Francesca Dego / Francesca Leonardi IL CANNONE

 

IL CANNONE

 

Amanda Favier / Orchestre Philharmonique Royal de Liège / Adrien Perruchon IGOR STRAVINSKY Concerto in D Major JOHN CORIGLIANO The Red Violin Concerto

                                         IGOR STRAVINSKY - JOHN CORIGLIANO

Tesla Quartet / Alexander Fiterstein JOY & DESOLATION

Following its hugely acclaimed debut on Orchid Classics, the Tesla Quartet returns alongside clarinettist Alexander Fiterstein in works by Mozart, Finzi, John Corigliano and Carolina Heredia.

In its latest Orchid release, the Tesla Quartet offers fresh and vibrant interpretations of repertoire ranging from the Classical epoch to the present day. Mozart’s exquisite Clarinet Quintet finds an outstanding advocate in this performance by Alexander Fiterstein, and Finzi’s autumnal Bagatelles, originally composed for clarinet and piano, are heard here in a delightful arrangement by Christian Alexander. Contemporary American composer John Corigliano wrote his deeply-moving Soliloquy in memory of his late father, and Argentinian composer Carolina Heredia wrote Ius in Bello in 2014 as a fascinating exploration of social justice, using Latin-American popular styles to add colour and depth to the work’s tensions, its dream-like quality evoking the desire for peace.

Anne Akiko Meyers MIRROR IN MIRROR

Superstar violinist Anne Akiko Meyers is one of today’s most in-demand classical performers. A Billboard Top Selling Classical Instrumentalist of the Year, she is beloved by audiences around the world, with a reputation for groundbreaking recital programmes and ground-breaking commissions. Mirror in Mirror marks her 37th studio album and is one of her most personal projects to date.

With the exception of Ravel, Anne collaborated with all of the composers and arrangers on this album. Several of the works were written for her. The music is reflective and spiritual, and weaves a beautiful story. Philip Glass’ Metamorphosis II is heard in an arrangement commissioned by Anne. The original work inspired Fratres by Arvo Pärt, whose Spiegel im Speigel (Mirror in Mirror) provides the album’s title. John Corigliano’s Lullaby for Natalie was written to commemorate the birth of Anne’s first daughter. Anne has commissioned numerous works by Jakob Ciupinski who combines acoustic instruments with electronics in Edo Lullaby – a modern setting of a traditional Japanese melody that Anne recalls from her childhood – and Wreck of the Umbria which conjures the composer’s dive and discovery of the ship off the coast of Sudan. Ciupinski contributes electronics to Ravel’s Tzigane, re-creating the sound of the original version’s lutheal. The album is capped by another Anne commission – the premiere recording of Morten Lauridsen’s own arrangement for violin and orchestra of his most famous choral composition, O Magnum Mysterium.

Sung-Soo Cho MAXIMUM | MINIMUM | MODERN

Korean pianist Sung-Soo Cho performs an intriguing recital of compositions by American composers that range from works with very progressive musical language to ones that integrate influences of folk and honky-tonk -- in other words, the full spectrum of modern American classical music. The oldest work on the program was written in 1967 and the most recent in 2015. John Corigliano, Michael Ippolito, John Adams, Lowell Liebermann, Steve Reich, Elliott Carter, and David Rakowski are all represented on this recording. These composers have a strong advocate in Sung-Soo Cho, who was awarded "Best American Contemporary Performance: at the Cincinnati World Piano Competition and "Best Performance of the Commissioned Work: at the Texas State International Piano Competition. An award winner of numerous international competitions, Cho has appeared as a soloist in Asia, the U.S., and Europe. A graduate of Seoul National University and Manhattan School of Music, he is currently pursuing his D.M.A. degree at the Cleveland Institute of Music. He is on the faculty at Notre Dame College.

Lara Downes & Friends FOR LENNY

Could there be a more perfect pairing than Leonard Bernstein and Lara Downes? Each incarnates the American spirit in resplendent manner, the former in his magnificent writing and the latter in her captivating piano playing. True to her generous nature, Downes has shared the credit for her tribute to Bernstein on the occasion of his hundredth birthday with “friends,” four of who accompany her on four of the twenty-eight tracks. But said credit could be extended beyond those participants to the many composers, among them Stephen Sondheim, Marc Blitzstein, and Ned Rorem, whose own Bernstein tributes appear. One of the more surprising things about the release is that while a generous amount of his own material is included, world premieres written by others appear too. Selection details aside, two things in particular distinguish For Lenny, Downes's always exquisite playing, of course, but also the audacity of Bernstein's lyrical writing and his bountiful melodic sensibility. In her hands, his songs sing.

