Janina Fialkowska's 2015 release on ATMA Classique is a selection of Edvard Grieg's Lyric Pieces, drawn from the full set of 66 miniatures, which were published between 1867 and 1901. Her choice of the most popular character pieces reflects a common practice among pianists to fit a representative sample on a single disc, necessarily leaving out less familiar numbers along the way. As a result, her CD of 25 tracks is comparable to other highlights albums that typically feature such favorites as the Berceuse, Butterfly, March of the Trolls, Sylph, Wedding Day at Troldhaugen, Evening in the Mountains, and Remembrances. While Fialkowska's long career has yielded many fine recordings of Chopin, Schubert, and Liszt, this sensitive exploration of Grieg is a welcome addition to an impressive catalog that has been focused almost exclusively on the early Romantic period.© TiVo

The first volume of Cécile Chaminade’s piano music on Piano Classics won the same kind of universal accolades as the rest of Mark Viner’s fast-growing catalogue of albums for the label. His masterful advocacy is helping her to regain the reputation she enjoyed during her lifetime, when she could count Queen Victoria among her legion of ardent fans, in a long and fruitful career capped by becoming the first female composer to be awarded the "Legion d’honneur", in 1913 – when she still had more than 30 years of productive music-making ahead of her. The reason for Chaminade’s popularity is the charm, tunefulness and general accessibility of her music. It touches a ready chord with every music lover, and the fancy titles and not overly virtuosic piano writing made that her works became drawing room favorites of the epoch. Chaminade is principally remembered today as a composer of salon music, but she began her career writing on a much grander scale and with loftier expressive ambitions, both for the piano and in other genres. Such ambitions leave a mark on the set of six Etudes de concert which Mark Viner has compiled from different opus numbers (distinct from the Op. 35 set recorded on Volume 1), beginning in dazzling style with the flashing runs of the Etude romantique, Op. 132 and ending with the no-nonsense counterpoint of the Etude scolastique, Op. 139. Au pays dévasté, Op. 155 is one of Chaminade’s most profound conceptions, among the most serious of her late works, published in 1919 in the wake of the First World War, which she had spent as a nurse to wounded soldiers away from the front line. However, there is also plenty of Chaminade the charmer here, at the peak of her powers in the Six Pièces humoristiques – the first and last of which receive their world premiere recordings here. The album opens with Ondine, among her most supple and delicately textured tone-poems, and closes with the irrepressibly cheeky Lolita, a "caprice espagnol" worthy of Carmen herself. Further highlights in between include a swaying and sensuous Danse créole, Op. 94 and the offbeat, coquettish Guitare, Op. 34. Under Mark Viner’s fingers, Chaminade casts the same spell here as she did over audiences across Europe 150 years ago. © Piano Classics

Several famous pieces of music based on birdsong appeared in the 19th and 20th centuries; those by Saint-Saëns, Britten, and Ravel are here, although Messiaen is not. However, the affinity between music and birdsong had been explored for centuries before that, and the early music group La Rêveuse here provides some delightful examples. The always pictorial François Couperin is represented, as is Rameau, but other composers are less familiar but no less charming. Sample the works by Theodor Schwartzkopff, Michel Blavet, and especially Michel Pignolet de Montéclair (1667-1737), whose "Les Ramages" ("The Songs") names a group of birds and then illustrates their songs. Then there are historical-instrument versions of Saint-Saëns, Britten, and Ravel. One may accept this idea or not, but even in the latter case, they don't do much to dent the charm of the whole. The program ends with a work by contemporary composer Vincent Bouchot, Le Carnaval des animaux en péril, a kind of a take-off on Saint-Saëns for the Anthropocene era that also calls forth a striking variety of instruments from La Rêveuse. Another questionable idea is that, in keeping with the practices of this group, recorded birdsong is heard between some of the tracks. Whatever aspects of this release might be doubtful, it rarely fails to bring a smile. © James Manheim /TiVo

