Scandale

". . . enjoy these dance pieces at face value, the performances and recording of which are terrific . . . the sections of motoric rhythm in [Stravinsky's] two-piano version of "The Rite" seem made for the percussive character of the instrument, while some of the slower passages reveal more so than in their original garb the challenging harmonic language that so provoked the first audiences . . . ["The Kalender Prince"] provides lyrical contrast before "La valse", deftly, brilliantly executed, the final pages [dogged and relentless] . . . The final Piece is the world premier of Tristano's "A Soft Shell Groove" which, with its foot-tapping (literally) rhythm, is bound to find many friends among listeners and other two-piano teams."  --Gramophone, July 2014

"A glintingly percussive "Rite of Spring" . . . Ravel's "La valse" is technically impressive . . . poetry is again at a premium." --BBC Music Magazine, July 2014

Alice Sara Ott (piano) & Francesco Tristano (piano)

For her new recording rising star Alice Sara Ott teams up with Francesco Tristano, who is a guarantor for highly innovative projects.

Fascinated from the idea of Ballets Russes their challenging programme for two pianos centers upon Stravinsky’s extremely rhythmic and avant-garde score of “The rite of spring”, the crowning success de scandale of Ballets Russes and includes the catchy tune of Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Scheherazade”.

The album features an exciting new composition by Francesco Tristano himself "A soft shell groove", which has never been recorded before.

No ballet company influenced the 20th-century intellectual world as did Serge Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, with its signature conceptualization of dance, music and the fine arts as equal partners in a unified art form.

Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes became one of the most influential ballet companies of the 20th century, in part because of its ground-breaking artistic collaboration among contemporary choreographers, composers, artists, and dancers.

Mozart: Piano Concertos Nos. 22 & 24

BBC Music Magazine, October 2014  Performance****/Recording****   

Replete with all the Angela Hewitt virtues—among them, unfailing clarity, innate elegance, an unerring sense of proportion, a finely honed mastery of style, melodic finesse and an unobtrusive grasp of harmonic rhythm—these are exemplary performances. Stylistically, they are very much of their time, falling midway between the 'Beethovenian', 'revisionist' tendency of the mid-20th century, repudiating the earlier essentially miniaturist 'Dresden China' tradition, and the sometimes rather antiseptic, musicologically-'enlightened' approach of the century's final third. 

The prevailing tonal palette, from soloist and orchestra alike, is appropriately lean but always beautifully focused and elegantly applied. Operatic in the best sense, Hewitt is more concerned with dialogue, not only between the two hands but within all levels of the texture, than with conventional notions of 'vocal' cantabile.

But what finally renders Mozart's operas supreme (and I maintain, loosely, that he never wrote anything but opera) is not the matchless subtlety and characterisation of the dialogue, but the continuous development of the individual characters and the relationships between them. What I most miss here, and I recognise that I may be in a small minority, is precisely that feeling of development, which necessarily relies on vivid and varied characterisation in the first palce. I feel this throughout, though never more so than in the C minor Concerto, especially the slow movement, where the uniquely Mozartian tension between harmonically loaded melody and the essentially neutral, often near-static nature of metre is spoiled by an excessive sense of symmetry. -- --BBC Music Magazine, October 2014

Purcell: Phantasies, Ayres & Chaconys

Known for their diverse and colourful programmes, The Flautadors recorder quartet is firmly established as one of the UK's leading recorder ensemble.  Their repertoire spans 800 years treating listeners to medieval polyphony through to today's newest compositions. This disc finds them exploring the works of two important British composers, Henry Purcell and Matthew Locke and in collaboration renowned lutenist David Miller, who is in much demand both as a soloist and accompanist.

Purcell utilized the recorder in many songs, odes, symphonies and of course in some of his greatest dramatic works.  Whilst the recorder quartet never appeared as such, recorders were amongst the musical forces employed and, since much of the theatre music appears in four part score, it transfers easily.

Purcell, a great admirer of Locke, composed nine Fantazias in four parts in the year 1680.  Many of the Fantazias cannot be played on recorders without some alterations or compromises. This CD features a selected four that felt comfortable on recorders and seemed to lend themselves more to the timbre of wind instruments.

