Ðề: Kệ nhạc cổ điển ivanhoe76 [Multi] Davies - Lutoslawski Bartok Musique funebre (2012) [ECM] {24-44} View attachment 194194 FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44.1 kHz | Time – 01:00:45 minutes | 623 MB | 5% recovery info Genre: Classical | Official Digital Download – Source: highresaudio.com | © ECM Records GmbH Recorded: May 2004 and February 2010, Liederhalle, Stuttgart Hungarian Radio Children’s Choir Stuttgarter Kammerorchester Dennis Russell Davies, conductor Spoiler Conductor Dennis Russell Davies leads the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra in a program of music by, and dedicated to, Béla Bartók. The disc opens in the latter vein with Witold Lutosławski’s Musique funèbre, composed between 1954 and 1958 for the 10th anniversary of Bartók’s death. The title, often erroneously translated as “Funeral music,” is better rendered as “Music of mourning,” and connotes homage to one of Lutosławski’s greatest inspirations, if not the greatest, for he never dedicated a work to another composer. Although the piece’s overarching development resembles Bartók’s Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta, the opening cellos closely prefigure the robust, overlapping memorial of Henryk Górecki’s Symphony No. 3, even if they do chart a vastly different geography, from collective to individual landing. That initial feeling of density and weight gives way to a dark airiness. Motives bend and sway—at moments pliant, at others sharply angled. Darting violins bring us closer to a sense of inner turmoil and bold reckoning. The Bartókian flavor is clear yet faged, and falls back where it began: in the solemn cellos. Ashes to ashes. As Wolfgang Sandner observes in this album’s liner notes, for Bartók the music of Hungary’s peasants “was the source of a radical new musical system, not material for reverting to a nostalgic transfiguration of the original sounds.” In light of this, we might reckon his Romanian Folk Dances of 1917 not as an archival storehouse but, more like Estonian composer Veljo Tormis’s choral arrangements, as an experiment made fresh by extant impulses. While for me the reference recording by Midori and Robert McDonald (1992, Sony Classical) gets to the core of the music in ways I’ve not since heard, the Stuttgarters’ soaring performance of this 1937 arrangement for string orchestra by Arthur Willner articulates the orbits of its moons with surprising precision. A delicate piece of nevertheless sweeping proportions, it moves by a hand unseen. The solo violin stands out like a red rose among a field of black, its changes organic, even a touch mournful, in the present setting. As the mosaic evolves, it gives light to the translucent cells of its becoming. The flute-like strings in the enlivening finale give us reason to rejoice in the shadows. So, too, does the Divertimento. Composed 1939 in dedication to Paul Sacher (who commissioned the work) and the Basler Kammerorchester, it achieves novel balance of spiritedness and restraint under Davies’s direction. Its unmistakable beginning lures with its insistent rhythm but would just as soon fragment into multiple galaxies of melodic thought. There is a smoothness of execution in the tutti passages and a paper-thin delicacy to the solo strings. While one might expect that energy to be sustained, it waxes and wanes in a most natural, thought-out-loud sort of way that lends especial insight into Bartók’s compositional process. The second movement proceeds slowly at first, but then, with the coming of dawn, stretches its gravity. The lower and higher strings forge an implicit harmony, an acknowledgment of the invisible forces connecting them both. The contrast between double basses and violins is one not of tone but of purpose: the lowers an unstable fundament, the uppers a firmament in turmoil. This chaos they share as if it were blood. The final movement returns the promise of that dance with wit. There are, of course, intensely lyrical and slow-moving parts, with the violin carving surface relief, but always returning with that whirlwind of fire. In the wake of this dynamism, selections from Bartók’s 27 Two- and Three-Part Choruses (1935-41) come as something of a breather. They are not adaptations of folksongs, but were composed in such a style at the behest of Zoltán Kodály. With evocative titles like “Wandering,” “Bread-baking,” and “Jeering,” each is a vignette of imagined life. A snare drum pops its way through the choral textures, by turns martial