Isabelle Faust / Orchestre de Paris / Pablo Heras-Casado STRAVISNKY Le Sacre du Printemps EÖTVÖS "Alhambra" Concerto

 

LE SACRE DU PRINTEMPS - "ALHAMBRA" CONCERTO

 

Orchestre de Paris / Christoph Eschenbach EDITH CANAT DE CHIZY Les Rayons du Jour

LES RAYONS DU JOUR

Javier Perianes / Orchestre de Paris / Josep Pons RAVEL Concerto en Sol - Le Tombeau de Couperin

As if in a mirror, this recording juxtaposes the original piano versions of two of Ravel's masterpieces (Le Tombeau de Couperin and Alborada del gracioso) with their respective orchestrations. The Concerto in G major combines the two facets, both when the piano is integrated into the overall sound and when it plays its role as a soloist. The subtle playing of Javier Perianes and the refined sonorities of the Orchestre de Paris, conducted by Josep Pons, also remind us that Spain was the most significant source of inspiration in Ravel's output.

Khatia Buniatishvili / Paavo Järvi / Orchestre de Paris CHOPIN

Georgian pianist Khatia Buniatishvili is a phenomenon, and kudos to Sony Classical for snagging her! This is Chopin of the old school, with massive interposition of the performer between music and listener. And it's glorious. The Piano Sonata No. 2 in B flat minor, Op. 35, is an absolutely original reading, with that black belt of classical pianism, a fresh rendition of the famous funeral march, with real involvement in the emotional content of the movement. This is a Chopin funeral march played after someone actually died, and the moment of chilly nihilism that serves as the finale is really a bit scary here. The big Ballade No. 4 in F minor, Op. 52, is hardly less stirring. Buniatishvili races forward at times, delays as if in torture at other times, and has the skills and the raw power to pull it all off. Are there problems? Sure. It's true that a 19th-century virtuoso recital would have freely mixed orchestral and solo music, but the live performance of the Piano Concerto No. 2 in F minor, Op. 21, doesn't quite fit here, partly because the acoustic of the Salle Pleyel in Paris is nothing like that of the Jesus-Christus-Kirche in Berlin, where the other pieces were recorded. And a few of Buniatishvili's dynamic contrasts go beyond anything Chopin could have accomplished with his own piano or even intended. But these are the flaws that serve only to point up the considerable accomplishments elsewhere. This is the kind of Chopin playing that people used to line up to hear. (James Manheim)

Katia Labeque / Marielle Labeque BRYCE DESSNER El Chan

This album is dedicated with love and admiration to Alejandro González Iñárritu and his wife Maria Eladia Hagerman. Nestled in the canyons outside their hometown of San Miguel de Allende, ‘El Charco del Ingenio’ is a pool of water which has been the source of popular legends for many centuries, as well as the primary source of water in the area. ‘El Chan’ is its guardian spirit, a mythic being from the underworld who dwells in the mysterious waters and shows its terrible powers to those daring to approach. The pool changes colors throughout the year and is fed by a spring which is one of the last sources of natural water in the area.

Renaud Capuçon / Paavo Järvi / Orchestre de Paris LALO Symphonie Espagnole SARASATE Zigeunerweisen BRUCH Violin Concerto No. 1

Renaud Capuçon exudes a youthful air, but, now firmly established as one of the world’s leading violinists, he celebrates his 40th birthday on January 27th 2016. This release of the best-known works of three composers – Edouard Lalo, Pablo de Sarasate and Max Bruch – marks this important personal occasion in a suitably festive fashion. Capuçon made the recordings with Paavo Järvi and the Orchestre de Paris at the orchestra’s new home, the French capital’s Philharmonie, which opened in early 2015 and was immediately hailed for its superb acoustics. The Bruch concerto became the first piece to be recorded there, in May 2015.

As it happens, Capuçon shares a birthday with Edouard Lalo, born in 1823 – and with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart too! Lalo’s Symphonie espagnole, first performed in Paris in 1874, inhabits the same Franco-Spanish musical world as Bizet’s Carmen, which received its premiere the following year. The piece also has a special connection with both Sarasate’s Zigeunerweisen [Gypsy Airs] and Bruch’s Concerto No1, as Renaud Capuçon explains:

“These three works, first heard between 1868 and 1878, are among the most famous in the history of the violin, and there are links of friendship and respect between their three composers – Lalo, Sarasate and Bruch: Lalo dedicated his Symphonie espagnole to Sarasate [born in northern Spain and one of the most celebrated violinists of his time]. Bruch dedicated his Scottish Fantasy to Sarasate some years later, but it was the great Joseph Joachim who gave the first performance of Bruch’s Concerto No 1.”

All three pieces also have a special significance for Capuçon: “I first approached these works when I was 12 years old and studying at the Paris Conservatoire with Veda Reynolds [a celebrated American violin teacher]. I played the Bruch in my first competitions; the Lalo was the first piece I played to Gerard Poulet [Capuçon’s other teacher at the Paris Conservatoire] and the Sarasate featured in my first proper recital."

