, in waves and vibrations of compressions from the shifting pillar of air inside her instrument.
The “special art of listening” that you can practice and train, leads to a deepened and furthered act of hearing, though, and is strongly recommended to those who care very much for music and their perception of it - and I suppose you wouldn’t read this if you weren’t one of those! It is rewarding on many levels. As always in Stockhausen’s music, there are many different levels of possible listening, and like the characters in Herman Hesse’s novels you can develop a deeper understanding by evolving through level after level. “Traum-Formel” (“Dream Formula”) for basset-horn is the second work. It is a short piece with its barely 8 minutes. It starts off with a prolonged and elaborated, repeated note, bringing me reminiscences of Klezmer recordings of the 1920s, or the intense soloistic efforts of a Mosaic Central European and Middle Eastern – also Russian – tradition by Dror Feiler on his CD “Celestial Fire”, where Mr.
Feiler improvises on different kinds of saxophones in glowing little pieces like “Hallel” and “Sei Yabe”. The fire, the small-scale playfulness is inherent also in Stockhausen’s “Traum-Formel”, brilliantly conveyed by the masterly musicianship and pure identification of Suzanne Stephens. The instrument itself gives off some side-effect-sounds from the valves, and the nearness is stark and naked in this music, which dances blotting-paper-close to your body. Beethoven: Choral Fantasy op. 80 The piano's crashing opening chords herald what seems for the first three minutes like a solo work.
Then comes a tentative dialogue with the lower strings, after which - equally tentatively - the woodwind enter. Human voices arrive almost as an afterthought. This was a fantasy indeed, written at such speed that the musicians got their parts with the ink wet. As the piano reworks the simple musical ideas on which the whole edifice is based, we get a strong whiff of what Beethoven's celebrated improvisations must have been like. In 1808 he'd earned little, and his friends encouraged him to put on a four-hour concert of his own works in order to refill his coffers.
But this late addition was no mere space-filler: bringing order out of chaos, moving from darkness to light, and prefiguring the final theme of his Ninth Symphony, it reflects Beethoven's genius at full tilt. Beethoven: Sonata in D minor, op. 2 'The Tempest' Beethoven himself didn't give this work its name - according to his early biographer Schindler, the composer declared that the work could be understood by reading Shakespeare's play - but from the moment the first theme breaks free from the cavernous opening chord, it certainly is tempestuous. That chord seems to pose a question, to which - after a long journey through darkly dramatic landscapes - the last notes come like an answer. This sonata was one of three composed in the village of Heiligenstadt in 1802, at a time when Beethoven was growing deaf, and in near-suicidal despair. Here he was at his most heroic: on the one hand, his 'Heiligenstadt Testament' confided his woes to posterity (while concealing them from his contemporaries); on the other, he was creating masterpieces of coiled energy like this.
John Corigliano: Fantasia on an Ostinato As one of the American composers finding a way forward without abjuring tonality, Corigliano is blazing a fascinating trail. In this work from 1985 his aim has been 'to combine the attractive aspects of minimalism with a convincing structure and emotional expression'. The foundation is the famous theme of the second movement of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony, with Corigliano exploiting the repeated rhythmic motive as well as the harmonic pattern. (Michael Church). “I find its simplicity very attractive”, she says.
“And a simple song can go very deep. This music speaks to people who don’t regard themselves as classical specialists. It comes from a time when there was no equivalent to our divide between classical and pop music: it was simply the music everybody heard and sang. Some of these songs would have been performed in churches, but some are street music, and others were just intended for people to come together and play, rather than perform for an audience. It’s very much ensemble music, rather than about who is going to shine the brightest, and be the star. Because these songs are not difficult technically, one is able to get closer to the essence of what music is about. This is liberating: you’re singing for your own pleasure.” Finding the right ensemble with whom to record was crucial.
The singer particularly liked the undogmatic approach of, and the effects it generated through its imaginative use of plucked and bowed period instruments. “The basic assumption with this repertoire is that everybody is free to make their own arrangements, and decide which instruments they will use. We experimented with a lot of different arrangements in concerts before the recording – and this is a freedom we are no longer used to in classical music. It’s got nothing to do with the usual rehearsed approach, where you try to perform it exactly the way you prepared it.
