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A Lionel Tertis Celebration
Timothy Ridout
Classical - Released January 26, 2024 | harmonia mundi
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Violist Lionel Tertis and cellist Pablo Casals were both born on December 29, 1876. They were friends, and both did much to popularize and attract repertory to their respective instruments. It was a good day to be born, for both lived into their late nineties. Tertis is a familiar-enough figure among string players and aficionados of the early 20th century British scene, but he deserved the tribute that violist Timothy Ridout (who has already recorded Tertis' transcription of the Walton Cello Concerto for viola) offers here. Tertis is not well represented on recordings, so it is not really clear to what degree Ridout replicates his style. (Certainly, it does to some degree; Tertis' influence on British viola teaching was and remains deep.) Yet the program represents his activities in an engaging way. Although Arnold Bax wrote a good deal of music for Tertis, there is nothing by him here; perhaps another album is on the way, but there is a good deal of music that is not widely available elsewhere, certainly not in one place. There are attractive miniatures by Tertis himself, a variety of transcriptions he made of well-known pieces, and a genuine oddity, an obbligato part for the first movement of Beethoven's "Moonlight" Sonata. There are three more substantial works, the Viola Sonata No. 1 in C minor, Op. 18 by York Bowen; the viola version of Vaughan Williams' Six Studies in English Folk Song; and the Viola Sonata of Rebecca Clarke. The last two were not written for Tertis, but Clarke was a fine violist herself, and nothing seems out of place. The Clarke work, skillfully exploiting the viola's lower reaches, is especially nicely done. A must for violists, this is of interest to any lover of 20th century English music, and it made classical best-seller charts in early 2024.© James Manheim /TiVo
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Rachmaninoff: Preludes, Op. 23 & 32
Vladimir Ashkenazy
Classical - Released January 1, 1976 | Decca Music Group Ltd.
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The simple fact of the matter is that, compared with all previous releases of Ashkenazy's stupendous 1974-1975 recordings of Rachmaninov's 24 Preludes, this 96kHz 24-bit remastering is vastly better. Where the original LP release was warm and lush but a tad hazy, and earlier CD releases were warm and lush but a bit hard, this CD release is warm and lush -- but also clear and bright as polished crystal. Thus, while Ashkenazy's luminous lyricism, soulful sensuality, and blazing virtuosity are as manifest as ever -- and few pianists have ever matched him for these qualities in this repertoire -- what had previously seemed like his unfortunate tendency to overpedal in heavier textures is here shown to be a flaw in earlier releases, not his playing. More significantly, the remastering allows the colors and nuances of Ashkenazy's performances to sound more cleanly and accurately. In the hard-charging B flat major Prelude, the delicately radiant G sharp minor Prelude, even the played-to-death C sharp minor Prelude, Ashkenazy's playing seems much more subtle and dazzling -- which, considering his performances have long been considered among the deepest and strongest ever recorded, is quite an achievement. Everyone who treasures Rachmaninov's music should hear this release -- whether they've heard the earlier releases or not.© TiVo
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Schubert: Lieder with Orchestra
Munich Radio Orchestra
Classical - Released October 6, 2023 | BR-Klassik
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One might react to this album with initial annoyance and ask whether it is really necessary to hear orchestrated versions of Schubert's supremely pianistic songs. It may come as a surprise, then, to find that most of these Lieder with Orchestra were arranged by great composers. They include Benjamin Britten, Jacques Offenbach, and Max Reger, who took on the job because, he said, he hated to hear a piano-accompanied song on an orchestral program. Perhaps the most surprising name to find is that of Anton Webern, but his arrangements are not the minimal, pointillistic things one might expect; he wrote these arrangements as a way of studying Schubert's music, and they are quite straightforward. Indeed, it is somewhat difficult to distinguish the arrangers simply by listening to the music; Schubert's melodic lines tend to suggest distinctive solutions. Perhaps Reger's are a bit more lush than the others, although his version of Erlkönig, D. 328, is one of the few numbers here that just doesn't work (there is no way to replicate the percussive quality of the accompaniment). As for the performances as such, Benjamin Appl is clearly an important rising baritone, and he has a wonderful natural quality in Schubert. An oddball release like this might seem an unusual choice for a singer in early career, but he contributes his own notes, and he seems to have undertaken the project out of genuine enthusiasm for the material. At the very least, he has brought some intriguing pieces out of the archives and given them highly listenable performances. The Munich Radio Orchestra, under the young Oscar Jockel, is suitably restrained and keeps out of Appl's way. This release made classical best-seller lists in the autumn of 2023.© James Manheim /TiVo
