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Honegger: Symphonies Nos 1-5, Pacific 231, Mouvement symphonique No. 3
Serge Baudo, Czech Philharmonic
Classical - Released January 1, 1991 | Supraphon a.s.
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La Playlist Classique
Classical Music: 50 of the Best, Radio Musica Clasica, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Tchaikovsky, Johann Strauss II, Johann Sebastian Bach, Johannes Brahms
Classical - Released October 19, 2019 | Armasi
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Alkan Grande Sonate, "Les Quatre Ages", Symphonie Pour Piano Solo
Vincenzo Maltempo
Classical - Released May 2, 2012 | Piano Classics
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5 de Diapason
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Brunch Classical Music
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig Van Beethoven, Classical Music: 50 of the Best, Claude Debussy, Edvard Grieg, Johannes Brahms, Johann Sebastian Bach,
Classical - Released March 10, 2020 | Armasi
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Antonín Dvořák: Symphonie du nouveau monde
Philippe Fournier
Classical - Released October 7, 2000 | iMD-ORCHESTRE-CONFLUENCES
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Debussy: Complete Orchestral Work
Jun Märkl
Classical - Released January 30, 2012 | Naxos
Booklet
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For Clara: Works by Schumann & Brahms
Hélène Grimaud
Classical - Released September 8, 2023 | Deutsche Grammophon (DG)
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Robert Schumann was never more purely Romantic than in his set of piano pieces Kreisleriana, Op. 16. The set is of extramusical, literary inspiration, taking its name from a character in stories by E.T.A. Hoffmann, and it features the explosive imagination of the young Schumann at its best. Schumann announced the work, which he apparently wrote in four days, rather breathlessly to his inamorata, Clara, and more than almost any other work of his, it seems to spill over the boundaries of the short piano piece. Hélène Grimaud has recorded the work before, but she seems to have added intensity this time around. She is nervously excited in the faster virtuosic numbers, but sample No. 4 to hear her marvelous control over the tonal instability that appears in many of these pieces. The Brahms Intermezzi, Op. 117, were also "For Clara," sent to Clara Schumann toward the end of his life; the two had remained friends, and here, in Grimaud's evocation of tempestuous old-school pianism, one is stirred to wonder what Clara sounded like playing this music. The connection of the nine Lieder und Gesänge, Op. 32, of Brahms to Clara is less clear, and the set, with baritone Konstantin Krimmel on the vocals, may seem like an afterthought; the three performances on the album were all made at different places and times. However, taken on its own terms, it is a fine performance of this set, consisting entirely of settings of texts by Eastern poets. Krimmel catches the rather mystical nature of the songs, and Grimaud, with whom he has worked in the past, is effective as an accompanist. This is an important entry in Grimaud's catalog, with a Kreisleriana that is as fine as any.© James Manheim /TiVo
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Brahms: The Symphonies
Johannes Brahms
Classical - Released April 21, 2017 | BSO Classics
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Ravel: L'Œuvre pour piano
Philippe Bianconi
Solo Piano - Released September 15, 2023 | La Dolce Volta
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Ravel's piano works include some of the most popular keyboard pieces of the 20th century, so pianist Philippe Bianconi has plenty of competition for this double-album complete cycle. Of course, one advantage of the complete set is that it can include the less common pieces like Ravel's musical impressions of Borodin and Chabrier and the Menuet en Ut dièse mineur ("Minuet in C sharp minor"). These lesser-known works, mostly miniatures, fit Bianconi's style beautifully; he is a precise, concise player who brings out Ravel's considerable rhythmic subtlety. His Ravel performances tap into a long French tradition stretching back to Robert Casadesus and his wife, Gaby, who was one of Bianconi's teachers. Imbued with the French conservatory values of clarity and restraint, Bianconi sacrifices mood for clean execution. In Le Tombeau de Couperin, he is wonderful, one of the very best available, catching the ways Ravel stretches the Baroque rhythms in a really uncanny way. Many pianists can handle the technical challenges of Gaspard de la nuit these days, but few can seem as effortless while doing so. In music that depends more on extramusical references, such as the four-hand Ma mère l'Oye (recorded with Clément Lefebvre), some listeners may want a bit more color, while others will find Bianconi's approach bracing and fresh, with an evocative Miroirs. Sample several different works. Most listeners will agree that the La Dolce Volta label's sound, from the Grande Salle at the Metz Arsenal, is ideal for the music and the music-making here.
