Naoko Yoshino / Marie-Pierre Langlamet DANSES

 

DANSES

 

Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra / Vasily Petrenko STRAVINSKY Petrushka

 

PETRUSHKA

 

Sinfonia of London / John Wilson RESPIGHI Fontane di Roma - Pini di Roma - Feste Romane

ROMAN TRILOGY

Michael Foyle / Maksim Štšura THE GREAT WAR CENTENARY

‘Music expresses that which cannot be put into words and yet cannot remain silent’, wrote Victor Hugo in 1864. Half a century later, his words had never felt more pertinent. Every composer writing during World War I found a unique way, through their music, to describe and protest against the horrors that were tearing civilization apart.

Created in the depth of morbidity, Debussy’s parting musical gift is a subtle, dignified and heroic celebration of youth and joie de vivre. A sense of patriotism in the war years links Debussy with the foremost Moravian composer of the day, Leoš Janáček. Ottorino Respighi was only in his thirties when the war broke out. His 1917 Sonata for violin and piano is a work of Romance written in the time of hate, a reminder that the past and the future remain beacons of hope in desperate times.

Commissioned for this recital programme to reflect on the centenary of The Great War from our own times, Kenneth Hesketh’s Inscrizione, derivata, subtitled ‘A lie to the Dying’, is a quasi-meditation on the dying man, his anxious thoughts and the spasms of his failing heart being weaved conspicuously into a narrative of disquieting melancholy.
Foyle-Štšura Duo Praised for ‘playing of compelling conviction’ (The Daily Telegraph) and ‘astonishing mutual feeling, understanding and responsiveness’ (Seen and Heard International), Foyle-Štšura Duo won the Beethoven Piano Society of Europe Duo Competition and the Salieri-Zinetti International Chamber Music Competition in 2015.

Francesca Dego / Francesca Leonardi SUITE ITALIENNE

The Italian violin and piano duo Francesca Dego and Francesca Leonardi will release a new disc on Deutsche Grammophon this October, featuring Stravinsky’s Suite Italienne, Respighi’s Violin Sonata in B minor for violin and piano and the world premiere recording of three works by the Italian composer Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco.

In addition to violin paraphrases of operas by Rossini and Verdi, the disc includes Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s “Ballade” Op. 107 for violin and piano, which was written for and premiered by Tossy Spivakovsky in 1940. It was left to gather dust until February 2018, when it was recovered by Dego with the assistance of the composer’s granddaughter, Diana Castelnuovo-Tedesco. It is now available internationally in print thanks to Edizioni Curci.

Sonja Leutwyler / Astrid Leutwyler / Benjamin Engeli HYMNE À LA BEAUTÈ

Hymne à la beauté' brings together rarely heard gems of chamber music in delightful arrangements for voice, violin and piano, passionately performed by the aspiring and outstanding Swiss artists Sonja Leutwyler (mezzo soprano), Astrid Leutwyler (violin) and Benjamin Engeli (piano). This programme of discoveries features captivating works by Louis Spohr, Johannes Brahms, Charles Ives, Camille Saint-Saëns, Felix Petyrek, Czesaw Marek and Ottorino Respighi. On a special commission for this CD, the Swiss composer Martin Wettstein has composed the piece 'Hymne à la beauté (hymn to beauty)' for mezzo soprano, violin and piano after a poem by Charles Baudelaire.

Mara Dobresco SOLEILS DE NUIT

That which we sense without knowing, what we cannot perceive in the darkness, in the reflections or the dancing glimmers, that which can only be said in music, or can only appear in a dream… This is the subject of the album Soleils de Nuit (“Suns of Night”). It is not an album for insomniacs, made to caress and relax. Rather it is an evening stroll, with the particular listening quality a stroll can elicit, in search of extraordinary (or unheard of) lighting… An eyes-wide-open dream.

