Sinfonietta Rīga / Maxim Rysanov PETERIS VASKS Viola Concerto - String Symphony "Voices"

VIOLA CONCERTO - STRING SYMPHONY

Gidon Kremer / Kremerata Baltica HYMNS AND PRAYERS

A beautifully-recorded album from master violinist Gidon Kremer and his Kremerata, Baltica, spanning a wide range of music, all of it broached with conviction. Hungarian composer and pianist Stevan Kovacs Tickmayer from the Serbian province of Vojvodina has written eight hymns in commemoration of the film director Andrei Tarkovsky, an artist he has called a homo moralis whose remarkable visions cast a small but significant light on the tragic world of the previous century. Georgian composer Giya Kancheli contributes a silent prayer for two of his most important musical associates: the cellist and conductor Mstislav Rostropovich and the violinist Gidon Kremer. The contemplative intensity of the hymns and the ascetic tranquillity of the prayer are offset by César Franck‘s Piano Quintet in F minor like a premonition of Beethoven’s Appassionata, whose second movement, marked Lento, molto sentimento, in turn takes up the mood of the other two works. This programmatic combination underlines an intrinsic principle Paul Klee developed in his theory of harmony in the visual arts: any compositional harmony will gain character through dissonances, with the balance being restored by counterweights. (ECM Records)

Alexei Ogrintchouk W.A. MOZART Oboe Concerto - Quartet - Sonata

Chamber recordings of major repertory on modern instruments is becoming increasingly rare on recordings, but Russian-born oboist Alexeï Ogrintchouk shows there's still considerable life in the genre with this selection of Mozart works for oboe. The underperformed Oboe Quartet in F major, K. 370, is a real highlight here. This work blends sparkling melody and virtuosity (it was composed for a famed oboist of Mozart's time) in a way that clearly looks forward to, and is nearly on a par with, the clarinet masterpieces of Mozart's last years, and Ogrintchouk plays it to the hilt in a performance that remains relaxed despite the very high technical demands placed on the soloist. The Oboe Concerto in C major, K. 314, probably better known in its D major version for flute and orchestra, is very nearly as good. There was no reason for BIS' engineers to mike Ogrintchouk quite so closely in the large Lithuanian National Philharmonic Hall, picking up a good number of clicking keys, but in both the quartet and the concerto he serves as a talented leader (and conductor in the concerto, which is rare for wind players), generating ensemble work well beyond the norm in each case. The transcription of the Violin Sonata in B flat major, K. 378, is not quite so successful, even if, as the notes point out, this work was transcribed for various instruments going back to Mozart's own time. The piano is the dominant partner in the work, and the odd timbre of the oboe makes a slightly strange impression as an accompanying instrument. There is, however, nothing to complain about in any of the performances by Ogrintchouk, the lead oboist of the Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam and clearly both a technically and interpretively gifted player. The recording of the Oboe Quartet here is worth the price of admission by itself. (James Manheim)

Maxim Rysanov KANCHELI Styx TAVENER The Myrrh-Bearer

This CD includes two pieces for an extraordinary combination of forces: solo viola, chorus, and orchestra (or percussion). Composers Giya Kancheli and John Tavener are frequently classified as "holy minimalists," but the designation "holy post-modernist" would be more accurate, if decidedly less spiritual sounding. Both composers are products of secular societies, have developed a preoccupation with spiritual topics in their music, and have rejected the prevailing modernism of their times in favor of a style, which in spite of its emotional directness and simplicity can't by any stretch of the imagination be legitimately characterized as minimalism. One characteristic that links Kancheli and the other so-called "holy minimalists" such as Górecki and Pärt is the earnest sobriety of their music. It would be ungenerous to characterize the work of such a diverse group of composers as humorless, but (particularly among those who suffered for the bulk of their professional lives under the artistic restrictions of the Eastern Bloc) their work is often notable for its relentlessly somber tone. That is the case of the two works recorded here. The darkness of the viola in its lower register and the agonized wail of its absolutely highest notes make it an apt vehicle for Kancheli's and Tavener's sober and sometimes anguished visions, and they write for it with great expressiveness. Both composers use the chorus orchestrally, more to create a particular textural color than to convey textual content, and their choral writing is inventive and colorful. The works are harmonically sumptuous and richly imagined, and they have an undeniably powerful emotional fiber. Violist Maxim Rysanov and conductor Máris Sirmais, leading the Liepaja Symphony Orchestra, the youth choir, Kamer…, and the State Choir Latvija perform with all the virtuosity and wrenching intensity the works require. (Stephen Eddins)