Stravinsky & Prokofiev: Violin Concertos

“Kopatchinskaja brings [virtuosity] to the [Stravinsky] in spades, but she also shatters the image of the work as a neo-classical homage to Bach...Her whole approach to Stravinsky...brings his world close to Prokofiev's...where Kopatchinskaja seems to be feeling her way into the music...A wonderful disc.” --BBC Music Magazine, January 2014 *****

Gramophone Awards 2014 Shortlisted - Concerto

“One feels that with every phrase she has succeeded in making the [Prokofiev] concerto her own...Throughout both concertos, conductor and orchestra appear to support with enthusiasm Kopatchinskaja's vision of the music, with many distinguished solo contributions...Not to be missed.” --Gramophone Magazine, January 2014

“From the start, it is clear that there is a lot more to her than glittering technical accomplishment. That quality is present in spadefuls, but is simply used to back up a truly outstanding imagination...There is a sense of discovery, of spontaneous re-creation of these two masterpieces. Totally stylish yet wholly new; great playing and a truly outstanding issue.” MusicWeb International, 4th December 2013

Rachmaninov: Piano Concerto No.3, Suite No.2

“Rarely in her extraordinary career has Argerich sounded more exhaustingly restless and quixotic, her mind and fingers flashing with reflexes merely dreamt of by other less phenomenally endowed pianists. Yet her Rachmaninov is full of surprises, her opening Allegro almost convivial until she meets directions such as più vivo or veloce, where the tigress in her shows her claws and the music is made to seethe and boil. The cadenza (the finer and more transparent of the two) rises to the sort of climax that will make all pianists' hearts beat faster and her first entry in the 'Intermezzo' interrupts the orchestra's musing with the impatience of a hurricane.

 

But throughout these pages it's almost as if she's searching for music that will allow her virtuosity its fullest scope.

In the finale she finds it, accelerating out of the second movement with a sky-rocketing propulsion.
Here the music races like wildfire, with a death-defying turn of speed at 7'21" and an explosive energy throughout that must have left audience, conductor and orchestra feeling as if hit by some seismic shock-wave.” --Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

Campagnoli: Violin and Flute Concertos

Bartolomeo Campagnoli (1751‐1827) learned his trade with famous Italian musicians Tartini and Nardini. As a virtuoso on the violin he travelled Europe, where he held several important posts in Freising (Bavaria), Dresden and Stockholm, before settling as Kapellmeister of the famous Gewandhausorchester in Leipzig. In 1776 he moved to Germany, working in various cities (Freising, Dresden, Leipzig). In Leipzig he published his famous Violin Method, which soon became popular throughout Europe.

Campagnoli claimed for himself “the german learnedness with Italian soul”

Musica Barocca

Founded in 1985 in Milan, Il Giardino Armonico was one of Italy's earliest period instrument groups. Directed by Giovanni Antonini, who also acts as solo flutist, it consists of about 30 players, all highly accomplished and, to judge from their photograph, appropriately taken in what looks like the garden of a country house, all young. Many of them take solo turns, most prominently the concertmaster, the wind players, and the lutist. Their style is very "baroque," with lower pitch, speedy tempos, especially in fast movements, clipped articulation, lots of swells as well as sudden contrasts, and lavish, imaginative ornamentation.

The program, except for improvised variations on "Greensleeves" for solo lute, is all-Baroque and a bit strange. It opens with Bach's Suite No. 3 in a brilliant, exuberant performance, enhanced by a Trumpet Consort from Innsbruck, and then alternates complete concertos for various single and multiple solo instruments with short works, including separate movements. This produces variety but also frustration: the playing is so good that one wants to hear the rest of the piece. Apart from the Bach, Purcell's G-minor Chaconne and the Pachelbel Canon are most familiar. A Vivaldi Concerto for flautino (a sort of piccolo recorder) is a bravura showpiece, but the instrument sounds like a mechanical bird. Also notable are a somber, dramatic Oboe Concerto by Marcello, and several lovely slow movements, including one by Telemann and three by Albinoni. Surprisingly, the saddest and most dissonant of these brings the program to a very mournful close. --Edith Eisler