PHILIP GLASS In The Upper Room

In the Upper Room is a collaboration between choreographer Twyla Tharp and composer Philip Glass. This new disc marks the first complete recording of the 1986 ballet. The first recording of the work, released on Sony’s Dance Pieces, presented only five of the work’s nine movements. Also, Sony’s disc heavily reinforced the acoustic instruments with synthesized tracks, presumably to artificially thicken the orchestral sound. This new, definitive recording uses only acoustic instruments, as the composer originally intended.

Philip Glass (1937 - )

In the Upper Room

1) Dance I [1:11]

2) Dance II [5:43]

3) Dance III [2:21]

4) Dance IV [7:33]

5) Dance V [3:23]

6) Dance VI [2:11]

7) Dance VII [2:45]

8) Dance VIII [4:59]

9) Dance IX [8:08]

2009 Orange Mountain Music

1 CD DDD

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PHILIP GLASS Music in Twelve Parts

Music in Twelve Parts, written by Philip Glass between 1971 and 1974, is a deliberate, encyclopedic compendium of some techniques of repetition the composer had been evolving since the mid 1960s. It holds an important place in Glass's repertory — not only from a historical vantage point (as the longest and most ambitious concert piece for the Philip Glass Ensemble) but from a purely aesthetic standard as well, because Music in Twelve Parts is both a massive theoretical exercise and a deeply engrossing work of art. Glass wrote Part I in early 1971. "The first movement was originally intended to stand on its own and the 'Twelve Parts' in the title referred to twelve lines of counterpoint in the score," he explained in 1993. "I called it Music in Twelve Parts because the keyboards played six lines, there were three wind players involved, and I had originally planned to augment the ensemble to bring in three more lines, for a total of twelve. I played it for a friend of mine and, when it was through, she said, 'That's very beautiful; what are the other eleven parts going to be like?' And I thought that was an interesting misunderstanding and decided to take it as a challenge and go ahead and compose eleven more parts." By this point, some new music for the Philip Glass Ensemble was needed, and needed badly. Music with Changing Parts (1970) had proven the epical possibilities of Glass's new musical language and the very early pieces were slowly being phased out of the repertory. Some of these — titles such as How Now, 600 Lines and Music in Eight Parts — are tantalizingly obscure, known only to the most fervent and superannuated Glassian, never recorded and unplayed for more than twenty years. Other early pieces — Two Pages, Contrary Motion, Music in Fifths and Music in Similar Motion — are available as reissues on Nonesuch. The Glass Ensemble, after a rather freewheeling initial phase during which composers and players would simply drop by and join in rehearsals and performances, had now been formalized and had begun to tour. (By the early '80s, it would be playing almost 60 concerts every year.) "When I started the first Philip Glass Ensemble in 1968, it was easy to find people to rehearse with me every Thursday night because nobody had anything else to do anyway,' Glass recalled. "But I wanted to make this a professional organization. When you are creating a new musical language, you need a new technical way of playing it and to develop this, I needed to have a consistent ensemble.' "My strategy was to play enough concerts every year that I could pay the musicians twenty times a year and provide them with unemployment and health benefits," he continued. "To organize our first tour, I sent out something like 120 letters and got six responses. We played in Tacoma, St. Louis, Minneapolis and a few other places. We loaded our van, unloaded it, played the concert, loaded up the van again and drove on. Presenters put us up in their homes. But, by the mid-'70s, we were starting to establish ourselves." Indeed, by the time of Music in Twelve Parts, the Glass Ensemble had solidified into an aggregate of two electronic keyboards (Farfisa organs in the early years), wind instruments and voice, amplified and fed through a mixer by Kurt Munkacsi, who was considered in every way a full member of the group. When Music in Twelve Parts was completed, the lineup was Glass and Michael Riesman on keyboards; Richard Landry, Jon Gibson and Richard Peck playing winds; soprano Joan LaBarbara and Munkacsi at the mixing desk. Two decades later, Munkacsi, Riesman, Gibson and Peck remain with the ensemble; in addition, Martin Goldray on keyboards and Dan Dryden, sound mixer, have been regular members for the last ten years. In the past, Glass vociferously objected to being called a "minimalist" composer. ("That word should be stamped out!" he said in a 1978 interview.) He now grudgingly accepts the term — with the distinction that it only applies to his earliest pieces, those up to and including Music in Twelve Parts. Indeed, it is difficult to see how such a mammoth work as, say, Einstein on the Beach can possibly be called "minimalist" and Glass now prefers to speak of himself as a composer of "music with repetitive structures." The music was written in numerical order, and the parts began to appear in performance in 1971. The world premiere of the complete Music in Twelve Parts took place at New York's Town Hall in 1974 and lasted more than four hours (there were further New York performances in 1981 and 1990). The first eight parts were taped by the Glass Ensemble in 1974 