Alice Sara Ott ECHOES OF LIFE

 

ECHOES OF LIFE

Patricia Kopatchinskaja, Sol Gabetta, Francisco Coll, Camerata Bern PLAISIRS ILLUMINÉS

 

PLAISIRS ILLUMINÉS

 

Christian-Pierre La Marca CELLO 360

 

CELLO 360

 

David Greilsammer LABYRINTH

 

LABYRINTH

 

Khatia Buniatishvili LABYRINTH

LABYRINTH

 

Kirsten Ashley Wiest / Siu Hei Lee LUMINOUS

LUMINOUS

Anthony Romaniuk BELLS

BELLS

Silas Bassa OSCILLATIONS

OSCILLATIONS

Khatia Buniatishvili MOTHERLAND

Khatia Buniatishvili has been described by The Independent as “the young Georgian firebrand”. At the age of only 26 years, this Tblisi-born pianist has already achieved an exceptional maturity of interpretation and a distinctive artistic approach that make her playing unmistakable. Khatia’s warm, sometimes sorrowful playing may reflect a close proximity to Georgian folk-music, which, she attests, has greatly influenced her musicality. Critics emphasize that her playing has an aura of elegant solitude and even melancholy, which she does not feel to be a negative attribute. “The piano is the blackest instrument,” she says, a “symbol of musical solitude… I have to be psychologically strong and forget the hall if I want to share it with the audience.” Khatia Buniatishvili speaks five languages and lives in Paris.

The CD is an intimate quest encompassing solo piano works from Bach to Pärt and from Brahms to Kancheli, in which the themes of longing for home, the merriment of a folk dance and the eternal cycle of growth and decay are apparent. Spanning a broad stylistic and historical range, the album celebrates the works that have accompanied Khatia Buniatschvili’s personal path in life, including pieces from her Georgian homeland. Motherland juxtaposes the happy lightness of a ‘Slavonic Dance’ by Dvorak and the melancholy of Grieg’s lyrical ‘Homesickness’, and contrasts the elegant gaiety of Mendelssohn’s ‘Song without Words’ (op. 67/2) with the graceful introspection of Liszt’s ‘Lullaby’. Classics of the Romantic piano repertoire such as Chopin’s Étude in C-sharp minor (op. 25/7) and Brahms ‘Intermezzo’ (op. 117/2) are embedded between Bach’s cantata ‘Sheep May Safely Graze’ and Arvo Pärt’s musical dedication ‘For Alina’. 

Belcea Quartet JANÁCEK - LIGETI Quartets

Formed in 1994 at the Royal College of Music in London, the Belcea Quartet already has an impressive discography, including the complete Beethoven string quartets (ALPHA262). For this new recording, the ensemble has chosen three quartets by two iconic composers of the 20th century: Leos Janáček and György Ligeti. Fifteen years after their first recording for Zig-Zag, and after some changes in personnel, they have decided to record again the two string quartets by Janáček. The First Quartet was inspired by Leo Tolstoy’s famous novella, The Kreutzer Sonata: the fourmovement work follows the narrative, including its culminating murder. The Second Quartet is subtitled Intimate Letters, in homage to Kamila Stösslova, with whom the composer had an important relationship expressed through letters, one that influenced both his life and his music. Finally, the First Quartet by Ligeti, subtitled Métamorphoses nocturnes because of its particular form. The composer described the work as a sort of theme and variations, but not with a specific theme that is then subsequently varied: rather, it is a single musical thought appearing under constantly new guises – for this reason the word ‘metamophoses’ is more appropriate than ‘variations’.

Augustin Hadelich / Norwegian Radio Orchestra / Miguel Harth-Bedoya BRAHMS - LIGETI Violin Concertos

Winner of the Warner Prize, this is the first recording for violinist Augustin Hadelich as an exclusive Warner Classics artist. On this new recording of the concertos by Brahms and Ligeti, the Ligeti Concerto includes new cadenzas written by Thomas Ades especially for Augustin – never-before recorded. With the Norwegian Radio Orchestra under Miguel Harth-Bedoya.

