Janine Jansen / Antonio Pappano 12 STRADIVARI

 

12 STRADIVARI

Jean Daufresne / Mathilde Nguyen MIROIR

MIROIR

Dana Zemtsov / Cathelijne Noorland ROMANTIC METAMORPHOSES

The term ‘Romantic’ has always been something of a mystery to me due to its many and often subtle definitions. On this CD I invite the listener to re-explore this phenomenon, so often evident in day-to-day life, from different perspectives. T he programme takes as its point of departure the nineteenth-century classical romanticism of the beautiful ‘Sonata’ by Henri Vieuxtemps. This is the lyrical, sensitive type of romanticism so typical of that period. In contrast to this is ‘Suite for viola and piano’, Ernest Bloch’s romantically fantasized adventure through savage nature and tribes under the sun in the jungle. Waxman’s ‘Carmen Fantasy’, which probably needs littleintroduction, is a strong depiction of Bizet’s dramatic opera.

For me personally, however, the most ‘romantic’ and personal piece on this CD is the ‘Melodie im alten Stil’ by Evgeni Zemtsov. The nostalgic style in which this modern piece is written, with its lyrical melody, ornamented in Baroque style, imposed on fresh, contrasting harmonies, is just one reason to admire it. A second one is the story behind it: during his studies in Moscow the composer fell in love with a beautiful girl. She played the viola, and he wrote this beautiful piece for her instrument as a declaration of love. One year later their first child – my father – was born. (Dana Zemtsov)

Soo-Min Lee / Hyo-Sun Lim CLARKE - VIEUXTEMPS Sonatas - Capriccio

At age 18, Soo-Min Lee already won 1st prize in Dong-A competition which is one of the biggest competitions in Korea.

She studied with Prof. En-sik Choi in Seoul National University and after she finished Bachelor, she continued her studies in Cologne with Prof. Rainer Moog. She finished her Diplom with distiction and Konzertexamen in Musikhochschule in Cologne.

From her devoting to contemporary music, she has participated in International Ensemble Modern Academy in 2008-09. Since then she plays in Ensemble Modern as a guest violist throuout many major concert halls in Europe. Recent engagement include appearences at Salzburg, Paris Salle Pleyel, Berlin Konzerthaus, Frankfurt Alte Oper, Roma Santa Cecilia, Milano among others.

She has been invited to Salzburg Music Festival,Verbier Music Festival, Open Chamber Music in Prussia Cove, Seoul Spring Festival of chamber music, and Tong-Young international music festival.

She has played as the 1st Principal Violist in Duisburger Philharmoniker/ Deutsche Oper am Rhein. And she has been invited as a guest principal violist to KBS symphony Orchestra and TIMF Orchestra in Seoul, Korea.

Recently she teaches in Seoul National University, Korea national university of arts and Inje University. Also as a member of Quartet Knecht who has recorded two CDs from Sony classical label.

Hilary Hahn RETROSPECTIVE

On January 19, Hilary Hahn releases Retrospective, an album showcasing all of her recordings for Deutsche Grammophon, along with new, unedited live performance recordings, which provide the full immediacy of the concert experience.

The collection includes at least one track from each of her 12 Deutsche Grammophon albums and live recordings from Hahn's Meistersaal concert in Berlin, an event especially dedicated to her fans. The recording includes the live performance of Mozart's Sonata KV 379, in addition to Max Richter's “Mercy” and Tina Davidson's “Blue Curve of the Earth,” with pianist Cory Smythe, from In 27 Pieces: the Hilary Hahn Encores.  

Hahn made her first record at the age of 17: Hilary Hahn Plays Bach. She has gone on to release sixteen more albums on Deutsche Grammophon and Sony, in addition to an Oscar-nominated movie soundtrack and an award-winning recording for children, and win three Grammy awards. This latest release Retrospective references Hahn’s latest decade and a half of recording activity, from age 23 to the current day. 