© James Manheim /TiVo
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Brahms: Symphonies Nos. 1 & 3 & Academic Festival Overture
Otto Klemperer
Classical - Released June 2, 2023 | Warner Classics
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Brahms : The Complete Solo Piano Works
Geoffroy Couteau
Solo Piano - Released March 18, 2016 | La Dolce Volta
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Elisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre: Céphale et Procris
Reinoud Van Mechelen
Classical - Released February 9, 2024 | Château de Versailles Spectacles
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Brahms – Reger: Song Transcriptions
Rudolf Buchbinder
Classical - Released March 22, 2024 | Deutsche Grammophon (DG)
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The veteran pianist Rudolf Buchbinder is known best for Haydn and Mozart, but he has the kind of record that has earned him the right to do pretty much what he wants in later life. Here, he plays transcriptions of Brahms songs by Max Reger, items that most listeners will not have heard. Of course, on the one hand, transcriptions were part and parcel of the 19th century scene (although perhaps less so in the song genre); on the other, 28 of these things, deprived of the texts, may sound like a lot, but Buchbinder's program is interesting on the whole. He takes his Brahms songs chronologically, and this yields various insights. There are simple pieces from throughout Brahms' lied output, but most of these songs are not simple, and without the contrast provided by the voice, the listener's attention is directed toward the place of the melody line in a web of polyphony. Consider a song as straightforward as the Wiegenlied, Op. 49, No. 4, the so-called "Brahms Lullaby." There turns out to be plenty going on below, and often above, the melody, holding the listener's interest in a whole new way. The chronological organization gives the listener a unique window into the growing density of Brahms' late style. There is probably no way to know whether Schoenberg and the other members of the Second Viennese School, great admirers of Brahms, heard the masterful treatment of register in these transcriptions, but they certainly might have. A fine offbeat find for Brahms lovers, and indeed those of Reger.© James Manheim /TiVo
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Berlioz : Symphonie fantastique (Live)
Les Siècles
Classical - Released October 25, 2019 | harmonia mundi
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5 de Diapason
The large collection of antique instruments at Les Siècles' command makes its recordings more than just speculative period exercises, but something approaching musical time travel. Led since 2003 by its founder, François-Xavier Roth, this singular French orchestra has given thrilling historically-informed recreations of the repertoire of the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries on vintage instruments that were available to the musicians of the time, crafted by hand, and possessing the unique sonorities and tunings of different regions. For this 2019 album from Harmonia Mundi, Roth and his musicians play Hector Berlioz's hallucinatory Symphonie fantastique and the dramatic overture Les Francs-Juges with marvelous orchestral colors and a striking textural clarity that almost makes their distinctive characteristics seem especially highlighted. However, this recording isn't meant to be a sonic showcase for audiophiles, because the drama, musicality, and visceral excitement of the performances soon override the novelty of instrumentation, and the overall effect of the presentation is a startling reassessment and a refreshing change from the weightier Berlioz of a Thomas Beecham or a Colin Davis. No one could write for brass more blazingly than Berlioz, and his skillful handling of the woodwinds is even more apparent when heard with early Romantic timbres. The ultimate pleasure of this disc, though, is found in the cohesion, agility, and passion of the group's playing, and Roth's confident leadership comes through in his precision and alert attention to details. Highly recommended.