and 1975; this writer presented their radio premiere in 1978 on Columbia University's WKCR-FM. Parts I and II were briefly issued on LP 1975, on the Caroline label, but the entire work (most of it recorded in the mid '70s) was not available on disc until 1989. And so this new interpretation represents not only a radical improvement in electronic technology but the accretion of twenty years thought and experience playing Music in Twelve Parts as well. "Back in the 1970s, we were creating a musical language,' Glass offers by way of explanation. "Now we know the language and we're fluent in it." There are many beauties in the score but Part I — the original Music in Twelve Parts, from which the other eleven sprung — remains some of the most soulful music Glass ever wrote. And yet it is also one of his most determinedly reductive compositions: at any place in the music, reading vertically in the score, one will find both a C sharp and an F sharp being played somewhere in the instrumentation. Through skillful contrapuntal weaving, Glass creates, paradoxically, a drone that is not a drone — an active, abundant, richly fertile stasis. Part I leads directly into Part II, which introduces a different key, a faster tempo, greater rhythmic and melodic variety and the human voice (the soprano, as was customary in early Glass works, sings only solfege syllables). Andrew Porter, writing about Music in Twelve Parts in 1978 for The New Yorker, described these transitions well: "A new sound and a new chord suddenly break in, with an effect as if one wall of a room had suddenly disappeared, to reveal a completely new view." Part III, one of the few movements that is entirely self-contained, is a gurgling study in fourths, and one of the shortest, at thirteen minutes, of the twelve parts. Part IV is extraordinary: after a brief introduction, it becomes a lengthy examination of a single, unsettled chord that sweats, strains and ultimately screams for resolution until the musicians suddenly break into the joyous, rushing catharsis of Part V. Part VI is another example of how Glass can take what initially seems a standard chord progression and gradually build considerable interest on the part of his audience as he presents it to us, again and again, from different rhythmical perspectives. Part VII clearly derives from Music in Similar Motion (1969) which is, in 1993, the oldest piece in the ensemble's active repertory. But the development is much more swift than that of the earlier work and it is infinitely more virtuosic (the soprano, in particular, must do her best to avoid tongue-twisting and sibilance in the exposed, rapid-fire melismatic passages). And the close of Part VIII prefigures the "Train" scene in Einstein on the Beach, with its irresistible forward motion and sheer, "boy-with-a-gadget" fascination with a systematic augmentation and contraction of the soprano line. (For whatever it's worth, Glass used to refer to those occasions when the ensemble got lost in the middle of a piece as "trainwrecks.") "I had a specific didactic purpose in mind when I set to work on Twelve Parts, Glass said in 1990. "I wanted to crystallize in one piece all the ideas of rhythmic structure that I had been working on since 1965. By the time I got to Part VIII, I'd pretty much finished what I'd started out to do. And so the last movements were different. Parts IX and X were really about ornamentation." Part IX, after a lithe, bouncing, broken-chord introduction, becomes a study in chromatic unison while Part X begins with a blaring, aggressively reiterated figure in the winds that is eventually softened cushioned — by the addition of complementary figures in the bass. Parts I-X had all been based on stable harmonic roots that had remained constant throughout the movement. Part XI is just as rigorous in its application of an antithetical approach: the harmony changes with every new figure. In Part XI, which is essentially an aria for soprano and ensemble, there is more harmonic motion than in all of the mature works Glass had composed in the previous ten years put together; here, once again, is a clear prefiguration of what is to come in Einstein on the Beach. Music in Twelve Parts ends with a quodlibet — a "musical joke" — that may be especially amusing to those who remember the musical politics of the '60s and '70s. Like most young composers of the time, Glass was trained to write twelve-tone music; unlike most of them, he rejected the movement entirely. And yet, in the bass line of Part XII, toward the end, the careful listener will discern a twelve-tone row, underpinning this riot of tonal, steadily rhythmic, gleeful repetition — underpinning, in other words, all the things that textbook twelve-toners shunned. "It was a way of making fun not only of other people but also of myself," Glass said in 1993. 'I had broken the rules of modernism and so I thought it was time to break some of my own rules. And this I did, with the shifts of harmony in Part XI and then in Part XII, where, for the first and only time in my mature music, I actually threw in a twelve-tone row. This was the end of minimalism for me. I had worked for eight or nine years inventing a system, and now I'd written through it and come out the other end. My next piece was called Another Look At Harmony and that's just what it was. I'd taken everything out with my early works and it was now time to decide just what I wanted to put back in — a process that would occupy me for many years to come.' (Tim Page)

