Jean-Guihen Queyras / Pierre-Laurent Aimard / Isabelle Faust / Jörg Widmann OLIVIER MESSIAEN Quatuor pour la fin du temps (Video)

QUATUOR POUR LA FIN DU TEMPS

Isabelle Faust / Jean-Guihen Queyras / Alexander Melnikov / Freiburger Barockorchester / Pablo Heras-Casado BEETHOVEN Triple Concerto - Piano Trio Op. 36

 

TRIPLE CONCERTO - PIANO TRIO OP. 36

 

Isabelle Faust / Swedish Symphony Orchestra / Daniel Harding ARNOLD SCHOENBERG Violin Concerto - Verklärte Nacht

                                       VIOLIN CONCERTO - VERKLÄRTE NACHT

Jean-Guihen Queyras / Alexandre Tharaud COMPLICES

                                                                       COMPLICES

Jean-Guihen Queyras BACH Cello Suites

The Bach suites for solo cello are among the most frequently recorded -- and debated -- works in the whole of the classical repertoire. This is certainly the case if only considering the cello repertoire, with cellists often making multiple releases of the suites as their relationship with and interpretation of Bach change over their lives. As such, new releases of the suites are often met with skepticism and cautiousness. This set by French cellist Jean-Guihen Queyras proves, however, that there are still new things to be said about Bach, and that there is always room for one more magnificent recording of the cello suites. A student of Baroque cello guru Anner Bylsma, Queyras is heard here playing on a modern instrument. His training with Bylsma is obvious in his approach to the suites, but the modern instrument provides a clarity and resonance of sound that is completely enveloping. Tempos and rhythm throughout the suites is completely organic and fluid; it is far from metronomic playing, but his use of rubato is never overdone and always serves to highlight phrasing and implied harmonies. Queyras uses his own ornamentation -- a common practice in the Baroque -- to great effect. No aspect of his technical brilliance can be faulted; intonation is impeccable, right arm articulation is precise while still maintaining long, spun lines. Queyras' sound is extremely resonant in the lower registers of his instrument while higher notes are delightfully clear. (Mike D. Brownell)

Isabelle Faust ROBERT SCHUMANN

Isabelle Faust, Jean-Guihen Queyras and Alexander Melnikov begin their project to record all of Schumann’s concertos and piano trios using gut strings and a piano of Schumann’s time (a Streicher of 1847) with the most challenging two works of all. The tangled performance history of the Violin Concerto is well enough known by now – written in 1853 for Joseph Joachim to play, it was suppressed after Schumann’s death and not performed in public until the 1930s. Performances have remained sporadic though, and as Faust’s shows, even the finest violinists (and she is one of the very best around today) still struggle to make convincing sense of some passages, especially in the rather stop-start opening movement; there are moments here when the usually nimble Freiburg Baroque Orchestra sounds as if it is having to wade through musical treacle. Composed two years before, the G minor Piano Trio isn’t top-drawer Schumann either, especially when compared with the two earlier trios, but Faust and her colleagues have the knack of teasing out its lyrical beauties and giving all the music real lightness and transparency.

Alexander Melnikov ROBERT SCHUMANN

This is the second in a three-part series exploring Schumann’s concertos and piano trios on gut strings and a period piano, and as the slightly creepy cover photo spells out – shadows of violinist Isabelle Faust and cellist Jean-Guihen Queyras flank Alexander Melnikov like lurking henchmen – it is the pianist’s turn to shine. Melnikov is a steely player with plenty of ideas and charisma, but even in the finessed company of the Freiburg Baroque and conductor Pablo Heras-Casado, his bracing account of the Piano Concerto is hard to love. The first moment opens with a dry punch and hurtles ahead hell-for-leather; the second movement is breezy and borderline trite, and the finale digs in its heels with laboured earthiness and a self-conscious ping at the top of each phrase. All affectations evaporate in the Trio, though, where Faust’s sound is so silvery and expressive, so simultaneously commanding and questioning, that she risks blowing the rest of the disc out of the water. (The Guardian)

Jean-Guihen Queyras ROBERT SCHUMANN

The idea for this CD project arose during a tour on which we performed Robert Schumann’s Trio op.80. As passionate admirers of the composer, we conceived the desire to place his works for piano, violin, and cello in a broader context and to illuminate them mutually in order to allow listeners to gain a deeper understanding of his music. We soon agreed to play the pieces for this recording on a historical piano and stringed instruments with gut strings, using orchestral forces to match. Thanks to this, we expected our playing to be better balanced, better articulated, and more open-minded. 