and lyrical, adding colors of interest throughout. And while these pieces hardly hold a candle to his a capella choruses (the orchestral writing feels at points superfluous), they provide welcome contrast to the veils that precede it with gift of vision. –ecmreviews.com The Musique funèbre (Funeral Music) title and the graphics for this release, showing a sere landscape against a black sky, might make you think that the emotional content consists of unrelieved gloom. But in fact it’s more cheerful than not: the final selections from Bartók’s 27 Two- and Three-Part Choruses, BB 111, are sunny songs for children’s chorus and orchestra. They make a rather incongruous conclusion, but the music steadily brightens after the titular work by Witold Lutoslawski, and what you really have here is a crack performance that demonstrates Lutoslawski’s links to Bartók and offers a nice mix of familiar and unusual Bartók works. Eastern European composers of the 20th century’s second half were almost without exception mightily influenced by Bartók, whether they wanted to admit it or not, and fortunately Lutoslawski was one who readily acknowledged his debt. The Musique funèbre, in fact, was a direct tribute, written for the tenth anniversary of Bartók’s death and marking the beginning of Lutoslawski’s flirtation with twelve-tone music. He nevertheless used the technique in a characteristic way: developing melodies and structures from specific intervals in a way that recalls nothing so much as Bartók’s own experiments with folk music. Bartók’s Romanian Folk Dances, BB 76, are an ideal counterpoint, lifting the gloom but recognizably related. The common fund of contrapuntal treatments continues in the Divertimento for string orchestra, BB 118, the last work Bartók completed before fleeing to America in 1940. The most popular work on the program, it makes a good bridge between Bartók’s late crowd-pleasing style and the rigors of his middle-period works. It is given a performance of awesome precision here by the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra under Dennis Russell Davies, and it’s worth the purchase price by itself. With the usual ECM engineers on hand for two separate sessions at the Liederhalle in Stuttgart, the sound is flawlessly consistent in spite of the fact that the sessions took place six years apart. Whether this program was planned organically or came together by chance, it makes a lot of sense in a collection of contemporary Eastern European music. –James Manheim Tracklist: Witold Lutoslawski (1913–1994) 1. Musique funèbre (1954–1958) – À la mémoire de Béla Bartók 13:55 ̀ Béla Bartók (1881–1945) 2. Romanian Folk Dances, BB 76 (1917) 6:26 3. Divertimento, BB 118: Allegro non troppo 9:03 4. Divertimento, BB 118: Molto adagio 9:47 5. Divertimento, BB 118: Allegro assai 7:31 27 Two and Three-Part Choruses Sz. 103, BB 111 6. Hussar 1:42 7. Don’t leave here! 1:46 8. Loafer’s Song 0:45 9. Wandering 2:30 10. Bread-baking 2:20 11. Only tell me 3:22 12. Jeering 1:30 Nhấn nút Cảm ơn (dưới chân bài) để thấy link!
Ðề: Kệ nhạc cổ điển ivanhoe76 [Multi] Leonore Piano Trio - Arensky Piano Trios (2014) [Hyperion] {24-96} View attachment 194214 FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Digital Booklet | 1.3 GB | 5% recovery info Genre: Classical | Official Digital Download - Source: Hyperion Composer: Anton Arensky, Sergei Rachmaninov Orchestra/Ensemble: Leonore Piano Trio Spoiler Arensky’s Piano Trios represent a fine example of the Russian romantic piano trio, a form ‘invented’ by Tchaikovsky, Arensky’s close friend and influence. Piano Trio No 1 is the more popular of the two, dedicated to the cellist Karl Davidoff. Davidoff is regarded as the founder of the Russian school of cello-playing, and Arensky’s dedication accounts for the fact that the cello plays such a prominent role, having most of the principal themes and often seeming to eclipse the violin in importance. Piano Trio No 2 is one composer’s last works, and marks a considerable advance in Arensky’s compositional techniques. Hyperion is delighted to present the Leonore Piano Trio (Tim Horton, Benjamin Nabarro and Gemma Rosefield, who features as soloist on Hyperion’s Romantic Cello Concerto series Volume 3: Stanford Cello Concertos) in its debut recording. Reviews: The heroic years of Russian musical Romanticism, roughly from the 1850s to the early 1890s, were dominated by the Nationalist school of the ‘Mighty Handful’ (or the ‘Five’)—Balakirev, Borodin, Musorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov and Cui—centred on St Petersburg, and the more Europeanized figures of Tchaikovsky and Rubinstein. The generation that came to maturity after them included many important and colourful figures: Glazunov, Taneyev, Rachmaninov, Scriabin, Medtner and Liadov, for example. But to a greater or lesser extent they all had to define themselves in relation to, and against the background of, their illustrious seniors, who were often their teachers. This is the certainly the case with the career of Anton Stepanovich Arensky. Arensky was born in Novgorod and, though originally a pupil of Rimsky-Korsakov in St Petersburg, where he gained the Gold Medal for composition, he became a professor at the Moscow Conservatory in 1882, at the age of twenty-one, where he was closely associated with Tchaikovsky, both in friendship and stylistic emulation: the kinship of Arensky’s musical language to that of the older composer has often been noted. (It certainly piqued Rimsky-Korsakov, who remarked in his memoirs that as a result Arensky would be thoroughly forgotten!) Among the pupils in his harmony class were Rachmaninov and Scriabin, and like Rachmaninov Arensky composed a work in memory of Tchaikovsky—his String Quartet No 2, in which he unusually substituted a second cello for the second violin, probably in order to darken the tone colour for his elegiac purpose. In the 1890s he returned to St Petersburg as the director of the Imperial Choir, a post for which he had been recommended by Balakirev, but retired from this position in 1901 with a pension. Heavy drinking and an addiction to gambling are said to have ruined his constitution, and Arensky died comparatively young, of tuberculosis, in a sanatorium at Perkijarvi, Finland, leaving an output of moderate size of which the best-remembered pieces are undoubtedly the second string quartet and the Variations on a theme of Tchaikovsky which he extracted from it and scored for string orchestra. Tchaikovsky’s friendship and music had a powerful impact on Arensky, and one work that made a deep impression was Tchaikovsky’s epic Piano Trio of 1881–2, subtitled ‘in memory of a great artist’ and composed as a memorial for the pianist Nikolai Rubinstein. The genre had hardly existed in Russia before this work, and with it Tchaikovsky initiated a tradition of elegiac or commemorative trios. Rachmaninov, for example, composed a pair of Trios élégiaques in 1892–3, the second of them in memory of Tchaikovsky himself. Just one year later Arensky composed his own Piano Trio No 1 in D minor Op 32, conceived as a memorial to his (and Tchaikovsky’s) friend, the cellist Karl Davidoff, who had been director of the St Petersburg Conservatoire when Arensky was a student there, and who had died in 1889. Davidoff is regarded as the founder of the Russian school of cello playing, and Arensky’s dedication accounts for the fact that the cello plays such a prominent role, having most of the principal themes and often seeming to eclipse the violin in importance; at times this work might almost be described as a duo for cello and piano with obbligato violin. The lyrical and rhapsodic theme that opens the expansive first movement—stated by the violin at first, but taken up by the cello and then elaborated by both instruments in duet—has been believed by some commentators to be a portrait of the generous and outgoing Davidoff. Here, as throughout the movement, accents of regret and melancholy can be detected among the melodic riches. A quicker, more capricious transitional theme, rather dance-like, leads to a warmly expressive second subject announced by the cello, and a more dramatic theme, with the piano to the fore, rounds off the exposition, which is repeated in full. The development is comparatively short and mainly based on the opening theme and the dance-like idea, working up to a full-scale recapitulation and a quiet, elegiac coda. The second movement Scherzo is in the form of a scintillating waltz, full of the spirit of the dance as well as good humour and delightful bursts of bravura from all three instruments, especially the piano. In this whimsical confection Arensky largely bases the music around a little stuttering figure in the violin, swooping scales and sparkling keyboard decorations. The cello leads off a more ponderous but still humorous trio section in which it seems the dancers are doing their best not to be wrong-footed. The waltz returns, and stutters to its end. The Adagio slow movement, titled