Sol Gabetta / Patricia Kopatchinskaja SOL & PAT

 

SOL & PAT

 

Patricia Kopatchinskaja SCHOENBERG Pierrot Lunaire

 

PIERROT LUNAIRE

 

Patricia Kopatchinskaja, Sol Gabetta, Francisco Coll, Camerata Bern PLAISIRS ILLUMINÉS

 

PLAISIRS ILLUMINÉS

 

Patricia Kopatchinskaja / Giovanni Antonini / Il Giardino Armonico WHAT'S NEXT VIVALDI?

WHAT'S NEXT VIVALDI?

Patricia Kopatchinskaja / Camerata Bern TIME & ETERNITY

Time and Eternity. Always in search of powerful musical experiences, the violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja and Camerata Bern – of which she has just taken over the artistic direction – here juxtapose Hartmann’s Concerto funebre, composed in 1939 to express his indignation at the Nazis’ terror, and the Polyptyque for violin and orchestra that Frank Martin wrote in 1973 for Yehudi Menuhin, a work inspired by six scenes from the Passion of Christ painted by Duccio di Buoninsegna around 1310. The Kyrie from Machaut’s Messe de Nostre Dame, composed half a century after the altarpiece and heard here in an arrangement for strings, is interspersed between the movements, along with Bach chorales, ‘as an invocation of eternal consolation’. A Polish folksinger interprets the Jewish song ‘Eliyahu hanavi’, which expresses the hope of salvation and which Hartmann quotes in his concerto. Six hundred years of music to ‘make the victims’ voices heard’, says Patricia Kopatchinskaja. The album opens with Kol Nidrei by John Zorn (born 1953), in response to the eponymous prayer spoken by a representative of the Jewish community. A Catholic priest and an Orthodox priest also say a short prayer.

Patricia Kopatchinskaja MICHAEL HERSCH End Stages - Violin Concerto

Virtuoso violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja, for whom Michael Hersch's Violin Concerto was composed, wrote recently of the piece that it ''is an open wound, there is no other way to say it.'' She continued, the work ''is so convincing ... moves me so deeply, makes me speechless, tolerates neither doubt nor objection. It is like a mountain one can't ignore ... everything is crystal clear, there is no decoration, no superficial beauty, no compromises. Everything is exactly in place, has found its perfect form.'' A follow up to his haunting ''Images from a Closed Ward'', New Focus releases Hersch's Violin Concerto, performed by Kopatchinskaja with the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), and end stages in a performance by the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. With both pieces, Hersch reinforces his reputation as a composer of gripping music, unafraid to tackle through sound the most vulnerable and difficult corners of the human psyche. Patricia Kopatchinskaja displays remarkable versatility in her diverse repertoire, ranging from baroque and classical often played on gut strings, to new commissions and reinterpretations of modern masterworks. Called ''America's foremost new music group'' by The New Yorker, the ICE is an artist collective that is transforming the way music is created and experienced. As performer, curator, and educator, ICE explores how new music intersects with communities across the world. Committed to innovation and artistic excellence, Orpheus is considered among the finest chamber ensembles in the world. Orpheus was founded in 1972 by a group of like-minded young musicians determined to combine the intimacy and warmth of a chamber ensemble with the richness of an orchestra.

Patricia Kopatchinskaja / Polina Leschenko DEUX

I can’t remember when I last heard a violin-piano recital that was as ingenious and exhilarating as this. On the sleeve, the Franco-Hungarian programme looks a bit odd – the Poulenc sonata written for Ginette Neveu in 1943, a Dohnanyi setting of a waltz from Delibes’ Coppélia, the full-on Bartók sonata of 1922 and Ravel’s Tzigane to close.

What do these pieces have in common?

On April 8, 1922, Béla Bartók gave a recital in Paris with his compatriot Jelly d’Aranyi. Ravel was the page turner for Bartók and Poulenc for d’Aranyi. In the audience were Stravinsky, Szymanowski, Milhaud, Honegger and Roussel. The violinist said it was the most thrilling concert of her life. She had already sat through a long night with Ravel playing him gypsy tunes, which he turned into Tzigane. This single concert fused three distinct cultures.

Only Patricia Kopatchinskaja would have made these connections, and no other violinist could bring them to life with such wildfire exuberance, verging on madcap abandon. The Russian pianist Polina Leschenko, rather than offering a steadying hand with big, bold chords, is a subtle provocateur, forever daring barefoot Pat Kop to do something really wicked.