Ensemble Ouranos QUINTETTES À VENT

From the moment we first created Ensemble Ouranos, we were deeply convinced that we should forge our group's artistic identity through an engaged exploration of repertoire. This remains the predominant goal of our work to this day: that each member's language join in one breath to form the ensemble. The choice to bring these three pieces together in one album stems from two desires on our part. Firstly, our wish was to offer up the many facets of the wind quintet and the diversity of its musical languages. The wealth of possibilities is inherent to this ensemble makeup and the very nature of wind instruments, at once soloistic in their individual voices and deeply orchestral when one melds their particular sounds. Secondly, we also wanted to highlight the idea of folk material as an essential part of musical discourse. Upon inspection, this omnipresent and protean folklore appears clearly as a linking thread between these three works. It is fascinating to discover at which point each of the three composers transcends his national heritage to transmit, in his own way, his inner life.
(Ensemble Ouranos)

Yuja Wang THE BERLIN RECITAL

Her fingers dance over the piano keys with such breathtaking speed that some say “Yuja Wang must have more than two hands” (Die Zeit). After early lessons, the Chinese pianist was accepted at the conservatory in Beijing when she was only nine years old. She went to Canada at the age of 14, and a year later moved to the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia where she studied for five years with piano legend Gray Graffman: “I learned to look closely and to search for the intentions of the composer in the musical text.” First awards at international competitions followed her European debut in 2003, and she made her US debut one year later. The decisive boost to her career came when Yuja Wang took over the solo part in Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto in Boston in 2007, standing in for an indisposed Martha Argerich. Since then, her perfect playing and charismatic stage presence have enthralled audiences all over the world: “The arrival of Chinese-born pianist Yuja Wang on the musical scene is an exhilarating and unnerving development. To listen to her in action is to re-examine whatever assumptions you may have had about how well the piano can actually be played.” (San Francisco Chronicle).

In 2013, she made her Berliner Philharmoniker Foundation debut with a recital and has been a regular guest ever since – including on no less than three occasions this season: as a chamber musician, as a guest of the orchestral concerts and with this piano recital. From her extensive repertoire which ranges from Classical to Contemporary, Yuja Wang has chosen, preludes and études by such diverse composers as Sergei Rachmaninov and György Ligeti for this programme. She also plays Alexander Scriabin’s tenth sonata, the last he wrote and which is characterised by its ecstatic mood, and Sergei Prokofiev’s Sonata No. 8, composed during the Second World War, which Sviatoslav Richter described as “the richest of all of Prokofiev’s sonatas. It contains a whole human life with all its contradictions”.

Ditta Rohmann SOLO CELLO PORTRAIT

For the performing artist, a concert offers the possibility of freedom and spontaneity, the transient moment; while a sound recording, by capturing a crystallized production, makes it possible to record for posterity the current idea of the artist about the given piece of music. Ditta Rohmann chose the order of the works deliberately, fitting in a Kurtág piece as a bridge and also as an essential reflection between compositions by other composers. 

Her program gives a selection from about a hundred years of Hungarian cello literature.

I first met Ditta in the student orchestra of the Basel Music Academy. I have been following her career since, as her sound and technique were getting ever richer, and as her unwavering interest in everything important, valuable and special has grown. When I came across musical or technical difficulties that other musicians were unable to solve, I invited Ditta for concerts and first performances. Now, listening to this recording, I realized that when composing I always hear Ditta’s especially richly textured cello sound in my ears. (Péter Eötvös)

Orchestre De La Suisse Romande / Jonathan Nott STRAUSS Schlagobers DEBUSSY Jeux LIGETI Melodien

This album presents extraordinary works of three twentieth-century composers with diverse cultural backgrounds, underlining the versatility and legacy of the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande in its centenary year. Richard Strauss’ Schlagobers (Whipped Cream, 1924) is a playful ballet set in a Viennese Konditorei, of which the orchestral suite is featured on this album. With its lively mix of Viennese waltzes and modern harmonies, light-versed tunes interspersed by sudden outbreaks of ravishing beauty, all brilliantly orchestrated, it can be considered a further exploration of the composer’s “Rosenkavalier style”. Claude Debussy is featured with Jeux, Poème dansé (1912), another piece created for a ballet performance, built around an erotic nocturnal search for a lost tennis ball that Pierre Boulez characterized as a “Prélude à-l’Après-midi d’une Faune in sports clothes”. Debussy’s Jeux has been a major source of inspiration for post-war avantgarde composers such as Boulez and Stockhausen, and, therefore, the transition from Jeux to Györgi Ligeti’s Melodien, für Orchester (1971) is not jarring. Melodien has the unmistakable mix of sensuous yet eerie soundscapes that makes most of Ligeti’s works so filmic and appealing.

This album adds a significant chapter to the PENTATONE discography of the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, which already contains the complete Bruckner Symphonies with Marek Janowski, three dance-oriented albums with Kazuki Yamada, and concerto recordings with renowned soloists such as Arabella Steinbacher, Johannes Moser and Denis Kozhukhin. On this album, the OSR’s new chief conductor Jonathan Nott makes his PENTATONE debut.

