Julian Prégardien / Martin Helmchen / Christian Tetzlaff / Florian Donderer / Rachel Roberts / Tanja Tetzlaff / Marie-Elisabeth Hecker SCHUBERT Schwanengesang - String Quintet

 

SCHWANENGESANG - STRING QUINTET

Signum Quartett SCHUBERT Ins stille Land

 

INS STILLE LAND

Signum Quartet ERKKI-SVEN TÜÜR Lost Prayers

 

LOST PRAYERS

 

Viktoria Mullova / Paavo Järvi ARVO PÄRT

Immutable, austere, impassable – the strength of Arvo Pärt’s music lies in its ability to project an image as powerful and complete as the religious iconography it often seeks to replicate.

This is not music that hinges on sudden shifts and sharp contrasts. However, at its core lies the age-old dichotomy between freedom and control, head and heart – or ‘mathematics … and love’, as Pärt himself put it in last month’s Gramophone feature on this recording. Keeping both elements in check – and in balance with one another – remains key.

The Russian violinist Viktoria Mullova brilliantly manages to tease out these dichotomies on this new recording of Pärt’s works for violin and orchestra. In Fratres, she approaches each variation from a different angle. Sap and rosin fly off the bow in the coruscating arpeggio figurations of the opening chord sequence. Mullova’s skill here is to ratchet up the intensity by gradually imparting weight and purpose to the lowest note in each pattern. Lighter feather-bedding is applied in the fourth variation’s rapid triadic ostinatos, creating an almost symphonic effect. Intensity is maintained throughout the double-stopped variation but the expression never becomes exaggerated. There is no let up – and very little rubato – until Mullova finally eases off during the final ‘flautando’ variation.

Mullova’s instinct is to know when and where to foreground these shifting dichotomies. They gradually dissipate during the two-movement Tabula rasa and dissolve completely by the time we get to Spiegel im Spiegel. Aided in Tabula rasa by the equally impressive Florian Donderer on second violin, the overall shape of the work hinges on maintaining a more or less exact proportional relationship of 1:2 between both movements. Gidon Kremer’s premiere recording of the work (ECM), still a benchmark in many respects, is close at 9'36" and 16'50" respectively. But, at 10'57" and 20'35", Mullova is pretty much bang-on.

Pärt was said to have been very pleased with the way the recording sessions went with Mullova, Paavo Järvi and the Estonian National Symphony Orchestra, and one can certainly understand why. Get the mathematics right and the love will take care of itself. (Pwyll ap Siôn / Gramophone)

Nils Mönkemeyer / William Youn / Signum Quartett BRAHMS

These CDs feature performances by a Grand Old Man of the viola and one of the instrument’s most celebrated present advocates. Now in his seventies, Rainer Moog can look back on a career that started with a prize at the Munich Competition and included a stint as principal violist of the Berlin Philharmonic, followed by several decades of unassumingly successful work as a teacher in Cologne. Nils Mönkemeyer (b.1978) enjoyed a run of competition successes before inheriting his teacher’s position at the Munich Hochschule in 2011. Both players have made a number of recordings during their respective careers but not many of Moog’s are available on CD, making this, his second recording of the Brahms sonatas, all the more welcome.

Moog’s view of these pieces is the loving result of countless performances and long reflection on the music: his pacing and phrasing feel absolutely natural, and rubato sounds inevitably right. Moog relishes the music’s broad intervals with heartfelt portamentos. Although he keeps mostly to the higher, ‘clarinet’ version of both sonatas, he does make an exception for the beginning of the F minor piece – the warmth of the C and G strings is too good to lose! Moog’s tone may not be as immediately seductive as, say, William Primrose’s

or Yuri Bashmet’s but its sinewy quality fits the music’s autumnal mood like the proverbial glove. Hashiba is a thoughtful partner throughout.