Alongside the magnificent nocturnes of Chopin, Grieg, Debussy and Tchaikovsky, this disc aims to present lesser-known compositions, such as the nocturnes of Lipatti and Britten, Enesco’s Carillon nocturne, as well as compositions from our time, by Oscar Strasnoy, Philippe Hersant and Anatol Vieru. The choice to include contemporary compositions – and thus share the project with the composers of today – was important to me. I had the opportunity to collaborate with Oscar Strasnoy, who dedicated the cycle Piano4 to me. The Berceuse on this disc is drawn from the cycle, and I have developed a deep affection for the work. My affinity with the music of Philippe Hersant was immediate. His music speaks to me; when playing it I feel “at home”.

I am especially happy to include the Nocturne in F-sharp minor by Dinu Lipatti, my mentor from the beginning, a great pianist whose compositions are unknown to the general public. This Nocturne, written in 1939, is dedicated to Clara Haskil, who appreciated it enormously and performed it on numerous occasions. This piece had to feature in a program which is a search for light in darkness. I always remember the words he regularly repeated to his students: “Always search for the light higher in other people, and as deeply as possible within yourself.”

I chose to end this dreamy evening stroll with a prodigious composition: a posthumous piece by G. Enesco, drawn from the Pièces impromptues. In it, one hears the bells of northern Romania’s monasteries. The atmosphere is palpable, solemn, pensive, impulsive, and at the very end of the piece, I imagine a farewell gesture, formed by a hand at the edge of the world.

Teodora Gheorghiu / Jonathan Aner ART NOVEAU

No, she’s not Angela’s sister, cousin, or secret daughter, although being called Gheorghiu can’t have hurt a young singer’s lonely path of rejections, rigged auditions, and raised hopes. There’s even a nice photo of both singers hugging on Teodora’s website. Teodora Gheorghiu is a rising name in major European opera houses, like Vienna and Geneva, and she crops up in Naïve’s Vivaldi series. Discovered by José Carreras, she gained some attention with her intriguing first album of music written for Anna de Amicis, and with this second album, she seems still keen not to flood the market with yet more Puccini arias. Although darkish in timbre, hers is a very different lyric soprano to Angela’s, with less covering and with a pleasing Slavic edge to the sound. The latter could become strident if she is not careful, but here it is a delight, compared to the watery, neither-here-nor-there sopranos that colleges are churning out. More than once in this enterprising multilingual album, her detailed, lively approach reminded me of the versatile Sicilian soprano Nuccia Focile, and for me compliments don’t come higher.  

This program is a pan-European take on Art Nouveau, with four contemporary but seemingly disparate composers. The Strauss items are familiar enough. We start with his early set, Mädchenblumen , where the florid, sensual texts are tastefully handled, with that clean, refreshing tone of hers keeping any sugariness at bay. I have heard more involved accounts of the later Ophelia songs, but it is hard not to admire Gheorghiu’s taste and refusal to overplay these “mini operas.” Although steeped in a similar romanticism, the lovely set of Zemlinsky songs brings out the best in this young singer, her simple, direct approach being ideal for what are essentially sophisticatedly written arrangements of Tuscan folk texts. Although an early work, there are clear hallmarks of what Zemlinsky’s romantically developed Modernism would become.
We step back a bit, tonally, into Ravel’s Five Popular Greek Melodies, sensually done and providing a good introduction to the four single Ravel songs that follow. Her Rêves is poised and sincere, but the florid and dramatic Tripatos takes Gheorghiu’s voice to its limit, with the runs not bang on. Her strengths lie in the more smoothly poised songs like the Ballade de la reine morte d’aimer . The early Respighi cycle Dieta silvane is a light but utterly delightful discovery, with the texts of his artist/contemporary, Antonio Rubino, depicting a very modern take on classical imagery such as fauns and Pan. The final song, Crepuscolo (Twilight), is as fine a lament as any for the Art Nouveau movement in general.
Gheorghiu’s Italian and French are excellent; in fact she is convincing in all three languages, although I would like her German diction to be placed more forward vocally, as that gets cloudy. Perhaps Gheorghiu missed a trick by not visiting Spain on this European journey of early 20th-century song writing, as there is just enough room for some Falla items, for instance. Jonathan Aner’s playing is superb throughout, never cloying in the Ravel, nor overbearing in the Strauss songs. The Respighi, though, is what makes this album extremely valuable. Aparte is spending money on her with a lavish presentation and booklet, which contains not only full texts and translations but also biographies and an interview. Sound is excellent, airy but focused. We vocal collectors end up with hundreds of pleasing but same-y recital programs, so it is nice to see this singer stick out for mainly the right reasons. (FANFARE / Barnaby Rayfield)