Pablo Heras-Casado and the Freiburger Barockorchester sprang spontaneously to mind as the ideal partners for a project of this kind. And indeed they took up our idea enthusiastically and were keen and irreplaceable fellow-conspirators in the world of Schumann. 

Our shared journey into the magical world of this incomparable composer will remain with us as an exceptionally intense, happy, and fulfilling experience. (Isabelle Faust / Alexander Melnikov / Jean-Guihen Queyras)

Jean-Guihen Queyras VIVALDI Sonatas for Violoncello & Basso

“I think that in immersing myself in the world of these sonatas, I’ve probably taken a stroll down memory lane. We all carry within ourselves significant events that have structured our childhood, our imagination, sometimes our doubts, and when we decide, as performers, to concentrate our attention on a specific repertory, we’re often setting out in search of a part of ourselves that calls for new light to be shed on it. […] This music enveloped my everyday life, in a totally natural, familiar and almost organic way.” (Jean-Guihen Queyras) 

“These cello pieces, composed in the grip of the greatest inspiration, remind us of the extent to which the extravagant and emotional brilliance of Vivaldian (and Venetian) art reposes above all on a direct sensibility of the elements in their simplest, even crudest form. Pisendel once submitted an attempt at a concerto to his teacher. Vivaldi immediately divested it of half its notes: one must know how to leave enough space for the miracle to filter through.” (Olivier Fourés)

Arcanto Quartett QUATUORS À CORDES

Admirers of the Arcanto Quartet will lap this disc up, and it deserves to be a spur to anybody who has not yet been alerted to this ensemble’s expertise, panache and interpretative perception. Previous discs of Brahms and Bartók have shown how the players, while possessing personalities of their own, coalesce and strike sparks off one another, instinctively sensing opportunities for crisp, collaborative counterpoint, for quick reactions, for rich, lyrical togetherness and for poetic eloquence as well. On this disc the landmark French quartets of Debussy and Ravel are combined with a later-20th-century classic by Henri Dutilleux, his Ainsi la nuit, completed in 1976. The playing throughout is masterly, and also thoroughly involving in terms of both technique and expressiveness.

The interpretation of the Debussy Quartet has sinew and propulsion, with that apt shading of dynamics and subtlety of nuance that have become hallmarks of the Arcanto’s distinctive and distinguished style. Delicacy and fluency are equally embraced in this commanding performance, as they are in the Ravel, where colouristic finesse is allied to clarity of articulation, sharp definition of thematic ideas and a warmth and energy in the overall characterisation of the music. With its broad outlook on the quartet repertoire, the Arcanto bring no less imagination to Dutilleux’s Ainsi la nuit, in which the short, epigrammatic miniatures that go to make up this seven-movement piece are played not only with complete control of the practical aspects but also with a gripping immediacy, personality and kaleidoscope of fascinating detail. (Gramophone)

Arcanto Quartett / Jörg Widmann WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART Clarinet Quintet - String Quartet K.421

If you want a recording of Mozart’s Quintet on a conventional clarinet, Jörg Widmann and the Arcanto Quartet are up there with the best. Using a basset clarinet, with its treacly extra low notes, Romain Guyot or Matthew Hunt (with Ensemble 360) bring more Papageno-ish fun to the finale. But few performances I know rival Widmann and the Arcanto for mingled refinement, imagination and sensitive give and take.

In the first two movements the players balance autumnal lyricism with more than a hint of period-style astringency. Tempi – not least in the flowing Larghetto – are on the brisk side, textures crisp and lucid, with sparing string vibrato, dynamic contrasts unusually wide. In the Minuet’s second Trio, Widmann creates two distinct characters, yodelling blithely, then digging with a vengeance into his deep, chalumeau arpeggios. The whole performance combines illuminating detail with an unerring sense of the music’s larger shapes, whether in the mounting harmonic tension of the first movement’s development or the floating serenity of the Larghetto, clarinet and first violin locked in tender colloquy.

