Julia Fischer INTIMATE

INTIMATE

Varduhi Yeritsyan SWEET DREAMS

SWEET DREAMS

Rachel Barton Pine / Royal Scottish National Orchestra / Teddy Abrams DVORÁK - KHACHATURIAN Violin Concertos

                                                          VIOLIN CONCERTOS

Vasily Petrenko / Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra MUSSORGSKY Pictures at an Exhibition

Vasily Petrenko is the Principal Conductor of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra.

Between 1994 and 1997, Petrenko was Resident Conductor at the St Petersburg State Opera and Ballet Theatre in the Mussorgsky Memorial Theatre. During this time he gained an enormous amount of operatic experience and he now has over 30 operas in his repertoire.

Petrenko is equally at home in symphonic and operatic repertoire. On the symphonic front, he has previously worked with the City of Birmingham Symphony, Swedish Radio, Ensemble Orchestral de Paris and NDR Hanover, BBC Wales, Cadaques and Castille y Leon Orchestras in Spain.

A Russian orchestral showcase from Vasily Petrenko and the award willing Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra present a programme of Russian orchestral classics - with some surprises.

Ravel’s brilliant orchestration of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition and Khachaturian’s sumptuously romantic suite from his ballet ‘Spartacus’ with its famous ‘Adagio’ keep company with Kabalevsky’s fizzing overture to his opera ‘Colas Breugnon’ and Schehedrin’s ‘Naughty Limericks plus a wistful Rachmaninov song in beautiful orchestral arrangement.

Lang Lang PIANO BOOK Encore Edition

Global superstar pianist Lang Lang has announced a new deluxe digital version of his chart-topping album Piano Book – the best-selling classical album worldwide released this year. Piano Book – Encore Edition, released on 15 November 2019, features six new additional tracks. Accompanying the release will be three performance videos and six short films in which Lang Lang talks about the pieces. 

Piano Book – Encore Edition is a collection of 47 tracks including brand-new recordings of ‘Sweet Dreams’ from Tchaikovsky’s Children’s Album, ‘Ivan Sings’ from Khachaturian’s Adventures Of Ivan, Christian Petzold’s ‘Minuet In G Minor’ from J.S. Bach’s Notebook For Anna Magdalena Bach and the three movements of Friedrich Kuhlau’s ‘Piano Sonatina In C Major, Op.20 No.1’. These are featured alongside favourites from the original album including Beethoven’s ‘Für Elise’, Chopin’s ‘Raindrop Prélude’ and Bach’s ‘Prelude In C Major’ from The Well-Tempered Clavier. 

Lang Lang’s Piano Book has enjoyed huge success around the world since its release in March. It has topped the classical charts in the US, the UK, Germany, France, China and Japan and entered the pop charts in Austria, France, Germany, Spain, Switzerland and the UK. His recording of Beethoven’s ‘Für Elise’ reached No.4 in the official Chinese pop single charts.

Nemanja Radulović BAÏKA

More than a violinist, Nemanja Radulović is a fully rounded artist who breathes new life into everything he plays, as can be seen from his Deutsche Grammophon discography (which ranges from core repertoire for violin and orchestra with the concertos of Bach and Tchaikovsky to Journey East, a collection of shorter works and perhaps his most personal album so far, dedicated to his mother). A musician who plays with the utmost passion and sensitivity, he appeals to all kinds of audiences, not just habitual concert-goers but also those with little or no experience of classical music.

“If I have a mission as an artist,” he says, “it’s that I want to share the things I love with all my heart with everyone!” This is why he loves creating moving musical narratives that transport listeners, taking them on distant journeys of the imagination. There’s always a story behind his vision of the works he performs.

Radulović has already looked eastward for some of his Yellow Label recordings. Journey East evoked the classical past of Central and Eastern Europe with works by Brahms, Dvořák, Shostakovich – composers inspired by traditional music and Slavic folk songs. After this album, the violinist turned to the eternal Bach, creating versions of the Violin Concerto in A minor and the Double Violin Concerto that offer a Bach of our times, and also including a viola concerto by Johann Christian Bach. Next came an album of standard repertoire: Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto and Rococo Variations (world premiere recording of new arrangement). And now, with Baïka, which means “story” or “tale” in Serbian, he’s once again exploring the music of Eastern Europe and beyond.  

His performance style is impossible to reduce to a simple formula. He is open to all influences, notably that of the HIP movement, but has no qualms about giving free rein to a form of modernity when performing the kind of virtuoso showpieces that are sadly still seen as somehow second-rate repertoire. He also takes delight in new arrangements of existing works – extrapolations of the originals that can reveal entirely new worlds. When putting together a programme, he is more than willing to be inspired by meetings with other musicians, well aware that such meetings can generate new stories. Such was the case when it came to the making of Baïka.