A mere scan of the set-list reveals one of the project's greatest strengths: rather than exclusively feature well-known Bernstein material, Downes instead chose less familiar pieces, seven of them “Anniversaries” he wrote for family and friends on their birthdays, Aaron Copland, Lukas Foss, and Sondheim among the latter. In an imaginative move, that gesture's returned in kind by figures such as John Corigliano, Daron Hagen, Shulamit Ran, Theo Bleckmann, and Eleonor Sandresky, whose personal Bernstein tributes were written in some cases during his lifetime and in others were newly composed for this project. Such an inspired programme is the kind of thing we've come to expect from Downes, a justly admired artist whose discography includes homages to another great American artist, Billie Holiday, as well as America itself.

As mentioned, four pieces feature guests: Kevin “K.O.” Olusola (a member of the a cappella group Pentatonix) beatboxing on “Something's Coming”; clarinet prodigy Javier Morales-Martinez (whom Downes discovered through the national Young Artists program she founded at the Mondavi Center, UC Davis) on “Cool”; and roots singer Rhiannon Giddens and baritone Thomas Hampson on “So Pretty” and “A Simple Song,” respectively. Each collaboration is memorable in its own way, Olusola's for the fresh spin his treatments bring to one of Bernstein's better-known songs and the vocalists' for the contrast their radiant presence adds to an otherwise instrumental collection. While all four pieces would no doubt have impressed had they been performed by Downes alone, the inclusion of the extra colours the guests provide is hardly objectionable.

Most of the twenty-eight pieces are miniatures (only three edge past the four-minute mark), but they never feel slight; Downes's urbane execution and bright articulation make even the most fleeting piece seem substantial. Bernstein's own material ranges from saloon-styled blues (“Big Stuff”) and playful reveries (“Anniversary for Craig Urquhart”) to chromatically adventurous explorations (“Anniversary for Nina”); the tributes likewise differ in tone, many of them, including those by Corigliano, Urquhart, Sandresky, and Sondheim heartfelt, tender, and wistful; the ones by Stephen Schwartz and Michael Abels, on the other hand, are declamatory, emblematic of Bernstein's high-spirited side (Abels's is even titled “Iconoclasm/for Lenny”).

Among the standouts are poignant renderings of justly beloved Bernstein settings such as “The Story of My Life” and “Some Other Time” and Ricky Ian Gordon's “What Shall We Remember?”; never is Downes's artistry more evident than during her debonair treatments of such elegiac fare. One would have to be hard-hearted indeed not to be inspired and galvanized by her example. At a historical moment when an abundance of ills makes despair a not unreasonable choice, her music-making symbolizes an unwavering belief that the world and its people have the capacity to make things better. Such an infectious and life-affirming stance makes resignation seem like a cowardly choice.(Textura / March 2018)

Elina Vähälä / Lahti Symphony Orchestra / Jaakko Kuusisto THE RED VIOLIN

Jaakko Kuusisto may be one of his generation’s leading violin virtuosos but he features here as composer and conductor, leaving the pyrotechnics to the phenomenally talented Elina Vähälä (aka Mrs Ralf Gothóni). And what a show she puts on here, in two full-blooded 21st-century concertos of Romantic, or at least conventional, idiom, rich in melody, orchestral texture and expressive purpose.

Corigliano’s Concerto will be familiar to many, having been both assembled from the music to Girard’s film The Red Violin in 1997 and in part the progenitor to it. Corigliano pre-composed the opening Chaconne as an independent work so that the actors had a piece they could mime to in the film, but in 2003 added three further movements, including a magical Pianissimo Scherzo, to make a full-size concerto that his namesake father – former concertmaster of the New York Philharmonic – would have liked to play. Vähälä’s vibrant account is a match for Bell’s – and three minutes faster in the Chaconne – and fleeter and more exciting throughout, with superior sound, than Ludwig on Naxos. (In the Chaconne, Vähälä outpaces Chloë Hanslip, too, but expressively matters are more even here.) Kuusisto’s own Concerto (2011) is a colourful and dramatic score, although he has confessed to no extramusical inspiration. The original idea was for a concertante work using unusual and electronic instruments but over time it transformed into the present vivacious half-hour-long concerto of relatively conventional stamp. The finale’s rhythmic drive and alternating lyricism are immensely appealing. The disc opens with the playful overture Leika (‘Child’s Play’, 2010 – not the similarly-named Soviet space dog). Excellent performances and sound. (Guy Rickards / Gramophone)