Chasing the Butterfly is the result of a couple of creative people seeing a confluence of ideas and working to produce something unique and unexpected. Pianist Sigurd Slåttebrekk and producer Tony Harrison worked together on a recording of Grieg's Piano Concerto in 2005. The desire to look at the work as if it were a new piece led them to examine the recordings that Grieg himself had made of some of his Lyric Pieces in 1903 in Paris, the composer performing his own works, which at the time would be considered new (or relatively new) music. The next question was "What would those pieces have sounded like on Grieg's own piano?" Lief Ove Andsnes had already used Grieg's piano at Troldhaugen to record some of the Lyric Pieces. What Slåttebrekk and Harrison decided to do was attempt to re-create Grieg's recordings, to capture the music as Grieg would have played it in his own home, in 21st century sound, meaning not just using the same pieces, but also trying to replicate the same tempos, dynamics, and shadings. Slåttebrekk realized that merely listening to Grieg play and then precisely imitating him would not do. He tried to absorb the way Grieg played, the way he handled different types of passages and sounds, to create performances that sound natural and musical. Slåttebrekk succeeds in this, as can be heard in the full Sonata, Op. 7. Grieg was only able to record half of the last movement, but Slåttebrekk gives us the complete work, sounding very fresh and organic. The same is true of the Ballade, Op. 24. There is a brightness and momentum in his playing that makes it come alive. In the Andante moderato movement he uses sensitive phasing and rubato, but not so much that the sense of direction is ever lost. To prove how closely Slåttebrekk comes to Grieg's original, the Grieg recordings are also included, as is a track Harrison put together of the Wedding Day at Troldhaugen that weaves Grieg's and Slåttebrekk's performances. The second disc contains the Piano Concerto recording with Michail Jurowski and the Oslo Philharmonic that started it all. It has some of the same sparkle as the solo pieces and is not treated as monumentally heavy or forcefully as most pianists do. This distinctive release -- something of a twist on period performance practice -- is recommended for any fan of Grieg's music. © TiVo

If Chopin "invented" the Mazurka, then surely by the same token Grieg "invented" the Lyric Piece. Over his lifetime he published ten volumes of Lyric Pieces, containing sixty-six individual works. Born in Bergen, Grieg studied in Leipzig and became established as Norway’s leading composer, successfully synthesising Norwegian folk music with the forms and conventions of the German tradition. While he was internationally acclaimed for his Piano Concerto and the incidental music to Peer Gynt, the vast majority of his output lies not in large-scale works, but in smaller, more intimate forms, especially songs and, of course, his Lyric Pieces. Peter Donohoe writes: "as a teenager I expanded my knowledge of the music of Grieg to include many solo piano pieces as well as the better-known orchestral works. I was beguiled by his style, and the reason remains somewhat intangible. Although one is able to identify the originality of Grieg as a composer – the Norwegian folk element in his music, his natural gift for memorable melodic lines, his occasional diversions into unique and extraordinarily forward-looking harmonies, and, to some degree, his emotional naïveté – there is a unique, unidentifiable kernel in his output that defies analysis, as is true of the work of all the great composers... All these works are pristine examples of his diverse and original style – Norwegian with a Germanic flavour – and it has been a huge and satisfying pleasure to return to them to create this and future recordings". © Chandos

Even by the supremely high production standards of Alpha recordings, this issue is especially splendid. Entitled Versailles, L'ile enchantée, it fully lives up to its name. As directed by Skip Sempé, the widely varied program features music written for Louis XIV's pleasure palace, performed by the Capriccio Stravagante Orchestra with mezzo soprano Guillemette Laurens and bass violist Jay Bernfeld. Each work is superbly selected, and every performance is absolutely idiomatic and wonderfully alive. There is wit and tenderness and elegance and, yes, nobility to their performances, which taken together form as much a portrait of the Sun King as the palace of Versailles itself. As organized into eight Divertissements, Sempé's choices range from the grand Ouverture de Psyché by Lully to the intimate Mes Yeux by Campra, from the soulful Les Voix Humaines by Marais to the massive Passacaille in C by Louis Couperin. As captured in the evocative photographs by Jean-Baptiste Leroux and reproduced in Alpha's superlative program book, Versailles looks every bit as beautiful as this disc sounds. Anyone who loves Baroque music, particularly French Baroque music, will love this disc.© TiVo

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