Symfonische muziek

Awarded for his Mozart recital in a Qobuzissime, the soprano Regula Mühleman continues her discographic journey with Sony with an album dedicated to an outstandingly romantic theme. Lieder der Heimat is an ambitiously conceived musical work as it merges masterpieces (Schubert, Liszt), unexpected rarities (Rossini) and rarities (Baumgartner, Frey and the very French Marguerite Roesgen-Champion) around a typically German concept. We could translate Heimat as motherland, but we would then be neglecting the affectionate aspect of the German term where one would wander the German countryside in their youth. The atmosphere and expression of feeling in this lied are very much tied to this privileged place. Schubert produces art where melodic and harmonic sophistication are forgotten in the place of natural poetry that speaks straight from the heart. The album also opens with the sound of the pastoral instrument par excellence, the clarinet, here played by Daniel Ottensamer. Its velvety house-hold fireside sound acts as the opener for Regula Mühlemann. The program unravels without warning as her clear, warm voice settles into the repertoire – in German, French, Italian and even Alemannic. We are all awoken from a dreamlike state as La Vieille Chanson de Guggisberg begins. The singer adjusts her timbre to provide colour thanks to supple inflections and an almost subdued vibrato. This a cappella section starts with one voice that is joined by a second then a third – it’s a shame the booklet doesn’t give more details about the additional participants. Be that as it may, Regula Mülemann forms a perfect duo with the pianist Tatiana Korsunskaya. The latter also plays a solo of a rippling page from Années de pèlerinage: Le lac de Wallenstadt. While Konstantin Timokhine signals a return to Schubert with a stroll-like accompaniment of the sound of a natural alpine horn (Auf dem Strom, D. 943), it is two, more operatic pieces that close the record. Schubert’s La Pastorella al prato wraps things up with clarity and luxury along with one of Rossini’s Soirées musicales, La Pastorella dell’Alpi. The composer of Guillaume Tell (Switzerland again!) offers a somewhat butterfly-minded conclusion to the recording. The incredible Regula Mühlemann suits, unquestionably, all outfits. © Elsa Siffert/Qobuz

As one of the finest pianists of his era and an improviser of genius, Ludwig van Beethoven’s preferred vehicle for musical exploration was the piano. His earliest composition, from 1782, was a set of piano variations and he continued to compose for solo piano until the last years of his life. His interest in the concerto form diminished as his deafness forced him to retire from performing. Nonetheless, with his five piano concertos composed between 1788 and 1809, Beethoven not only achieved a brilliant conclusion to the Classical piano concerto, but also established a new model for the Romantic era: a sort of symphony with obbligato piano which remained a reference point well into the beginning of the twentieth. Ronald Brautigam has already recorded these seminal works with the Norrköping Symphony Orchestra, in acclaimed performances released between 2008 and 2010. Since then he has also released all of Beethoven’s solo piano music on the fortepiano to universal praise. When Brautigam now returns to the concertos, it is in the company of conductor Michael Alexander Willens and Die Kölner Akademie playing on period instruments. The same team has previously partnered him in an 11-disc survey of Mozart’s piano concertos and it is plain to hear that all involved clearly relish the opportunity to congratulate Beethoven on the eve of his 250th anniversary. © BIS Records

To celebrate the 250th anniversary of Beethoven’s birthday with the entire world in 2020, the Carnegie Hall chose the French ensemble the Ébène Quartet to perform Beethoven’s Quatuors in their entirety. Honoured by this prestigious invitation, the four musicians decided to prolong this exceptional moment by playing this globally recognised music around the world, on all five continents in seven concerts between April 2019 and January 2020. The intellectual and emotional strength of Beethoven’s opus remains a force to be reckoned with, a humanist vector carried by the spirit of the Enlightenment. Over the course of this fantastic journey, the Ébène Quartet will record the quatuors in concerts given in Vienna, Philadelphia, Tokyo, São Paulo, Melbourne, Nairobi and Paris, their home ground. A film crew will follow the musicians on their world tour and will thereafter produce a documentary. The first milestone of this Beethoven around the World journey makes up this album, and was recorded in June 2019 in the Mozartsaal of the Vienna Konzerthaus. It contains the first two Razumovsky Quatuors, performed in the very city where they were composed in 1806. © François Hudry/Qobuz

Andrea Lucchesini’s career continues discreetly in the shadow of more mediatized Italian pianists. The star pupil, like Nelson Goerner, of the great Maria Tipo, Lucchesini has invested a lot of his time into concerts and recording. After becoming known for his interpretations of Luciano Berio’s music, in particular his concerto Echoing Curves directed by the composer himself, he has recorded the integrity of Beethoven’s sonatas for the label Stradivarius.Over the last few years, Lucchesini has concentrated on Schubert, “my great love”, he calls him. These two very different composers on the cusp of romanticism fascinate Andrea Lucchesini who presents here his first volume dedicated to the late works of Schubert. These works were written at a time when the composer of Lieder returned to composing sonatas amidst greats like Beethoven who also coincidentally lived in the same town.For Lucchesini, Schubert remains an enigma. The man left behind almost no written documents, he never stayed put in one precise residence and no one could understand his shyness, agitation, nor his latent homosexuality. “Rediscovering his final works”, says Andrea Lucchenini, “showed me the difference between the artist who entertained his friends and the composer who worked in solitude without any prospect of being published nor played.” Such solitude that longs to break free can be heard clearly in this album, particularly in the interpretation of Andantino of Sonata D. 959 through which troubling phantoms move. © François Hudry/Qobuz