On their own, the Arcanto, lean and sinewy of tone, are no less eloquent in the D minor Quartet. In the opening Allegro they stress the music’s elegiac fatalism rather than its agitation. Rarely will you hear such intense pianissimo playing in the mysterious – and still shocking – remote modulations at the start of the development. Here and elsewhere their response to mood and colour is matched by their care for balance and contrapuntal clarity. Perhaps the Arcanto’s rubato in the Minuet’s serenading Trio totters on the edge of winsomeness. But their vivid characterisation of the finale’s variations, from the truculent cross-rhythms of No 2 to the chaste tenderness of the D major variation, sets the seal on a desirable Mozart coupling, recorded in an aptly intimate acoustic. (Richard Wigmore / Gramophone)

Jean-Guihen Queyras / Alexandre Tharaud BRAHMS Cello Sonatas - Hungarian Dances

Pianist Alexandre Tharaud and cellist Jean-Guihen Queyras are long-established as a duo team, but this is the first time that Queyras has joined Tharaud for an Erato recording. They have chosen works that lie at the heart of the Romantic repertoire, all by Brahms: his two cello sonatas and the duo’s own transcriptions of six of the Hungarian Dances.

Reinbert de Leeuw / Asko|Schönberg / Netherlands Radio Choir GYÖRGY KURTÁG Complete Works for Ensemble and Choir

Recorded in Amsterdam’s  Musikgebouw and Haarlem’s Philharmonie between March 2013 and July 2016, this 3-CD Set is a milestone in the documentation of Hungarian composer György Kurtág’s s work and also a labour of love.  It brings together all of Kurtàg’s works for ensemble and for ensemble and choir. The insightful and precise performances bear witness to extensive preparation by the dedicated Asko/Schoenberg Ensemble. Conductor Reinbert de Leeuw  speaks of “learning Kurtág’s oeuvre step by step, and performing these pieces repeatedly over a period of twenty years.”  De Leeuw consulted extensively with György and Márta Kurtág before and after each session: “There were moments when I was overwhelmed at first hearing”, says the famously-demanding Kurtág, “and we could embrace the result immediately. But sometimes we were critical. The fact that Reinbert always listened to our remarks and re-recorded fragments or even whole pieces makes this publication authentic.”  Works heard here are presented in chronological order of composition, beginning with the Four Capriccios (1959-1970, rev. 1993) and continuing with Four Songs to Poems by János Pilinszky (1975),  Grabstein für Stephan (1978-79, rev. 1989), Messages of the late Miss R. Troussova (1976-80), …quasi una fantasia… (1987-88), Op. 27 No. 2 Double Concerto (1989-90), Samuel Beckett: What is the Word (1991), Songs of Despair and Sorrow (1980-1994), Songs to Poems by Anna Akhmatova (1997-2008),  Colindă-Baladă (2010),  and Brefs Messages (2011).   Extensive CD booklet includes all song texts with translations, an interview with Reinbert de Leeuw, liner notes by Wolfgang Sandner and Paul Griffith, and a statement by György Kurtág. (ECM Records)

Jean-Guihen Queyras / BBC Symphony Orchestra / Jirí Belohlávek EDWARD ELGAR Cello Concerto TCHAIKOVSKY Rococo Variations

French cellist Jean-Guihen Queyras explores the late Romantic repertoire on this 2013 Harmonia Mundi release and finds a kind of mirroring of intentions and expressions between Pyotr Il'yich Tchaikovsky's Rococo Variations on a Rococo Theme, Op. 33, and Edward Elgar's Cello Concerto, Op. 85. While this is a rather subjective understanding of the music that listeners can either take or leave, there's no denying that Queyras, conductor Jirí Belohlávek, and the BBC Symphony Orchestra offer performances of both works that are evocative and beautiful, with or without any underlying connections. Indeed, the polished soloist and the committed orchestra play effectively in both pieces, and Queyras' intense but controlled playing is well balanced by the orchestral accompaniment, which never overwhelms. For a break between the two heavyweight pieces, Queyras plays Antonín Dvorák's Rondo, Op. 94, and the tone poem, Silent Woods, Op. 68/5, which provide a lighter mood. Harmonia Mundi's reproduction is immaculate, with central placement for the soloist and realistic depth for the orchestral sections. (Blair Sanderson)

