Lydia Maria Bader CHINESE DREAMS

CHINESE DREAMS

Nino Gvetadze CYRIL SCOTT Visions

                                                                            VISIONS

Ray Chen THE GOLDEN AGE

Recognized as a musician of “phenomenal talent” by The Washington Post, Chen has handpicked a selection of works for his new album which celebrates the ‘golden age’ of the violin – not only in terms of repertoire, but also in performance style and ingenuity. The centrepiece is Max Bruch’s Violin Concerto which was recorded in August last year with the London Philharmonic Orchestra and conductor Robert Trevino.

The album opens with a piece for string quartet which has already garnered over 50,000 hits on Chen’s YouTube channel. Titled, “A New Satiesfaction”, it features “Gymnopédie No.1” by Erik Satie with an allusion to Rossini’s “William Tell Overture”. Performed by Chen and his Made in Berlin quartet, the arrangement of “A New Satiesfaction” is done by the group’s cellist, Stephan Koncz. The other violinist in the quartet is Noah Bendix-Balgley while Amihai Grosz plays viola. All of Chen’s collaborators in the group are members of the Berlin Philharmonic and they recorded together in the city last November.

The album also features compositions and arrangements by such legendary violinists as Fritz Kreisler and Jascha Heifetz, which Chen performs with pianist Julien Quentin. Among them are Kreisler’s “Syncopation and Schön Rosmarin” and Cyril Scott’s “Lotus Land”, plus Heifetz’s transcriptions of “Estrellita” by Manuel Ponce and George Gershwin’s “Summertime”. Stephan Koncz has also arranged Debussy’s Clair de lune and the traditional Australian favourite “Waltzing Matilda” (Ray hails from Australia and Taiwan).

Chen teased The Golden Age with a custom-built computer game: http://umusic.digital/goldenviolin/. “This album acknowledges the various styles of the past, but also retains one important philosophy: as long as we keep inspiring and producing, perhaps what we create now will one day be deemed worthy of being named a golden age,” says Chen.

Chen is among the most compelling young violinists today. He has performed with many of the world’s leading musicians in concert halls across the globe and he has also amassed a huge online following (including more than 2 million fans on SoundCloud) through quirky, self-made videos and engaging social media posts.

Sandrine Chatron / Ophélie Gaillard / Michael Bennett A BRITISH PROMENADE

A 1994 graduate of the Paris Conservatory in harp and chamber music, Sandrine Chatron is also the winner of the Louise Charpentier Competition (1998) and the Arles chamber music competition, as well as being distinguished by the Natexis-Banque Populaire Foundation and the ‘Déclic’ series of Cultures-France. She avidly stands up for the repertoire of her instrument, from the classical harp to contemporary creation, whether as a soloist or chamber player, and within prestigious orchestral ensembles. 

As a soloist, she has performed in the Présences festival, at the Champs-Élysées Theatre, the Orsay Museum and the Maison de Radio France, with the Orchestre Colonne, the Ensemble Fa, La Grande Écurie & La Chambre du Roy, the Nederlands Kammer Orkest and the Lebanese National Symphony Orchestra. She has premiered works by Pierre Boulez (Sur Incises), K. Maratka in 2010, S. Yoshida in 2009, and R. Nillni at the Festival Présences in 2008. 

She takes pleasure in revealing unpublished or little-known scores and has to her credit two critically-acclaimed albums, with Naïve for the Ambroisie collection (‘André Caplet and his contemporaries’ in 2005), and in 2009 ‘Le Salon de Musique de Marie-Antoinette’, recorded on a single-action Erard harp from the Musée de la Musique. She was appointed solo harpist of the Nederlands Philharmonisch Orkest in 2009. Since 2012 she has taught at the Conservatory of Amsterdam. 

As the title of her new disc British Promenade suggests it, the harpist Sandrine Chatron takes us on a musical wandering in the early 20th England. Along the journey, we meet little known artists, such as Herbert Howells or Cyril Scott, but also the famous Benjamin Britten. Their scores for harp carry us to England, among coastal views and bucolic landscapes. The lyricism of Ophélie Gaillard's cello and the warmth of Michael Bennett's tenor voice enhance the evocative power of the music and complete the pointillist qualities of the harp. (Aparté)