It’s a completely different way of thinking about music.” They decided to switch the focus away from Monteverdi – who makes just one appearance – on to songs which many listeners will never have heard. This is a repertoire whose daring dissonances are sometimes closer to modern music than Handel, Vivaldi or even the Romantics. The instrumental selections recorded by Pierre Pitzl and his Private Musicke ensemble agreeably reinforce the period colour. (Michael Church). Carolin Widmann, who received praise and awards both for her accounts of Schumann’s violin sonatas and for the recital disc “Phantasy of Spring” (with music of Feldman, Zimmermann, Schoenberg and Xenakis) now applies her acute interpretive sensibilities to Franz Schubert. Widmann and Alexander Lonquich (whose own New Series disc with music of Schumann and Holliger was also a critical success) play the C-Major Fantasy of 1827 and the Violin Sonata in A-Major of 1817, as well as the B-minor Rondo of 1826 (the only one of these works published in Schubert’s lifetime). This is duo playing at a very high level, as Hans-Klaus Jungheinrich emphasizes in the liner notes: “Not once does Carolin Widmann and Alexander Lonquich’s intelligent and empathetic reading devolve into the trivial state of music for a domineering violin with piano accompaniment.
Instead we are treated to a magically iridescent poem of changing colours, melodies and counterpoints.”. Stravinsky’s relationship with the string section of the orchestra, and with the violin in particular, was a love-hate affair.
For a long time during and after the First World War he more or less gave up writing for strings altogether, finding their tone ‘much too evocative’, as he put it after completing The Rite of Spring, ‘and representative of the human voice’. Then suddenly, in 1928, he came out with a ballet score, Apollo, written exclusively for strings and uninhibitedly tender and expressive in precisely the way he had previously so pointedly rejected. Apollo seems to have ‘corrected’ his attitude in general, and within four years he had composed two major works for violin solo, the concerto with orchestra of 1931 and the Duo concertant with piano of 1932.
Soon after that he made most of the transcriptions recorded here. Why Apollo turned out as it did is one of the great Stravinskian mysteries. But the violin works that followed had a clear and specific origin. Towards the end of 1930, Stravinsky’s German publisher, Willy Strecker, introduced him to a young Polish-American violinist by the name of Samuel Dushkin and invited him to write a concerto for Dushkin to play and Strecker’s firm, Schott, to publish. Dushkin was a fine, if not great, violinist; but above all he was an intelligent and cultivated musician who it transpired could give Stravinsky—not a string-player—sympathetic advice on technical matters. After the premiere of the Violin Concerto, in Berlin in October 1931, Stravinsky began work on a recital piece for violin and piano which he and Dushkin would be able to programme without all the expense and paraphernalia of orchestral concert bookings. There were undoubtedly complicated motives behind the Duo concertant, as the new work would be called.
Dushkin had an exclusivity on the concerto for a certain period, but after that there was no way of forcing agents to prefer him to other, more famous virtuosos, with whom, on the other hand, (who was desperate for concert engagements) might not want to work. A recital, by contrast, could be offered as a package. Their first appearance in this form was in Milan in March 1932. But it was at once apparent that joint repertoire would be a problem. They played the concerto (with piano), and a suite Stravinsky had made from the ballet Pulcinella in 1925. But otherwise they played solos.
Stravinsky had no interest in performing the standard duo repertoire. His own Duo was not yet ready and even if it had been they would have had barely fifty minutes’ music. How to remedy this crucial problem at a time when concert bookings were falling, politics and economics were starting to close in on orchestral planning, and Stravinsky needed to make the most of his personal notoriety and the relative popularity of his best-known works? The answer he and Dushkin came up with is to be found on the present disc. Soon after the Milan concert Stravinsky wrote to Strecker that the two of them were at work on what he called ‘un joli Kammerabend’—a pretty chamber-evening—of violin pieces, including of course the Duo concertant, together with transcriptions of pieces from Petrushka (the ‘Danse russe’) and The Firebird (the ‘Berceuse’), and a completely new suite from Pulcinella which he christened Suite italienne. Later that summer they added further pieces from The Firebird and the early opera The Nightingale; and in the next year or two the little Pastorale (originally a vocalise composed in St Petersburg in 1907), and most notably the suite, or Divertimento as Stravinsky called it, from his recent Tchaikovsky-based ballet The Fairy’s Kiss.
These various arrangements were pressed into service as they became available. The Duo concertant had its premiere in a Berlin radio concert in October 1932, and isolated recitals followed in 1933. In 1934 they undertook their first proper tour, in England as it happens, with concerts in Manchester, Liverpool (where Stravinsky found himself at a memorial lunch for Elgar the day after that master’s death), Cambridge, London and Oxford. Later that year there was a French tour, and in 1935 Dushkin accompanied Stravinsky on the composer’s second tour of the United States, playing recitals or the concerto (with orchestra) in cities as far-flung as Minneapolis, St Louis, San Francisco, Denver and Washington D.C., and baffling the frontiersmen with the discovery that the notorious composer of terrifyingly modern music which few of them had heard seemed on the whole to be a natural and rather gifted melodist. (Stephen Walsh). The sound of Shostakovich belongs to Lisa Batiashvili’s earliest memories. During her childhood, she often heard her father’s string quartet rehearse Shostakovich’s music, and at home and in concert his was the sound world which shaped her sense of cultural context.
