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.

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

Rota: Cello Concertos Nos 1 & 2

"Rota remains largely unrecorded, so it’s good to be able to offer an enthusiastic welcome to world premiere accounts of his two cello concertos… these concertos create a powerful impression." --BBC Music Magazine

Precocious as a composer, with an oratorio first performed when he was 12, Nino Rota studied at the Milan Conservatory, thereafter taking private lessons first with Pizzetti and then with Alfredo Casella. His career brought a long association with the Bari Conservatory, of which he was appointed director in 1950. A versatile composer, he contributed to a wide range of musical genres.

Ravel & Enescu: Music for Violin and Piano

“A compelling programme based principally around the figure of Georges Enescu, both as composer and as a performing phenomenon, the latter probably inspiring Ravel's Violin Sonata of 1897, a lavish essay redolent of early Debussy. Both Ravel pieces respond handsomely to Leonidas Kavakos's agile and refined approach, Tzigane in particular being meticulously prepared, the partnership with Péter Nagy ensuring clarity in matters of articulation and the 'pickup' of motives between violin and piano; you're unlikely to hear a more supportive or better gauged account of the piano part.

These aren't 'showy' performances. Though Kavakos is audibly appreciative of the folk flavouring in Enescu's Third Sonata, he treats the abstract element as paramount, suggesting keen parallels with the violin sonatas of Bartók. Again Nagy takes the greatest care over such issues as rhythm, texture and the shape of individual phrases: his precise musical thinking could serve as an object lesson in such matters. The highspot of the performance is the cantorial closing section of the Andante second movement, so exquisitely turned and sustained. The graphic Impressions d'enfance, with its lullaby, caged bird and cuckoo-clock, chirping cricket and ecstatic dawn, is endlessly fascinating, again rich in folk references, the sort that Enescu worked in to his Romanian Rhapsodies.

These performances justify consideration for their warmth, intelligence and superb sound.” --Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

Concertos for Cello & Winds

The Gothe is, I feel, a significant work that will deepen on repeat hearings. The Martinů and Ibert remain entertaining; the Ibert more so. The Rosenberg is rather dry and objective but essential to an understanding of his still neglected music. Production values, annotation and recording quality are well up to Bis's usual enviable standards." --musicweb-internacional.com

Album Review

“The Piano Quartet displays their glowing warmth of tone and carefully scaled dynamics… what’s not to like here?” --Fanfare

“The Maggini Quartet and Peter Donohoe give a commanding performance of the Piano Quartet, locating an underlying toughness of argument and urgency of expression in both outer movements to make one regret all the more forcefully the budding composer's decision to withdraw the piece following his demobilisation in 1919.

Otherwise unrepresented in the domestic catalogue, the Viola Sonata was written in 1933 for Lionel Tertis. If Bliss's inspiration lacks the distinctive melodic profile and organic mastery of, say, Walton's Viola Concerto of four years previously, the work as a whole is still worth getting to know. The Maggini's violist, Martin Outram, makes commendably light of the solo part's at times hair-raising demands and Donohoe offers exemplary support.

But the jewel in this anthology is the Oboe Quintet that Bliss composed in 1927 for Leon Goossens. Elegance and resourcefulness are the watchwords in the first two movements, whose bitter-sweet lyricism forms an effective contrast with the exuberant festivities of the finale.

Nicholas Daniel and the Maggini give a spry, ideally proportioned reading. Production-values throughout are of a high order. Very warmly recommended.” --Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

Feinberg: Piano Sonatas Nos.1-6

Revelatory. The music of Samuil Evgenievitch Feinberg is hypnotic in the extreme, most obviously close to Scriabin in mystical mode. All credit to BIS (who already are doing sterling work for the composer Nikos Skalkottas) for releasing this magnificent disc, with superbly detailed annotations by Christophe Sirodeau, one of the two pianists featured on the disc, and a composer himself. Both Sirodeau and Samaltanos contributed to the Skalkottas/Feinberg concerts held in Paris in 1999.

Album Review

Roussel: Concertos Pour Orchestre

Albert Roussel's compositions have the sea in their very soul. The music sways and bucks in waves of oceanic scale. It should come as no surprise that the composer reached the rank of sub-lieutenant in the French navy before resigning to study music. This 1998 recording captures Roussel's adventuresome spirit.