The seeds for this album were sown during the first tour that Radulović undertook with Sascha Goetzel and the Borusan Istanbul Philharmonic Orchestra, on which Bruch’s First Violin Concerto and Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade were among the works performed. During the tour, the violinist used to sit in the auditorium for the second half of each concert and became increasingly captivated by Scheherazade’s solo violin part, which represents the voice of the sultan’s eponymous young bride as she spins her fantastical tales. With the idea of taking that line and expanding on it, Radulović asked his Serbian composer friend Aleksandar Sedlar to develop it into a piece for solo violin and his ensemble Double Sens. The resulting suite – to which the violinist contributed by helping to write the solo part – is a worthy successor to the kind of late nineteenth-century bravura violin works composed by Sarasate and Wieniawski, among others.

Since that first tour, violinist, conductor and orchestra have continued to work together on a regular basis, and they all met up in Istanbul to record the Khachaturian Violin Concerto for Baïka. The concerto dates from the Soviet era and reflects modern Armenia, rather than the fairy-tale east conjured by Scheherazade.

Nemanja Radulović has a soft spot for the Armenian-born Khachaturian, whose celebrated Sabre Dance he recorded for Journey East. For Baïka he chose not only the Violin Concerto, but also the composer’s Trio for clarinet, violin and piano. The key role played by the clarinet in both works makes them companion pieces. Here again Radulović was keen to record with musicians he already knew well and whose talents he hugely respected: clarinetist Andreas Ottensamer and pianist Laure Favre-Kahn.

The album closes with Aleksandar Sedlar’s Savcho 3, a work studded with folk tunes from the shores of the Black Sea. Sedlar created the work by taking an excerpt from his Concerto for saxophone and orchestra and adapting it for solo violin and Double Sens. Baïka is, then, an album rich in colour and texture, as Radulović’s violin is heard with full orchestra, then with string ensemble and piano, and finally in two chamber pieces. The locations in which it was recorded – Berlin, Belgrade and Istanbul – add to the idea of the eastern travels involved in its making.

Varduhi Yeritsyan & Friends LETTERS FROM ARMENIA

A composer’s mother tongue is the first music he hears; it therefore determines the “genetic inheritance” of the musician’s sound world.  The link between a country’s music and its language seems, therefore, evident to me.  There is a clear relationship between the lyricism of Verdi’s music and the melodious character of Italian.  And does the acute sense of structure inherent to the Austro-German music of Beethoven, or Schoenberg, not reflect the language spoken by these two composers?  It is just as incontestable that Debussy’s chiaroscurist art is fundamentally linked to the ever-nuanced, veiled nature of the French language.

Armenian music is no exception to this rule.  It is as singular a construct as is Armenian, an orphaned Indo-European language born at the borders of Orient and Occident.  Like the national language, it is a synthesising language that unites opposing sources, Eastern and Western, folk and art.  If the melodic and even harmonic archetypes of Armenian music give a leading role to the augmented intervals and untempered scales characteristic of the Orient, the great Armenian musicians’ compositional art is thoroughly anchored in Occidental technique and know-how.

The founding father of Armenian art music was Komitas Vardapet.  Like Bartók, he was a great collector of folk melodies, which he first faithfully transcribed as he heard them, then arranged, harmonised and complexified them.  The folk song arrangements played on this recording, either by a solo piano or by small chamber groups, are therefore already at one step’s distance from the original folk model, which would be sung a cappella.  Several decades later, the other great figure of Armenian music, Aram Khachaturian, would use these folk-derived elements and add to them that great orchestral mastery so characteristic of many Soviet-trained composers.

Most of the folk songs set down by Komitas have touchingly simple texts that express nostalgia, or even melancholy.  Though humour and derision are important elements of Armenian culture, the ordeals the Armenian people have endured over the course of their lengthy history ensure that the expression of grief is a constant feature.

This recording is released in the centenary year of the 1915 genocide.  As this tragedy has never been recognised by those who perpetrated it, the Armenian people has never been able to engage in the necessary collective grieving process that must follow such a calamity.  On the contrary, the wait for an admission of responsibility from Armenia’s neighbor does nothing but revive national anger against an unacceptable case of historical revisionism.  But even in the darkest moments of its history, Armenia has always produced musicians and music.  The Armenians’ legendary optimism is an effective form of struggle against obscurantism.