For many years, Hahn has received unsolicited works of art from fans of all ages at concerts, which she features on her website and social media. To include her fans in this retrospective and acknowledge their longtime presence in her career, Hahn decided to use fan art for both the cover and the internal booklet. She chose pieces by professional and amateur artists in Turkey, Switzerland, Canada, and the U.S., and the artists will be compensated for the use of their work.

Christine Fraser, who drew the cover art says, “Fan art seems like a way to honor a person and to visually say, 'thank-you.' In Hilary's case, she has provided me with such a wonderful array of music that I frequently listen to while drawing or painting, I wanted to show her my appreciation by creating something to convey that message. For me, it's exciting to see an artistic exchange like this, as music has always been a huge influence in my own creative process. I am both honored and inspired by this opportunity and it is an incredible feeling to be part of a collaboration that includes artists of different age groups, with different styles, and from various locations around the world.” 

Antoine Tamestit / Cédric Tiberghien BEL CANTO

Going well beyond mere historical interest, this album unveils the charms of a repertoire that delighted Parisian concert halls and salons throughout the 19th century. It demonstrates how the viola finally emerged from the violin’s shadow thanks to virtuoso playing, now resuscitated by the talent of Antoine Tamestit and Cédric Tiberghien in pieces which offer much more than the exquisite languors of bel canto. Italian for 'beautiful singing' or 'beautiful song', the term remains vague and ambiguous but is commonly used to evoke a lost singing tradition; in this case the famed singing tone of Antoine Tamestit's viola, a 1672 Stradivarius, loaned by the Habisreutinger Foundation.

Born in Paris, Antoine Tamestit studied with Jesse Levine at Yale University and with Tabea Zimmermann. He has won several coveted prizes including the William Primrose Competition, first prize at the Young Concert Artists (YCAT) international auditions, a place on BBC Radio 3’s New Generation Artists Scheme and a Borletti-Buitoni Trust Award.

Antoine Tamestit’s distinguished discography includes Berlioz’s 'Harold en Italie', which was recorded with the London Symphony Orchestra and Valery Gergiev and released in 2015 by LSO Live. For Naïve he has recorded three of the Bach Suites, Hindemith solo and concertante works recorded with the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra and Paavo Järvi, and an earlier recording of 'Harold' with Marc Minkowski and Les Musicians du Louvre.

This particular diva is the viola; its servant is Antoine Tamestit, here making his first solo recording for harmonia mundi. (Presto Classical)

Kim Kashkashian / Robert Levin ELEGIES

Kim Kashkashian is easily one of the finest violists to ever place her bow on the instrument. She shines just as effervescently in the company of an orchestra as she does solo or here alongside Robert Levin, a trusty accompanist with whom she shares a palpable musical bond, and puts the range of her talents on full display in this fine chamber program of mostly rarities.

On the whole, this album is very warmly recorded. Levin pulls from the piano an almost gamelan-like quality, while Kashkashian luxuriates in the plurivocity afforded to her. She interacts with her instrument as would fingers upon a spine and her tonal depth often breaches cello territory. For anyone who is curious to discover what her playing is all about but who is wary of her penchant for the contemporary, this is an ideal place to start. (ECM Reviews)