Lisa Batiashvili and her family left their Georgian homeland when she was eleven years old, but the music of Shostakovich travelled with them. Mark Lubotsky, her teacher in Hamburg, was a student of David Oistrakh, for whom Shostakovich wrote his violin concertos, and to the young Lisa Batiashvili, this felt like a direct line to the source. “When my teacher started telling stories about the First Violin Concerto, I completely fell in love with this piece. David Oistrakh had shared very emotional and precise information about every movement. Somehow the piece became symbolic of the time in the Soviet Union, which I had also experienced myself during the first ten years of my life. Musicians during Soviet times were also looking for the freedom that Shostakovich sought through his music. Music was an escape and a symbol of freedom at a time when it was so difficult to function in an incredibly brutal system.
When I travelled to Moscow with my parents, we met many people, and I had a strong feeling that this music was a mirror of what they were going through.” So her debut recording for Deutsche Grammophon has Shostakovich’s First Violin Concerto at its core. Under the title Echoes of Time, Lisa Batiashvili has assembled a collection of works which all cast light on Soviet Russia. Her native Georgia is represented through Giya Kancheli’s haunting V & V, a small taste of a sound world which is markedly different from, yet somehow connected to, that of its massive northern neighbour. “Georgian people are actually not at all related to Russians”, explains Lisa Batiashvili. “In terms of climate, Georgia is a southern country, and the people are more like southern Italians or Greeks by nature – very alive, incredibly emotional and spontaneous. You have the mountains and the sea and great weather for eight months of the year. Russia is vast and lonely and full of isolated places, whereas Georgia is compact and everything is kind of burning.
Of course, I cannot avoid sounding Georgian when I play. I spent my childhood there, and when you are in Georgia, you feel something very intense. It’s in my genes and in my veins, even if I’ve spent more than 20 years now in Europe.”. In 1994, Lisa Batiashvili and her family moved to Munich, where she stayed for 15 years.
Since then she and her oboist husband have moved to France with their children, but the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra still feels like family. “It’s very special to record with them, because during my time in Munich I got to know three quarters of the orchestra personally”, she says. “I have friends in the orchestra and also colleagues with whom I play chamber orchestra.
Recording with them was one of the most wonderful personal experiences – quite apart from the fact that this is one of the most fantastic orchestras in the world, with a tradition like few others.”. Germany, Finland, Georgia, Moscow, France – in the course of our conversation, Lisa Batiashvili has mentioned a surprising number of places which are almost, but not quite, home.
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“It has happened quite often over the past fifteen years that I was not really sure where I belonged”, she agrees. “Germany felt so different from my own country when I first arrived there. But when I went back to Georgia I found I didn’t understand anymore who I was or where I belonged. And at the same time I didn’t really integrate fully with the German way of life, I felt like a guest everywhere. On the other hand, for musicians it is a huge advantage to be able to make their home wherever they go. I have a French husband now, our children were born in Germany, and I no longer feel uncomfortable about this way of life. When you bring music to the whole world, it is important to have an easy connection to all kinds of people.
And then, in the end, you are not really a stranger anywhere anymore.”. The Martha Argerich Project, presented annually at Lugano, Switzerland, has yielded many exciting sets of live recordings for EMI, all starring its namesake but prominently featuring many musicians she enjoys working with, both established artists and rising talents. Live from Lugano 2011 encapsulates the tenth of these festivals, and this three-disc package offers selections by Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schumann, Liszt, Rachmaninov, Shostakovich, Ravel, and a name new to many of the participants: Juliusz Zarebski. This 19th century Polish composer is represented by a piano quintet he composed a few months before his death in 1885 at age 31, and Argerich has recorded this piece for the first time here. The obscurity of the work may compel some listeners to play it first, and that's not a bad way to explore the set, which need not be appreciated in sequential order. Zarebski's music is not widely known, but the quintet's brooding Romanticism and passionate outpourings hold a special appeal that Argerich's fans will respond to immediately. Once the Zarebski work has been heard, the rest of the program can be absorbed at leisure.
