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Saint-Saëns: Works for Piano & Orchestra
Alexandre Kantorow
Classical - Released April 1, 2022 | BIS
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In 2019, Alexandre and Jean-Jacques Kantorow’s recording of the last three piano concertos by Camille Saint-Saëns earned the highest praise around the world, including a "Diapason d’or de l’année", "Editor’s Choice" in Gramophone and top marks and recommendations from the leading German websites. The Kantorows’ orchestra of choice was the Finnish ensemble Tapiola Sinfonietta, and they have now returned to Helsinki to record not only Saint-Saëns’ first two concertos, but all of the remaining works for piano and orchestra. Presented on this amply filled disc, the programme spans 33 years, the earliest work being Concerto No. 1, regarded as the first significant French piano concerto and written by a 23-year old composer. Ten years later, in 1868, Saint-Saëns composed the Concerto in G minor, a work which at first met with consternation although Liszt – who was present at the first performance – thoroughly approved of it. The work, which begins with the soloist playing what resembles the improvisations of an organist, soon became popular however, and remains one of Saint-Saëns’ best-known works. The shorter pieces which make up the rest of the programme were written between 1884 and 1891, and could be said to erveal different aspects of the composer: Wedding Cake was written as a wedding present to a close friend, in Rhapsodie d’Auvergne Saint-Saeëns explored French folk music, while Africa is a piece of pure Orientalism, reflecting his lasting affection for North Africa. © BIS Records
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Albéniz: 4-Hand Piano Music
Duo Van Dua
Classical - Released November 12, 2021 | Naxos
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Albéniz’s distinctive musical vocabulary, with its sensual harmonies, rich melodic lines and characteristic rhythmic figures, has ensured lasting popularity, not least in his music for the piano. This album of four-hand piano music reveals the composer’s love of Spain’s regional music traditions, whether in the glittering sweep of the Suite española No. 1 or in the Rapsodia española where a hypnotic dreamscape meets dramatic outbursts. Two movements from Iberia – one of which is a rarely encountered arrangement by the great Spanish pianist Alicia de Larrocha – reveal a daring modernity that aligns Albéniz with Debussy and Ravel. © Naxos
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Isaac Albeniz: Piano Works
Martin Jones
Classical - Released June 5, 2020 | Nimbus Records
Booklet
What's striking about the piano music of Isaac Albéniz, especially when it's heard in large bunches like this, is how varied his solutions to the problem of fusing Spanish music with external influences were. Some pieces, like the Estudio Impromptu, Op. 56, do not begin in a "Spanish" way at all, but that work plunges the listener decisively into the world of flamenco in its second strain. This big group of Albéniz pieces were recorded by pianist Martin Jones in 1995 and 2000 and were collected in 2020 and reissued in a triple-album set. As such, they make up a somewhat random collection, with large works (Iberia, the Piano Sonata No. 5, Op. 82, and the Suite Española, Op. 47) mixed in with smaller and in some cases obscure-but-worthwhile works, but the randomness gets the listener away from the greatest-hits frame of mind and into the variety of Albéniz's achievement. Jones is a fine specialist in Spanish music, not one who emphasizes the Spanish fireworks in these pieces, but always clean and precise in the virtuoso passages and exploring the subtleties of the music. A negative in the presentation is that Albéniz, and some of the Spanish titles, are missing their accent marks; this would be annoying if it were generally true, but what's worse is that some instances have the mark while others don't. This has the feel of a thrown-together reissue, but in this case, it works.© TiVo
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Ravel: Spanish Rhapsody - Lalo: Cello Concerto - Enescu: Romanian Rhapsodies Nos. 1 & 2
André Navarra, Constantin Silvestri, Czech Philharmonic
Symphonic Music - Released May 30, 2000 | Supraphon a.s.