Philip Glass (1937 -)

CD 1:

Part 1 (18:16)

Part 2 (19:18)

Part 3 (13:15)

Part 4 (17:18)

Part 5 (beginning) (4:26)

CD 2:

Part 5 (conclusion) (18:47)

Part 6 (14:11)

Part 7 (19:59)

Part 8 (18:16)

CD 3:

Part 9 (12:14)

Part 10 (17:09)

Part 11 (14:30)

Part 12 (18:19)

Michael Riesman, musical director

Lisa Bielawa, voice

Jon Gibson, soprano saxophone, flute

Philip Glass, keyboards

Martin Goldray, keyboards

Richard Peck, alto and tenor saxophones

Michael Riesman, keyboards

Andrew Sterman, flute, soprano saxophone

1996 Nonesuch

3 Compact Discs DDD

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Anna Netrebko - Marianna Pizzolato STABAT MATER a tribute to PERGOLESI

Since its advent as a fashionable watering place in the early 19th century, Russian aristocrats, merchants and artists have flocked to the charming southern German spa town of Baden-Baden. Tolstoy used it as a location for part of Anna Karenina, and Dostoyevsky was a frequent visitor at the gilded casino. But one particular Russian has recently taken the town by storm with unparalleled success. Since her triumphant debut in 2001 Anna Netrebko has become one of the most popular singers – if not the most popular – to make regular appearances there. Netrebko-fever grips the inhabitants every time she’s due to perform, and portraits and pictures of her spring up everywhere. Jostling crowds rush to the stage door for her autograph after a performance.
For her concerts in July 2010, Anna Netrebko chose to take a risk. Rather than stick to the tried-and-tested route of Russian repertoire (her Iolanta in Baden-Baden in 2009 received dazzling reviews) or recitals of opera arias, she decided to programme works from a period with which she is not often associated – the Baroque. She opted to concentrate on the music of Giovanni Battista Pergolesi, whose tercentenary was being celebrated in 2010. Although he died tragically young, Pergolesi wrote an important comic opera (La serva padrona) which influenced the future development of the whole genre, and a Stabat Mater which became one of the most frequently printed pieces of sacred music of the 18th century. The latter, a cantata for two voices and a small chamber orchestra, was known and admired by Mozart and has remained popular – with both specialists and non-specialists in Baroque repertoire – into our own times.
Since Anna Netrebko was keen to present both the sacred and secular sides of Pergolesi’s output, and since the Stabat Mater is a duet, it felt like a good idea for each of the duettists to have a non-religious work to sing, too. Anna Netrebko chose Nel chiuso centro, a delightful cantata she had sung once very early in her career, and her mezzo colleague Marianna Pizzolato chose a work with equal opportunities for dramatic and lyrical expression, Questo è il piano. (Warwick Thompson 12/2010)

Giovanni Battista Pergolesi (1710 - 1736)
Nel chiuso centro
1. Nel chiuso centro [2:03]
2. Euridice e dove [8:33]
3. Si, che pietà non v'è [2:31]
4. O d'Euridice n'andrò fastoso [3:29]
Anna Netrebko

Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia
Antonio Pappano
Li prodigi della divina grazia nella conversione e morte di san Guglielmo d'Aquitania
Sinfonia
5. Allegro assai e spiritoso [1:26]
6. Andante [1:36]
7. Allegro [1:56]
Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia
Antonio Pappano
Questo è il piano, questo è il rio (Cantata for alto and strings)
8. Questo è il piano [6:51]
9. Oh, dolce tempo [0:50]
10. Torna, torna a Cocito [1:43]
11. Se nel dir son menzognero [3:36]
Marianna Pizzolato
Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia
Antonio Pappano
Stabat Mater
12. Stabat mater [4:32]
13. Cujus animam [2:03]
14. O quam tristis [2:11]
15. Quae moerebat [2:08]
16. Quis est homo [2:43]
17. Vidit suum [4:08]
18. Eja mater [1:46]
19. Fac ut ardeat [2:07]
20. Sancta mater [5:41]
21. Fac ut portem [3:34]
22. Inflammatus 1:47
23. Quando corpus 4:34
Anna Netrebko
Marianna Pizzolato
Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia
Antonio Pappano

2011 Deutsche Grammophon GmbH, Hamburg
1 CD DDD
477 9337 3 GH

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Zimerman - Andsnes - Grimaud BARTÓK Piano Concertos (reuploaded)

Composed over three consecutive decades (the First in 1926, the Second in the early '30s, and the Third in 1945 during the composer's final days), Bela Bartók's piano concertos have never been fully accepted into the standard repertoire -- a puzzling fate for such powerful and exhilarating music. Pierre Boulez plainly feels the works deserve better, asserting on the CD cover: "For me Bartók's piano concertos belong to the climax of his output. You cannot describe the 20th century without mentioning these works." Accordingly, he has devoted this release -- one of the first in his 80th-birthday celebration series for Deutsche Grammophon -- to the three works, assembling an impressive group of leading pianists and orchestras, with each concerto boasting a different combination of artists. Krystian Zimerman tackles the First, perhaps the most percussive and rhythmically driving of the lot; paired with the Chicago Symphony, Zimerman seems to take a chamber musician's view, thoughtfully melding his part with the orchestra. Leif Ove Andsnes and the Berlin Philharmonic unite for the Second; this work is a close sibling to the First in its rhythmic vigor but is even more technically demanding -- indeed, it's one of the most difficult concertos ever composed. The generally cool-tempered Andsnes rises to the challenge with a note-perfect performance that doesn't skimp on animal energy. Hélène Grimaud joins the London Symphony for the last concerto; more lyrical and less rhythmically aggressive than the earlier scores, this concerto benefits from Grimuad's lucid playing, and the LSO comes off as the most polished ensemble on the disc. Boulez communicates his zeal for the music from beginning to end, leading performances that are both technically solid and thrillingly electric. Assembled from disparate recording sessions that took place between 2001 and '04, the disc is a must for anyone interested in this repertoire, and by offering an assortment of soloists and ensembles, it has the advantage of variety over other complete sets like those from Anda, Kovacevich, and Jando. (EJ Johnson)

“20th-century music history cannot be recounted without mentioning the works of Bartók”, insists Pierre Boulez. “They define the 20th century.” This central role played by Bartók is revealed through the stylistic breadth in his works that Boulez habitually puts on display: “The French composer pays homage to the Hungarian composer’s universal spirit, and that means that the impressionism born of Bartók’s fateful encounter with Debussy and the unrelenting toughness of his Stravinskian rhythms flow together to create a portrait of astonishing unity”, asserted the daily Tagesspiegel in reviewing a Boulez conducting engagement in Berlin. Universal spirit can even be found within a single CD, the new release featuring Bartók’s three piano concertos, with three great pianists and three of the world’s great orchestras: Krystian Zimerman and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Leif-Ove Andsnes and the Berliner Philharmoniker, Hélène Grimaud and the London Symphony Orchestra. (Deutsche Grammophon)