Jesus Rodolfo TRANSFIXING METAMORPHOSIS

“Once upon a time, in a hidden part of France, a handsome young prince lived in a beautiful castle. Although he had everything his heart desired, the prince was selfish and unkind. He demanded that the village fill his castle with the most beautiful objects, and his parties with the most beautiful people...”

The magical music that accompanied the story of Beauty and the Beast was what aroused in me, aged 4, the love of music. From that moment, my life events had a soundtrack that would shift like a kaleidoscope. Nearly 30 years later, it feels like looking through the glass of that kaleidoscope again, and a new soundtrack plays in my head describing each of the three decades of my life. 

Just as it is when we go for a walk, Bach’s Adagio from his Solo Violin Sonata No. 3 builds, step by step, towards noble and divine harmonies. Like any prince, my childhood was spent chasing my dreams; in my case, learning the works of Bach, as well as conveying the beautiful message of faith through music. At this time of life, creativity is limitless, bold and innocent, and this sonata not only communicates that spirit but also delivers a message of hope for the future. 

Paul Hindemith was Germany’s “enfant fatale”, and although very conservatively rooted in Baroque techniques of composition, he strove for the more modern and avant-garde. When this Sonata for Solo Viola, Op. 11, No. 5 was written, Hindemith was undergoing his final and definite transition to becoming a fully- edged viola player, establishing himself as the most famous violist and composer for viola in music history. In a similar way, my teens were a period of blossoming creatively, musically and personally. I felt like a warrior defending my identity and developing who I envisioned I wanted to be. 

My 20s were a time of extremes at every level: the biggest challenges and most fulfilling accomplishments. Ligeti’s Viola Sonata is also a work of extremes, renowned as the hardest solo sonata ever written for the instrument, encapsulating his compositional techniques in just one piece. And so, when I least expected it, the transformation happened. These experiences coalesced and, all of a sudden, I realised I was an adult. I am nothing but the result of what has been learned during those different phases of my life, paired with the beautiful dreams, experiences and wishes that brought about the metamorphosis of these reminiscences, producing who I am today, as an individual and as a musician.  (Jesus Rodolfo)

Silvia Márquez CHACONNERIE

Chaconnerie is a recording that deals with repetition. Chaconnerie illustrates that particular principle of Art that seeks to combine elements over and over again to achieve balance and unity. Chaconnerie encourages us to undertake a voyage in which sounds –through the centuries– build upon an insistently repeated, or imaginatively varied, scheme. Repetition has been a major element of humankind’s artistic manifestations and expressions ever since the time of the moais on Easter Island up to the drawings of Max C. Escher. Repetition is rhythm, pulse, and life, and life overflows in the chaconne, a dance whose origin Lope de Vega attributed to the American Indian (“from the Indies to Seville / it has come by post”) and whose character Miguel de Cervantes describes as lascivious and immoral. With its accent on the second beat and its variations on a harmonic scheme, this dancing base – together with sarabandes, folias, and passacaglias – was conducive to improvisation on chordal progressions, a novelty that had a crucial impact on Baroque music in Europe.

Iveta Apkalna LIGHT & DARK

For Iveta Apkalna, the organ is the queen of instruments. The now released recording "Light and Dark" from the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg brings the wide sound spectrum of this queen to you!

The wide-ranging programme offers contemporary organ music by Thierry Escaich as well as works by Leoš Janáček. This first recording on the organ of the Elbphilharmonie not only shines with a program rich in contrasts. Titular organist Iveta Apkalna also gives the album a personal touch with "Hell und Dunkel" by Sofia Asgatowna Gubaidulina.

"It's true that our whole life consists of contrasts, but often we don't even notice it. Of course life is colourful, but the basic colours are black and white, and these are my favourite colours too," told Iveta Apkalna at NDR Kultur.

Iveta Apklana is no stranger in her native Latvia. From there she conquered the world with her talent for the great instrument. On 27 January 2017 she was honoured to inaugurate the organ of the Elbphilharmonie with a Mozart recital. With the new organ album "Light And Dark", the charming instrumentalist will be able to inspire even more people with her "Queen".

This gem of classical music is an enrichment for any collection. Whether physical or digital, the album is a listening experience for conscious connoisseurs.

