Nadia Kossinskaja GUITAR DREAMS

GUITAR DREAMS

Claudio Constantini / Louiza Hamadi 20TH CENTURY TANGO

20TH CENTURY TANGO

Tabea Zimmermann / Javier Perianes CANTILENA

                                                                    CANTILENA

Azumi Nishizawa DEBUSSY HOMMAGE

Fascinating journey through the music that unites Debussy with Spanish composers. Places are sounds: Granada. The city was a recurring source of inspiration for Debussy, and yet the composer never visited it; his knowledge of it was gained only indirectly through literary accounts, images, and musical sources heard in Paris. All of these materials served to unleash his imagination in regard to its sound, which according to Falla represented ‘the truth without authenticity, as not a single note is borrowed from Spanish folklore and yet, even in its smallest details, it wonderfully expresses Spain’. A common element links all the composers in the present program: the city of Paris. From the end of the nineteenth to the early twentieth century, the French capital was a fundamental goal for many Spanish composers, who at some point in their lives went there for study or work purposes.

Marc Regnier ZAMBRA!

Since its outset at the turn of the 19th century, the six-string guitar has been an inseparable part of Spain's musical life. Although Italy and France were also prolific centers of performers, composers and builders during the early decades of the century, Spain later became the instrument's iconic country. Guitarists started accompanying flamenco singers, making the guitar an intrinsic part of the art form and positioning it as Spain's national instrument. Many concert guitarists --most notably Julián Arcas-- included it in their performances and compositions. Both flamenco and classical guitars increased their volume, quality of sound, and overall possibilities with the designs by luthier Antonio de Torres, whose construction standards have remained unchanged to this day. A long list of referents would ensue in later generations, including Francisco Tárrega, Miguel Llobet, Emilio Pujol and Andrés Segovia. Moreover, both Spanish and foreign composers evoked the sound of the guitar and the forms associated with it as an immediate reference to the Mediterranean country.

Vilde Frang / José Gallardo HOMAGE

Vilde Frang’s Homage is more than a captivating programme of short pieces for violin and piano, it is also a homage to the players of the Golden Age of the Violin, such as Fritz Kreisler, Leopold Auer and Joseph Szigeti. The recital includes music originally conceived not just for the violin, but also for piano, orchestra or voice, and proves once again, as BBC Music Magazine wrote, that “Frang has the knack of breathing life into every note, whether by variations in phrasing, attack, tone or dynamic.”

Vilde Frang has conceived the album as something of a homage to her illustrious predecessors. Born in 1986, she is clearly very much a violinist of today, and – as a Norwegian trained in Germany – she did not grow up in the Central and Eastern-European tradition of Heifetz, Kreisler, Auer and Szigeti. That being said, she brings her own, distinctively captivating magic to her instrument. As Gramophone wrote of her performance of the Korngold concerto, a work that has its roots in the composer’s glorious late-Romantic scores for Hollywood: “Frang has a winning way with the rubato that makes the melodies yearn and smile, but there’s a fragile thread of silver woven through her passagework that bounces off the glinting accompaniment of the Frankfurt RSO as an opalescent gown catches the light in a mirrored ballroom. Fresh thought illuminates each phrase and she has the technique to bring off every idea, from the wild caprice of the first movement’s dash to the double-bar, to a coquettish (or demure?) restraint in the finale’s big tune.” (Warner Classics)

Tristan Pfaff PIANO ENCORES

The encore, an end-of-concert ritual, is always highly appreciated by the audience. In a way, through them the listener gets to know the artist a little better, as encore choices reveal taste and personality. Thus, pianist Tristan Pfaff interprets above all pieces he loves: from the Baroque era of Bach to music of the 20th century by Prokofiev and Kabalevsky, a very broad musical horizon is proposed. Popular song is also present with Gershwin's 'The man I love', in its piano version.

Here, after two discs – one devoted to Liszt, the other to Schubert, Pfaff follows one of Schumann's numerous bits of advice inscribed on the score of his 'Album für die Jugend': 'Nothing great can be achieved in art without enthusiasm'. With this disc, recorded in very few takes, Tristan Pfaff, whose greatest pleasure is to play onstage, gives us a succession of encores… beloved works offered as gifts to the audience. (Presto Classical)

Simon Ghraichy HERITAGES

Simon Ghraichy is a 30 year old, Paris-based, Lebanese-Mexican pianist.  He juxtaposes his Latino-American and oriental roots with a European sensibility and history of classical music tradition that he has learned alongside masters such as Michel Béroff and Daria Hovora at the Conservatoire National de Paris (CNSMDP), and Tuija Hakkila at the Sibelius Academy of Helsinki. He’s attracted to traditional classical and romantic European repertoire, as well as lesser-known repertory by Latin American composers such as Villa-Lobos, Ponce, Gottschalk, Guarnieri, Chaves; Finnish composer Sibelius; and Australian and Anglo-Saxon contemporary composers.