Roussel's Little Suite for Orchestra is particularly evocative, building its swirling, blustery theme around a simple, almost hurdy-gurdy-like rhythm. His structural techniques and his extensive use of counterpoint are vastly different from the style of his contemporaries.

These distinctive Roussel qualities are found in all of the pieces on this album. Alexandre Tharaud's deft piano work on the Concerto for Piano and Orchestra reverberates deeply, a building storm reaching its climax. David Stern and the Ensemble Orchestral de Paris take a slightly different tack with the Concerto for Small Orchestra, and yet the composition remains true to the same vital pulse.

American Record Guide (5-6/00, p.178) - Recommended

Orff: Carmina Burana

This is a terrifically exciting performance of Orff's popular chestnut. Tempos are swift, from the opening "O fortuna" onward. The soloists are uniformly excellent, especially Judith Blegen, whose "In trutina" remains one of the most beautiful ever recorded. Robert Page's Cleveland Orchestra Chorus sings with musicality, enthusiasm, and superb discipline. Of the composer's Bavarian roots and earthy humor there's nary a shred. This is Orff seen through the lens of Stravinsky's Les Noces. Michael Tilson Thomas hammers home the work's repetitive rhythms with obsessive, mechanical precision, aided by playing of characteristic brilliance and transparency from the Cleveland Orchestra.

It is certainly a legitimate view of the work, but one about as far removed from Jochum's warmth and folksiness (DG) as Cleveland is from Munich. The sonics, multi-miked to the hilt and originally designed to present a different placement of each individual number, may strike your ears as overly processed (big surprise)--but they actually support the interpretation. In sum--an unusual and extreme rendition, really well done.

--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

Sir Arnold Bax: Four Orchestral Pieces & Phantasy

“Dukes deliver the Phantasy's solo part with a forthright energy that seems to thwart loveliness of tone. In every other department these performances could hardly be finer. The orchestral playing is vivid and precise, as is the recorded sound; and Davis's conducting is a masterclass in how to conjure atmosphere.” --BBC Music Magazine, November 2014 ****/*****

“there's little with which to quibble performance-wise...Drawing some first-rate playing from the BBC Phiharmonic, Davis imparts plenty of confident swagger and twinkling fun to both outer movements...every Baxian will surely want to investigate this new Chandos survey.” --Gramophone Magazine, October 2014

Sir Andrew Davis is among the most distinguished interpreters of British music today and here turns to the works of Sir Arnold Bax. With the inclusion of the Phantasy for Viola and Orchestra, this disc marks the completion of Chandos’s long project to record Bax’s complete orchestral music over time.

Born in 1883 into a wealthy family in London, Arnold Bax began a love affair with Ireland as a young man. He moved there in 1911 and his Four Orchestral Pieces from 1912 – 13 are deeply influenced by the landscape of the countryside near his Dublin home. The first three are better known in revised versions, from 1928, as Three Pieces for Small Orchestra. Here ‘The Dance of Wild Irravel’ joins the other three movements for the premiere recording of the four Pieces as Bax originally conceived and orchestrated them.

The Phantasy for Viola and Orchestra from 1920 was inspired by the strong feelings with which Bax responded to the Irish political turmoil at the time, underlined by his use of the Sinn Fein Marching Song (later the Irish national anthem) at its climax. Bax is celebrated for his melodic invention and this passionately lyrical score must be one of the finest examples of his gift. Here the soloist is Philip Dukes, described by The Times as ‘Great Britain’s most outstanding viola player’.

By 1927 Bax’s style was changing and the opening of the Overture, Elegy and Rondo is reminiscent of a classical concerto, suggesting a leaning towards then-fashionable neoclassicism. The long, dreamy melody of the middle section and brilliant, colourful orchestration, however, are unmistakable hallmarks of Bax’s individual voice.