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Paganini : 24 Caprices, Op. 1
Augustin Hadelich
Violin Solos - Released January 12, 2018 | Warner Classics
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5 de Diapason -
Gramophone Editor's Choice -
4 étoiles Classica
There comes a moment in the career of any respected violinist (and even some who aren't), when they dream of playing, and perhaps recording, Paganini's 24 Caprices. And that is precisely what German star violinist Augustin Hadelich (b. 1984) has done. Hadelich has been a regular fixture in the orchestras of Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, London, Munich and Salzburg, for whom he has given some of the greatest concertos that exist, but he has also performed a repertoire of much rarer, contemporary works, which he has decided to champion. Hadelich tackles these 24 Caprices, which Paganini wrote over about 15 years, from 1802 to 1817, without intending to make them into a cycle in their own right - much less a programme to be played in a single concert; indeed, it seems that he never performed them in concert himself - like many small Italian operas (but French ones as well, in the tradition of grand opéra), each one is concentrated down into a few minutes. They run from grandiose tragedy in the style of Meyerbeer, to lighter shades of Rossini, with a real lyrical and vocal vision which is as far removed as can be from pure and demonstrative virtuosity. At 33 years old, Hadelich shows consistent maturity, but also humility, and a sense of experience which one would expect to see in a much older musician. © SM/Qobuz
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Sviatoslav Richter plays Alexander Scriabin
Sviatoslav Richter
Classical - Released January 1, 2017 | Praga Digitals
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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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Camille & Julie Berthollet
Camille Berthollet
Classical - Released October 28, 2016 | Warner Classics
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This debut recital by teenage sisters Camille and Julie Berthollet (Camille plays both violin and cello, Julie the violin) consists of light music, but has an exuberant, fearless quality that suggests deeper things to come. The sisters arrange the program in the manner of a 19th century concert for the general public, with an orchestra trading tracks with a piano in the accompanist slot and a gleeful mix of familiar tunes, ethnic dances, folk-like melodies (here extended forward to Gershwin, whose Summertime gets a highly novel treatment), and movements of serious trios by Schubert, gorgeously played. This would all be enough in itself, but the real fun comes from the constantly shifting roles of the solo violins and cello, variously deployed in arrangements that have in some cases been around for a while (the Gluck tune appears in a setting by Fritz Kreisler), but have never been put together in quite this way. Sample the Paganini Caprice No. 24 and enjoy the deconstruction of Paganini's solo violin work into material for two violins and orchestra. The cleverness with which the whole program is put together belies the lightness of the material, and these are definitely young musicians to watch. Highly recommended.© TiVo
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Schumann: Études symphoniques, Op. 13 - Études sur un thème de Beethoven, WoO 31 & Geistervariationen, WoO 24
Claire Désert
Classical - Released September 10, 2021 | Mirare
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From one recording to the next, French pianist Claire Désert continues her exploration of Schumann’s piano works with a new album focussed on the variation genre. She explores the manifold, elusive moods found in the “Symphonic Studies”, the “Etudes in Variation form on a Theme of Beethoven” and the “Geistervariationen” (Ghost Variations), like a diary of the composer. From a tribute to Beethoven to the ultimate variations composed right before sinking into the Rhine, it is all Romanticism that is sung by Schumann's piano, with its breaks and ideals. © Mirare
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Beethoven: Complete Sonatas for Piano and Violin
Ludwig van Beethoven
Classical - Released September 25, 2014 | Challenge Classics
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Sarasate
Julia Fischer
Classical - Released January 1, 2013 | Decca Music Group Ltd.