Simon Ghraichy’s career took flight in 2010 when critic Robert Hughes of The Wall Street Journal praised his interpretation of the Réminiscences de Don Juan of Franz Liszt. He has performed in recitals, chamber music concerts and as a soloist with orchestras on five continents including the Brazil Symphony Orchestra, State of Mexico Symphony Orchestra, Cairo Symphony Orchestra, Lebanese Philharmonic Orchestra, Cuba National Symphony Orchestra, UniSA international music festival in South Africa, the EXIT festival in Serbia, and the Isang Yun festival in South Korea.  Ghraichy has won numerous prizes and international distinctions at festivals including the BNDES (Banco do Brasil) International Piano Competition, the Manuel M. Ponce International Piano Competition in Mexico City, and the Torneo Internazionale di Musica in Rome. He is a laureate of the Gyorgy Cziffra Foundation with whom he collaborates yearly in Senlis (France) and different partner festivals.   In 2015, Simon Ghraichy debuts at the Festival International d’Art Lyrique d’Aix-en-Provence at the Theatre du Jeu de Paume, and the Bard Music Festival and Carnegie Hall in New York.

Hélène Grimaud WATER

Hélène Grimaud’s latest album for Deutsche Grammophon, produced by Nitin Sawhney, was inspired by her abiding fascination with Nature’s most precious gift. Water is set for worldwide release on January 29, 2016 and conveys imaginative responses to everything from mighty oceans and great lakes to raindrops and snowflakes as well as inviting listeners to contemplate the mounting threats to the safety, security and supply of this essential resource.

“What inspired the idea to record this album is really the fascination that so many composers of the 19th and 20th centuries seem to have had with the element of water,” Grimaud states. Not only did this sow the seed for a recording, it also grew into a collaboration between the pianist and Turner Prize-winning artist Douglas Gordon. Their site-specific installation tears become… streams become… was created for the Wade Thompson Drill Hall at New York’s Park Avenue Armory in December 2014. Described by the New York Times as a “compelling, boldly original work”, the project blended elements of art, music and architecture, with Grimaud’s water-themed programme located at its core. Gordon transformed the cavernous Drill Hall by slowly flooding its vast floor to create the impression of what he described as an endless “field of water,” entirely surrounding the grand piano at which Grimaud performed.

The album features works by nine composers: it opens with Berio’s Wasserklavier and includes Takemitsu’s Rain Tree Sketch II, Fauré’s Barcarolle No.5, Ravel’s Jeux d’eau, “Almería” from Albéniz’s Iberia, Liszt’s Les Jeux d’eau à la Villa d’Este and the first movement of Janáček’s In the Mists, before closing with Debussy’s La cathédrale engloutie. These myriad reflections on the qualities of water were recorded live at the Armory during the installation and then connected and woven into the album narrative by seven “Transitions” that were newly composed, recorded and produced by Sawhney. Grimaud was delighted to work with the award-winning composer, DJ and multi-instrumentalist, praising his ability to highlight “the universal human dependence on our planet’s most precious resource” and weave “contrasting poetic and philosophical perspectives into a single, cogent musical ecosystem.”

Each piece on this new album unfolds as part of an acoustic “stream”, carefully structured in its blend of classical and contemporary compositions, yet experimental in its overall aesthetic.

Hélène Grimaud is not only one of the world’s most celebrated pianists, but also a tireless champion of ecological causes, having founded the Wolf Conservation Center, which raises awareness of the importance and relationship of these top predators to our ecosystem. With Water, the insightful Grimaud has united her twin passions for music and the environment in unique fashion.

Andor Foldes WIZARD OF THE KEYBOARD

Andor Foldes was born in Budapest on Dec. 21, 1913, and began his studies privately with his mother, Valerie Ipolye, and with Tibor Szatmari. He made his public debut performing a Mozart concerto with the Budapest Philharmonic when he was 8 years old. The next year he entered the Budapest Academy of Music to study the piano, composition and conducting, but he continued to perform publicly.

During his student years, Mr. Foldes worked with several important Hungarian composers, among them Ernst von Dohnanyi, with whom he studied until 1932, and Bartok, whom he met in 1929. Bartok's music became a central part of his repertory. He gave the New York premiere of Bartok's Second Piano Concerto at Carnegie Hall in 1947. His 1948 recording of the work, prized by collectors, was recently reissued on compact disk, as was a set of Bartok works he recorded for Deutsche Grammophon, which won the Grand Prix du Disques and other prizes. A New York Premiere.

Mr. Foldes made his American orchestral debut in a radio concert in 1940 and his recital debut at Town Hall in 1941. He met his wife, a Hungarian journalist, in New York, and they became American citizens. In the 1950's, when Mr. Foldes's European concert engagements were more plentiful than his American ones, he and his wife moved to Europe, settling in Switzerland in 1961.

Besides a large discography, which includes not only the Bartok recordings but also works by Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Falla, Debussy, Poulenc, Liszt, Schubert and Rachmaninoff, Mr. Foldes was the author of "Keys to the Keyboard" (1948).

Among his awards are the Grand Cross of Merit, given by Germany in 1959 for his help in raising money to have the Beethoven Halle in Bonn rebuilt, and the Silver Medal of the City of Paris, given in 1969. (Allan Kozinn, The New York Times)