James Ehnes / Andrew Armstrong ELGAR - DEBUSSY - RESPIGHI Violin Sonatas

The shadow of death hovers over Debussy’s Violin Sonata though you would never guess from its generally genial disposition: in 1915, with his creative urges stifled by the slaughter of the Great War (he wrote barely anything during 1914), Debussy discovered that he had cancer of the rectum, his mother died on 23 March, and his mother-in-law six days later. In the summer of 1915 he and his wife rented a house at Pourville on the Normandy coast and he began to compose again. ‘I want to work,’ he wrote to his publisher Durand, ‘not so much for myself, as to provide a proof, however small, that thirty million Boches can’t destroy French thought...’

Among the works produced in this creative outburst were the Sonatas for cello and piano and for flute, viola and harp. These were the first of a planned Six sonates pour instruments divers, par Claude Debussy – musicien français (as he now signed himself). The Sonata for violin and piano to which he turned in 1916 was to be the last of these he completed – and indeed his last major work – before his death. Debussy found its composition difficult, finishing the final movement, Très animé, in October 1916, four months before completing the two preceding movements – Allegro vivo and Intermède (marked Fantasque et léger). The composer himself with the violinist Gaston Poulet gave the premiere on 5 May 1917 in the Salle Gaveau in aid of the charity Foyer du soldat aveugle. He played the Sonata again in September that year at two concerts in Biarritz, concerts which proved to be his last public performances.

Debussy died aged just 55 on 5 March 1918. Just two days earlier in Bologna, Ottorino Respighi with his old violin teacher Federico Sarti had given the premiere of his new Sonata in B minor. Completed within months of Debussy’s, it was composed shortly after Fontane di Roma, the first triptych of Respighi’s great trilogy of Roman tone poems which shot the composer to international fame, and contemporary with his most popular work, La Boutique fantasque (the ballet, based on Rossini’s music, written for Diaghilev’s Ballets russes).

Respighi had, in fact, written a violin sonata prior to the B minor masterpiece – the Sonata in D minor completed in 1897. The influences of Schumann, maybe Franck and certainly Brahms are readily discernible in this assured student work. Respighi, whose own instruments were the violin, viola and piano, had then gone on to study composition with Giuseppe Martucci and afterwards Rimsky-Korsakov. Yet the B minor Sonata, while naturally more confident and individual, still retains a Brahmsian flavour. Witness the first movement, Moderato, with its constantly changing meters and soaring lyrical line which leads to the Andante espressivo second movement in E major, rising to a passionate climax. The finale, Allegro moderato ma energico, was inspired by the last movement of Brahms’s Fourth Symphony, a passacaglia. Interestingly, instead of a conventional eight bar phrase, the theme is ten bars long. It is repeated eighteen times within the movement through various modulations before a muscular, intense coda brings the work to a conclusion with its final bars (Largo) marked ffff.

Some five and a half months after the premiere of Respighi’s Sonata – on the morning of 20 August 1918 to be precise – Sir Edward Elgar noted laconically, ‘Wrote some music’. The music was the preliminary sketch for what was to be his Violin Sonata in E minor op.82. Having produced virtually nothing in the previous twelve months, a sudden burst of energy saw Elgar’s three great chamber works – the Sonata, String Quartet op.83 and Piano Quintet op.84 – composed at Brinkwells, his Sussex home, between that August morning and early 1919.

Like the violin sonatas by Debussy and Respighi, Elgar’s has three movements (Allegro, Andante, Allegro non troppo) but here, while it has an important and busy part, the piano plays the more traditional role of accompanist than in the French and Italian works. W.H. Reed, who gave the first public performance with Landon Ronald (Aeolian Hall, 21 March 1919) thought that the Andante, with its central section anticipating the third movement of the Cello Concerto, was ‘utterly unlike anything I have ever heard in chamber or other music: it is most fantastic, and full of subtle touches of great beauty’. Elgar himself described the finale as ‘very broad and soothing like the last movement of the 11nd Symphy’ [sic].

