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

Berg & Mozart: Chamber music

“The Berg is superbly played… Christian Tetzlaff plays the solo violin part with breathtaking technical mastery…” --BBC Music Magazine, December 2008 *****

“[In the Mozart] the EIC's phrasing is a model of clarity and good taste. It's the performance of the Berg, though, that makes this such an important issue; both soloists...are perfectly attuned to Boulez's approach...The authority and logic of the performance are compelling, and this is easily the best version of this intractable work to appear on CD.” --The Guardian, 24th October 2008 *****

 

“…there's a sense of fun, of genial affection for the music. Whether in the fluid lines of the tender Adagio or the yearning Andante, or in the bustling, concise finale, where everything - in the true spirit of opera buffa - seems to come right, Boulez makes plain his relish for the work [Mozart Gran Partita]. Berg's Chamber Concerto was also written for an auspicious event - the 50th birthday of his friend and mentor Arnold Schoenberg. ...what makes Mitsuko Uchida and Christian Tetzlaff outstanding is their feeling for the piece's inherent theatricality. ...Urchida brings to the opening variation set a breathtaking rhapsody... the Rondo ritmico, begins with a swirling cadenza. The freedom of the two players here is extraordinary, undoubtedly helped by the fact that they toured the work before taking it into the studio.” --Gramophone Magazine, December 2008

Albinoni: Double Oboe & String Concertos Volume 2

"...the solo playing is of the highest quality. Intonation is never for one moment in doubt, and both players are not only confidently assertive in allegros, but shape slow movements with considerable sensitivity..." --Fanfare (7-8/98, pp.64-66)

“[Robson's] tone is most appealing and his phrasing and musicianship are second to none. Simon Standage provides alert accompaniments, also using original instruments, and creates bright, athletic string timbres...The artistic results are very lively and refreshing.” --The Penguin Guide, 2011 edition [Vol.1]

Scarlatti: Concerti & Sinfonie

This recording presents music by two Scarlattis: Alessandro (1660-1725), composer of innumerable vocal and chamber works, and his son Domenico (1685-1757), famous mostly for his several hundred keyboard sonatas. Alessandro is represented by six Concerti Grossi, a Sonata, and a Sinfonia; Domenico by three Sinfonias. All feature solo instruments: harp, recorder, and most prominently, violins and continuo cello. Alessandro fostered his son's talent, but the two eventually, perhaps inevitably, became rivals, and Domenico left his native Rome for Portugal and then Spain.

Most of Alessandro's music recorded here is somber, solemn, and mournful, full of dissonances and sighing suspensions; four of the six concerti are in minor, but the two in major are bright and sprightly. One of the highlights is the slow, pastoral Finale of No. 6. They vary greatly in form, character, and texture; there is much masterful counterpoint, pungent rhythmic inventiveness, and a chromaticism that seems ahead of its time.

Europa Galante, an excellent Italian period-instrument group, is distinguished by its successful blending of meticulous technical and ensemble execution with musical spontaneity. Notable among the soloists are cellist Maurizio Naddeo and recorder player Petr Zeifart. Violinist Fabio Biondi, the group's director, is outstanding for his virtuosity, beautiful tone, and daring, inventive ornamentation. He deserves our gratitude for rescuing these unfamiliar works from undeserved neglect. --Edith Eisler

Liszt: Funeral Odes

“Volkov shapes all these pieces with what seems perfect understanding of their different shades of gloom or grief, and the playing of the BBC Scottish, helped by Hyperion's first-rate recording, is also perfectly attuned to the light and shade of Liszt's sound-palette. Altogether a revelatory album: this combination of works actually says something new about Liszt's quality as an orchestral composer.” --BBC Music Magazine, April 2011 *****

BBC Music Magazine - Orchestral Choice, April 2011

“Volkov, aided by superior engineering, offers a... detailed account: witness the precision of the suave Scottish string section in the opening of "Der Kampf um's Dasein" with the important figure in the brass that succeeds it generating added tension.” --Gramophone Magazine, May 2011

 

“Volkov does not disappoint in bringing out the sombre fatalism but also the inward serenity of the music...[in Trois Odes funèbres] Volkov (aided by a rapt response from the men of the Glasgow Singers) delves that much deeper into music whose long-term influence is out of all proportion to its present-day unfamiliarity.” --International Record Review, March 2011

Liszt’s Trois Odes funèbres were composed between 1860 and 1866, and exist in a variety of versions: for orchestra, for piano solo and for piano duet. There is also a chorus in the first Ode and the possibility of a narrator in the first and second. The first is also an organ piece, with the title Trauerode, and La notte also exists for violin and piano. The third of the Odes is also entitled ‘Epilogue to the Symphonic Poem: Tasso, Lamento e Trionfo’, and in its orchestral version it enjoyed a certain vogue towards the end of the nineteenth century. Although it is quite clear from the original manuscripts that Liszt intended these works to be performed as a cycle, they have never been published together and have rarely been performed as he wished. This is the first recording of the complete set.

‘From the cradle to the grave’ was written after a drawing by the Hungarian artist Mihály Zichy (1827–1906) depicting three stages of existence: birth; the struggle for being; and death, the cradle of the life to come.

The Faust legend preoccupied Liszt for much of his life, and inspired the composer’s most famous orchestral work, the Faust Symphony. However Zwei Episoden aus Lenaus Faust also contains some of the composer’s most thrillingly atmospheric music.