Jean-Guihen Queyras 21st CENTURY CELLO CONCERTOS

Canadian-born French cellist Jean-Guihen Queyras has been the featured cello soloist for the Ensemble InterContemporain for some time and appeared in this role on DGG's 1992 recording of Pierre Boulez's the Ligeti Cello Concerto with that ensemble. Queyras, however, doesn't just make contact to new music through composers who come through IRCAM, but also seeks it out on his own; Harmonia Mundi's 21st Century Cello Concertos combines three such commissions from composers Bruno Mantovani, Philippe Schoeller, and Gilbert Amy. When approaching this disc, one must be prepared for the reality that in Europe much "new music" of the twenty first century sounds like that of the twentieth, particularly the new music of the 1960s and '70s. While there are those, like Nicolas Bacri for example, who are finding ways to move on, these composers are in a sense defined by the degree to which they orbit the core experimental literature of the '60s, with Mantovani cycling the furthest away, Schoeller quite a bit closer, and Amy altogether belonging to that tradition. 

It is partly due to his total absorption into the milieu of the '60s -- as a participant in that scene and the conductor who took over the Domaine Musicale concerts from Boulez -- that the Amy concerto seems the strongest of these three. Amy's Concerto pour violoncelle et orchestre (2000) is the longest of the concertos, maintains the most consistent overall mood, satisfying formal development, and sense of variety throughout its seven short movements, which effectively add up to a single-movement work, though feeling subdivided into the usual three. Amy's orchestration is beautifully done and the concerto is also reasonably free of "new music clichés," most certainly not the case in Schoeller's The eyes of the wind (2005). This piece is subdivided into four short movements that sound an awful lot like one another, although there is some variability in the third movement. Schoeller uses a relatively small number of gestures throughout the 20-minute work, and a distant, shimmering atmosphere as established in the string section of the ripieno is an important element overall. In the first movement, however, there is a cliché in the form of an intermittent woodblock figure that resembles the "organizing woodblock" of Xenakis' Akrata; after awhile, one wearies of hearing it go "tic-tic-tic" over and over again. 

Bruno Mantovani's Concerto pour violoncelle et orchestre (2003) begins like gangbusters with a riotously colorful range of ideas that are expanded well; ultimately, though, these ideas end up being caught in a cycle that grows gradually shorter in a contracting loop, and one loses patience during this section. Then this stops and a new section begins of weaker material until the piece is concluded; the concerto feels seamy and none too finished. While Harmonia Mundi's 21st Century Cello Concertos may not seem like the freshest new music one could encounter in the twenty first century, overall it is high-quality music with some measure of flaws, though at least some measure of provocative and evocative moments as one would expect in such music. All of the pieces provide a considerable showcase for Queyras as soloist, particularly a cadenza in the Amy concerto where he is required to keep a dialogue going between figures in three different ranges of his instrument. Throughout, Queyras is mightily impressive; the recordings are made on three different occasions, with the Mantovani being the most responsive and the Schoeller least so. (Dave Lewis)

Alexander Melnikov / Isabelle Faust / Jean-Guihen Queyras LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN Piano Trios Op. 70 No. 2 & Op. 97

Beethoven’s first published works—his Opus No.1—were three trios for piano, violin and cello and already they show a marked advance on Haydn’s trios in the comparative interdependence of the three parts. Their freedom from Haydn’s oppressive formality looks forward to the first mature trios, the pair that comprises Opus 70, displaying all sorts of harmonic twists, thematic innovations and structural idiosyncrasies, these trios make much of the piano part and contain plenty of dramatic outbursts that are typical of Beethoven’s middle period. Even more arresting is the first of the Opus 70 trios (1808) nicknamed ”The Ghost” because of its mysterious and haunting Largo. Its sibling boasts a cheerful bombastic finale that is the most entertaining music that Beethoven composed for this combination of instruments. 

The “Archduke” Trio Opus 97 (1811) was Beethoven’s last full – scale work for piano trio and is typically conclusive. The third movement is its centre of gravity, a highly moving set of variations with the cello dominating the thematic content. It opens with a hymn-like theme and progresses to a coda which magnificently sums up the movements ideas. The finale might be less powerful than that of Opus 70 No. 2, but it nevertheless has a sweeping rhythmic power. Again, it is beyond the shadow of a doubt that Beethoven defined the piano trio form that it retained throughout the 19th century by allowing the string instruments the status of genuinely equal partners in this superlative performance. This is clear from the performances of pianist Alexander Melnikov, violinist Isabelle Faust and cellist Jean-Guihen Queyras present Beethoven’s last two works in the genre—Opus 70, No. 2, dedicated to Countess Marie Erdödy and the celebrated ”Archduke” that also marked the final public appearance of its composer. 