This is an interesting idea: to combine performances by different pianists and different orchestras. It calls attention to this being Boulez's Bartók . . . Krystian Zimerman takes a direct, hard-hitting approach to the opening Allegro moderato of the First Concerto, in which he is joined by Boulez and the Chicagoans. Every note is crystal clear, and the concerto benefits from Zimerman's stunning pianism and the exquisite brass-playing of this great orchestra . . . Zimerman and Boulez display extraordinary concentration throughout the Andante, and the Allegro molto finale is sheer brilliance . . . The recorded sound is clean and open, keeping both piano and orchestra to the fore. On balance, this is as fine a recording of the First Concerto as any I have heard . . . Hélène Grimaud . . . produces the warmth and gentleness that so many miss in this elegant, comparatively relaxed concerto, which the dying Bartók wrote so that his widow could make a living playing it. Boulez seems totally in synch with Grimaud . . . They attack the finale strongly . . . Revisiting the raison d'être of this disc -- Boulez's Bartók -- it seems entirely appropriate to have three pianists play these three very different concertos . . . three pianists is an equally admirable solution. Record Review / James H. North, Fanfare (Tenafly, NJ) / 01. July 2005

Béla Bartók (1881 - 1945)

Piano Concerto No.1, BB 91, Sz. 83
1) 1. Allegro moderato - Allegro [8:47]
2) 2. Andante [7:51]
3) Allegro - 3. Allegro molto [6:36]

Krystian Zimerman, piano

Chicago Symphony Orchestra

Pierre Boulez

Piano Concerto No.2, BB 101, Sz. 95
4) 1. Allegro [9:24]
5) 2. Adagio - Più adagio - Presto [11:26]
6) 3. Allegro molto [6:13]
Leif Ove Andsnes, piano

Berliner Philharmoniker

Pierre Boulez

Piano Concerto No.3, BB 127, Sz. 119
7) 1. Allegretto [7:33]
8) 2. Adagio religioso [11:08]
9) 3. Allegro vivace [7:05]
Hélène Grimaud, piano

London Symphony Orchestra

Pierre Boulez

2006 Deutsche Grammophon GmbH, Hamburg
1CD DDD

477 5330 GH

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Maria João Pires Le Voyage Magnifique SCHUBERT Impromptus

This is something very special indeed. Maria João Pires’s two-disc set of Schubert’s Impromptus, significantly dedicated to Sviatoslav Richter, contains a booklet in which standard notes are replaced by carefully chosen extracts from Pires’s own reading: reflections on time, space and wilderness from Yves Simon’s Le voyageur magnifique; meditations on Schubert as Wanderer; and thoughts from a neuroscientist on the “physiology” of great music. Like so many prefaces, these words are best read afterwards, when certain fragments, different for each listener, may well close-focus in the mind elements still resonating in the ear. And in the spirit, too: for the neuroscientist’s words on great music apply equally to great performance – certainly as one recognizes it here.
Pires’s characteristic impassioned absorption in all she plays – that concentration which makes the listener appear to be eavesdropping on secrets shared between friends – could hardly find a truer soul mate than in the sensibility of Schubert. Each Impromptu has a rare sense of integrity and entirety, born of acute observation, long-pondered responses and, I sense, long wanderings throughout Schubert’s musical world at large.
To analyse such entirety is to reduce it: a reviewer can only point to certain manifestations. To Pires’s instinct for tempo and pacing, for instance, which brings a sense of constant restraint, a true molto moderato to the Allegro of the C minor work from D899, created by a fusion of right-hand tenuto here with momentary left-hand rubato there. Then there is the clarity of contour within the most subtly graded undertones of the G flat major of D899 which re-creates it as a seemingly endless song. Or an Andante just slow, just nonchalant enough for the Rosamunde theme of the D935 B flat major to give each variation space and breath enough to sing out its own sharply defined character.
The Allegretto, D915 acts as a Pause between the two discs, a resting place, as it were, for reflection and inner assessment on this long journey. Its end – which could as well be its beginning – is in the Drei Klavierstücke, D946 of 1828. The first draws back from the fiery impetuousness within the Allegro assai’s tautly controlled rhythms, to an inner world with its own time scale; the second, more transpired than played, has an almost unbearable poignancy of simplicity.
The paradox of these totally unselfregarding performances is how unmistakably they speak and sing out Pires and her unique musicianship. To draw comparisons here would be not so much odious as simply to miss the point. (Gramophone)

CD 1:
Franz Schubert (1797 - 1828)
4 Impromptus, Op.90, D.899
1. No.1 in C minor: Allegro molto moderato [11:05]
2. No.2 in E flat: Allegro [4:46]
3. No.3 in G flat: Andante [5:50]
4. No.4 in A flat: Allegretto [7:49]
5. Allegretto in C minor, D.915 [5:41]