The Poulenc sonata delivers winsome blues, a mild dig at the Nazi occupation. The Coppélia waltz is undanceable at this speed. The Bartók sonata aches with homesickness for Balkan steppes and Tzigane is absolutely electrifying. There is more voltage on this record than a nuclear power plant on the Seine. (Norman Lebrecht)

Patricia Kopatchinskaja / Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra SCHUBERT Death and the Maiden

"With the wonderful Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra we are presently exploring Schubert's quatuor ‘Death and the maiden’. Of course we have to include Schubert’s earlier song with the same title on the poem of Matthias Claudius. This song belongs to the medieval tradition of the dance of death. Therefore we also play "Toden Tanz" (with poor me dancing), an ancient death dance written up by the German organ player August Nörmiger (1560-1613). Schubert’s song and the slow movement of his quatuor use the solemn rhythm of a Pavan, so we also play one of Dowland’s Pavans from "Seaven Teares". Add to this "Moro lasso" a madrigal about death by the famous Renaissance composer (and murderer!) Gesualdo. In between we also refresh our ears with other unsettling works by modern composers like György Kurtag and Heinz Holliger." (Patricia Kopatchinskaja)

Patricia Kopatchinskaja / MusicAeterna / Teodor Currentzis TCHAIKOVSKY Violin Concerto STRAVINSKY Les Noces

Testament to the versatility and musical command that Teodor Currentzis and his unique orchestra and choir possess, this new album brings together two diverse masterworks from two titans of Russian music. Although they have been acquainted for a long time prior, this recording represents the first musical collaboration between Teodor Currentzis and the exceptional violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja. The instant artistic rapport (an “artistic wedding” of sorts) between these two maverick musicians can be heard in this dynamic new recording of Tchaikovsky’s Violin concerto – one of the most popular works in the violin repertory. Currentzis’ authentic approach to the folk influences in Stravinsky’s music (as revealed in Le Sacre du Printemps) is again very present in his interpretation of Les Noces. This work for percussion, pianists, chorus, and vocal soloists – originally composed as ballet music – is probably one of Stravinsky’s most rarely recorded works. The work is based on a Russian peasant wedding, which the cover artwork references. Exceptional to this new recording is that the MusicAeterna choir members are all native-Russian speakers who bring another level of understanding and authenticity to the work. After her prominent participation in the “Rameau – The Sound of Light” recording, Nadine Koutcher – freshly crowned “2015 Cardiff Singer of the Year” – returns to sing the leading soprano solo part in Les Noces.

Gidon Kremer / Patricia Kopatchinskaja / Kremerata Baltica GIYA KANCHELI Chiaroscuro

Georgian composer Giya Kancheli’s latest ECM New Series album, issued shortly after his 80^th birthday, features first recordings of two major works: Chiaroscuro for violin and chamber orchestra, and Twilight for two violins and chamber orchestra. Gidon Kremer and Kremerata Baltica have had a long and close association with Giya Kancheli. On Twilight, the coming together of Kremer and Patricia Kopatchinskaja, two of the most powerfully expressive violinists of our era, makes for fascinating listening. The piece is a touching meditation on mortality, written at a time when Giya Kancheli was recovering from illness and seeing in the leaves and branches of poplar trees outside his window a metaphor for change and transformation. 

Twilight, Kancheli’s first piece composed for two solo violins and strings was written on Gidon Kremer’s initiative for the annual Mozart Week in Salzburg. “In my professional life various superb performers have appeared at different periods,” Giya Kancheli writes in the liner notes.

“I am very happy that for the ECM production of Twilight Gidon Kremer joined forces with Patricia Kopatchinskaja. At the rehearsal I realized from the first bars that Patricia has all the attributes of a distinguished musical personality.” Kopatchinskaja, for her part, much enjoyed the encounter with fellow violinist Kremer: “This was one of my strongest and most moving experiences….I grew up and educated myself with the sounds and visions of Gidon Kremer. He is the musician and thinker who always captures me with all senses and trust, when listening to anything he does.”
The title composition Chiaroscuro borrows its name from the painting technique of the renaissance and baroque whose concern with dramatic contrasts of light and shade corresponds quite directly to the characteristically stark dynamics of the composer’s writing, vigorously conveyed by Kremerata Baltica. The piece was originally written for Julian Rachlin, to be performed by him on both violin and viola.

