Andrew Wan / Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal / Kent Nagano GINASTERA - BERNSTEIN - MOUSSA Works for Violin and Orchestra

WORKS FOR VIOLIN AND ORCHESTRA

 

Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal / Kent Nagano PENDERECKI St. Luke Passion

ST. LUKE PASSION

Mari Kodama / Kent Nagano / Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin BEETHOVEN Piano Concertos 0 - 5

                                                         PIANO CONCERTOS 0 - 5

Till Fellner / Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal / Kent Nagano LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN Piano Concertos Nos. 4 and 5

Austrian pianist Till Fellner whose two Bach albums on ECM have won him unanimous international acclaim teams up with conductor Kent Nagano and his Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal for a sensitive and meticulous interpretation of Beethoven’s much-loved piano concertos Nos. 4 and 5. In a review to be published in the March issue of ‘Fanfare’ Jerry Dubins speaks of a “stunning achievement” and points out that “the recording has a fullness, depth, and solidity to it that are equal to the very best modern technology has to offer.” Fellner and Nagano, musical collaborators for more than a decade, share a delicate and sensitive approach to Beethoven’s middle period that, by eschewing all demonstrativeness, focusses on natural tempi, transparent sound and maximum clarity of articulation. While Fellner continues his much-lauded cycle of Beethoven’s 32 piano sonatas on major concert platforms in the US, Europe and Japan, Nagano and his Montreal orchestra have received much attention with their Beethoven project “Ideals of the French Revolution”. Fellner can also be heard in Thomas Larcher’s “Böse Zellen”, to be released in late March.

Kent Nagano / Philharmonisches Staatsorchester Hamburg JÖRG WIDMANN Arche

Commissioned to write new music to inaugurate the Elbphilharmonie concert hall in Hamburg, composer Jörg Widmann drew inspiration from the shape of the building itself: “From the outside it resembles a ship. To me, the interior looked like the hold of a ship, an ark…Re-emerging into the daylight, the ark idea would not leave me alone. The inflection of the music I had to compose was clear….”  Arche, an Oratorio for soloists, choirs, organ and orchestra is a compendious work embracing the course of history in the west with a collaged libretto drawing upon a range of writers: from the unknown authors of the Old Testament to Nietzsche and Sloterdijk via Francis of Assisi, Michelangelo and Schiller. Arche looks at the tradition of the oratorio and transforms it. Dieter Rexroth in the liner notes: “What immediately stands out is above all the impression of paradox and the vast diversity of forms and musical resources. Everything happens at once, everything interlocks. Every moment transports us into another world.” Kent Nagano directs the massed musical forces with aplomb in this concert recording from the premiere performance in January 2017. (ECM Records)

VERBIER FESTIVAL 25 Years of Excellence

This limited 4-CD edition of previously unreleased live recordings from the Verbier Festival celebrates the festival’s 25th anniversary.
Featuring admired DG artists as Martha Argerich, Yevgeny Kissin, Mikhail Pletnev, Bryn Terfel, Daniil Trifonov, Yuja Wang and conductors Valery Gergiev, Gustavo Dudamel, Kent Nagano and Kurt Masur in performances of both core classics and lesser-known works from the orchestral, concert, chamber and operatic repertoires.
Since 1994 the Verbier Festival has transformed a small Swiss Alpine resort into a unique hothouse for musicians to explore new repertoire and new partnerships, always with revelatory results. Founder Martin T:son Engström’s ambitious idea to create a summer festival in the Swiss Alps with a resident youth orchestra and an academy has for 25 years encouraged musical excellence and created a platform for young musicians to learn from the world’s finest artists, as well as offering audiences a dynamic, music-centered experience. A quarter century after the first festival, Verbier’s magic continues unabated and surely will do for years to come.

“I’ve been coming to Verbier since I was 21 and it was there that all these fantastic musicians who lived in my head became real. Verbier is so magical for me – it always feels like coming home, or a fun vacation with my closest friends.” Yuja Wang

Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal / Kent Nagano LEONARD BERNSTEIN A Quiet Place

Decca Classics and the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal are proud to present the world premiere recording of the chamber version of Leonard Bernstein’s ‘A Quiet Place’, adapted by Garth Edwin Sunderland. It is conducted by Kent Nagano and will be released on 22^nd June, ahead of the Bernstein centenary on 25^th August 2018.
Premiered in 1983, Bernstein’s opera ‘A Quiet Place’ was the composer’s last work written for the stage and remains one of his lesser known large-scale compositions. The concert-version presented on the new album features a chamber orchestra and was recorded live at the Maison symphonique de Montréal in May 2017. Garth Edwin Sunderland’s adaptation offers a compact presentation of the three-act opera which places equal focus on librettist Stephen Wadsworth’s dramatic narrative and Bernstein’s complex and highly developed late musical style.
Kent Nagano was introduced to Bernstein by Seiji Ozawa in 1984 and studied with him until his death in 1990. Nagano says, “For Bernstein music was life – the two were synonymous, inseparable. He never stopped exploring and pushing his own compositional language. The goal in this particular adaptation is to allow the spirited brilliance and poetic depth of the work to shine through – including dance rhythms and elements of American folklore. Our hope is that the timeless and universal quality of the piece and the genius of the composition are laid bare in this new recording.”
Joining Kent Nagano and the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal on this new album is an outstanding group of young singers featuring soprano Claudia Boyle as Dede and tenor Joseph Kaiser as François. The cast also includes: baritones Gordon Bintner, Lucas Meachem and Daniel Belcher; tenors Rupert Charlesworth and John Tessier; mezzo-sopranos Annie Rosen and Maija Skille; and bass Steven Humes; as well as the OSM Chorus led by chorus master Andrew Megill.
‘A Quiet Place’ is an audacious musical-dramatic exploration of the changing face of American society. As Garth Edwin Sunderland, Senior Music Editor at the Leonard Bernstein Office, said of the composer’s late opera, “It’s such a brilliant work, the culmination of what he accomplished and the culmination of his gifts as a composer. Creating this adaptation was a deeply powerful experience for me, and it is my hope that it will provide audiences with a similar experience of this great American opera.”