“Water equals time and provides beauty with its double.” Anna Gourari, a pianist with a completely individual naturalness and authority, chooses these words from Joseph Brodsky’s essay on Venice as epigraph to her third recording for ECM. Her programme is typically wide-ranging but tightly focussed, with exquisitely alive performances of slow movements by Bach framing a choice selection of pieces from our own time. A span of three centuries is thus traversed, with magical and moving ease. We find memories of Bach reappearing in the regularly repeating notes of diary entries for piano set down in 2002 by the senior Russian composer Rodion Shchedrin, in a work written for Gourari. And we find in the late Five Aphorisms by Alfred Schnittke strange and beautiful chords that seem to condense whole swathes of Bach’s harmony. This is the “Elusive Affinity” of which the album’s title speaks. The two Bach slow movements are from his transcriptions of concertos by Antonio Vivaldi and Alessandro Marcello, arrangements in which he retraced these orchestral concertos for his own fingers, bringing to them an intimate privacy that Gourari also conveys throughout this recording. Vivaldi and Marcello were both Venetians, and Venice provides, by elusive affinity, the recording’s imaginary location. Photographs by Luca d’Agostino, reproduced in the booklet, follow Gourari through a Venetian archway, beside an ancient wall, on the edge of the lagoon. Water circulates in the city, enveloping past and present, old and new. So in our awareness, as we listen, Bach’s images of a Venice he never visited swim with others from nearer at hand. These others remind us that Venice, the Mediterranean mirror-image of St. Petersburg, has long been important to Russian artists. Schnittke’s dark pieces sound like shadows cutting across sunlit paving, though there is wit in this music, too. Arvo Pärt, represented by a crucial but largely overlooked early example of his luminous style, evokes bell sounds common to both Venice and the Baltic. Also here are two haunting miniatures by Giya Kancheli and a sequence of memorials to friends by Wolfgang Rihm, where sombreness joins with light, in what is again a Venetian conjunction. © ECM Records

"Zwiegespräche" is a meeting of spirits. “We compose the same way,” said György Kurtág to Heinz Holliger on hearing this recording, which emphasises works for oboe by these two major composers. Both of them reference the entire history of music in their pieces, both incorporate dedications and messages to friends and colleagues in the fabric of their work, and both draw upon literature as an inspirational source. Both, moreover, love the miniature as an expressive form; short pieces by Kurtág and Holliger are interwoven. Holliger’s sequence Airs (2015/6) is inspired by seven texts by Swiss poet Philippe Jaccottet, whose voice is heard here. The release of "Zwiegespräche" is timely. Heinz Holliger turns 80 on May 21, his creativity as composer and his resourcefulness as instrumentalist undimmed. The album concludes with Holliger’s Sonate für Oboe solo, composed in 1956, and still played by its author with absolute authority. © ECM Records

Without the help of blaring drums or castanets, culture-filled aesthete Paul van Nevel gives the opportunity to hear the music that Christopher Columbus heard during his travels and adventurous life. This has resulted in a rigorous selection of (many unknown) a capella works, by Italian and Spanish composers from the late 15th and early 16th centuries. Beginning with childhood memories of Christopher Columbus (a carnival song evoking an erotic joke about chimney sweeps), the album ends with pieces by Agricola most likely heard by the navigator at the end of his final voyage in 1506. This virtual musical journey begins in 15th century Venice and reaches the court of Ferdinand and Isabella in Madrid, Seville, Cordoba and Valladolid. This offers an exciting programme benefitting from the exceptional quality of singers of the Huelgas Ensemble, specialised in medieval and Renaissance polyphony and founded in 1971 by Paul van Nevel. © François Hudry/Qobuz

Caruso, Pavarotti, Mario Lanza and many others have all succumbed – with more or less success − to the charms and spells of southern popular songs, filled with sunlight, liveliness and joy of life. Dazzling Latvian mezzo soprano Elīna Garanča takes her shot at this tradition with her first “non-classical” album, released under the Yellow Label of Deutsche Grammophon. Exploring a predominantly masculine repertoire, she masterfully proves music has no barriers and that joy belongs to everyone.Living in the Canary Islands, Elīna Garanča has selected a few pearls, not necessarily the rarest, from the Spanish repertoire, as well as some works from Italy and Latin America, with bespoke arrangements often prepared by her husband and conductor Karel Mark Chichon, who leads the Philharmonic Orchestra of Gran Canaria for this performance. The result is a commingling of songs and extracts of zarzuelas and tangos, including Yo Soy Maria by inevitable and dear Astor Piazolla.The perfect opportunity to experience Elīna Garanča’s irresistible velvety voice and her God-given ability to sing anything with the same enthusiasm. The purity of her vocal line and ability to alter her tone to match the repertoire bestow a new dimension to these popular miniatures, and contribute to slimming, almost abolishing the boundary between opera and popular music. © François Hudry/Qobuz

