Mari & Momo Kodama / Sarah & Deborah Nemtanu MARTINU Double Concertos for Violin & Piano

Bohuslav Martinů’s distinctive musical voice, which infuses the great Czech tradition with modern idioms, is showcased in this captivating survey of his concertante works, performed by the Orchestre Philharmonique de Marseille conducted by Lawrence Foster. 

The Concerto for Two Pianos and Orchestra is a lively and rhythmic tour de force. Breezily energetic and relentless, it is full of jazzy inflections and high speed fireworks, pausing only in the tranquillity of the slow movement for moments of serene calm. By contrast, the Concerto for Two Violins and Orchestra is a warm, lyrical work in the Romantic tradition. With its intricate and interweaving solo lines, expansive melodies and dance-like syncopations it’s an engaging work of considerable charm which deserves a wider audience. The Rhapsody-Concerto for Viola and Orchestra is a dreamily nostalgic work whose simple melodies, radiant lyricism and soaring viola line make it one of the 20th century’s most performed viola concertos.

Sarah Nemtanu / Deborah Nemtanu BARTÓK 44 Duos

Sarah and Deborah Nemtanu, the Franco- Romanian violinist sisters have recorded the 44 violin duos by Béla Bartók, Bartók 44 Duos, on the Decca label, due for digital release on January 8, 2016. 

Bartók’s Forty-Four Duos for two violins had their origins in his work as a folksong collector. In the early 1900s he travelled throughout his native Hungary and elsewhere in Eastern Europe in search of traditional melodies. Bartók and his friend Zoltán Kodály notated the songs and dances of peasant communities soon to be scattered or destroyed by two world wars. When Bartók composed his Forty-Four Duos in 1931, he mined his rich stock of Hungarian, Slovakian, Romanian, Ruthenian, Ukrainian and Algerian folk tunes for source material. Bartók 44 Duos sees the sibling violinists draw deep from their cultural roots to express the passion and energy of works inspired by Eastern European and Arabian folk song and dance. 

Each of Bartók’s duos is based almost entirely on an existing folk melody, either collected by Bartók or by other expert ethnographers. The complete set, contained in four books, opens with a Matchmaking Song and includes evocatively titled works like Teasing Song, Limping Dance, Mosquito Dance and Romanian Whirling Song. These works enter the Universal Classics catalogue for the first time with the Nemtanu sisters’ recording.

Sarah Nemtanu was born in 1981 and her sister Deborah, followed two years later. They began their violin studies with their father Vladimir who was first violinist with the Orchestre National Bordeaux Aquitaine. They both progressed to the Conservatoire regional influence of Bordeaux and the National Conservatory of Music in Paris where they studied with Gérard Poulet.

In 2005, Deborah was appointed concertmaster of the Ensemble orchestral de Paris. From 2002, Sarah has been co-concertmaster of the Orchestre National de France, with whom she also performed as a soloist. In 2009, she played the role of the violin soloist in Radu Mihaileanu’s film Le concert performing the Violin Concerto by Tchaikovsky.

The sisters say they have been playing Bartók’s duos from when they were 5 and 7 years old. Written in graded levels of difficulty for students, Deborah says ” Being sisters adds something a little bit magical….We feel something miraculous when we play together because when we play together there is an alchemy and much happiness.”

Sarah Nemtanu GYPSIC

"Purist friends, please don't read the following" is the defiant opening salvo in Romanian-French violinist Sarah Nemtanu's notes for this release, and she might have added that purists should avoid listening to the album as well. The remainder of the listening public, however, should be very intrigued. Buyers coming to the album online might guess that the program is a conventional set of Eastern European and gypsy-oriented pieces that might have been played half a century ago. But sample well, focusing especially on tracks 3 and 8, so that you know what you're getting into. Nemtanu's album also attempts to add modern crossover elements to the traditional, not to say hoary, form, of the gypsy-classical concert, and she makes several unusual moves and one radical one. Some of the album, however, is played straight, and there's an unusual continuum from traditional to experimental at work. In the former category is the Violin Sonata No. 3 in A minor, Op. 25, "On Popular Romanian Themes," of Georges Enescu, played by Nemtanu and pianist Romain Descharmes in a straightforward way that doesn't exaggerate the gypsy elements; Ravel's Tzigane is also done as written. Then the fun starts; Sarasate's Zigeunerweisen, Op. 20, has an added part for cimbalom. Moving into left field, you come to four performances that employ the talents of Canadian-born French keyboardist Chilly Gonzales, who adds elements of electronica to Vittorio Monti's well-worn Czárdás, Ravel's Berceuse sur le nom de Gabriel Fauré, Georges Boulanger's Avant de mourir, track 9, is given its more familiar U.S. title of My Prayer, and, most unusually, the "Blues" movement from Ravel's Sonata for violin and piano of 1927. This piece gets from Gonzales what Nemtanu rather unfortunately terms "ethno-percussion"; the melody is recast as a piece of Ethiopian pop. This is a risky move, for it seems not to go with the rest of the music on the album, but Nemtanu swings for the fences and succeeds; the piece in this form is a natural expansion on the basic energies radiating from the meeting point between France and Romania that has animated all the music up to that point. Nemtanu here hatches and works out in some detail an absolutely original concept of how classical music and internationally flavored electronics might cross-fertilize, and her efforts are well worth hearing.  (James Manheim)

Sarah & Deborah Nemtanu BACH / SCHNITTKE

French sisters Sarah and Deborah Nemtanu are leaders of the Orchestre National de France and the Orchestre de Chambre de Paris, respectively.

And they are also characterful soloists who play Bach’s three violin concertos with what sounds like intuitive freedom – just sample the flicked-in embellishments.

These recordings also combine period- instruments style spareness of vibrato with moments of almost old-style fullness of orchestral sound.

The couplings are fascinating, two of Bach’s Two-Part Inventions played on violin and gutteral viola, and Schnittke’s Third Concerto Grosso of 1985, a work that moves from faux Bach into pure Schnittke as if by way of musical hallucination.