After its premiere both Yuri Bashmet and Gidon Kremer asked Kancheli for independent versions, and these were subsequently developed and performed. As Kancheli remarks, “Profound personalities always discover in the music something that cannot be expressed in notes and signs … They effectively become co-authors of the works they perform.”
In this sense, Gidon Kremer – as masterful interpreter – has been ‘co-authoring’ Giya Kancheli’s work since 1998 and his riveting performance of Lament – Music In Mourning Of Luigi Nono. Other Kremer/Kancheli collaborations on ECM include Time…and Again and V & V (on the album In L’istesso tempo, recorded in 2000 and 2003), Silent Prayer (on Hymns and Prayers, recorded 2008) and Themes from the Songbook (recorded 2010). Kremerata Baltica, too, has been programming Kancheli’s music from the beginning of its history. Gidon Kremer: “Giya’s music has become an inseparable part of the Kremerata Baltica orchestra’s repertoire: each year, each season we have studied and played one or two of his pieces. Despite our previous acquaintance, each piece reveals something new and special.” (ECM Records)

Patricia Kopatchinskaja / Anja Lechner / Amsterdam Sinfonietta / Candida Thompson TIGRAN MANSURIAN Quasi Parlando

“Quasi Parlando” is an important addition to ECM’s documentation of the work of Tigran Mansurian, an often breathtaking account of highly original contemporary chamber orchestra music. Issued in the wake of his 75th birthday, the album opens with the Armenian composer’s fiercely-concentrated Double Concerto, and proceeds to new music performed by its dedicatees: the lyrical Romance, dedicated to Moldavian violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja, and the intensely expressive Quasi Parlando, dedicated to German cellist Anja Lechner. Both are world premiere recordings, as is the Concerto No 2, subtitled Four Serious Songs, which concludes the programme. Throughout, the soloists deliver committed performances, as does the Amsterdam Sinfonietta under the direction of Candida Thompson. 

In the liner notes, Wolfgang Sandner describes title piece Quasi Parlando, composed in 2012, as one of the works which best exemplify Mansurian’s aesthetics of reduction: “Every note is exactly where it belongs. Compositional feeling seems at one with the innate potential of the sounds. Yet we are amazed to hear how the cello’s rhetorical figures congeal into an effective and expressive art that transcends the conceptualisations of speech.” The Romance, composed a year earlier, initially retains the four-bar periods of a simple but moving folk song until the strings enter a dialogue with the solo violin, whereupon a transformation takes place... 

In terms of textural density, Mansurian’s music has seen some changes in the thirty years that separate the composing of the Double Concerto and the Four Serious Songs, but his aesthetic stance has been consistent, both works sharing an immediacy of expression and rigorous creative will. At the same time, the composer encourages a degree of creative freedom from his music’s interpreters: “What is important is what the music needs, not what I need”, he said in a talk given at the Muziekgebouw Amsterdam, immediately before the recording of these pieces in October 2012. 

Patricia Kopatchinskaja has described the violin part of Four Serious Songs as “pure spirit and magic... Tigran’s music is some of the strongest of our time.”

Patricia Kopatchinskaja / Markus Hinterhäuser / Reto Bieri GALINA USTVOLSKAYA

Russian composer Galina Ustvolskaya (1919-2006) insisted that she wrote no chamber music: instrumentation alone could be no index of her music’s intentions. Her works are infused, she said, with a religious spirit, and the powerful, rhythmic stringency of the music testifies to the relentlessness of her vision. Although Shostakovich had been one of her teachers, Ustvolskaya maintained that her music resembled that of no other composer, living or dead, and put herself outside all stylistic “schools”. She followed only her own austere, unforgiving path. Its sense of concentration is sometimes ferocious; her work, said Viktor Suslin, has the "narrowness of a laser beam capable of piercing metal.” Entering its sound-world calls for a special kind of commitment. With prescience Shostakovich said of her art, “I am convinced that the music of G. I. Ustvolskaya will achieve worldwide renown, to be valued by all who perceive truth in music to be of paramount importance.” Many years had to pass for this prediction to be fulfilled, but Ulstvolskaya’s music is increasingly being taken up by artists. On the present disc, Patricia Kopatchinskaja, pianist Markus Hinterhäuser and clarinettist Reto Bieri rise to its challenges.