Hilary Hahn MOZART 5 - VIEUXTEMPS 4 Violin Concertos

Hilary Hahn’s newest album, Mozart 5, Vieuxtemps 4 – Violin Concertos, is her first recording with The Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen and Paavo Järvi, after performing and touring with the ensemble and conductor for many years. The disc releases on March 31, and is Hahn’s first orchestral offering since her 2010 pairing of Tchaikovsky’s violin concerto and Jennifer Higdon’s Pulitzer-prize winning violin concerto, which was written for Hahn. With this new album, she returns to core violin repertoire, hot on the heels of her critically-acclaimed, Grammy-winning album of 27 commissioned short pieces, In 27 Pieces: the Hilary Hahn Encores, and an improvised recording with prepared pianist Hauschka, titled Silfra.
Mozart 5, Vieuxtemps 4 also brings Hahn full circle, after more than three decades of violin playing, to two concertos that have been part of her repertoire since she was ten years old. Vieuxtemps’s Violin Concerto No. 4 was the last large piece she learned with Klara Berkovich, her teacher from ages five to ten. Several months later, Mozart 5 was the first concerto that Jascha Brodsky taught her at the Curtis Institute of Music. Berkovich began her violin studies in Odessa and went on to teach in St. Petersburg (then Leningrad) before emigrating to the States. Brodsky was one of the last pupils of the legendary Eugène Ysaÿe, who, coincidentally, was a star student of Vieuxtemps, making Vieuxtemps Hahn’s musical great-grandfather in the violinist family tree.

Both concertos are part of Hahn’s active performance repertoire, and both were written by composers who were violin virtuosos in their own right. Hahn writes, “It’s fun to delve into [Mozart’s] ingenuity and emotional directness, his writing speaking directly to listeners while performers delight in his myriad clever phrases. As a result, Mozart improves moods; when I look around the stage at people playing his works, I always see smiles.” On this recording, Hahn plays the cadenzas by Hungarian violinist Joseph Joachim.

Like Mozart, Vieuxtemps initially learned violin from his father and toured Europe as a prodigy. When he wrote Concerto No. 4, he was living in St. Petersburg, where he was a court violinist to Tsar Nicholas I and taught violin at the Conservatory. “This concerto is operatically lyrical and demands flexibility, panache, focus, a flair for drama, and chamber-music-style unity even in its most symphonic dimensions,” Hahn explains.

Of the collaboration for this album, Hahn writes, “One of my favorite things about working on a piece over many years is the chance to experiment broadly with expression, concepts, and technique — on my own and with my colleagues. When those colleagues have been musical partners for a long time, as is the case with Paavo Järvi and The Deutsche KammerphilharmonieBremen, our shared access to the imaginative aspects of music is immediate and honest. Trying a new idea is as natural as breathing, and challenging each other’s musical inclinations is like conversing with your oldest and closest friends.”

Dana Zemtsov ENIGMA Works for Solo Viola

Unlikely other stringed instruments the viola repertoire hasn't been as thoroughly explored, but this colourful anyhology of music for solo viola contains some of the most challenging works. Famous for her soulful dedication to the viola Dana Zemtsov takes the listener along to a world of warm, deeply touching sounds. She wants to warn the listener for the music on her debut recording: ... here one will scarsely find
lyrical melodies and heartwarming beauty with which music is so often associated.
Instead, there will be tales of war, perplexed wanderings through obscured labyrinths, intense cries of despair, sour tears of sorrow, maybe at places an ironic grinn...
For 2014 and 2015 Channel Classics and Dana agreed on two more recordings, one with piano acccompaniment and another with orchestra.
Winner of numerous competitions and developing an outstanding career, Dana Zemtsov (b. 1992) is one of the most promising international viola soloists of her generation.
Highlights in the 2012 / 13 season include Dana’s performance of the Bartók Viola Concerto in the Great Hall of the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, chamber music with Janine Jansen and Martin Frost during the Utrecht Chamber Music Festival and a recital in Carnegie Hall of New York.
Dana is First Prize laureate of several competitions in Luxemburg, Italy, Austria, Germany, Portugal and the Netherlands. In 2010 she won the Dutch Television competition ‘Evening of the Young Musician’ becoming the ‘Young Musician of the Year’ and representing The Netherlands at the Eurovision Young Musicians Competition in Vienna.
Dana is regularly appearing on the most important international stages and festivals as well as chamber music partner as soloist.
Dana Zemtsov was born in 1992 in Mexico City. She comes from a family of musicians. At the age of 5 she received her first music lessons from her grandmother and from her parents, both viola players, Mikhail Zemtsov and Julia Dinerstein. Since 2012 she studies with the famous viola virtuoso Michael Kugel.