Madetoja: Symphony No. 2

“If you're new to Madetoja this is a good place to start; if you already possess the alternative versions...these are still worth investigating.” --Gramophone Magazine, April 2013

“These Madetoja scores are conducted with sharp insight and unfaltering authority. Under Storgårds’ baton the impeccably prepared Helsinki Philharmonic exhibit their commitment to the music. The playing glows with expressive force and a palpable sense of concentration.” --MusicWeb International, 21st May 2013

“Perhaps Sibelius's finest contemporary...It's vividly performed.” --BBC Music Magazine, June 2013 ****

Hindemith: Der Schwanendreher, Konzertmuzik

In a BBC Radio 3 ''Building a Library'' feature which I did two years ago, Blomstedt's Decca recording of the Mathis der Maler Symphony was then, and has remained, an obvious first choice. He seems to have an instinct for pacing and weighting Hindemith. Take this new Nobilissima Visione: there's momentum and energy in the second movement's central fugato (both of which flag in the recent Tortelier version on Chandos) with incisive timpani, quite different from the heavy-weight wrestling match of the composer's own recording (EMI, 5/58—nla). Or the rondo (from 3'40'') in the first movement where some may find Blomstedt a little fast,

I personally warm to its balletic grace and shape at this flowing tempo (closer to the score's marking than most)—the piece is, after all, a 'choreographic legend'.

This Concert Music is quite simply the finest we have had on disc to date. I made a similar claim for Bernstein (DG) in 1991, but his very broad manner for the opening, his lachrymose treatment of the second movement's central langsam, and steep rits. won't be to all tastes. The San Francisco strings negotiate their challenging tasks with the sort of confidence and lack of strain that give the impression of greater accuracy than usual, and the balance between brass and strings is near perfect. There is a wide dynamic and expressive range here, but no exaggeration; to name but one of many highlights, the sehr breit second section of the first movement finally opens out to stunning effect.

That range, at times, seems comparatively narrow in Der Schwanendreher (Hindemith's third viola concerto which, like Mathis, uses songs from the Altdeutsches Liederbuch), with a performance that respects its modest forces and gestures. Geraldine Walther is balanced 'from the desks' (except that there are no orchestral violas or violins in this concerto) and plays with gentle expressiveness in the slow movement, and a light touch in the finale. Blomstedt tailors his accompaniment to match, and the result has all the intimacy and clarity of chamber music. For more traditional display you will have to turn to the two Daniels (Benyamini and Barenboim) on DG—a fine performance saddled with Steinberg's glossy but often coarse and uncaring Boston recordings of Mathis and the Concert Music.'

-- John Steane, Gramophone [4/1993]

Moderato Cantabile: Komitas, Gurdjieff & Mompou

“relaxed, vaguely ethnic, New Age background music in which one piece segues imperceptibly into the next and rough edges are smoothed away...listeners in search of a mood of limpid repose could do a great deal worse. Lechner and her partner are seriously accomplished and sensitive players.” --Gramophone Magazine, November 2014

Anja Lechner (cello), François Couturier (piano)

After a decade of shared work in the Tarkovsky Quartet and an ongoing alliance in the Pergolesi Project, German cellist Anja Lechner and French pianist Francois Couturier unveil their new duo. The players approach the music from different vantage points: Lechner is a classical soloist with an uncommon interest in improvisation, Couturier a jazz musician travelling ever further from jazz. On ‘Moderato cantabile’ they present their own arrangements of works by three fascinating outsiders from the margins of music history - G.I. Gurdjieff, Komitas and Federico Mompou.

To differing degrees their music reveals influences from the east, both in terms of relationship to folk traditions and religious music, and philosophically. A contemplative air pervades the session. The programme has connections to Anja Lechner's acclaimed account of Gurdjieff's music on the earlier Chants, Hymns and Dances (9819613, with Vassilis Tsabropoulos), but the new duo has its own identity, and time spent in Armenia has deepened Lechner's understanding of the contexts from which the music emerged: her cello assumes almost a singer's role in these pieces, exploring the strong melodies.

François Couturier's compositions function as both contrasting and complementary elements. As a player, François has a long history of working with Mompou's music. He has been influenced, furthermore, by his association with Anouar Brahem, and the sonorities of the Middle East are part of his palette. ‘Moderato cantabile’, a striking and unusual album, was recorded in the rich acoustics of the Lugano studio in November 2013 and produced by Manfred Eicher.