Anee Akiko Meyers THE AMERICAN MASTERS Barber - Corigliano - Bates

While I have written many program notes for my own CDs, this is the first time that I have done so for other composers.
There is a reason I agreed so readily to do it this time: Both composers have shared the intimate quality of mentorship with me – Samuel Barber was my mentor, and I was Mason Bates’s mentor. That sense of connection extends to the artists heard here: Anne commissioned both the concerto and lullaby from Mason and me, and Leonard Slatkin, a close friend of mine, has championed all three composers on this disc. Three generations of friendship and shared ideas are captured in this recording.
I met Samuel Barber in the 1960s after sending him my setting for chorus and orchestra of Dylan Thomas’s Fern Hill. He sent it on to his publisher, G. Schirmer, with a recommendation to publish it, and they agreed. I asked Hans W. Heinsheimer, at the time the famous head of publications at Schirmer, if I could meet Barber, and he arranged for me to see him. At the meeting, Barber gave me some important criticisms of my work, in addition to a lot of encouragement, and this occasion began a mentorship that lasted through the rest of his lifetime. I would show him my work, and he always had something important to say about it. As I developed and grew older, our relationship also grew into a deep friendship that lasted until his death in 1981.
I met Mason Bates, then a Juilliard student, when he brashly interrupted a dinner party I was giving. While my guests stayed in the dining room, he explained that although he knew my studio was full, he had to study with me. I made an exception and took him on as an extra student, both because I had heard his music and felt he had enormous potential, and because of his conviction that working with me would help him. We worked together for several years, and after graduating, he went off into the world and has established a considerable reputation. Mason and I have become colleagues and friends, and even now, he often speaks to me about works he is immersed in. So the mentorship (and friendship) continues… (John Corigliano)

Hélène Grimaud / Esa-Pekka Salonen CREDO

Beethoven: Choral Fantasy op. 80
The piano's crashing opening chords herald what seems for the first three minutes like a solo work. Then comes a tentative dialogue with the lower strings, after which - equally tentatively - the woodwind enter. Human voices arrive almost as an afterthought. This was a fantasy indeed, written at such speed that the musicians got their parts with the ink wet. As the piano reworks the simple musical ideas on which the whole edifice is based, we get a strong whiff of what Beethoven's celebrated improvisations must have been like. In 1808 he'd earned little, and his friends encouraged him to put on a four-hour concert of his own works in order to refill his coffers. But this late addition was no mere space-filler: bringing order out of chaos, moving from darkness to light, and prefiguring the final theme of his Ninth Symphony, it reflects Beethoven's genius at full tilt. 

Beethoven: Sonata in D minor, op. 31 no. 2 "The Tempest"
Beethoven himself didn't give this work its name - according to his early biographer Schindler, the composer declared that the work could be understood by reading Shakespeare's play - but from the moment the first theme breaks free from the cavernous opening chord, it certainly is tempestuous. That chord seems to pose a question, to which - after a long journey through darkly dramatic landscapes - the last notes come like an answer. This sonata was one of three composed in the village of Heiligenstadt in 1802, at a time when Beethoven was growing deaf, and in near-suicidal despair. Here he was at his most heroic: on the one hand, his "Heiligenstadt Testament" confided his woes to posterity (while concealing them from his contemporaries); on the other, he was creating masterpieces of coiled energy like this. 

John Corigliano: Fantasia on an Ostinato
As one of the American composers finding a way forward without abjuring tonality, Corigliano is blazing a fascinating trail. In this work from 1985 his aim has been "to combine the attractive aspects of minimalism with a convincing structure and emotional expression". The foundation is the famous theme of the second movement of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony, with Corigliano exploiting the repeated rhythmic motive as well as the harmonic pattern. (Michael Church)

Music is about emotional communication. Give it a try, and don't think you have taken the wrong road when perhaps you just have not gone far enough. After all, what is to come does not need to be discovered so much as invented. (Hélène Grimaud)