Mari Kodama / Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin / Kent Nagano BEETHOVEN The Piano Concertos - Triple Concerto

On the evidence of this set, the husband-and-wife team of Mari Kodama and Kent Nagano enjoy a keen musical rapport. This may not be the greatest or most pristine Beethoven piano concerto cycle on the CD market but it’s pretty good. Try the bold way Kodama tackles her initial entry on the first movement of the First Concerto, while the cadenza is strongly projected (I love the cheeky little arpeggio just before the close), even if some minor detail is lost in the fray, ie in the down figurations at around 12’55”. The Largo is feelingly played and the closing Rondo whizzes along nicely, the odd hurried turn notwithstanding.

The first-movement cadenza of the Second Concerto is perhaps rather earthbound and I wasn’t too sure about the way Kodama gate-crashes the close of the Third Concerto’s initial tutti with her first entry. Then again, at 2’23” into the Largo, her handling of the second set delivers poetry to spare, while her almost imperceptible easing into the closing rondo marks a definite climate change without breaking the spell. The same CD features an affable reading of the Triple Concerto, Nagano proving himself the ideal master of ceremonies, his tempos lively but never overstretched, his manner warmly accommodating without abandoning the limelight. The opening tutti is a fair case in point, Johannes Moser’s first entry quietly mellifluous, Kolja Blacher bowing a bright, silvery line. Thereafter we’re talking chamber music writ large, both soloists sounding in happy accord, Nagano an obvious soulmate. The central ‘song without words’ (which is how the Largo has always struck me) holds fast to a sense of intimacy, the closing Rondo alla polacca a perfectly happy summation, if without the smiling demeanour of, say, the Argerich, Capuçon, Maisky recording.

The Fourth Concerto is nicely done though the Andante con moto’s imploring central cadenza sounds a little prosaic. Best of all is the Emperor’s finale, which lilts along seemingly without a care in the world. Here Kodama is at her best. As to where this set stands in the firmament of great Beethoven concerto recordings, I’d say not terribly high. Pollini with Abbado, Fleisher with Szell, Aimard with Harnoncourt – to name just three obvious rival contenders – all have more to tell us about the music. (Rob Cowan / Gramophone)

Orchestre de l'Opéra de Lyon / Kent Nagano / Peter Eötvös EÖTVÖS Drei Schwestern

Since its world premiere at the Opéra de Lyon, France, in March 1998, Peter Eötvös' Three Sisters has received instant recognition, with several new productions scheduled in Germany, Holland and Hungary for the season 1999/2000, and more to come later. No wonder Deutsche Grammophon decided to publish this astonishing lyrical masterpiece in its "20/21" collection. Former co-conductor, along with Pierre Boulez, of the Ensemble Intercontemporain in Paris, the Hungarian Peter Eötvös is hardly a newcomer on the contemporary scene; but the tremendous dramatic and musical impact of Three Sisters has taken everyone by surprise. Part of the success may be explained by the story, based on Anton Chekov's eponymous play. Peter Eötvös and his librettist Claus H. Henneberg have considerably changed the original: the action is concentrated in a single section instead of four acts. But the true originality of the libretto (sung in Russian) is that the story is presented three times in as many sections, adopting each time the point of view of a different character: first Irina, then Andrei, and finally Macha. This re-composition, or de-construction, of the original plot allows Eötvös to dig deeper into the characters' souls, expectations and inner life, while the return of the same scenes, shown slightly differently each time, translates with amazing force the painful passing by of time in a world of deceived ambitions, where life flees and nothing ever really changes.

To match musically this universe of solitary souls, the Hungarian composer displays a stunning array of sonorities, from the lonely opening accordion melody, to intensely dramatic, spectacular clusters, through rarefied sound-clouds of the utmost refinement. Two orchestras respond to each other, one made of 16 soloists in the pit, the other, in full formation, set backstage. In this world premiere, all the feminine characters are sung by countertenors! This is by no means a choice imposed by the composer (other productions opt for sopranos instead); but the alchemy between ambiguous vocal timbres and the expressionist use of instruments contributes to create a haunting, hallucinated atmosphere of mystery, and ultimate fascination. The music itself pays tribute to Berg (painful melancholy mixed with "popular" material), Ligeti (ferocious irony surrounding Dr. Chebutykin), perhaps even early Bartók (mysterious suspended harmony), but retains its fundamental originality all along.

Conducted by Kent Nagano (soloists ensemble) and the composer himself (backstage orchestra), the Orchestre de l'Opéra de Lyon plays with superb concentration and exemplary commitment, while the vocal distribution appears absolutely flawless. If Albert Schagidullin (Andrei) and Dietrich Henschel (Baron Turzenbach) are particularly impressive in their characterizations, all of the singers participate equally in the success of the production. Though not exempt from stage noises, the live recording provided by Radio-France's engineers has presence, dynamism and clarity. As a fill-up, Peter Eötvös reads a well-done 8-minute listening guide (with music excerpts) in English, German and French. Who said opera is dead? (Luca Sabbatini)