The intensity of Ustvolskaya’s music is well-matched with the driven performance style of Patricia Kopatchinskaja who was recently voted “Instrumentalist of the Year” by the Royal Philharmonic Society, its jury of musicians hailing her as “an irresistible force of nature: passionate, challenging and totally original in her approach.” Her aim as an interpretative player, is “to communicate the meaning and inner workings of the music. Curiosity drives me to explore many different musical frontiers." Her repertoire has addressed music from Bach to Cage and beyond. Kopatchinskaja feels that Ustvolskaya’s 1964 Duet is amongst the 20th century’s most powerful compositions: “Here is no place for ‘beauty’. In order to rise to the expressive power of this music the interpretation has to go to the extremes.” The 1952 Sonata, meanwhile, “gains quality and depth with each repeated playing (and listening). In the beginning the violin repeats a hammering phrase, - the stonemason working on a tombstone. This pulse prolongs itself through the whole piece, sometimes interrupted by irregular breaths and sighs – a lonesome soul walking through an endless Russian landscape. The music of Ustvolskaya is like a ritual, taking the listener into a unique and archaic world, where there is no place for comparisons or theoretical analysis.”

The present recording of Ustvolskaya’s music was made at Lugano’s Auditorio Radiotelevisione svizzera in March 2013, and produced by Manfred Eicher.

Patricia Kopatchinskaja BARTÓK / EÖTVÖS / LIGETI

Peter Eötvös evidently wants us to hear his music as the continuation of a grand Hungarian tradition, in which he is only two steps removed from the country’s greatest ever composer. This album makes the case, and without over-emphasizing the connections. The individuality of each composer is just as evident as their similarities, and the connections themselves are subtle. The portamento-based sliding textures, for example, in the Eötvös concerto, when heard in any other context may seem like a legacy from electronic music, but when placed directly after Bartók’s Second, there is a clear link with the earlier composer’s trombone glissandos. There’s Bartók in the Ligeti too, or rather, there’s Ligeti in the Bartók; the strident woodwind chords in Bartók’s second movement sound surprisingly similar to Ligeti’s ocarinas and distuned horns.
But this narrative is merely a subplot to the album as a whole, and despite the fact that one of the featured composers stands at the podium, it is the soloist who dominates proceedings. Patricia Kopatchinskaja has a distinctive voice as a violinist, with both her style and her technique marrying Eastern European Gypsy music with Central European classical traditions. She is drawn to classical works that include folk elements, and by emphasizing their earthy textures and infectious rhythms, she is able to rescue them from both the formality and the arbitrary sophistication of the concert hall.
The distinctive flavor of Kopatchinskaja’s playing is most clearly evident in the Bartók, where comparison with the already burgeoning catalogue demonstrates just how different her approach is. Kopatchinskaja’s tone is focused and vibrant. It has a kind of neon aura that could almost suggest electronic manipulation of the sound. The cult (or myth?) of naturalness that pervades the classical recording industry means that this sort of sound is all but unheard in the concerto repertoire. As a result, her timbre alone makes Kopatchinskaja sound like an import from the folk world. Something has to give, of course, and while Kopatchinskaja gives an intensely musical reading of the Bartók, many will find it lacking in a number of respects. Kopatchinskaja’s sound is either on or off: She can play quietly, but even then she dominates proceedings. And the quieter passages, especially in the first movement, don’t have that urbane late-Romantic sensibility that most violinists find there. The payoff is in the loud and propulsive music, and here Kopatchinskaja comes into her own, dropping all pretentions to classical respectability and going back to her roots as a folk fiddler, roots Bartók himself would surely have recognized.
The Eötvös concerto is entitled Seven and was written in memory of the seven astronauts who died in the Columbia space shuttle disaster in 2003. Not that it is a particularly mournful piece. The emotional profile of the work balances the enthusiasm and excitement of space exploration with this significant reminder of its dangers. So the music is full of invention and sonic exploration, but is continually reined back to a human scale, not least by the focus on the soloist within the large ensemble. (In fact, seven ensembles are used, spaced judiciously around the hall—there’s certainly a case here for a surround-sound recording.) The most radical aspect of the concerto is its form: four accompanied cadenzas, each more substantial than the last, and culminating in a finale proper. The work was not written for Kopatchinskaja (it was premiered by Akiko Suwanai) but her insistent and incisive tone works to the benefit of the complex textures. Eötvös lets his imagination run free in his use of the orchestra, but there is never any danger of the soloist getting lost in the sound. Her playfulness is also an asset here, and when Eötvös’s score begins to sound too intellectual for its own good, the vibrant musicality of the soloist always ensures a sense of immediacy and emotional engagement.
Ligeti’s Violin Concerto is possibly the ideal vehicle for Patricia Kopatchinskaja’s unique approach. Elsewhere she seems to be continually fighting against classicized and normative models of Eastern European folk music within the established canon—even in the Bartók. But Ligeti speaks her language. Ligeti’s late music relies heavily on intractable sound complexes, and on mind games of order and chaos. But both are motivated by a desire to get back to his Eastern roots, to short-circuit the sophisticated mechanisms of new music and reveal beneath them the more astringent and primal sounds from which all music originally grew. And there is no violinist better suited to this paradigm than Kopatchinskaja. Comparisons between her reading and those already available—Saschko Gawriloff, Christina Åstrand, Frank Peter Zimmermann—show that the qualities she brings to the work are similar to those we find in the Bartók. Her focused ever-present tone prevents the opening appearing out of nothing. And the solo line always dominates, even on the rare occasions when it shouldn’t. But the polyrhythmic complexity of the solo writing is clearer and more engaging here than on any previous recording. And, most importantly, there is never any feeling that Kopatchinskaja is trying to civilize this music. She knows exactly where Ligeti is coming from, and like him, she has no intention of rounding off the edges in pursuit of spurious classical elegance.
Eötvös the conductor is a sensitive and perceptive accompanist. Twenty years ago, Pierre Boulez would have been the natural, perhaps only, choice for conducting a program like this (he conducted the premiere of the Eötvös and the first recording of the Ligeti). Eötvös has been gradually taking over that role in recent years, and the clarity he brings to the textures, the impeccable orchestral discipline, and the feeling of life and vibrancy in every orchestral passage show him to be ideally qualified as Boulez’s successor. Great playing too from both the Frankfurt RSO and Ensemble Modern, with both ensembles and soloist recorded in transparent and immediate audio.
A triumph, then, for all concerned, and a must-have for anyone interested in the music of Ligeti or Eötvös. Those thinking of buying the set for the Bartók should be warned that Kopatchinskaja’s reading is idiosyncratic and bypasses much of the classical sophistication heard on other recordings. But Kopatchinskaja works only on her own terms, and as with her previous discs, everything here is as distinctive as it is compelling. (FANFARE: Gavin Dixon)