The mix of a piano concerto, chamber pieces, and keyboard works is evenly spread out, so there is little chance of aural fatigue, and the variety of musicians and styles keeps the tone of the proceedings fresh. Of course, there is a great deal of vigorous and splashy playing - note especially Argerich's high octane performance of Ravel's Piano Concerto in G major - and rough edges abound with all this virtuosity, so don't expect the most polished or refined performances., though the focus on the instruments is a little variable, due to the microphone set-ups. (Blair Sanderson). The greatest privilege for a musician such as myself is the opportunity to create and record wonderful music with fellow musicians and composers. I first met John one afternoon at a London hotel where we sat down for a cup of tea to discuss the possibility of his writing a work for me. Out of this conversation came the Suite Lyrique, which I performed shortly afterwards.
It became obvious that we should record it and so I approached DG with the idea. We were overjoyed that they were keen to get involved.
There is always a whole army of people who help along the way to make projects like this happen. But, to name just a few. Thanks to John for all his work and musical inspiration; Elin for her sublime singing; Sinfonia Cymru for providing the fabulous young players that made up the strings and woodwind; Geraint and Elinor for their constant support and friendship; Lou Watson - finally the duet we were waiting for; the studio team for their engineering skills and making it all sound beautiful; and my family, who keep me pulsing on! CDs of opera and oratorio arias and duets by Handel are hardly a rare event. Last year’s 250th anniversary of the composer’s death lead to something of a glut in the market. In this respect, Chandos - under its early music Chaconne label - has made a wise choice in waiting until this year to release this recording of dramatic duets. It enables us to sit back and assess it on its own terms rather than as yet another anniversary act of homage.
And this disc really is worth considering closely. Superbly recorded, it sounds alive, clear and acoustically rich. It also features a well balanced programme, mixing operatic with oratorio duets that cover the full range of emotional experiences endured by Handel’s characters – from painful separation to joyous reunion; and from loving harmony to malign scheming. The playing from the English Concert under Harry Bicket is excellent. Their performance is a fully ‘authentic’ affair on original instruments, with the usual sections of the baroque orchestra augmented by organ, archlute and baroque guitar. The recording balance brings them more to the fore than is often the case in Handel recordings, and turns them from stage supporters, to fully fledged actors in each of the short scenarios. Take for example the painterly introduction to ‘To thee, thou glorious son of worth’ from Theodora (track 6), or the plaintive flutes that accompany ‘Vivo in te’ from Tamerlano (track 9).
And what of the two soloists –? Both are experienced Handelians in the recording studio and, more importantly, on stage, and therefore bring an insight, vigour and commitment to each of their roles. Their voices are also sufficiently varied to enable the listener to differentiate between them: Joshua’s is bright and lithe; Connolly’s warm and supple. Occasionally their blend is a little indistinct – in ‘Notte cara!’ from Ottone, for example (track 5) – and Connolly’s characterisation of roles originally sung by male castrati could do with a little beefing up. But for sheer vocal beauty, there is very little to fault.
(John-Pierre Joyce, MusicWeb International). It is not surprising that this piece would attract the kind of attention that it has. To begin with, it is a compelling dramatic gesture. At its first performance, virtuoso pianist David Tudor sat at the piano, opened the keyboard lid, and sat silently for thirty seconds. He then closed the lid. He reopened it, and then sat silently again for a full two minutes and twenty-three seconds.
He then closed and reopened the lid one more time, sitting silently this time for one minute and forty seconds. He then closed the lid and walked off stage. That was all. With the right kind of performer, such an event can be riveting, and Tudor was absolutely the right kind of performer, possessing an understated mastery of the instrument and a seriousness of purpose that was palpable to everyone in attendance. The piece can be difficult for audiences (just as the empty room in the exhibition might have been).
Sitting quietly for any length of time is not something to which people are accustomed in Western culture in general, much less in a concert hall setting. That tensions will arise, with controversy and notoriety following, is only natural. Confronted with the silence, in a setting we cannot control, and where we do not expect this kind of event, we might have any of a number of responses: we might desire for it to be over, or desire for more interesting sounds to listen to, or we might feel frightened, insulted, pensive, cultured, baffled, doubtful, bored, agitated, tickled, sleepy, attentive, philosophical, or, because we “get it”, a bit smug. But do we really think of as a piece of music? What did Cage mean when he made this piece? How are we supposed to take this music? I believe that the story of 4′ 33″, of the circumstances in Cage’s life from which it arose, can help us to answer these questions.
The was conducted for the first time by Christian Thielemann. A native of Berlin, Thielemann has been a regular and welcome guest of the Vienna Philharmonic since 2000, with the result that his first New Year’s Concert may be seen as setting an example and providing an appropriate tribute to his previous work with the orchestra. According to the orchestra’s chairman, Daniel Froschauer, orchestra and musicians trust each other completely: “The profound musical understanding and trust that have existed from the outset and that have always functioned perfectly have subsequently borne remarkable fruit in the symphonic repertory as well.”.