 Ms. Faust and Mr. Queyras as well as Mr. Melnikov reach into the depths of their individual and collective souls to find the spectacular tone textures that Beethoven had intended. They bring these forth with breathtaking motifs and heart-stopping melismas once again showing that interpretation requires genius enough to inhabit the skin of the composer in order to find the right balance between a perfect reading of the score and emotion that is over and beyond that the text might even suggest despite specific diacritical remarks by the composer. This is a wonderful recording indeed. (WMR)

Jean-Guihen Queyras / Alexander Melnikov LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN Complete Works for Violoncello & Piano

Two regular Harmonia Mundi artists here join forces for fascinating, polished performances of Beethoven’s works for cello and piano, embracing the five sonatas and the three sets of variations – on Mozart’s “Ein Mädchen oder Weibchen” Op 66, on Handel’s “See the Conqu’ring Hero Comes” WoO45 and on Mozart’s “Bei Männern welche Liebe fühlen” WoO46. Both Jean-Guihen Queyras and Alexander Melnikov have made distinguished recordings on their own, but they have also collaborated before on chamber music by Beethoven, Brahms, Dvorák and Weber, Melnikov having also played the Beethoven violin sonatas with Isabelle Faust.

The fact of their having worked together previously shines through in the instant rapport of the opening work of the first disc, the “Ein Mädchen oder Weibchen” variations. The playing is as clear as a bell, spirited, poised and as bold as the music itself. Some might find that the bleached tone that Queyras adopts in some exposed moments is an obtrusive factor. On the other hand, there are those who will say that this sparse vibrato goes with the historical territory, so it all remains a matter of taste – a quality that Queyras and Melnikov have in abundance.

In the Handel variations, and in the more or less contemporaneous two sonatas of Op 5 that Beethoven dedicated to Frederick William II of Prussia in the late 1790s, Queyras seems not to go so determinedly for that pallid timbre, and the result is that the performances combine a spectrum of tonal warmth with an exhilarating thrust of momentum, unanimity in matters of phrasing, dynamic shading and expressive detail and, altogether, a compelling, energised interpretative plan.

The second disc contains the A major Sonata Op 69, the two sonatas of Op 102 together with the “Bei Männern” variations. Here the two instruments are even more emancipated than in the earlier Op 5 sonatas, independent of line and yet united in expressive purpose.

The playing here combines breadth and urgency with, for example, a touching tenderness in the simplicity of the slow introduction to the C major Sonata Op 102 No 1 of 1815, shattered by Queyras’s and Melnikov’s muscular drive in the ensuing Allegro.
It all adds up to a valuable set for admirers both of Queyras and Melnikov, and of Beethoven. (Geoffrey Norris)

Pierre Boulez / Jean-Guihen Queyras BOULEZ Sur Incises - Messagesquisse - Anthèmes 2

Virtual infinity, music apparently without beginning or end or, in the wider context of the history of ideas, the open-endedness of the modern work of art; this is the radical conclusion that Pierre Boulez has drawn from atonality and from static and asymmetrical rhythm and metre in the wake of Webern, Stravinsky and Messiaen. In order to illustrate this fundamental change of attitude, he has suggested the image of a labyrinth - a structure involving ideas and experiences which, unlike the traditionally unambiguous Euclidean language of forms, acknowledges new convolutions and directions whose feasibility demands to be discovered and patiently explored. The consequences of this voyage of discovery embrace every aspect of composition and music-making and find expression not only in the notorious revisions to which Boulez subjects virtually all his works as a matter of principle, but also within each individual piece. The three works included in the present recording may serve to demonstrate the validity of this remark.

Each of this works is notable for its distinctive instrumental design: Anthèmes 2, for example, is scored for a solo violin whose playing is electronically split, up in performance, with the result that the soloist not only communes with himself but also with the ambient space. In Messagesquisse a solo cello is pitted against six other cellos that replicate its part in various ways. At the beginning, the tutti cellos enter in a kind of fugato, creating the impression of a flight of stairs, with each new entry imitating the main part in the manner of an echo and sustaining the notes in question. In this way the music unfolds like a prism. Sur Incises, finally, is scored for three pianos, three harps and three percussion instruments and is based on Incises for piano solo. In other words, all three works deal with the transformation of an essentially solo idea to produce completely different forms of musical interaction, forms that are novel, contemporary expressions of musical communication.