The pieces in this recital may be animated, contemplative, tender, or solemn, but they are very rarely gloomy or woeful.  A sort of trust in the future characterises the “Armenian spirit”.  Music is synonymous with hope, it is a way of fighting against annihilation, a tool of resistance. As I contemplate my ancestors who vanished a century ago, I would like this recording to bear witness to the faith in justice that has never fled my native land.

Lidia Baich / Matthias Fletzberger VIOLIN IN MOTION

The Violinist Lidia Baich and Pianist Fletzberger are a successful duo with optimum tonal differentiation, phenomenal virtuosity and incredible sense of style. Together they breathe life into the great works of music literature and expand their passion with genuine arrangements.

Violinist Lidia Baich was born in St. Petersburg. At the age of eight years she won her first international competition - numerous other top-prices followed. In 1998 she won the Grand Prix d'Eurovision and was nominated European Musicians of the Year. Since then she performs in all  major concert halls around the world with the worlds best orchestras (including the New York Philharmonic, St. Petersburg Philharmonic) and conductors such as Lorin Maazel, and Vladimir Fedoseyev.

In 2002 Lorin Maazel invited her to join star-tenor Andrea Bocelli on his world tour. The following year, she took part in the ten-year anniversary of Pavarotti and Friends in Modena. In 2008 she released her first CD on the Deutsche Grammophon label. In 2009 she was the official ambassador of the Haydn year. Lidia Baich also serves as a jury member at prestigious violin competitions such as the Eurovision Competition or the Menuhin Competition.

The musical talent of the Viennese Pianist Fletzberger was discovered at the age of 5, when he was accepted as a student of the University of Music in Vienna in Violin and piano and was soon known as a piano prodigy. He won top prizes the ìBusoniî- and ìRubinsteinî-competition. His career took him to all continents as soloist playing more than 1.000 concerts in only five years - he has performed with major orchestras (including the Israel Philharmonic, Orchestre de Bordeaux) and conductors as Ferdinand Leitner, Carl Melles or Jesus Lopez Cobos.

After several years of collaboration with the world famous soprano Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, he started a second career as a conductor (Vienna Festival, Salzburg Prague State Opera, etc.). Following a ten-year time-out he decided to return to the classical music scene in 2009, when he started his comeback as a classical pianist and conductor.

In 2011 the two artists released the CD / DVD Violin in Motion on the Deutsche Grammophon label, featuring their own arrangements of symphonic ballet-music. Plans for 2014 include a new CD with late-romantic violinsonatas by Richard Strauss and Joseph Marx.

Xiayin Wang / Royal Scottish National Orchestra / Peter Oundjian TCHAIKOVSKY Piano Concerto No. 2 KHACHATURIAN Piano Concerto

It’s always a pleasure when, like Fry’s Five Boys Chocolate (if you’re old enough to remember), realisation exceeds anticipation. From the first bar (no chocolate pun intended), you know that this brilliant Chinese-American pianist is the business. As on her earlier concerto disc of Copland, Barber and Gershwin with the same partners, she leads from the front throughout to exhilarating effect.

For those to whom such things are important (as I know they are from a review I penned last year of Denis Matsuev in the Tchaikovsky Second), the score is played complete in its original version – ie no cuts in the first movement and with the 16 bars included at the end of the second movement which Tchaikovsky removed in its revised form. To help us find our way during the lengthy first movement, Chandos has helpfully added three entry points. The two soloists in the second movement are credited, unlike those on Matsuev’s recording, who, however, I marginally prefer for their more espressivo solos.

The Khachaturian is, presumably, a replacement for Chandos of its well-regarded recording with Constantine Orbelian, Neeme Järvi and the same orchestra. Sumptuously engineered, the newcomer, unlike several other much-vaunted versions (Berezovsky) in inferior sound (Kapell, Lympany), takes Khachaturian at his word as far as tempi are concerned, markedly similar to the live performance conducted by the composer with Nikolai Petrov in 1977. Chandos, as before, has gone to the trouble of hiring a flexatone for the spectral second movement (the player, alas, is not credited). Xiayin Wang plays the stamina-sapping solo part with all the conviction and exuberance needed, though no one has ever quite matched the climax of the first movement cadenza as recorded by Peter Katin, the LSO and Hugo Rignold back in 1959 – a thrilling moment ‘captured in one lucky take,’ so Katin once told me. If you do not have a recording of the Tchaikovsky, then this is up with the very best; likewise the Khachaturian. Paired together, it’s a no-brainer. (Jeremy Nicholas / Gramophone)

Zurich Ensemble SCHEHERAZADE

Sheherazade as chamber music? Reduced to four members? Somewhere up there, Leopold Stokowski, the man who made this music a big-orchestra showpiece, is having a fit – especially since this recording is so successful in terms of the transcription and performance by the Zurich Ensemble. The four musicians – violin, piano, cello and clarinet – have the music in their souls and, through a combination of cunning and artistic will power, have made the piece their own.