Elegia, is the heart of the D minor Trio. Muted cello, supported by piano chords, introduces a theme at once doleful and tender; the violin is also muted, and takes it up before the two instruments share the theme together. The grief-stricken atmosphere is unmistakable, though there is a certain dream-like quality to the music, too—it could almost be by Fauré rather than any Russian composer. The piano then has a contrasting, almost childlike theme supported by gentle figuration in the string instruments. Roles are reversed as violin and cello take up this second theme against different figuration from the piano. When the first theme returns on the strings the piano part is different again until the coda, where cello and piano are heard as at the movement’s opening. The finale, whose function is very much to pull together and round off the work’s disparate threads, begins with a dramatic, even explosive theme full of rhythmic momentum. This idea injects drive and impetus throughout the movement, although it really functions as a ritornello between which Arensky places reminders of previous movements. Soon, for instance, we hear a lyrical tune that resembles the main theme of the Elegia, and a further helping of the dramatic theme simply introduces the gentle music from Elegia’s central section. The ritornello idea itself is then developed at more length, and this time leads, in a mood of nostalgic reminiscence, to the opening theme of the entire work. The finale’s theme breaks back in, insistently, and drives the work to an exciting but rather grim conclusion. Arensky composed his Piano Trio No 2 in F minor Op 73 nine years after the D minor Trio: it has no declared memorial purpose, but it was one of the composer’s last works, and considering his poor state of health by this time it might well be regarded as a personal swansong. It also marks a considerable advance in Arensky’s compositional techniques. While the first movement of the D minor Trio fell into clearly marked sections of an almost textbook sonata form, that of the F minor is a more seamless affair. Though the sonata outlines are still there, they are all but subsumed into the sense of ongoing argument. It opens with a restless, serpentine theme, quietly introduced by the piano, that snakes its way through the movement with passion and a certain obsessive quality. The first five notes of this theme, with its questing dotted rhythm, become an especially pervasive element—and they also function as a motto that appears in the other movements. The mood is deeply serious and thoughtful throughout, as befits the sombre F minor tonality. Though there are other thematic ideas, the main theme is repeated, metamorphosed and split up, acting both as the focus for the whole design and as the basis for an intricate but informal process of variation. When the movement has all but run its course, there is a sudden change of character for the coda, which unleashes a harried pursuit to the decisive final cadence. This time Arensky places the slow movement second. It is a Romance, beginning in almost salon style with a duet for violin and cello introducing the fragrant and delicate main theme on the piano. The development of this theme—in an ever more serious and thoughtful direction, with one disturbing emotional eruption—confirms Arensky’s quality as a master of melody, while the opening bars recur four times with haunting effect. The motto theme from the opening movement appears just before the last of these appearances, which rounds off the Romance with considerable pathos. The Scherzo somewhat resembles the corresponding movement in the D minor Trio, at least in its general playfulness and its character of a capricious waltz with a cascading piano part. It is a more sophisticated conception, however. The central trio section, led off by the cello, is disarmingly tuneful, although the motto theme can be heard here also. The return of the waltz is truncated. The finale is a theme and variations, a form that Arensky was very fond of and handled with great skill (as his classic Variations on a theme of Tchaikovsky demonstrates). The reflective theme, announced by the piano, is quite a complex affair, with its hints of canon, and superficially it might seem unpromising variation material; but after the theme’s initial presentation each of the six variations has a strongly drawn individual character, including an exciting Russian dance for the second variation, a rather Chopinesque waltz for the third, a