CD 2:
Franz Schubert (1797 - 1828)
4 Impromptus Op.142, D.935
1. No.1 in F minor: Allegro moderato [12:25]
2. No.2 in A flat: Allegretto [7:58]
3. No.3 in B flat: Theme (Andante) with Variations [13:04]
4. No.4 in F minor: Allegro scherzando [6:35]
3 Klavierstücke, D.946
5. No.1 in E flat minor (Allegro assai) [14:48]
6. No.2 in E flat (Allegretto) [12:29]
7. No.3 in C (Allegro) [5:29]

Maria João Pires

1997 Deutsche Grammophon GmbH, Hamburg
2 Compact Discs DDD
457 5502 GH2

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Anne-Sophie Mutter VIVALDI Le quattro stagioni (reuploaded)

In the last few years, Anne-Sophie Mutter has become a very different sort of violinist. Although she has always been one of the most accomplished and intelligent performers of her generation, Mutter's playing began to acquire a new depth and sense of purpose a number of years ago -- perhaps because of her natural evolution as a performer, perhaps because of a personal tragedy that touched her life. After spending a year playing nothing but the Beethoven sonatas (her Deutsche Grammophon set with pianist Lambert Orkis is now the most probing and comprehensive modern recording of the cycle), Mutter has emerged as one of the most consistently fascinating musicians around. Witness her recent version of Vivaldi's Four Seasons. Unlike her earlier recording -- a straightforward and, for many, straight-jacketed account with Herbert von Karajan -- the new version is a revelation. Dedicated to the memory of her husband, Dr. Detlef Wunderlich, Mutter's new interpretation is among the most celebratory and intensely personal recordings that this familiar music has ever received. Working with the Trondheim Soloists, a small Norwegian ensemble, the violinist approaches the music with little in the way of historical baggage. Not the slightest attempt is made to place the music in its historical context, and even less attention is paid to the austere niceties of "period" performance practice. The result is something that sometimes sounds perilously close to a Baroque jam session, with tempos, phrasing, and ornamentation that have a wonderfully spontaneous, conversational, make-it-up-as-you-go quality that's extremely seductive. If the Seasons have begun to lose their charm for you -- or, if you're like me and they never had much to begin with -- then Mutter's joyously unconventional reading may be the best remedy. (Jim Svejda)

Antonio Vivaldi (1678 - 1741)
Concerto for Violin and Strings in E, Op.8, No.1, R.269 "La Primavera"
1) 1. Allegro [3:35]
2) 2. Largo [3:14]
3) 3. Allegro (Danza pastorale) [4:22]
Concerto for Violin and Strings in G minor, Op.8, No.2, R.315 "L'estate"
4) 1. Allegro non molto - Allegro [6:11]
5) 2. Adagio - Presto - Adagio [2:20]
6) 3. Presto (Tempo impetuoso d'estate) [2:32]
Concerto for Violin and Strings in F, Op.8, No.3, R.293 "L'autunno"
7) 1. Allegro (Ballo, e canto de' villanelli) [6:13]
Anne-Sophie Mutter, Trondheim Soloists
8) 2. Adagio molto (Ubriachi dormienti) [2:59]
9) 3. Allegro (La caccia) [3:52]
Concerto for Violin and Strings in F minor, Op.8, No.4, R.297 "L'inverno"
10) 1. Allegro non molto [3:31]
11) 2. Largo [2:49]
12) 3. Allegro [3:50]
Giuseppe Tartini (1692 - 1770)
Sonata for Violin and Continuo in G minor, B. g5 - "Il trillo del diavolo"
13) 1. Larghetto affettuoso [3:50]
Trondheim Soloists, Anne-Sophie Mutter
14) 2. Allegro [3:25]
15) 3. Andante - Allegro [1:10]
16) 4. Allegro assai [8:29]

Anne-Sophie Mutter

Trondheim Soloists

1999 Deutsche Grammophon GmbH, Hamburg

1 CD DDD

463 2592 GH

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Alban Berg WOZZECK Wiener Philharmoniker - Claudio Abbado (reuploaded)