Prokofiev & Ravel: Piano Concertos

“She is a wholly exceptional artist, the possessor of a fabulous technique, and her musical understanding is a very rare quality...Her playing of the Ravel Concerto is breathtaking...I am sure that this is just what Ravel wanted - it really crackles with electricity, her passagework as light and as brilliant as quicksilver...These concertos are very different works, but this young pianist has the measure of them both - in spades.” --International Record Review, April 2011

Sergei Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in G Minor was written in 1913 and dedicated to a friend of the composer who had recently committed suicide. It was revised in 1923, and this version remains one of the most technically challenging works in the standard repertoire. Following a highly successful tour of America as piano soloist, Maurice Ravel finished his Piano Concerto in G Major in 1931. The concerto is heavily influenced by jazz, which at the time was highly popular in Paris as well as the USA.

“The Prokofiev concerto can sound flashy and empty, but Vinnitskaya's more fantastical and demented view reveals its hidden depths. She rips through the fiercely tough first-movement cadenza like a force of nature...Exemplary, high-wire Prokofiev.” --Classic FM Magazine, April 2011 ****

“Anna Vinnitskaya has a dry, clear sound which I think [Prokofiev] would rather have admired...Gilbert Varga's direction is precise and detailed...I certainly want to hear more from this phenomenally equipped pianist.” --BBC Music Magazine, Febuary 2011 ****

“The opening whiplash of Ravel's "Piano Concerto in G major" portends the virtuosic fireworks to follow...But the concerto's real achievement lies in the final two movements, whose fantastical twists grow more unsettling by the minute.” --The Independent, 28th January 2011 ***

Ballet For A Lonely Violinist

“Vadim Gluzman and Angela Yoffe, an impressive well matched husband-and-wife team, give a powerful account of the 1968 Shostakovich Sonata. This performance rises to its demands - extremes of tone and virtuoso intensity - the central Allegretto projecting an atmosphere of glittering ferocity. The Jazz Suite No 1 of 1934... takes us back to a very different Shostakovich: the wit may be sardonic but the mood remains light-hearted and upbeat. The Sonata, Auerbach's response to the events of 9/11, is on a far grander scale, with big, even melodramatic gestures. It's a well made piece, imaginatively cast for the two instruments and with some beautiful, inspiring moments...” --Gramophone Magazine, September 2006

“…the centre of gravity of this recital is a magnificently eloquent and understanding performance of Shostakovich's Violin Sonata, which as the years pass comes to seem one of the greatest of his late works. …Gluzman and Yoffe infuse the music with an expressive glow that transcends its innate austerity.” --BBC Music Magazine, March 2007 *****

Britten: Complete Works for Piano & Orchestra

“Steven Osborne and Ilan Volkov launch into the Piano Concerto's opening 'Toccata' at a headlong pace… For all the remarkable velocity, the playing has weight and incisiveness too, and Osborne's way with the two central movements is equally sure. Diversions... a beautifully devised single-movement set of variations presents Britten's inventiveness at its most elegant. Osborne and the orchestra do this neglected jewel excellent justice.” --BBC Music Magazine, September 2008 ****

Gramophone Awards 2009 Best of Category - Concerto

“…throughout the disc, Osborne and his colleagues make the best possible case for pieces which have tended to be placed on the outer fringes of the Britten canon.” --Gramophone Magazine, October 2008

“Osborne exults in Britten’s dazzlingly pianistic writing, and we get to hear the original 1938 version of the concerto’s third movement, a dazzlingly beautiful Recitative and Aria … a thrilling disc” --Sunday Times

“Commissioned as a 24-year-old to compose and perform a piano concerto for the 1938 Proms, Britten played safe. None of the edginess he might have filched from Bartók or Stravinsky, no Bergian angst: instead, the models are Prokofiev, Shostakovich and Ravel, and in these terms he doesn't miss a trick, at least before the finale's rather perfunctory final gallop. Most of the piece takes a genuinely fresh look at pianistic conventions, and Steven Osborne yields nothing to the great Sviatoslav Richter in the punchiness and fine-tuned filigree of his playing. No skating over the surface here, with Ilan Volkov and the BBC Scottish SO adept at teasing out the music's symphonic subtext, as well as its piquant orchestral effects.