capricious yet full-blooded fourth variation and a further, more sumptuous waltz for variation 5. Several of the variations, in fact, seem to hark back to elements heard in the previous movements, though not as blatantly as in the finale of the D minor Trio. The final variation is passionate, even grandiose, and climaxes in a return of the motto theme before the coda winds down to a final, introspective statement of the finale’s theme in its original form. Given the paucity of Sergei Rachmaninov’s original chamber music it is hardly surprising that a number of instrumentalists have been moved to try to enlarge the repertoire by arranging some of his other works. In fact with their long soaring melodic lines and complex accompanimental patterns, his piano pieces and vocal music are particularly well suited to instrumental duets, and some arrangements have been notable successes. The Vocalise, one of the best-known of Rachmaninov’s shorter compositions, was composed in 1912 and is especially appropriate for such treatment, since he wrote it originally for wordless voice and piano (it was published in 1915, as the last of his fourteen songs Op 34, with a dedication to the singer Antonina Nezhdanova). Rachmaninov’s work is conceived as if a single huge melodic paragraph, the main theme suggesting a Baroque, Bach-like serenity with subtle Russian inflections. Presenting the voice, as the original version does, as a pure ‘instrument’, the Vocalise is a classic demonstration of the sovereign power of melody without the need for words. Rachmaninov also made a version for soprano and orchestra, and another for orchestra alone; he also permitted his cellist friend Anatoly Brandukov to make an arrangement for cello and piano. The arrangement for piano trio recorded here is the work of Rachmaninov’s close friend Julius Edvardovich Conus (1869–1942), who had been a pupil of Arensky at the Moscow Conservatoire and later became professor of violin there. Like Rachmaninov, Conus left Russia after the 1917 Revolution, but unlike him he returned in 1939 and died in Moscow. Tracklisting: 1 Arensky Piano Trio No 1 in D minor, Op 32 - 1 Allegro moderato 2 Arensky Piano Trio No 1 in D minor, Op 32 - 2 Scherzo Allegro molto 3 Arensky Piano Trio No 1 in D minor, Op 32 - 3 Elegia Adagio 4 Arensky Piano Trio No 1 in D minor, Op 32 - 4 Finale Allegro non troppo 5 Arensky Piano Trio No 2 in F minor, Op 73 - 1 Allegro moderato 6 Arensky Piano Trio No 2 in F minor, Op 73 - 2 Romance Andante 7 Arensky Piano Trio No 2 in F minor, Op 73 - 3 Scherzo Presto 8 Arensky Piano Trio No 2 in F minor, Op 73 - 4 Tema con variazioni Allegro non troppo 9 RachmaninovConus Songs, Op 34 - 14 Vocalise Nhấn nút Cảm ơn (dưới chân bài) để thấy link!
Ðề: Kệ nhạc cổ điển ivanhoe76 [Multi] Melnikov - Faust - Shostakovich Piano Concertos Violin Sonata (2012) [HM] {24-44} View attachment 194241 FLAC (tracks) 24-bit/44.1 kHz | Time – 01:14:09 minutes | 660 MB | 5% recovery info Genre: Classical | Source: highresaudio.com | Artwork: Front Cover , Digital Booklet | @ Harmonia Mundi Recorded: novembre-décembre 2010, Rathaus-Prunksaal, Landshut (DE) (Concertos) | mars 2011, Teldex Studio Berlin (Sonate) Alexander Melnikov, piano Isabelle Faust, violin Jeroen Berwaerts, trumpet Mahler Chamber Orchestra Teodor Currentzis, conductor Spoiler The programming of this recording by Alexander Melnikov seems to be no accident. The two large, witty, outward-looking piano concertos surround the more grave, inward-facing Violin Sonata the way a sonata’s or concerto’s two fast movements surround a slow movement. It’s also a real reflection of Melnikov as a performer, schooled in the Russian tradition and mentored by Richter (the pianist of the first public performance of the Violin Sonata), who is as comfortable as a soloist as he is as a collaborative pianist playing chamber music. In that regard, Melnikov and Faust make their parts of the sonata equal partners in the music, bringing out the smallest details. It is generally held that the sonata is about death, and these two handle it with intensity and seriousness, but do not make it grim or frightful. In the concertos, Melnikov and conductor Teodor Currentzis are also well matched. In the slow movements, especially of the Concerto No. 2, Melnikov’s touch is so soft and phrasing so lyrical as to give the music a sweetness normally associated with a Rachmaninov or Ravel concerto, and Currentzis follows his lead. The animation in the fast movements, where Shostakovich likes