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Lalo: Symphonie espagnole, Op. 21 & Rhapsodie norvégienne
Pierre Amoyal
Classical - Released January 13, 2023 | Warner Classics
Saint-Saëns: Piano Concerto No. 1, Wedding Cake, Rhapsodie d'Auvergne & Africa
Jean-Philippe Collard
Classical - Released January 1, 1988 | Warner Classics
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Schumann: Fantasia in C Major, Op. 17 - Liszt: Rhapsodie Espagnole, S. 254 & Song Transcriptions of Schubert and Schumann
Nina Lelchuk
Classical - Released January 1, 1982 | Telarc
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Couperin & Debussy & Liszt & Skryabin & Rachmaninoff: La Folie
Elena Tarasova
Classical - Released May 6, 2020 | Etcetera
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Schubert: Chamber Works
Christian Tetzlaff
Chamber Music - Released February 3, 2023 | Ondine
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Diapason d'or -
Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik -
OPUS Klassik
There is an abundance of recordings of Schubert's two piano trios and of most of the other chamber pieces on this double album; one of them is even by the trio of players heard here, violinist Christian Tetzlaff, cellist Tanja Tetzlaff, and pianist Lars Vogt, but this one was made in the last year and a half of Vogt's life. He had not yet been diagnosed with the cancer that killed him in 2022, but he spoke of this as potentially one of his last recordings. Vogt seemed to be rushing to record as much as he could before his death, sometimes disregarding the advice of his doctors, and several of his last releases were very strong. This one is extraordinary. The brother-sister team of Christian and Tanja Tetzlaff are formidable chamber players, but here, they apply their skills to staying out of Vogt's way; he seems to direct the performances. They land somewhere between ecstatic and tragic. Sample the slow movement of the Piano Trio in E flat major, D. 929, which is something of a funeral march to begin with. Vogt's melody shines with transcendence. His lines in the Piano Trio in B flat major, D. 898, are soaring, shaped into a kind of momentum perhaps never before heard in this well-worn piece. There are several shorter pieces that are beautifully done, including a take on the comparatively rarer Arpeggione Sonata in A minor, D. 821, from Tanja Tetzlaff and Vogt. The main attraction is the pair of piano trios, and it is a bit sobering to ponder whether one must be staring death in the face to play like this.© James Manheim /TiVo
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Shostakovich: Symphony No. 9
Berliner Philharmoniker
Symphonies - Released May 12, 2023 | Berliner Philharmoniker Recordings
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Lalo: Symphonie espagnole - Bruch: Violin Concerto
Renaud Capuçon
Classical - Released January 22, 2016 | Erato - Warner Classics
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5 de Diapason
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Elgar
Nicola Benedetti
Classical - Released May 15, 2020 | Decca Music Group Ltd.
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This is a big outing for violinist Nicola Benedetti: the Elgar Violin Concerto in B minor, Op. 61, is a difficult work both technically and interpretively, and although it has been popular on recordings since the first one appeared in 1929, it is not exactly a crowd-pleaser; Benedetti scores here with a reading that steers a middle path between some well-established approaches. The Elgar concerto has an unusually wide range of interpretations of the tempo markings, with total timings clocking in at anywhere from 42 minutes (Jascha Heifetz) to 54 minutes (Nigel Kennedy, in one of the favored recordings of the last two decades of the 20th century). Benedetti comes in just shy of 47 minutes, and she catches the liquid speed of Heifetz while leaving room for the "awfully emotional, too emotional" quality Elgar himself described of the work. Her entrance in the first movement doesn't have quite the magnetic lyricism of Menuhin's, but her turns through the music's double stops and general veering quality generate quite a bit of momentum in both the first movement and the finale, interrupted quite effectively by a very free third-movement cadenza. For those wanting to hear Benedetti show what she can do in a more sentimental mood, the curtain is rung down by a trio of short violin-and-piano pieces, with Petr Limonov providing sensitive, quiet accompaniment. A fine Elgar concerto that can stand comparison with the other big ones on the market.© TiVo
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Berlin Stories: Mendelssohn, Juon, Skalkottas
Trio Gaspard
Chamber Music - Released June 23, 2023 | Chandos
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Berlin Stories is the first in a series to come from Trio Gaspard, all to be devoted to specific musical capitals. It is not clear how well a musical essence of the city is conveyed here. Mendelssohn's Piano Trio No. 2 in C minor, Op. 66, was composed in Frankfurt, although the composer had been associated with Berlin earlier in his career. The Litaniae, Op. 70, of composer Paul Juon indeed had its premiere in Berlin but, the composer said, referred to a scene he witnessed in a church in Munich, while the Acht Variationen über ein griechisches Volksthema ("Eight Variations on a Greek Folk Theme") of Nikos Skalkottas, though first performed in Berlin, is very much part of the Viennese cultural universe of Skalkottas' teacher, Arnold Schoenberg. However, it doesn't matter too much how "Berlin" the pieces are; the music and the music-making are solid throughout. Mendelssohn's C minor trio is one of the most serious and most Beethovenian things he ever wrote, and the Trio Gaspard gives it a full measure of tumult. The Juon Litaniae, which the composer termed a "tone poem," is a post-Romantic piece with a unique evolving structure and an intense near-mysticism. The Skalkottas piece is also unique, mixing serial and tonal elements. This release has elements that will appeal to a great variety of chamber music lovers.