The small-might-be-better trend was also manifested over the summer with Ensemble Festivo playing Schumann’s Fourth Symphony with 10 instruments – somewhat convincingly but not nearly on the level of this group, whose transcription by Florian Noack and Benjamin Engeli is full of shrewd insights that save their endeavour from palm-court kitsch and give the music a greater sense of dramatic narrative. The solo violin (beautifully played by Kamilla Schatz) is pretty much intact, though the violin joins in with the cello and piano to create rhythmic momentum when necessary. Orchestral strings are replaced by piano, which also covers the harp arpeggios. The clarinet creates a primary voice in the texture when the solo violin is otherwise occupied. Of course, limitations are to be expected. With less sound to work with, grand rubatos aren’t possible. Also, the group practises certain sleights of hand with spatial effects that are possible in the recording studio. If this four-person group isn’t about to summon an imposing Cinemascopic span of sound, why can’t depth of field replace lost grandeur?

Sheherazade is framed by lesser-known works: a suite of incidental music by Sergei Bortkiewicz (1877-1955) for A Thousand and One Nights (pleasant enough but incidental) and Khachaturian’s Trio for clarinet, violin and piano, a 1934 piece that’s a bit of a find, full of attractive ideas that never fall back on the animal energy of his better-known works. (David Patrick Stearns / Gramophone)

Kristina Fialová INTRODUCTION

Kristina Fialová has been primarily praised by the critics for her impeccable technique, impassioned performance and sophisticated musical sentiment. After winning the 2013 Michal Spisak International Competition in Katowice, Poland, she was invited to the major concert stages in Europe. Her appearance at the prestigious Tivoli Festival in Denmark was followed by her debuting at the Tonhalle Zürich and giving a recital at the 2015 Prague Spring festival.

Kristina Fialová studied at the Brno Conservatory, the Hochschüle für Musik Carl Maria von Weber in Dresden (Prof. Vladimír Bukač), the Royal Danish Academy of Music in Copenhagen (Profs. Tim Frederikson and Lars Anders Tomter), and the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (Prof. Jan Pěruška). She further honed her skills at master classes led by top-notch soloists and pedagogues around the world (Leif Ove Andsnes, Wolfram Christ, Sheila Browne, Tatiana Masurenko, Jerry Horner, Helen Callus, Charles Avsharian, Václav Hudeček, Siegfried Frühlinger).

The virtuosic young Czech viola player Kristina Fialová presents contemporary and 20th-century works by Rózsa, Godár, Penderecki, Khachaturian, Stravinsky and Bodorová. Great performances of music by composers from middle and Eastern Europe.

Nemanja Radulović CARNETS DE VOYAGE

. . . [an] exhilarating album that crosses musical boundaries as if they don't exist . . . [Radulovic has] exceptional talent, real charisma and serious youth appeal. This young man plays the fiddle brilliantly . . . [the album] allows Nemanja to display his musical range, with everything from a vivid arrangement of the "Sabre Dance" to traditional Serbian stuff that's utterly compelling at Nemanja's extraordinairy pace. There are also more soulful tracks, like a fine arrangement by his in-house guru, Yvan Cassar, of John Williams's "Schindler's List" theme. It's one heck of a visiting card, and not to be missed. (Record Review / David Mellor, Daily Mail (London) / 01. February 2015)

 

Radulovic balances virtuoso posturing, famous film melodies and traditional tunes with unapologetic flair . . . The overall feeling is light but enjoyable . . . he has a warm, full-bodied tone and the technique to master each of the pieces on this disc. He moves between styles quite naturally. Dvorák's chanson "Songs My Mother Taught Me" is breathy, and then soaring and vibrato rich; a rapid-fire Serbian folk tune is dispatched at speed but with no loss of rhythmic swing . . . the accompanying forces are varied (the cimbalom is a welcome inclusion) and elegantly deployed. This is a well-realised recording project. (Record Review / Tim Woodall, The Strad (Harrow, UK) / 01. July 2015)

Sergey & Lusine Khachatryan MY ARMENIA Dedicated to te 100th Commemoration of the Armenian Genocide