to use rapidly repeated notes, is not pointedly sharp, but is impressive and extremely engaging nonetheless. The finale of Concerto No. 1, when everyone — including the very precise trumpeter Jeroen Berwaerts — gets going together is almost precipitously exciting. Yet it is Melnikov’s sensitivity of touch that distinguishes his performance of these works from others’. Review by Patsy Morita Tracklist: Piano Concerto no.2 op.102 in F major / Fa majeur / F-Dur 1 | I. Allegro 7’10 2 | II. Andante 7’42 3 | III. Allegro 5’36 Sonata for violin and piano op.134 in F major / Fa majeur / F-Dur 4 | I. Andante 10’32 5 | II. Allegretto 6’43 6 | III. Largo 13’55 Concerto [no.1] for piano, trumpet and string orchestra op.35 in C minor / ut mineur / c-Moll 7 | I. Allegro moderato 5’56 8 | II. Lento 8’30 9 | III. Moderato 1’27 10 | IV. Allegro con brio 6’25 Nhấn nút Cảm ơn (dưới chân bài) để thấy link!
Ðề: Kệ nhạc cổ điển ivanhoe76 [Multi] Hewitt - Bach The Art of Fugue (2014) [Hyperion] {24-44} View attachment 194248 FLAC (tracks) 24-bit/44.1 kHz | Time – 89:40 minutes | 730 MB | 5% recovery info Genre: Classical | Studio Master, Official Digital Download | Source: hyperion-records | Digital Booklet , Front cover © Hyperion Records | Recorded: August 2013, Jesus-Christus-Kirche, Berlin, Germany Angela Hewitt, piano Spoiler Over the years that Angela Hewitt has recorded Bach for Hyperion records, it has gradually become clear that there has been an elephant in the room. Its unspoken name was The Art of Fugue, the monument of counterpoint left unfinished at Bach’s death. Hewitt wasn’t studying or playing it. Apart from being appallingly difficult, its music, she says, seemed remote, even boring. Finally, with no other Bach monument left to scale, this most elegant British-Canadian pianist grabbed her elephant by the trunk. She scheduled a performance, in two instalments, at the Royal Festival Hall in 2012-13. She studied hard, thought hard. And with the score seamlessly unrolling on her iPad she outpoured playing of unusual distinction, even for her. Recorded last summer under studio conditions in Berlin, this album captures that interpretation on her trusty Fazioli in friendly and pellucid sound. I won’t mince words. This Art of Fugue is marvellous. The variety and beauty of tone alone make compelling listening, bringing contrasts, clarity and warmth to Bach’s intellectual marvels. The fugal subjects pile up; they are inverted, augmented and turned inside out—permutations neatly documented in the pianist’s typically detailed booklet notes. Yet her fingers never make the results dry triumphs of engineering. Each piece casts a specific mood, sombre, flighty or relaxed. Hewitt maintains, too, an innate sense of the pace required for letting the counterpoint’s individual voices breathe. Dotted rhythms and decorative flourishes are polished and placed with infinite care, especially noticeable in Contrapunctus 6, labelled “in stylo Francese”. Here and elsewhere, in his own recording from 2008, Pierre-Laurent Aimard—French himself—appears very tightly corseted. Throughout, Hewitt’s interpretative decisions are almost all helpful and wise. The one exception for me is her addition of a chorale prelude following the last unfinished fugue, which performers usually leave dangling so poignantly in mid-air. I find the chorale an intrusion, but there can’t be any doubt, surely, about the expressive benefits of performing Bach’s epic on a modern concert grand—other options are possible—or the radiant majesty and humanity of her playing. The Art of Fugue is an elephant no more. –Geoff Brown, The Times Tracklist: The Art of Fugue BWV1080 1 Contrapunctus 1 [3’24]2 Contrapunctus 2 [2’47]3 Contrapunctus 3 [3’18]4 Contrapunctus 4 [4’37]5 Contrapunctus 5 [3’16]6 Contrapunctus 6 ‘in stylo Francese’ [5’34]7 Contrapunctus 7 ‘per augmentationem et diminutionem’ [4’39]8 Contrapunctus 8 [6’07]9 Contrapunctus 9 ‘alla duodecima’ [2’49]10 Contrapunctus 10 ‘alla decima’ [5’38]11 Contrapunctus 11 [7’03]12 Contrapunctus 12 Rectus [3’15]13 Contrapunctus 12 Inversus [3’08]14 Contrapunctus 13 Rectus [2’22]15 Contrapunctus 13 Inversus [2’24]16 Canon per augmentationem in contrario motu [4’35]17 Canon alla ottava [2’21]18 Canon alla decima in contrapunto alla terza [4’52]19 Canon alla duodecima in contrapunto alla quinta [2’23]20 Contrapunctus 14 (Fuga a 3 soggetti) [9’54]21 Wenn wir in höchsten Nöten sein ‘Vor deinen Thron tret ich hiermit’ BWV668a [5’14] Nhấn nút Cảm ơn (dưới chân bài) để thấy link!