Maxim Rysanov plays MARTINU

It makes perfect sense that Bohuslav Martinu was a fan of the viola; the instrument’s generous, conversational voice is exactly right for his music, and this recording from Ukrainian violist Maxim Rysanov is easy proof of why. Martinu grew up in a church tower in small-town Moravia, watching the sporadic stream of townspeople down below. Those organic real-life rhythms are everywhere in his music — listen to the second movement of the Rhapsody-Concerto (1952) to hear fleeting modal shifts, folk melodies laced with trepidation and motoric outbursts jostling against lush pastoralism. Rysanov clinches the shifting characters and always makes his lines sing; conductor Jiri Belohlavek draws warmth and brawn from the BBC Symphony Orchestra. In the sunny Three Madrigals (1947) and restive Duo No. 2 (1950) Rysanov soars and spars with violinist Alexander Sitkovetsky; the Sonata for Viola and Piano (1955) sounds like it’s been recorded from far away, but I love the stately breadth that Katya Apekisheva brings to the piano lines. (The Guardian)

DOBRINKA TABAKOVA String Paths

ECM New Series presents the first full album devoted to the music of Dobrinka Tabakova, a composer born in Bulgaria in 1980 but raised from a young age in London and educated there. In Tabakova’s music – richly melodic, texturally sensuous, often emotionally radiant – there resides the new and the familiar, or rather the familiar within the new, and vice versa; there are the spirits of East and West coursing through the pieces, usually hand in hand; and just as the composer’s technical virtuosity is apparent, she possesses a desire, and a talent, for direct communication that can be heard in virtually every measure. The recording features Tabakova’s Concerto for Cello and Strings, plus the Rameau-channelling Suite in Old Style for viola and chamber orchestra. Then there are three chamber works: the string trio Insight, the string septet Such Different Paths and a trio for violin, accordion and double-bass, Frozen River Flows. The performers include violinist Janine Jansen and several of Tabakova’s former conservatory colleagues: violinist Roman Mints, violist-conductor Maxim Rysanov and cellist Kristina Blaumane, principal with the London Philharmonic Orchestra.
Tabakova’s music has a particularly 21st-century feel for its broad palette – its free mix of tonality and modality, of folk-music influence and the example of past masters. Her ECM debut came about after a happenstance meeting of the composer with label founder-producer Manfred Eicher at the Lockenhaus Festival in Austria, where Rysanov was performing Tabakova’s Suite in Old Style (part of a triptych of suites she has written for him, along with a concerto). The resulting album presents Tabakova works from 2002 through 2008. (ECM Records)

Vilde Frang MOZART Violin Concertos 1 & 5 - Sinfonia Concertante

Norwegian violinist Vilde Frang made her orchestral debut to great acclaim at the age of just 13, with the Oslo Philharmonic and Mariss Jansons. On that occasion, she chose Sarasate's Carmen Fantasia, and in the fifteen years that have followed she has taken on the great Romantic and moderns, the Nordics and Russians: Sibelius and Prokofiev concertos for her debut album, followed by Tchaikovsky and Nielsen. 

Now, at 28, this young but serious star violinist at last commits Mozart concertos to disc, in lively, intimate readings with English chamber orchestra Arcangelo, led by Jonathan Cohen. 

The impetus for this album was a 2012 orchestral tour of Asia conducted by Cohen in which Vilde Frang performed Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 5. The vibrancy of their musical collaboration was something both artists were keen to repeat and commit to disc. 

Jonathan Cohen writes: “This was an important project for us to do with Vilde. Her poetic and sensitive playing and her beautiful silvery sound really serves Mozart and she was looking to collaborate with an ensemble such as ours well versed in the style and culture of Viennese classicism." 

As complement to Mozart's First and Fifth Violin Concertos, Frang chose the beloved Sinfonia Concertante, enlisting Ukrainian viola virtuoso Maxim Rysanov as her duo partner. 

"She and Maxim I think have produced a very special Sinfonia Concertante, which is a particularly extraordinary composition," says Cohen. 

The album has already been praised for the lightness and warmth, elegance and playfulness of the dialogue between soloist and ensemble. "The solo concertos are terrific. The First is often seen as slight, but Frang, with an endlessly varied palette of colours, delights in showing us how wrong we are," declares Sinfini Music. "She melds eloquently with the ensemble and manages to convey an artless simplicity."