Like for every nation, the space in which the musical Armenian culture developed corresponds to the nation’s development itself. According to some scientists, Armenians’ attested origins are dated from the second millenary B.C. The history of musical Armenian culture can be divided in two big categories: traditional and artistic music. Until the middle of the 19th century, traditional Armenian music used to be monodic in its whole. This monadic Armenian music can also be divided in three other categories: popular traditional music, traditional professional music, known as the Gusans’ or Aschughens’ art (Armenian equivalent for troubadours), and at last the artistic professional Middle Ages music, spiritual music or religious vocal art in Armenia. In the middle of the 19th century appear the first musical artistic works from Armenian composers. In the second half of this century, bases and specificities of the artistic Armenian music start to become important, freed from the European influence and reinforced through Armenia’s wish to be independent. These problems touching the Armenian culture have been resolved by Komitas Vardapet, who made traditional and religious Armenian music the frame of the artistic Armenian music. Komitas Vardapet (1869 – 1935) is therefore considered the founder of the national Armenian composition school.
Komitas Vardapet (his religious name; his civil name was Soghomon Soghomonian) was a composer, musician, ethnologist, music specialist, pedagogue, choir leader, singer and poet. He was formed at the Georgian seminary of Edchmiatzin (the siege of the Armenian Church). He then studied from 1896 to 1900 in Berlin in the Richard Schneider conservatory and at the imperial Friedrich Wilhelm University (now Humboldt University). He is one of the founders of the Berlin branch of the Internationale musicology society. In Berlin, Paris, or Vienna, he played several times for concerts and scientific conferences. In 1915 starts the Armenian genocide and Komitas Vardapet is deported with a group of intellectual Armenians from Istanbul to the Syrian Desert. Through the intervention of foreign artists and intellectuals he escapes deportation; but right after, abominations he saw during the deportation and he felt with his whole body, started a very hard crisis for him. He dies in 1935 in Paris. (naïve)

Nareh Arghamanyan / Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin / Alain Altinoglu PROKOFIEV - KHACHATURIAN Piano Concertos

Nareh Arghamanyan's first recording for PENTATONE of solo piano works by Rachmaninov showed her to be an artist of surprising maturity who combines musical acuity with a prodigious technique. Her follow-up disc of the Liszt Piano Concertos confirmed one's favourable opinion of her potential in virtuoso repertoire.
Her latest release couples Prokofiev's 3rd Piano Concerto – his most popular and most recorded – with the Piano Concerto of her fellow Armenian Aram Khachaturian, a work rarely appearing on concert programmes and even less frequently on disc and as in the earlier Liszt recording she is partnered here by the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by the young French-born conductor Alain Altinoglu with whom she obviously has a close rapport.
Khachaturian's Piano Concerto dates from 1936 and attempted to revive the bravura pianistic traditions of Liszt while at the same time introducing material in the concerto that derived from Armenian folk sources, though the composer denied quoting directly from such sources.
The bass drum thwack that opens the work resonates impressively in PENTATONE's vivid recording made in the Haus des Rundfunks, RBB Berlin in October 2013 and Nareh Arghamanyan's decisive first entry illustrates both the physical strength of her playing and her virtuosity as the movement proceeds. She plays the first of the movement's two long solo passages with a relaxed improvisatory feel and brings great exuberance and stunning virtuosity to the second.
The haunting central 'Andante' begins and ends with the bass clarinet extemporising under soft chords on muted strings before the gentle entry of the soloist. Khachaturian's scoring calls for a most unusual, and frankly bizarre sounding instrument – the flexatone, to be used in this movement. For this recording, however, Alain Altinoglu, has replaced the flexatone by a musical saw which certainly blends better with the strings and sounds here little different from a theremin or an ondes martinot.
The jazzy and sometimes even orgiastic finale is given a terrific performance from both soloist and orchestra, the music only slowing for the brilliant cadenza before building to a restatement of the first movement's opening theme and then driving to its thrilling and emphatic final chords.
Though this concerto has often been accused of brashness and empty rhetoric it is still worth an occasional outing especially when heard in such a beautifully recorded and committed performance as this one by Nareh Arghamanyan.
The Prokofiev concerto that follows faces much tougher competition from countless rival recordings and though Arghaman's playing has all the necessary fire power her performance fails to match the best of the SACD alternative versions in this piece that include those from Byron Janis, Freddy Kempff and Denis Matsuev. Thanks to the rather cautious tempi adopted by Altinoglu and Arghamanyan her account lacks the flamboyance of those mentioned above and its slightly restrained quality, while sometimes appropriate in the slower section of the work, misses some of the composer's wit and panache in the outer movements.
It must, however, be said that the orchestral contribution could hardly be finer. I can't recall a recording that reveals so much subtle detail in Prokofiev's orchestral writing and needless to say PENTATONE's sound quality is beyond reproach.
Those seeking this release for the Khachaturian Piano Concerto need not hesitate. (2014 Graham Williams and SA-CD)