There is nothing in the work to hint of the existence of composers like Bartók and Schoenberg but, as the critic L. Dutton Green wrote of the Sonata, ‘[it] seems like a protest against the far-fetched devices of the ultra- moderns – it seems to say: See what can be done yet with old forms, the old methods of composing, the old scales: if you only know how to do it your work may yet be new, yet original, yet beautiful.’

Jean Sibelius gained a comprehensive knowledge of the violin, having studied the instrument at Helsinki Conservatory in his youth. The Violin Concerto displays to the full a formidable grasp of the instrument’s capabilities, and Sibelius toyed with the idea of a second violin concerto during the period of the sixth and seventh symphonies. However, like the mystical eighth symphony these plans came to nothing. What we do have however, is a wonderful collection of shorter works for violin and piano which unaccountably have remained in relative obscurity. Opus numbers 78 to 81 date from the years of World War I. Finland’s communications with the rest of Europe during the conflict were almost cut off, and for Sibelius this period of isolation was one of financial and spiritual hardship. The short works for violin and piano provided a way to make ends meet as Scandinavian publishers were happy to take less challenging fare during this period. The charming Berceuse op.79/6, the last of a set of six pieces, is a calm, melancholy lullaby. (Jeremy Nicholas / October 2015)

James Ehnes / Andrew Armstrong ELGAR - DEBUSSY - RESPIGHI Violin Sonatas

After a rapturous critical reception for their Franck & Strauss Violin Sonatas, James and Andrew turn their attention to three violin sonatas all composed around the years of World War I. The Sibelius 'Berceuse' also dates from the war years when Finland was isolated from the rest of Europe. Sibelius was short of money and busy writing the 6th and 7th symphonies, and planning his 8th: the six short pieces of Op. 79 were attractive to publishers who were wary of large scale works with little chance of commercial return during the hostilities. Debussy would die in 1918 and had, like Elgar, composed very little during the conflict. 'I want to work,' he wrote to his publisher Durand, 'not so much for myself, as to provide a proof, however small, that thirty million Boches can t destroy French thought'. Elgar told a friend 'I cannot do any real work with the awful shadow hanging over us' he said. Suffering from ill health, Elgar wrote the sonata in Sussex where a copse of gnarled lightning-ravaged trees, near his house on the South Downs, inspired him to embark on three late great chamber works. Respighi s sonata inhabits a heroic late romantic almost Brahmsian world, seemingly unscathed by the devastation of the War to end all wars . (Presto Classical)

Anne-Sophie Mutter / Lambert Orkis PROKOFIEV - CRUMB - WEBERN - RESPIGHI Recital 2000 (CD 23 / ASM35)

This is a live recording, made at a pair of concerts in May, and ‘live’ is undoubtedly the word for it. All the performances have an improvisatory quality, interpretative decisions seemingly made before your very ears. At the beginning of the Prokofiev it is as though Mutter and Orkis, realising that the audience in the Beethovensaal are already uncommonly silent and attentive, had decided after a quick glance at each other to begin the Sonata almost confidingly, with quiet tenderness and muted colour. Once or twice they take risks: the third and most epigrammatic of the Webern pieces is played with a mere thread of tone; in the hall it must have approached the limits of audibility. But this approach powerfully distils the intimate but intense emotions of these pieces; there is something close to pain in the second of them.
Once in a while the risks show. Not long after the opening of the Prokofiev there is an abrupt, stabbed accent that you suspect Mutter would have had second thoughts about in a studio recording, and an equally sudden expressive scoop in the slow movement – hauntingly poignant as she phrases and colours it – robs her intonation of its purity for a moment. There are similar but less hazardous extremes in the big gestures and expansive palette of the Respighi; fewer in George Crumb’s evocative, post-Bartokian Nocturnes, with their striking use of plucked, brushed or drummed piano strings. Throughout the recital Mutter’s playing is nervously intense, emotionally searching, and you are bound to refer this to the fact that she dedicates the disc to the memory of her husband, who died five years ago. It is vulnerable music-making, not always comfortable, but deeply expressive and often moving. The recording is spacious, the audience hushed.' (Gramophone)