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5 de Diapason
On this 2013 Decca release, critically acclaimed violinist Julia Fischer and pianist Milana Chernyavska present a delightful recital of showpieces by Spanish virtuoso, Pablo de Sarasate. The music's fireworks give the program a strong appeal, and Fischer's technical brilliance is well-matched to all of Sarasate's demands, though her expressive intensity and soulful lyricism consistently carry the album. She pulls off all manner of flashy effects, including glissando harmonics, flageolets, pizzicati on the fingerboard, extended passages of sixths and octaves, flying spiccato bowing, and everything else in the violinist's bag of tricks, and there is never a missed opportunity for showmanship. Yet Fischer is most convincing when she has long, songlike melodies to spin out, and her control of line is always impressive, even when the melody is widely dispersed across the strings. Since the piano part is comparatively simple, often consisting of chords in a steady rhythm, Charnyavska has nothing particularly showy to play, but her support for Fischer's performance is constant and steady, and her sympathetic accompaniment is well-timed and subtle. Decca's reproduction is focused and clear, and the most dazzling passagework sparkles in the resonant recording space. Highly recommended.© TiVo
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Great Music of Small Forms
Yekaterinburg Philharmonic Choir
Classical - Released September 1, 2023 | Fuga Libera
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Shostakovich: 24 Preludes and Fugues - Nikolayeva
Tatiana Nikolayeva
Classical - Released January 24, 2020 | Musical Concepts
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Paradise Lost
Anna Prohaska
Classical - Released April 10, 2020 | Alpha Classics
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The gestation of this project lasted two years. Anna Prohaska and Julius Drake finally concentrated their research on the themes of Eve, Paradise and banishment. Some songs were obvious choices, such as Fauré’s Paradis, in which God appears to Eve and asks her to name each flower and animal, or Purcell’s Sleep, Adam, sleep with its references to Genesis. But Anna Prohaska also wished to illustrate the cliché of the woman who brought original sin into the world and her status as a tempter who leads man astray, as in Brahms’s Salamander, Wolf’s Die Bekehrte or Ravel’s Air du Feu. In Das Paradies und die Peri, Schumann conjures up the image of Syria’s rose-covered plains. Bernstein also transports us to the desert with Silhouette.. John Milton’s seventeenth-century masterpiece Paradise Lost was the inspiration for Charles Ives and Benjamin Britten, also featured in this very rich programme that constitutes an invitation to travel and reflection. © Alpha Classics
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Rachmaninoff: 24 Préludes
Boris Giltburg
Classical - Released April 12, 2019 | Naxos
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Although he now lives in Israel and was mostly trained there, pianist Boris Giltburg is a representative of the pure Russian school -- powerful, brilliant, and sweeping. Rachmaninov ought to be his métier, and so it is. For clean passagework at the highest possible skill level, Giltburg is a pianist to turn to now, and where the excitement is built into the piano writing, so to speak, the spirit of Rachmaninov himself will seem to breathe in his playing. Sample the Prelude in C minor, Op. 23, No. 7, which begins with almost impossible speed and then adds multiple counterpoints; few pianists can hold the whole structure gently in hand the way Giltburg can. The famous prelude that announced Rachmaninov to the world, the Morceau de Fantaisie in C sharp minor, Op. 3, No. 2, has plenty of monumental power. Where Rachmaninov offers programmatic mystery, or approaches Chopin's rarefied world, Giltburg is merely good, not great. But go see him if he's in your town on tour with these: he's the type of player to bring the crowd to their feet, and this recording is as good a place as any to start with him. Giltburg benefits from fine sound engineering at the entirely acoustically appropriate Wyastone Estate concert hall.
© TiVo
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Schubert: Winterreise
Joyce DiDonato
Classical - Released April 9, 2021 | Warner Classics
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World famous mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato and conductor-pianist Yannick Nézet-Séguin join forces to take on one of the most brilliant song cycles ever written: Schubert's Winterreise. DiDonato, however, casts a different light on this beloved cycle of 24 songs in telling their story from the perspective of the woman, the lost love. Nancy Plum, from Town Topics (Princeton) writes: "The question of what happened to the woman who sent the narrator on a tortuous journey was not answered in the Wilhelm Müller poetry from which Schubert drew the text, but DiDonato created a scenario onstage of being that woman, reading from the narrator's journal and responding to the inherent despair". "What stood out was the heavy emotion that came through in her singing, as she lingered on a syllable here, pressed her tone there. She created vivid feelings with her contrasts", wrote The New York Classical Review about Joyce Didonato's interpretation. © Warner Classics
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Piano Works by Chopin, Clementi, Haydn, Moszkowski, Scriabin & Schumann (Les indispensables de Diapason)
Vladimir Horowitz
Classical - Released April 1, 2023 | Les Indispensables de Diapason
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Louise Farrenc: Etudes & Variations for Solo Piano
Joanne Polk
Classical - Released February 7, 2020 | Steinway and Sons
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Paganini: 24 Caprices
Itzhak Perlman
Classical - Released September 25, 2015 | Warner Classics
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Vikingur Olafsson: Chopin - Bach
Víkingur Ólafsson
Classical - Released May 4, 2011 | Dirrindi
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Spatial Audio - The 3D Orchestral Collection
Orchestre Philharmonique De Strasbourg
Classical - Released October 15, 2021 | Warner Classics
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