We’re absolutely delighted to present a solo performance by one of Germany’s most fascinating pianists, Herbert Schuch, who after producing two albums with his wife Gülru Ensari for CAvi-Music, returns to the Cologne label to work on his own ambitious projects. Recorded in Studio 2 of the Bayerischer Rundfunk in December 2017, here’s at last his newest solo project, following his 2014 Naive album (Invocation − the relationship with the French firm was terminated when Naive’s art director joined Belgian label Outhere, and the group Believe took over Naive) and his seven albums produced for Oehms Classics before 2013.Herbert Schuch had seldom explored Beethoven until this album, in which he opposes Beethoven’s Eleven Bagatelles, Op. 119 to György Ligeti’s Musica Ricercata eleven miniatures, topping it off with the Bonn Master’s Op. 126. Unlike the Bagatelles’ last opus, Op. 119 isn’t necessarily designed as a cycle, meaning it makes perfect sense to weave together these Beethovenian thoughts with those of the greatest piano composer of the second half of the 20th century. With these powerful piano harmonics, supported by a brilliant sound recording that would lend itself marvellously to Olivier Messiaen’s music or the tenants of spectral music, the various characters explored by Ligeti in his Musica Ricercata directly impact Beethoven’s accents − the Bonn Master not necessarily being the most expansive of the two in this case.A slightly unsettling, yet undeniably intentional proposition. None should pass on the chance to experience the newest album of one of the piano scene’s smartest musicians, particularly as Musica Ricercata recordings remain a rarity. The Op. 126’s sculptural nature is most impressive. © Pierre-Yves Lascar/Qobuz

London in the 1730s. Musical life was flourishing around the figure of Handel. The Saxon composer also served as director; at the height of his fame, he surrounded himself with the finest London musicians, and was joined by many foreign composers to occupy the long breaks between the acts of his lyric works. Their musical interludes accompanied lavish dinners, during which Mr Handel escaped from the pit to indulge his gourmet tendencies. Quite a programme! © harmonia mundi

The Calder Quartet invites you on a journey from early to late Beethoven, passing through an exciting contemporary piece by Swedish composer Anders Hillborg along the way. Beethoven’s Op. 131 string quartet, that concludes this album, is already a great adventure in its own right, with its seven movements full of fugal writing, harmonic explorations, variations and passages filled with operatic drama. Hearing this late masterpiece together with the much more classical, but equally lively, Op. 18 no. 3 quartet opens our ears to the exceptional richness of Beethoven’s musical universe. Hillborg’s Kongsgaard Variations reveals unexpected sonic relationships to Beethoven’s variation technique, underlining the modernity of the older composer. This all leads to a program that is lively, layered and ravishingly beautiful. Hailed as one of the most exciting classical music groups of the United States, the Calder Quartet now presents the first fruit of its exclusive collaboration with Pentatone. © Pentatone

For a truly great interpretation it’s not enough just to play a historical instrument, the playing also has to be up to scratch. This recording released by the world-renowned label ECM showcases a pianist of the highest calibre playing the wonderful Viennese Brodmann piano. András Schiff captures the convergence of thought and sound remarkably well and seldom before have we been given so much insight into Schubert’s innermost thoughts. The softness and the unmistakable legato that the pianist produces on this Viennese instrument give the Sonatas D. 958 and D. 959 an indescribable feeling of nostalgia. But Schubert’s inward revolt was growing and András Schiff leads us steadily to the edge of the abyss. The crystalline sounds of the Scherzo in the Sonata D. 959 are as enchanting as the sound of ancient harpists who were so often depicted by German Romantics. This exploration into sound is also marvellous in the Impromptus D. 899 and the 3 Klavierstücke D. 946 or “Three Piano Pieces”, which have a very expressive counterpoint that differ from the unfathomable depth of the sonatas. This album is a revelation into a whole new world of sound that is unveiled as András Schiff’s fingers touch the keys. Inspiring. © François Hudry/Qobuz

Over the past five years, pianist Anna Vinnitskaya has made three Alpha recordings dedicated to Shostakovitch, Brahms et Rachmaninov. Evgeni Koroliov is a great master of the piano, a great Bach specialist, whose recordings of Bach are an acclaimed benchmark. His piano duo with his wife, Ljupka Hadzi-Georgieva, has made its mark over the past few years in all the major international concert venues. Also a highly reputed teacher, Koroliov was Anna Vinnitskaya’s professor at Hamburg. ‘Though I no longer study with him, I still meet and talk with him several times a week,’ she confides. ‘That helps me further in my development, not just as a pianist but as a human being.’ These three Slavonic pianists, who for some time have been aiming to record the Bach concertos as a team, decided to invite a German ensemble that is itself highly expert in Bach interpretation, the Potsdam Chamber Orchestra; they recorded this double album in a legendary venue where some of the greatest artists have recorded: the Jesus-Christus-Kirche in Berlin. © Alpha Classics