Magdalena Kožená SONGS

Magdalena Kožená's multi-lingual recital shows this singer's formidable talent for performing widely varying musical styles. Beginning with her idiomatic French (of which we had a substantial sampling on her previous French arias disc . . . she uses her light but well-placed and penetrating mezzo to illuminate Ravel's seductive Madagascar Songs. Listen to how Kožená creates a nearhypnotic effect with her passionate repeated cries of "Nahandove". In Shostakovich's Satires (5 Romances for Soprano and Piano ) Kožená embodies the composer's varied emotional states, from bemusement to sarcasm, and, in the concluding "Kreutzer Sonata", repressed frenzy . . . After Shostakovich's sharp edges, Respighi's lush romantic rhapsody "Il Tramonto" allows Kožená the opportunity to luxuriate in long, expansive melodic lines as well as in the resonance of pure Italianate vowels, for which the singer provides an engaging fullness of tone and depth of expression. From this we turn to Schulhoff's "Drei Stimmungsbilder" (for mezzo-soprano, violin, and piano), which begins with a lazy, quasi blues song about the sea and ends in a Debussian impressionistic haze. Kožená's creamy tone and gentle delivery make even the German language sound soft and inviting. In Britten's "Charm of Lullabies" . . . her sincerity and unerring musical instincts shine through, communicating the power and poignancy of Britten's songs. The well-chosen selections offer a variety of accompaniments, from the flute, cello, and piano trio in the Ravel, to the string quartet in the Respighi, with Malcom Martineau's sensitive pianism providing fundamental support throughout. DG's recording provides vividly realistic sonics, placing the singer and instrumentalists in natural, well-balanced perspective. In sum, this is an excellent recital disc that will please connoisseurs of the voice as well as collectors of uncommon repertoire.

(Record Review / Victor Carr Jr, ClassicsToday.com / 01. September 2004)

Ravel wanted his "Chansons madécasses" to sound 'new, dramatic and erotic' and Kozená succeeds, performing them on full throttle, her phrases dripping with desire and anguish. In Shostakovich's "Satires" she negotiates the composer's difficult blend of emotion and irony with masterfull control. And she pares her voice down to gripping simplicity for Britten's "English Lullabies". Martineau's accompaniments are beautifully well-jugded -- almost another voice rather than an accompaniment. This feels less like an recital than an exploration of limits -- limits that Kozená will keep pushing back.

(Record Review / Warwick Thompson and Carzena Hugh-Jones, Classic FM / 01. May 2004)

Much interest in Magdalena Kozená's powerful new recital disc will be centered on Erwin Schulhoff's "Drei Stimmungsbilder" ("Three Atmospheric Portraits"), op. 12. This haunting piece by the singularly talented composer . . . is well worth hearing. The gifted mezzo is helped in no little part by the ideal accompaniment provided by Malcolm Martineau who also lends strong support to Ms. Kozená's moody singing of Britten's spooky "A Charm of Lullabies". The Czech singer's charmingly accented English lends the music an extra brooding quality. Written for Peter Pears, the music is a showcase for Ms. Kozená's ravishingly beautiful low voice. It would be hard to find a better performance of Respighi's magnificent work for soprano and string quartet, "Il tramonto" . . . none have found the sensuous heart of the music better than Kozená. The Henschel quartet plays splendidly, as do the instrumentalists in Ravel's "Chansons madécasses" . . . Young Magdalena Kozená proves a master of these challenging works, each and every one. This is an impressive follow up to her first recital and is, for this reviewer, the lovely mezzo's finest work on disc to date. The recording is first rate . . . Highly recommended.

(Record Review / James Canmer, Fanfare (Tenafly, NJ) / 01. November 2004)

A treasure-trove . . . this is a recital you can listen to in one sitting, marvelling at the artistry of a great singer. (Record Review / Matthew Rye, Daily Telegraph (London) / 11. December 2004)