Justin Taylor CONTINUUM

Following his First Prize at the Bruges Competition and his first album, devoted to the Forqueray family (Choc of the Year in Classica, Editor’s Choice in Gramophone, Grand Prix de l’Académie Charles Cros), the Franco American harpsichordist Justin Taylor has recently been awarded the Révélation Musicale Prize of the French Critics’ Circle. His career has developed rapidly, both as soloist (harpsichordist and also fortepianist) and as director of his ensemble, the Taylor Consort, with which Alpha will soon be recording... For his second recital, Justin Taylor juxtaposes Scarlatti and Ligeti, two composers whose periods and universes seem so remote from each other, yet who show numerous affinities: in their inventiveness, the virtuosity of their respective languages and their common urge to push the keyboard to its very limits.

Continuum builds a bridgehead between these two hypersensitive composers by intertwining Ligeti’s three emblematic (and spectacular!) pieces for solo harpsichord with sonatas by Scarlatti.

Duo Gazzana RAVEL - FRANCK - LIGETI - MESSIAEN

The third ECM New Series recording by Italian sisters Natascia and Raffaella Gazzana focuses primarily on French music, by César Franck, Maurice Ravel and Olivier Messiaen, and also pays tribute to Hungary’s György Ligeti, with a premiere recording of his Duo for violin and piano.

Where 20th and 21st century music was explored on their two previous discs – the first with music of Takemitsu, Hindemith, Janáček and Silvestrov and the second with Poulenc, Walton, Dallapiccola, Schnittke and, again, Silvestrov – this time Duo Gazzana also reaches back a little further in music history. The album begins with two pieces composed at the end of the 19th century, Ravel’s Sonate posthume, written in 1897, and César Franck’s monumental A-major Sonata for piano and violin of 1886.

“If you speak of French music, the first association is probably with music where atmosphere and mood are emphasized,” the Gazzana sisters note. “But the Franck sonata is something really solid as well as beautiful, and it has influenced so many other composers.” As Wolfgang Sandner remarks in the CD booklet essay, “The sonata is a test of interpretation. In particular, it requires a command of its architecture, built through successive cycles, of its expressive intensity, product of a formal clarity maintained through harmonic boldness, enharmonic ambiguities and modulations to distant keys, and not least the dialogue that develops between the two instruments.”

Studying and playing the Franck sonata was Duo Gazzana’s starting point for the repertoire of the present disc. “And then we tried, as we always do in our programmes, to find links and interconnections, musically and historically.”

Three of the featured pieces are early works. Maurice Ravel was just 22 when he wrote the Sonata posthume (which remained unpublished until 1975), Olivier Messiaen composed his Thème et variations at 24, and György Ligeti wrote his Duo (dedicated to his good friend György Kurtág) aged 23. The Gazzana sisters, who gave eloquent voice to early William Walton on their last ECM album, are fascinated by the transitional character and the promise of such pieces: “In them, you can already hear and sense the next steps that these composers will make in their musical language.” Early potential is also embodied in the Franck A major sonata: completed when its author was in his mid-60s, it was built upon a work he had sketched some three decades earlier.

The Franck, Ravel and Messiaen pieces reflect upon their authors’ close relationships with great violinists. Franck dedicated his sonata to a fellow composer, the virtuoso violinist Eugène Ysaӱe. Ravel’s 1897 sonata is said to have been inspired by the playing of his friend George Enescu, when both musicians were members of Fauré’s composition class in Paris. And Messiaen’s Thème et variations is dedicated to his first wife Claire Delbos, who gave the premiere performance. The profound keyboard skills of César Franck and Olivier Messiaen are however not to be gainsaid, and both had reputations as outstanding organists and improvisers. Raffaella Gazzana: “In some of the demanding counterpoint of the 4th movement of his sonata, especially, one can imagine Franck thinking also of the foot pedals of the organ.”

Messiaen and Ligeti were universes unto themselves: “Neither of them can really be classified in terms of any school.” Regarding the inclusion of the György Ligeti piece here, the duo says, “we like Ligeti’s music very much, but he didn’t publish music for our instrumentation. After doing some research we found a mention of the early Duo, and went in search of the piece.” In contradistinction to the Franck piece, where any new interpretation must take into account many distinguished recorded performances, “it was interesting and challenging to play the Ligeti with no other reference than the notes on the newly-printed Schott score.”

Paul Griffiths’s commentary on Duo Gazzana’s 2011 debut can serve equally as a summary here: “The programme as a whole is typical of the duo’s inquiring and sensitive approach to repertory. What we hear here is a vital freshness.”

Like its predecessors, the album was recorded at Lugano’s Auditorio Stelio Molo RSI, and produced by Manfred Eicher. (ECM Records)