Britten replaced the original slow movement in 1945, possibly because it spent too much time in waltz-like regions already visited in the second movement. This disc adds it anyway, alongside two other scores for piano and orchestra.
Young Apollo (1939) was not heard for half a century after its premiere, perhaps discarded by Britten because its fanfare-like material was more effectively deployed in Les illuminations (also 1939). It's a quirky piece, difficult to programme, a euphorically unguarded response to Keats's vision of male beauty in Hyperion.

Diversions is on a much grander scale, its style making even clearer those debts to Mahler which Britten had allowed to surface now and again in the concerto. The multifarious challenges to the single-handed soloist create moments of strong emotional depth and, as throughout the disc, Osborne and his colleagues make the best possible case for pieces which have tended to be placed on the outer fringes of the Britten canon. The recordings, made in Glasgow's Henry Wood Hall, have ample depth of sonority and vividness of colour.” --Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

Piazzolla: Adios Nonino

The brilliant Argentine musician Astor Piazzolla, who revolutionised the traditional tango through his use of jazz elements, counterpoint, extended harmonies and dissonance, has constantly appealed to wide audiences, as well as fascinating classical musicians. Here Astoria (string quintet, piano, accordion), led by Christophe Delporte, gives a delightfully lively rendering, capturing the rhythm and all the lyricism and charm of Piazzolla’s tango nuevo.

A Second Of Silence

The Knights are an orchestra of friends from a broad spectrum of the New York music world who cultivate collaborative music-making and creatively engage audiences in the shared joy of musical performance. This is the Knights second album for Ancalagon Records, and follows their 2011 Juno Award-winning recording of Mozart with Scott & Lara St. John. The album features music of Schubert, Satie, Glass, and Feldman, composers who either influenced or were influenced by the great playwright Samuel Beckett.

"The future of classical music in America." --Los Angeles Times

The starting point for this intriguing programme from young US ensemble The Knights is Morton Feldman's suggestion that part of the magic of Schubert is "that kind of hovering, as if you're in a register you've never heard".

Accordingly, The Knights have sought to intersperse works by Schubert amongst subsequent pieces reflecting that hovering characteristic, from Debussy's arrangements of two of Satie's "Gymnopédies" to Philip Glass's four-part "Company". It's a daring conceit which works beautifully, particularly the section which elides between Satie's "Gymnopédie II", Schubert's 3rd and Feldman's "Madame Press Died Last Week At Ninety", a sequence which seems to erase time within a single fluid flourish.

Hindemith: Viola Works

“Tamestit brings his wonderful musical intelligence to bear on some of the greatest music written for the instrument...From both a performance and repertoire point of view, there is surely no better single-disc introduction to Hindemith's viola music for anyone still unfamiliar with it.” --BBC Music Magazine, June 2014 *****

“ In all four works, Hindemith captures the mournful pathos of the viola’s sound. Tamestit’s sumptuous tone is complemented by Hadulla’s diamantine pianism in Op 11, No 4, and by the sympathetic Frankfurt RSO under Järvi.” --Sunday Times, 26th January 2014

One of today’s leading violists, Antoine Tamestit has dedicated his eagerly awaited new recording to German composer Paul Hindemith, whose 50th anniversary of death was celebrated in 2013. Hindemith was a brilliant viola player whose compositions widened the repertoire for this instrument, ranging from solo pieces to concertos. This recording features the Frankfurt Radio Symphony, one of the major German orchestras, conducted by leading conductor Paavo Järvi. Antoine Tamestit is developing an intense career through his concerto, chamber and solo performances. Born in Paris in 1979, he was initially inspired by his teachers Jean Sulem, Jesse Levine and Tabea Zimmermann, and soon came to international prominence by winning, in rapid succession, the Maurice Vieux, the William Primrose, Young Concert Artists and the ARD Competitions.

With the support of the Borletti-Buitoni Trust Foundation and several important awards (Deutschlandfunk-Förderpreis, Victoires de la Musique, Crédit Suisse), he has quickly became one of the most sought-after viol players of his generation.