Patricia Kopatchinskaja / Vladimir Jurowski PROKOFIEV & STRAVINSKY

 

A masked ball. Two figures came up to me. One with a large wig, a long nose, and a black poodle on a leash. The other dark red, with an immense tear glistening in his eye . . .

‘Who are you?’ I ask.
‘We are the souls of the two pieces that you have recorded. We’re slightly related.’

The one with the long nose and the poodle says,

‘I start every movement with a slap. Did you find it amusing to slip inside me? ‘

‘Oh yes,’ I answer, ‘but tell me – how could your master have brought you into the world without those cheeky opening chords? Would you be here at all? And your disguise – is it supposed to be a provocation? Sergey Sergeyevich said it was all just “Bach with smallpox” . . . But, if you don’t mind my saying so, there isn’t much Bach there at all: where are the piety, the deep seriousness? There’s only his wig and his Baroque costume. And, wrapped up in that, pagan energy and sarcastic wit. Did the devil himself instil that in your master during a card game?’ The poodle looked at me suddenly.

The other mask was silent. I nudged him and said: ‘I was the melody of love in you. Did you feel that?’
The mask was silent.
‘I heard the ticking clock of destiny beneath me, but I flew over everything, worried about nothing, because I knew I had become a part of eternity . . .
There was melancholy, resignation . . .’
At the beginning, a dark prophecy. An old Russian woman in the fog . . . Was your master not running away from himself, feeling a fracture deep inside him? Did he not take refuge in a childlike dream world? Does the first move- ment not evoke images from fairy tales old and new, like Chagall? But alongside the human world is another one, inhuman, mechanical, the hum and ticking of machines and clock mecha- nisms. And constant scene changes, as in ballet or films. And in the last movement, the castanets, which to my ears don’t sound so much Spanish as like rattling skeletons. Really it’s all very eerie, a ‘danse macabre’ leading to death by exhaustion!

The mask was silent. (Patricia Kopatchinskaja)

The two violin concertos coupled on this recording display as many affinities as they do divergences. Both stem from creators in conflict with their native Russia – one choosing to return there, the other settling permanently in exile; both belong to the aesthetic of the ‘return to order’ observed from 1920 onwards and characterised by the reappropriation of models from the past. If Prokofiev preserves the traditional bases of the concerto, he combines them with a search for a new lyricism. As for Stravinsky, he reworks tried and trusted models while offering a deliberately neutral, distanced expressivity.