Xiao Chen KALEIDOSCOPE

KALEIDOSCOPE

 

Denis Kozhukhin / Orchestre de la Suisse Romande / Kazuki Yamada RAVEL - GERSHWIN Piano Concertos

Exuberant high spirits, pulsating rhythms and breathless virtuosity jostle with urbane sophistication and deeply felt sentiment in these scintillating jazz-inspired concertos by Maurice Ravel and George
Gershwin, played with élan by Denis Kozhukhin and the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande under Kazuki Yamada in this release from PENTATONE.

A sparkling divertissement with witty orchestration and sizzling virtuosity, Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G major is and one of his best-loved works thanks to its impeccable style, dashing humour, and its hauntingly beautiful slow movement. In a change of mood, Ravel’s Piano Concerto for the Left Hand in D major is a darkly hued, powerful work with a heroic grandeur realised in a fearsomely difficult piano part that traverses the keyboard to dazzling effect. And Tin Pan Alley beckons with Gershwin’s breezily confident and polished Piano Concerto in F major. With an inventive score that artfully combines jazz elements, heart on sleeve melodies and brilliant pianistics, the result is irresistible

Tristan Pfaff PIANO ENCORES

The encore, an end-of-concert ritual, is always highly appreciated by the audience. In a way, through them the listener gets to know the artist a little better, as encore choices reveal taste and personality. Thus, pianist Tristan Pfaff interprets above all pieces he loves: from the Baroque era of Bach to music of the 20th century by Prokofiev and Kabalevsky, a very broad musical horizon is proposed. Popular song is also present with Gershwin's 'The man I love', in its piano version.

Here, after two discs – one devoted to Liszt, the other to Schubert, Pfaff follows one of Schumann's numerous bits of advice inscribed on the score of his 'Album für die Jugend': 'Nothing great can be achieved in art without enthusiasm'. With this disc, recorded in very few takes, Tristan Pfaff, whose greatest pleasure is to play onstage, gives us a succession of encores… beloved works offered as gifts to the audience. (Presto Classical)

Andrew von Oeyen SAINT-SAËNS - RAVEL - GERSHWIN Piano Concertos

Warner Classics renews its collaboration with the PKF-Prague Philharmonia and the orchestra’s music director and chief conductor Emmanuel Villaume, with a new album to be released in January 2017.

Critically acclaimed pianist Andrew von Oeyen makes his label debut with the PKF-Prague Philharmonia and Villaume for a high-energy album of music by Saint-Saëns, Ravel, and Gershwin.

As with the orchestra's 2014 label debut Héroïque, with New Orleans-born tenor Bryan Hymel singing grand opéra rarities, the forthcoming release brings French and American connections to the fore.

Von Oeyen says that the choice of repertoire has been influenced by his own travels and the two centers of his international career. “I have been living between France and the US since 2002. Both Ravel and Gershwin appeal to me, as do croissants and bagels!” he explains.

“Perhaps, then, it is no coincidence that my first album for Warner Classics presents a Franco-American theme and explores the interplay between the two cultures. The unifying thread is Maurice Ravel, who knew both Camille Saint-Saëns and George Gershwin.”

A pianist of “indisputable gifts [with] an extravagantly thorough and effortless technique,” (Los Angeles Times), von Oeyen makes his Warner Classics debut with Ravel’s jazz-tinged Concerto in G and Saint-Saëns’s Piano Concerto No.2 in G Minor, written 60 years earlier. Alongside these two French masterpieces, von Oeyen has opted for a rarely-performed work by the composer of An American in Paris: not the sparkling Rhapsody in Blue for which Gershwin is most famous, but his Second Rhapsody (1931).

“It bears all the hallmarks of Gershwin’s genius and, in my estimation, at times even surpasses its prototype. Certainly it deserves to be played more often, particularly in the orchestration heard on this album,” von Oeyen affirms. “Probably no American composer was more influenced by the music of Ravel than Gershwin and no French composer more influenced by the music of Gershwin than Ravel,” he adds.

Having made his debut at the age of 16 with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Esa-Pekka Salonen, von Oeyen went on to study at the prestigious Juilliard School and Columbia University in New York. He now divides much of his time between Los Angeles and Paris.

Strasbourg-born Emmanuel Villaume was appointed Music Director and Chief Conductor of the PKF-Prague Philharmonia in September 2015. In February of that year, they made their Warner Classics debut in American tenor Bryan Hymel’s album Héroïque: Opera News praised “Emmanuel Villaume’s stunning work with the Prague Philharmonia throughout the disc”. (Warner Classics)

Anne-Sophie Mutter MUTTERISSIMO The Art of Anne-Sophie Mutter

It was in August 1976 at the Lucerne Festival that Anne-Sophie Mutter first set foot on the world’s stage. She was thirteen at the time. The following year she made her Salzburg Whitsun Festival debut under Herbert von Karajan, and a year after that her first recording was released by Deutsche Grammophon. The words “child prodigy” inevitably appeared in the newspapers. “I was half-aware of what was being said,” the violinist recalls, “but it was of little interest to me. I knew that I was a child. And the ‘prodigy’ part struck me as somehow comical.” To become world-famous as a teenager practically overnight was gratifying, of course, but it was also an emotional and a mental challenge. “As a result I learnt from a very early age to adopt a realistic attitude to all that was written about me and to place a certain distance between it and my private life.” This down-to-earth attitude was to prove useful to Anne-Sophie Mutter, for what followed was an international career unlike that of any other subsequent violinist.

Universally considered as one of the greatest violinists of our time, Anne-Sophie Mutter’s stunning and multi-faceted music-making extends across masterworks from the full breadth of the violin repertoire.

Mutterissimo – The Art of Anne-Sophie Mutter is a selection of highlights from her discography, personally picked by Mutter herself, bringing together recordings that date for the most part from the last twenty years. It invites listeners to undertake two tours of Anne-Sophie Mutter’s multiple worlds of music:

The first explores the highways and byways of the core repertory and features well-known works for violin and orchestra by Dvořák and Schumann alongside less familiar pieces. The second one, often with Mutter’s long-standing piano partner, Lambert Orkis, combines virtuosity and light-heartedness; the popular and the surprising; and emotion and rhythmic energy. 

For many years Anne-Sophie Mutter has performed not only in major international concert halls but recently also in clubs, where a young audience, largely unconcerned with traditional rituals, reacts to the music much more spontaneously. It is only logical, therefore, that she increasingly uses social media to engage in a dialogue with her fans.