City Of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra / Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla ELGAR - BRITTEN - WALTON - VAUGHAN WILLIAMS

 

ELGAR - BRITTEN - WALTON - VAUGHAN WILLIAMS

 

Nils Mönkemeyer / Bamberger Symphoniker / Markus Poschner WILLIAM WALTON - MAX BRUCH - ARVO PÄRT

Artistic brilliance and innovative programming are the trademarks with which the Bremen native Nils Mönkemeyer has, in a short time, achieved international renown as a musician while drawing enormous new attention to the viola.

As an exclusive Sony Classical artist, he has brought out several critically acclaimed, award-winning CDs in the last years, all of which have made their way into the German classical charts. The programmes of this and Mönkemeyer’s previous recordings encompass discoveries and first recordings of original viola literature ranging from the 18th century to modern pieces, as well as his own transcriptions. 2017 will mark the release of the newest recording with works by Walton, Bruch and Pärt and the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Markus Poschner.

Nils Mönkemeyer has collaborated with such conductors as Sylvain Cambreling, Elias Grandy, Christopher Hogwood, Cornelius Meister, Mark Minkowski, Michael Sanderling, Clemens Schuldt, Karl-Heinz Steffens, Markus Stenz, Mario Venzago and Simone Young, including orchestras like the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich, Helsinki Philharmonic, Musiciens du Louvre, Berne Symphony Orchestra, Konzerthaus Orchestra Berlin, Staatskapelle Weimar, Bremen and Hamburg Philharmonic, Dusseldorf Symphony Orchestra, MDR and NDR Radio Orchestras and the Berlin Baroque Soloists.

In the season 2017/18 he will appear as soloist at major international concert venues like the Musikverein Vienna, Salzburg, Helsinki Music Center, Liechtenstein, at the Philharmonie Berlin and Cologne, Festspielhaus Baden-Baden, Gasteig in Munich and the Alte Oper Frankfurt.g in Munich and the Alte Oper Frankfurt.

Duo Gazzana POULENC - WALTON - DALLAPICCOLA - SCHNITTKE - SILVESTROV

Duo Gazzana's second album for ECM New Series unites works from the 20th and 21st centuries with striking narrative character and retrospective glance at music history. Composers from France, Great Britain, Italy, Russia and Ukraine present earlier musical forms - toccata, suite, canons, variations - in the light of new developmental techniques, thereby revealing similarities and relations across centuries, geographical boundaries and contrasting forms of expression.

Alfred Schnittke's “Suite in the Old Style” is indeed a playful if unconventional allusion to compositional style of the past. “Hommage à J.S.B.”, by the Ukrainian living composer Valentin Silvestrov, evokes variations on themes of the Leipzig master. Similarly Luigi Dallapiccola, in his divertissement “Tartiniana seconda”, responds with contrapuntal mastery to the music of the Baroque composer Giuseppe Tartini. William Walton's rarely heard “Toccata”, written when he had just turned 20 years old, virtually overflows with structural ideas related to the virtuosic demands of traditional toccata form. The cadenzas for both the violin and the piano call for quasi-improvisational skills that draw rhythmic impetus from jazz. Vitality and vehemence inform also Francis Poulenc's dramatic “Sonate”, here representing the evolution, on a structural and formal basis, of the simplest and earliest musical forms (toccata, suites, divertissement and variations) used in the compositions of this album. Written in 1942-43 it is dedicated to the memory of the Andalusian poet Federico García Lorca.