© TiVo
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Brahms: The Final Piano Pieces, Op. 116-119
Stephen Hough
Classical - Released January 3, 2020 | Hyperion
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By the early 1890s, Johannes Brahms began thinking that his career was approaching its end, perhaps because of his growing awareness of his mortality, due to the deaths of several close friends. In spite of that, encouragement from Brahms' publisher Fritz Simrock and a renewed burst of creativity brought about the major works of his final years, which included chamber pieces for clarinetist Richard Mühlfeld; a collection of arrangements of German Folk Songs; the Four Serious Songs; the 11 Chorale Preludes; and the piano pieces published as the Fantasias, Op. 116, the Intermezzos, Op. 117, the Clavierstücke, Op. 118, and the Clavierstücke, Op. 119. This group of 20 keyboard pieces collectively represent the autumnal and sometimes gloomy moods that dominated Brahms' thoughts in his last decade, and have even retroactively colored the overall character his music, suggesting a nostalgic attitude in his work as a whole. Yet there is a balance between melancholy and exuberance in Brahms, and while much can be made of the sorrowful events in his life that influenced him, particularly in the Intermezzos, Op. 117 (which he considered to be lullabies for his sorrows), expressions in the late piano music are artfully conceived and perhaps less a measure of Brahms' emotional state than of his genius. Stephen Hough has recorded Brahms' piano concertos, and some of the chamber works, but this 2019 Hyperion album is his first album since 2001 devoted to Brahms' solo piano works. At this stage of his career, Hough seems to have found the right approach to these character pieces, which can be just as fiery and passionate as they are sad or sentimental. However, just as important are their structures and formal designs, which show an active and lively imagination, especially in Brahms' use of chromatic harmony and his sometimes expansive treatment of the Romantic "miniature."© TiVo
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Duo (Œuvres de Brahms, Chostakovitch, Debussy, Schumann)
Sol Gabetta
Classical - Released October 2, 2012 | Deutsche Grammophon (DG)
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Argentine-Swiss cellist Sol Gabetta and the nationally unclassifiable Hélène Grimaud (who is listed first in the graphics here, presumably so that Deutsche Grammophon may capitalize on her former enfant terrible reputation) are both known for a tendency toward interpretations that push the extremes. Grimaud, in fact, has named Glenn Gould, still among the greatest extremists of all, as an exemplar. But, perhaps because the necessity of working in a duo puts a damper on strong manifestations of individualism, the two play it pretty straight on this, the first duo recording for both. Their interpretations in this diverse recital of Romantic and modern pieces, in fact, tend distinctly toward the quiet side. Although Grimaud has resolutely declined to classify herself as French (she is of North African Jewish background, spent some years in Florida, and then lived in Switzerland), this is a chamber recital in the classic French vein, with plenty of impeccably elegant passagework from both players and an absence of emphatic gesture even in the Drei Fantasiestücke, Op. 73, of Schumann, which are arch-Romantic pieces. The Brahms Sonata for piano and cello No. 1, Op. 38, gets a very light touch that does delightful things with the contrapuntal finale. The pair are clearly at home in the Debussy cello sonata, and really the only piece that falls flat is the concluding Cello Sonata, Op. 40, of Shostakovich, where the restrained performance misses the icy fear of the slow movement and the sarcastic snap that was so characteristic of the composer's early years. The sound, from the Philharmonie Essen hall, is a bit too spacious for the music but is up to the task of capturing clearly the fine detail work on exhibit here.© TiVo
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Ravel: Ma Mère l'Oye, Tombeau de Couperin, Shéhérazade
Les Siècles
Symphonic Music - Released April 13, 2018 | harmonia mundi