© James Manheim /TiVo
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Saint-Saëns : Piano Concertos Nos 2, 5 & Piano Works
Bertrand Chamayou
Classical - Released August 3, 2018 | Warner Classics
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4F de Télérama -
Gramophone Record of the Year -
Choc de Classica
For French pianists who don't approach the task in a sympathetic spirit, the nearly obligatory early-career Saint-Saëns recital can seem a chore, for both pianist and listener. Not a bit of it here. Pianist Bertrand Chamayou and the Orchestre National de France under Emmanuel Krivine absolutely nail the Piano Concerto No. 2, Op. 22, with a performance notable for its combination of small detail and energy. Saint-Saëns is sometimes criticized, and indeed sometimes rightly, for being a by-the-book conservatory composer, but what to make of the unusual shape of this concerto, with its Allegro middle movement and lack of a true slow movement? Sample that middle movement, which is overflowing with melody, or the solo passage at the very beginning of the concerto, exquisitely carved out by Chamayou. The Piano Concerto No. 5, Op. 103 ("Egyptian"), with its supposedly authentic Nile tribal melody in the slow movement, is suitably colorful and exotic, and there are also gems among the rarely played small piano works that close out the program. The Etude, Op. 52, No. 6 ("En forme de valse"), which is just what it says, in the form of a waltz, but not quite a waltz, is an inspired choice. Chamayou tackles the various technical challenges with aplomb, and Erato contributes unfussy sound from a pair of sessions at the Radio France Auditorium. As good a place as any to start with the piano music of Saint-Saëns.© TiVo
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Beethoven : Piano Trios, Op.70 No.2, Op.97 "Archduke"
Isabelle Faust
Trios - Released February 24, 2014 | harmonia mundi
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Choc de Classica -
Qobuzissime
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Bernstein Sibelius - The Symphonies
Leonard Bernstein
Classical - Released June 5, 2015 | Sony Classical
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Clair de lune
Menahem Pressler
Classical - Released March 9, 2018 | Deutsche Grammophon (DG)
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5 de Diapason -
5 Sterne Fono Forum Klassik
Born 16 December 1923, today Menahem Pressler is, without a shadow of a doubt, the king of pianists, just as Mieczysław Horszowski was in the 1980s. Founder of the Beaux-Arts Trio, great and much-overlooked performer of French music, in his thirties he laid down some of the greatest recordings of Debussy (La Boîte à joujoux, Estampes, Suite bergamasque, Arabesques, La plus que lente, Rêverie) of the 1950s, for the American label MGM Records (but he also made several LPs dedicated to Prokofiev which are now completely forgotten, and the Histoires by Jacques Ibert...). Today, for Deutsche Grammophon, he has cast his mind back to that time when, standing on American soil, everything still lay ahead of him; and he has written a beautiful programme, largely centred around Debussy with the composer's greatest hits (Arabesques, Clair de lune from the Suite bergamasque, several Préludes from Livre I such as La fille aux cheveux de lin), finishing with Fauré (Barcarolle No. 6) and finally Ravel ( Pavane pour une infante défunte, Oiseaux tristes). Pressler is keeping alive another piano tradition, with his sound, his sense of style, and quite simply his spirit. His Clair de lune is full of this spirit, without ever falling into mawkishness, or losing its tone of softly-spoken confidence. But for pity's sake, Universal Music: re-release all of Pressler's solo pieces for MGM Records. Bringing back this inestimable and now-completely-inaccessible legacy would be a truly fitting tribute to this great artist. © Théodore Grantet/Qobuz
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Brahms: Piano Works, Opp. 24, 79, 118 & 119 (Original Edition)
Murray Perahia
Classical - Released November 12, 2010 | Sony Classical
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Gramophone Editor's Choice -
Choc de Classica
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Nuits parisiennes
Manon Galy
Classical - Released February 24, 2023 | Aparté
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Diapason d'or -
4F de Télérama
"At the beginning of the twentieth century, all roads led to Paris.... violinist Manon Galy and pianist Jorge González Buajasán capture the flavor of that time of renewal and offer a glimpse of the audacity and modernity that characterized French music during those years." The problem with this is that it doesn't describe the contents very well; much of the music is from considerably earlier (Debussy's Beau soir in Jascha Heifetz's evergreen arrangement) or considerably later (Poulenc's Violin Sonata). This cavil aside, Nuits parisiennes is quite a promising debut for this young duo, whose cooperation was honed by a long acquaintance at the Paris Conservatoire. Galy is an insightful player who keeps control over the rapid flow of events in the two rather thorny sonatas at the center of the program. To surround these, the players devise a consistently delightful program that, by turns, shows Galy's way with a tune and offers some more unusual pieces, with the ragtime-y Braziliera from Milhaud's Scaramouche and his rarely heard Cinéma-fantaisie, Op. 58b, both special pleasures. This release announces the presence of an exciting new duo.© James Manheim /TiVo
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