Roland Pöntinen INGMAR BERGMAN: MUSIC FROM THE FILMS

Ingmar Bergman (1918- 2007) made fifty films, directed more than 150 theatre productions and wrote several books, but the recurrent thread running through his life was music. He often said that if he hadn't become a director he would have wished to become a conductor, and went so far as to claim that ‘film and music are almost the same thing. They are means of expression and communication that go beyond human wisdom and that touch a person’s emotional centre.’ Bergman’s interest in classical music became evident early on in his career. Music in Darkness (1948) is about a pianist who loses his sight in a shooting accident, To Joy (1950) features a violinist who dreams of a solo career and Summer Interlude (1951) takes place at the Royal Swedish Opera. He admired all who could perform music, reserving his greatest love for pianists, and concert pianists are portrayed in Hour of the Wolf, Face to Face and Autumn Sonata. 

One of Bergman’s favourite Swedish pianists was Roland Pöntinen, who here performs a number of pieces featured in Bergman’s films, by composers including Mozart, Chopin and Schumann. Pöntinen is joined by the Stenhammar Quartet in the second movement of Schumann’s piano quintet, used by Bergman to great effect in the award-winning Fanny and Alexander. Another of the director’s favourite performers, the cellist Torleif Thedéen, also contributes to the project, with the sarabandes from three of Bach’s suites for solo cello

Martin Fröst / Lucas Debargue / Janine Jansen / Torleif Thedéen MESSIAEN Quatuor pour la Fin du Temps

The Quartet for the End of Time is intensely personal music and it deserves an equally personal response from anyone playing it now. When Martin Fröst overheard a rehearsal through an open window as a teenager at a music camp, he was transfixed: ‘I was bewitched … and I ended up walking away from the house that day with a different view on the world.’

It was the first work he played with Janine Jansen when they met 16 years ago and the cellist on that occasion was Thorleif Thedéen. This was a transforming experience for all three musicians. Martin Fröst remembers it as ‘one of life’s rare and profound musical moments, when everything comes together and you are left with a deep sense of connection not only to the piece, but to each other – we have been trying to find the right circumstances to record the piece together ever since.’

Finally, these musicians have brought this cherished project to fruition, joined by the brilliant pianist Lucas Debargue. The deep expressive power of the Quartet was brought home to them once again – and the time was right too: ‘As the world has been marking and reflecting upon the several anniversaries of the World Wars in recent years, it felt that now was the perfect time to get this project off the ground, especially too as I feel the music, is still as relevant in today’s political climate as it was in 1941.’
 

Anne Sofie von Otter / Cord Garben / Berliner Philharmoniker / James Levine BERLIOZ Les Nuits d'été - Mélodies

Berlioz composed his song-cycle Les nuits d’été for mezzo-soprano; so it is curious that Anne Sofie von Otter should transpose four songs down, retaining the keys intended for contralto. She is at her best in ‘Le spectre de la rose’, although her marvellous capacity to spin lines while fully articulating the words and their meaning is apparent everywhere. Was the semitone transposition of ‘L’île inconnue’ really necessary? ‘Villanelle’, ‘Absence’, and ‘Au cimetière’ lie a third lower (as with Janet Baker), marring Berlioz’s expertly conceived orchestrations and making the Berlin Philharmonic plusher than ever. Levine is a sensitive Berliozian, but the sound is more dense than intense, the voice embedded in the texture: some might prefer it in higher relief. Five mélodies with piano are repeated from the recent multi-voiced DG Berlioz collection which I have already reviewed (see July 1994). Further hearing reminds me to praise Cord Garben’s idiomatic playing, particularly the birds in ‘Le matin’ and the storm in ‘La belle Isabeau’. The other songs are ‘La mort d’Ophélie’, ‘La captive’ and ‘La belle voyageuse’; a pity not to use Berlioz’s orchestrations of the latter pair. A small orchestra and chorus reappear for ‘Strophes’ from Roméo et Juliette, exquisitely placed. An odd collection, therefore, but infinitely worth it for the singing. (Julian Rushton / BBC Music Magazine))

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)