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Recording Ravel's music on period instruments is the kind of thing that might raise a smile... until you realise just how much the production of instruments has changed in less than a hundred years: it's the return of catgut strings, skin drum heads, the French basson (and not the German system bassoon which is used across all the world's orchestras today), shaper tips, trumpets and trombones of French manufacture. At the head of his orchestra Les Siècles, François-Xavier Roth gives a new, orthodox, historically-informed version of Ma Mère l’oye (complete ballet), the Tombeau de Couperin and Shéhérazade, the long-neglected "ouverture de féérie" [Fairy Overture] which is pure Ravel. This return to the roots is clearly easier and more straightforwardly authentic for this period of music history, because, unlike earlier works, we possess recordings which date back to the 1920s, and even earlier, which can tell us about the style, the colours, the phrasing and the tempo. But it isn't enough just to have all this historical information to hand to make something interesting. What makes this record thrilling is that all the musicians in the Siècles are excellent, and François-Xavier Roth is a talented artist himself, who knows this music inside out. At which point, his complete recording of Stravinsky's Firebird has already struck us with its quality. This rediscovery of Ravel resounds with clarity and finesse; it is a feast of well-defined timbres which cuts against the "beautiful sound" which prevails in orchestras around the world today. © François Hudry/Qobuz
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For Clara: Works by Schumann & Brahms
Hélène Grimaud
Classical - Released September 8, 2023 | Deutsche Grammophon (DG)
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Bartók : Violin Concerto No. 1 - Enescu : Octet
Vilde Frang
Violin Concertos - Released August 10, 2018 | Warner Classics
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As a concerto soloist and chamber musician, Vilde Frang explores what might be considered public and private aspects of her art, though in both pursuits, her expressive and deeply internalized playing belies any simplistic division between the two. In this 2018 Warner Classics release of Béla Bartók's Violin Concerto No. 1 and George Enescu's Octet for strings in C major, Op. 7, Frang meets all expectations of a virtuoso soloist in the former work and takes a more collaborative approach in the latter, yet between them there is an overlapping of musical aims. Introspection is the dominant mood in the first movement of Bartók's youthful concerto, and Frang maintains a controlled lyricism that is both melancholy and ardent, only to be dispelled by the brusque second movement, which calls for flashiness and extroversion. However, the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France is held in check by conductor Mikko Franck, so Frang's moody solos are never overwhelmed by the accompaniment, which sometimes is quite loud. The string octet in Enescu's work is surprisingly full-sounding and resembles a string orchestra in its volume and richness, though Frang's distinctive sound is never lost in the mix. Yet for all the rustic hubbub of this energetic music, Frang conveys a pensiveness in the intimate third movement that reminds the listener that this is still chamber music, not a concerto. Warner's recorded sound seems a bit manipulated to even out the wide dynamics in the Bartók and the booming acoustics in the Enescu, which contribute to the octet's unnaturally big sound.© TiVo
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Couperin: Concerts Royaux
Pierre Gallon
Classical - Released March 15, 2024 | harmonia mundi
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François Couperin's Concerts Royaux were keyboard dance suites from 1714, preceding those of the set known as Les Goûts Réunis. Couperin wrote them for a single keyboard but noted that they could also be performed by a small ensemble, and the many available recordings of the pieces have availed themselves of both options. This one by Pierre Gallon and Matthieu Boutineau, however, is unique; it is for two harpsichords, with a few continuo additions from theorbo and Baroque guitar. The suites are presented as versions for two harpsichords; these are not credited to anyone but have been created by the performers. The reasoning for this, as presented in the booklet, draws from the ideas that Couperin, even if he did not suggest this option, clearly imagined the instrumentation as flexible, that Couperin did suggest a two-harpsichord option for the Apothéoses for chamber ensemble, and that harpsichord works by the composer Gaspard Le Roux were said by the composer to be playable on two harpsichords. These factors do not quite prove the point being made by the performance, and this recording might better be regarded as an elaboration on Couperin's music. In some pieces, the two players each perform the bass line, distributing the rest of the music between them, and this creates a rich, monumental sound that differs quite a bit from the usual intimate detail one associates with Couperin. The effect is intensified by Harmonia Mundi's booming church sound environment, which doesn't correspond with what Couperin imagined, either. It is true that those who want the versions Couperin himself approved have plenty of major recordings to choose from, and this one is genuinely novel. The bottom line is that a bit of sampling will inform listeners as to whether they find the approach convincing or not.© James Manheim /TiVo
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