Jillon Stoppels Dupree J.S. BACH Fantasy and Caprice

 

FANTASY AND CAPRICE

Kirsten Ashley Wiest / Siu Hei Lee LUMINOUS

LUMINOUS

The Teton Trio TRIOS FOR CLARINET, VIOLA AND PIANO

TRIOS FOR CLARINET, VIOLA AND PIANO

Jackie Glazier / Galen Dean Peiskee, Jr MAGIC FOREST SCENES

MAGIC FOREST SCENES

Solomiya Ivakhiv / Antonio Pompa-Baldi / Slovak National Symphony Orchestra / Theodore Kuchar HAYDN + HUMMEL Concertos for Violin, Piano and Orchestra

CONCERTOS FOR VIOLIN, PIANO AND ORCHESTRA

Nadia Caristi / Massimo Marchese AMORE LA SOL MI FA REMIRARE

AMORE LA SOL MI FA REMIRARE

Trio Advenio ADVENIO

ADVENIO

Charlotte Mattax Moersch THE BACH LEGACY

THE BACH LEGACY

Zaira Meneses WUNDERBACH

This release goes to show that Bach is beautiful on any instrument. Zaira Meneses plays Bach on guitar with unusual sensitivity and style. This is anything but mechanical Bach. This is Bach living and breathing on the guitar. Zaira Meneses is among the most exciting performers on the international classical guitar circuit. Her musicality and charisma have delighted audiences on three continents. Zaira Meneses was born in Xalapa, Mexico. From an early age she showed great talent for music, studying both classical guitar and voice. She traveled widely, performing as well with the famed Orquesta de Guitarras. At the age of 17 and as the youngest contestant, she won first prize in an important national concerto competition. This success led to performances of Joaquin Rodrigo's Concierto de Aranjuez and Concierto Madrigal for two guitars throughout Mexico. Since moving to the USA in 2001, Meneses has built a stellar reputation for her warm sound, limpid technique, and superb natural musicality, performing in many of the great concert halls of the world, including Boston's Jordan Hall, New York City's Alice Tully Hall, and Salzburg's Wiener Saal.

Kinga Augustyn GEORG PHILIPP TELEMANN 12 Fantasias for Solo Violin, TWV 40:14-25

Polish-born New York City-based musician Kinga Augustyn is a versatile classical concert violinist and recording artist who is gaining worldwide recognition through her performances as a concerto soloist, recitalist, and chamber musician. She has been described as “an adventurous performer valuable to New York’s scene” (NY Concert Review), “stylish and vibrant… playing with verve and superb control” (The Strad Magazine), and “beyond amazing, one hell of a violinist!” (The Fanfare Magazine). Her repertoire ranges from early baroque, which she sometimes performs on a baroque violin, to modern, oftentimes written especially for her. She has won several international awards, including First Prizes at the Alexander & Buono International String Competition. On this release, she presents Georg Philipp Telemann’s 12 Fantasias for Solo Violin.

Sylvie Proulx LES TENDRES PLAINTES

Canadian classical guitarist Sylvie Proulx has added to the transcription catalogue of music by a leading French Baroque composer with her new recording, Les Tendres Plaintes: Works by Jean-Philippe Rameau.

The CD was released on January 5, 2018 on the Centaur label. It features dance movements from Rameau’s harpsichord suites, of the sort developed in the 17 th century, and short, descriptive works. The transcriptions are by such celebrated guitarists as Andrés Segovia, John Duarte and Venancio Garcia Velasco.

Sylvie Proulx herself has created three, among them the title track (in English The Tender Complaints), from Rameau’s method book on finger mechanics.2018 marks the 335 th anniversary of the birth of Rameau (1683-1764), the pre-eminent opera composer in 18 th century France, who first made his name as an organist, theorist and composer of keyboard music. (Centaur)

Elizabeth Farnum / Margaret Kampmeier KAIKHOSRU SHAPURJI SORABJI The Complete Songs for Soprano

Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji (1892-1988) may remain an outwardly formidable and eccentric figure, but his music, with its heady transformation of past exotic idioms into a bewildering alternation of excess and economy, is a marvel of inventiveness, appealing notably to those whose taste runs to music at once serious and exotic. 

Son of a Spanish-Sicilian mother and a Parsee father, Sorabji was celebrated for his polemical outbursts and opinions. Yet beneath the mask of his extravagance (‘Ravel, like Alexander Pope, is full of cocktail cretinisms’) he possessed a penetrating, witty, if frequently mischief-making, mind. Musical aphorisms (the final Arabesque on this delectable disc) alternate with works lasting several hours and his writing can be so intricate that it spreads its tendrils over as many as seven staves. Small wonder that it is only recently that Sorabji’s mysterious star has started to shine. 

Remarkably, Elizabeth Farnum and Margaret Kampmeier’s disc of the complete songs for soprano and piano is a world première recording and it would be hard to imagine a more persuasive case made for music too often dismissed as a specialist taste. The majority of the songs are in French – some are in English – and both artists declare their labour of love in every spine-tingling bar. The influence of Debussy is paramount in the earliest songs. ‘Crepuscule de soir mystique’ from Trois poèmes, for example, remembers the Etude ‘Pour les quatres’, while ‘Pantomime’ from the same set recalls the same composer’s magical setting of Verlaine’s Green. Chrysilla plunges from assurance to despair while L’heure exquise lovingly reworks ‘La lune blanche’ from Fauré’s La bonne chanson.
Poems that take a Swinburnian excess to extremes (‘the wild rose covers itself in the perfumed blood of its dye/And that the virgin, blushing with happiness,/Brings her crown and her heart to the arms of her beloved’), and the darkness of L’étang, are somehow magically cleansed of self-indulgence by both artists, such is their style and refinement. 

Elizabeth Farnum is a richly versatile singer who offers heartfelt thanks to all who made this very demanding and elusive project possible and it is no surprise to find that Margaret Kampmeier won the 1995 Naumberg Chamber Music Award. Both artists sing and play as one and they have been beautifully balanced and recorded. It would have been good to have the original French poems printed alongside Charles Hopkins’ more than helpful translations but any possible complaint in that department is balanced by an outstanding essay by Alistair Hinton, curator of The Sorabji Archive. (Bryce Morrison / Gramophone)

Beatrice Berrut ROBERT SCHUMANN The Three Sonatas for Piano

"This is a mostly impressive debut recording by the Swiss pianist Beatrice Berrut. Berrut brings coherence to its structure with the clarity and control of her playing (...) she has the work's considerable technical difficulties entirely under control (...) She plays the second movement of the Third Sonata as expressively as Horowitz." (Fanfare, Paul Orgel)

 “Here is another excellent recording of all three of the Schumann sonatas. The pianist has contributed her own perceptive notes and plays the music with full understanding of the composer's many tempo quirks and mandatory free use of rubato..." (American Record Guide, Becker)

 “…Beatrice Berrut isn’t afraid of challenges. And what a challenge, indeed, to play three Schumann piano sonatas after great names such as Pollini, Argerich or Horowitz. At 26 years old, the pianist puts all her determination and spirit into these three little-recorded pieces. Breathtakingly beautiful sound, winged virtuosity, refined sensitivity: Beatrice Berrut plunges deeply into the whimsical universe of Schumann, embracing the tiniest bit of expression with astonishing, natural flow. Superb Romantic piano pieces performed by a pianist we should follow carefully…” (Tribunes de Genève, Luca Sabbatini)