Ori Kam / Sharon Kam / Matan Porat CONTRASTS

 

CONTRASTS

 

Matan Porat CARNAVAL

CARNAVAL

 

Liana Gourdjia / Matan Porat CHARLES IVES

Since I remember myself, there were sounds of violin and piano. I must have been present during hundreds of hours of scrupulous work, when my grandmother was teaching my sister the violin, long before being aware of what it all really meant. Music was all around me. My mother played the piano. Often the violin students of The Moscow Conservatory came to rehearse chez nous, and that is how I became familiar with every microscopic detail of most violin pieces she had accompanied. My mother loved accompanying, she made everyone feel confident, even in most treacherous passages. We knew she would always wait, or, in any case, do just the right thing in order to support a player. Masterful accompanists are hard to come by; they must be cherished. (Liana Gourdjia) 

Between 1902 and 1916, Charles Ives wrote sonatas for violin and piano referencing more and more frequently popular or religious melodies he heard in daily life, as if to better link serious music and the daily lives of Americans. A rare repertoire, championed by the sparkling Liana Gourdjia, who trained in Moscow, and later studied in Bloomington and Cleveland.

Matan Porat LUX

With Lux, the brilliant pianist and composer Matan Porat offers a visionary programme inspired by the theme of light. Twelve pieces chosen among a repertoire spanning twelve centuries accompany the course of a day, from dawn to nightfall. each piece corresponds to a time of day, with its own particular light.

David Greilsammer BAROQUE CONVERSATIONS

This Sony-label debut release by Israeli pianist David Greilsammer has much in common with his earlier recording Fantasie Fantasme, released on the Naxos label. In fact, here Greilsammer might be said to have refined the ideas on the earlier album. Both combine contemporary and mainstream repertory, and apparently Greilsammer has an inclination toward pretentious graphic design. But here the focus is tightened. Greilsammer constructs a sequence of four Baroque three-movement "pieces," each consisting of three compositions. Of these sets of three, the outer two are Baroque works, while the center is a contemporary piece, commissioned in two cases by Greilsammer himself from contemporary Israeli composers. Greilsammer balances these works cleverly: the structure of the sets of three is not fast-slow-fast, but not simply random, either; the pieces instead are linked by motive and mood, with the modern work emerging as just a slight shift from what precedes it, and as a logical introduction to the finale. One might make several objections along the way: the Handel Suite for keyboard in D minor, HWV 447, with its four movements, disturbs the plan for no very good reason, and Greilsammer's readings of the Baroque pieces, especially the opening Gavotte et Six Doubles of Rameau, are a bit too dreamy, a bit too obviously bent to the requirements of the project. Still, there's no denying that Greilsammer has come closer than most other performers to the grail of integrating contemporary music into a mainstream concert program, and that he has done it in a very inventive way. The combination of a Frescobaldi toccata and the Wiegenmusik of German-born composer Helmut Lachenmann, each with little figures gracefully spinning off an underlying rhythm, is especially effective. Recommended for listeners of a speculative frame of mind. (James Manheim)