In a booklet interview, Mönkemeyer claims to play the E flat major Sonata ‘from the clarinet part’ but of course he does no such thing: some telltale double-stops and the odd changed pitch point to the usual viola part, albeit restored (mostly) to the original, higher octave. Conversely, Mönkemeyer keeps to the traditional, ‘low’ version of the F minor Sonata, which suits the piece’s tragic hue but results in anticlimactic octave drops. Mönkemeyer’s tempos are consistently on the broad side and, combined with his suavely sweet trademark tone (and a more resonant acoustic than in Moog’s more closely balanced recording), they make for a very different, to my ears more mannered experience. Youn is a stimulatingly proactive collaborator. Mönkemeyer’s coupling of the Hungarian Dances is lightweight in comparison with Moog’s, who includes Fuchs’s very Brahmsian Sonata and Kiel’s rarely recorded Romances, redolent of late Schumann. (Carlos Maráa Solare)

Signum Quartett SCHUBERT Aus Der Ferne

Hailed as one of the most adventurous and outstanding string quartets of today, both in the performance of modern pieces and the iron repertory, Signum Quartett now releases its first PENTATONE recording with an all-Schubert program. 

Aus der Ferne illuminates the Romanticism and lyricism of this great master. By combining string quartets with lieder arranged for string quartet, the members of the Signum Quartett aim to show how Schubert’s instrumental and vocal music cross-pollinate each other. The fact that Schubert quotes openly from his own songs in his chamber music underlines the strong connection between the two, and this album takes this connection a step further. The concept for the album grew out of the Schubertiad, where chamber music and vocal works would be heard side by side in an intimate setting. A further idea was to complement one of the late quartets with an earlier one - perhaps lesser-known but not a lesser piece. The B-flat major quartet and the Rosamunde Quartet, both featured on this album, share a delicacy and fragility of spirit; convey a longing from afar. These instrumental works gain significance by being accompanied by the lieder arrangements, created by quartet member Xandi van Dijk. These arrangements present quintessential Schubert lieder such as Du bist die Ruh, Wandrers Nachtlied and Lachen und Weinen in a new, fascinating light.

Antoine Tamestit / Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks / Daniel Harding WIDMANN Viola Concerto

Antoine Tamestit's recording of Jörg Widmann Viola Concerto is released on Harmonia Mundi on 23 February 2018. Tamestit gave the world premiere of the concerto in 2015 with the Orchestre de Paris and Paavo Järvi. “One of the most gifted French musicians of the era,” wrote Le Figaro, “the work is made to measure for Tamestit, his style of playing, his tone, his personality.” The work was co-commissioned by the Swedish Radio Symphony and Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks with conductor Daniel Harding, who play on the recording. 
As well as Widmann’s Viola Concerto, the disc features chamber works performed by Tamestit and Bruno Philippe, Marc Bouchkov and the Signum Quartet. 
The theatrical concerto sees the soloist exploring a range of positions on the stage. Initially seated behind the harp players the soloist moves towards the centre of the orchestra and eventually ‘front and centre’ assuming the traditional position for the soloist. 
Tamestit has already performed the concerto widely, and it has proved popular with audiences at subsequent performances with the Danish National Symphony Orchestra, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, Stavanger Symphony Orchestra, Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra and Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra.

Hélène Grimaud PERSPECTIVES

She could be called a Renaissance woman for our times. Hélène Grimaud is not just a deeply passionate and committed musical artist whose pianistic accomplishments play a central role in her life. She is a woman with multiple talents that extend far beyond the instrument she plays with such poetic expression and peerless technical control. The French artist has established herself as a committed wildlife conservationist, a compassionate human rights activist and as a writer.

The word ‘perspective’ has a Latin root that means ‘to look through’. It is a word that readily applies to Hélène Grimaud’s way of making music and conceiving programs. She never plays a piece simply for the sake of playing it. She ‘looks through’ a composition, scrutinizing its components, its implications, its ambiguities, its position within that particular composer’s output, its commonalities with other like-minded works, and its tactile, spiritual and emotional resonances. For Grimaud, this collection is a retrospective offering new perspectives through a very personal choice of repertoire which creates enlightening new echoes between works. From Bach to Rachmaninov, Mozart to Chopin, Grimaud’s own selection of highlights from her albums reflects her artistic journey through the piano’s most famous solo and concerto repertoire in a series of interpretations that never fail to offer new perspectives on even the most familiar music – to be released in April!