The personal nature of this album is further emphasised by Renaud Capuçon’s wish to dedicate it to the memories of two people who meant a great deal to him: the broadcaster Jacques Chancel, who died in December 2014, and his father-in-law Gratien Ferrari, who died in October 2015.

Capuçon’s credentials in this kind of Romantic music are made clear in reviews of past performances and recordings. When he played the Lalo in London in 2012, the Guardian praised him for capturing “the full measure of the seriousness behind its grace and wit. Capuçon played with virile agility and tremendous nobility of tone,” while The Times extolled a “gorgeous performance from violin soloist Renaud Capuçon, laidback in manner, but so nimble, so fiery.” The Bruch concerto – with its rhapsodic first movement and energetic, dancing finale is close in spirit to the Brahms Violin Concerto, composed in 1878 and also dedicated to Joseph Joachim. Capuçon’s recording of the Brahms was released in 2012. Reviewing the CD, the Telegraph wrote that: “Capuçon has an impressive grasp of the concerto’s expressive contours, using his technical arsenal with finesse and tracing the music’s breadth of line and its arching shapes while maintaining its inner momentum. The rhythmic punch and energy of the finale are echoed by the orchestra’s powerful attack and buoyancy ... This is altogether a remarkable disc.” (Presto Classical)

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)

Itzhak Perlman / Orchestre de Paris / Daniel Barenboim SAINT-SAËNS Violin Concert No. 3 WIENIAWSKI Violin Concerto No. 2

 There is really very little that need be said about these virtuoso performances of these two sweetly melodious concertos except to record that they are played as brilliantly as one would expect and that the sound is full and warm. Perlman has recorded Wieniawski's No. 2 before on HMV, as can be seen; possibly he has now an even silkier demeanour with it. It is perhaps this quality that leads me to prefer his playing above Chung's rather more forceful manner in the Saint-Saens (Decca). Perlman is particularly elegant in the slow movement of the Wieniawski, and of course he never makes the mistake of trying to inflate either work to the status of masterpiece.
Gramophone [1/1984]
reviewing the original LP

Patricia Petibon / Chœur de l’Orchestre de Paris / Paavo Järvi POULENC Stabat Mater - Gloria - Litanies à la Vierge noire

“I have the faith of a country priest,” Francis Poulenc confessed a few days before his sudden death in January 1963. The “bad boy” of French music was also – from the time of the Litanies à la Vierge noire to the late Sept Répons des ténèbres – a masterly exponent of 20th-century sacred music. Poulenc drifted away from religion for a period of some 15 years, only to return to the fold in the wake of the death of the composer Pierre-Octave Ferroud, who was killed in a car crash on 17 August 1936. “The appalling way in which this musician, who was so full of vitality, was wrenched away from us left me utterly stupefied,” Poulenc later explained. “Thinking of how little our human husk weighs, I felt once again drawn to the spiritual life.” Five days after the tragic event, Poulenc visited the sanctuary at Rocamadour, “a place of extraordinary peace” that sheltered the statue of a black Madonna. Deeply impressed, he began work on his Litanies à la Vierge noire that same evening, completing the score within a week. In the opening, marked “calm”, the female chorus alternates with the instrumental part – an organ in the original version of the work. The lines are simple, almost archaic, the conjunct motifs repeated obsessively and studded with harsh dissonances. The score bears the words “humble and fervent”, admirably summing up the composer’s conception of religion throughout his entire life. “It is very special, humble and, I think, gripping,” Poulenc wrote to Nadia Boulanger, who conducted the first performance of the piece for the BBC in London on 17 November 1936. With this “miracle work”, as pure as it is poignant, Poulenc in a moment of great psychological distress expressed his dismay in the face of death and begged the Virgin to grant him the strength to believe in God once again – after all, Mary herself never gave up hope even when her son died on the Cross. In September 1947 Poulenc arranged the organ part for strings and timpani, producing the lesser-known version heard here. It was the death of another artist that inspired Poulenc to write his powerful Stabat Mater for soprano solo, mixed choir and orchestra. In this case the death was that of Christian Bérard, who died in February 1949 at the age of 46. A painter and stage designer, Bérard had worked for Marcel Achard, George Balanchine, Jean Cocteau, Jean Giraudoux, Louis Jouvet and others. Soon after his death, Poulenc wrote: “When Bébé died I was in London, thus missing those horrible days with the funeral arrangements. I can think of him as if he was off on a trip round the world. [...] Dear Bébé, I think of you as a sweet, invisible presence and not, thank God, as a ghost.” In writing a Stabat Mater, Poulenc hoped to commit his friend’s soul to Notre-Dame de Rocamadour. Once again, he felt that in invoking the sufferings of the Virgin at the time of her son’s crucifixion, he might be able to offer the best possible homage – even more so than with a requiem, which would have been too “bombastic” and would have “had the air of a funeral service”. (Excerpts from the booklet text accompanying the album)