Wozzeck, Alban Berg's first opera, is the ultimate representation of German Expressionism. The lurid libretto, based on a fragmentary play by Georg Büchner, tells the tragic tale of impoverished soldier Franz Wozzeck, his unfaithful girlfriend Marie, and their illegitimate child. Each scene is extremely concise and the story progresses with the sure swiftness of a nightmare. Berg's music is gnarled, acrid, and sometimes violent, expressing the ghastliness of Wozzeck's pathetic existence. But shock value isn't the only thing on the composer's mind. For one thing, every scene is written in a different strict classical form (passacaglia, sonata, rondo, invention), so there's a strong sense of structure as well as plenty of musical variety. For another, Berg adds glimmers of tonality and abundant lyricism to the dissonant and knotted score, emphasizing the story's pathos. Despite its horrific aspects, Wozzeck is a very moving, very human tragedy. This electrifying performance led by Claudio Abbado -- recorded during live performances at the Vienna State Opera in 1987 -- conveys the music's brutality and poignancy with equal force. Hildegard Behrens is an unusually sympathetic Marie, and Franz Grundheber makes Wozzeck's strange neuroses seem almost ordinary, a portrayal that's all the more harrowing for its believability. There's a bit of audience noise, but the up-close-and-personal recording has tremendous impact. (Andrew Farach-Colton)

Alban Berg (1885 - 1935)
Wozzeck
Act 1
1) Scene 1: The Captain's room. "Langsam, Wozzeck, langsam!" [8:13]
2) Scene 2: An open field outside the town. "Du, der Platz ist verflucht!" "Ach was!" [6:41]
3) Scene 3: Marie's room. "Tschin Bum, Tschin Bum, Bum, Bum, Bum! Hörst Bub? Da kommen sie!" [8:11]
4) Scene 4: The Doctor's study. "Was erleb ich, Wozzeck?" [7:35]
5) Scene 5: Street before Marie's door. "Geh einmal vor Dich hin!" [2:55]

CD 2:
Wozzeck
Act 2
1) Scene 1: Marie's room. "Was die Steine glänzen? [5:30]
2) Scene 2: Street in town. "Wohin so eilig" [8:53]
3) Scene 3: Street before Marie's door. "Guten Tag, Franz" [3:28]
4) Scene 4: Tavern garden. "Ich hab' ein Hemdlein an, das ist nicht mein" [10:26]
5) Scene 5: Guardroom in the barracks. "Oh oh Andres! Andres! Ich kann nicht schlafen" [4:26]
Act 3
6) Scene 1: Marie's room. "Und ist kein Betrug" [2:59]
7) Scene 1: "Und kniete hin zu seinen Fuessen" [2:03]
8) Scene 2: Forest path by a pool. "Dort links geht's in die Stadt" [5:00]
9) Scene 3: A low tavern. "Tanzt Alle" [2:55]
10) Scene 4: Forest path by a pool. "Das Messer? Wo ist das Messer?" [7:50]
11) Scene 5: Street before Marie's door. "Ringel, Ringel, Rosenkranz" [1:40]

Grundheber
Behrens
Raffeiner
Langridge
Zednik
Haugland
Šramek
Maly
Wiener Sängerknaben
Wiener Staatsopernchor
Wiener Philharmoniker
Claudio Abbado

1988 Deutsche Grammophon GmbH, Hamburg
2 Compact Discs DDD

423 5872 GH2

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Simone Kermes - Andrea Marcon - Venice Baroque Orchestra AMOR PROFANO Vivaldi Arias

Antonio Vivaldi composed opera for Italian theaters for some three decades, often in connection with the Carnival season observed right before Lent. Not only did he write a lot of operas, he composed a great many opera arias and was not above revisiting an aria from a past effort and dressing it up anew for a subsequent one. A sobering amount of opera arias extant from Vivaldi's pen exist for which musicologists have no idea -- and will likely never know -- what stage works they were intended for. One of these, the lovely "La Farfalletta Audace" (Bold Little Butterfly) is heard for the first time, along with four other recording premieres, on Archiv's Amor Profano featuring soprano Simone Kermes as supported by the Venice Baroque Orchestra under Andrea Marcon. The theme behind the collection focuses on Vivaldi's settings that deal with affairs of the heart, a subject that as an ordained priest he wasn't expected know much about, but from the gory details of Vivaldi's biography, we are aware that he knew a great deal. The music in these settings demonstrates that very attribute throughout the collection -- the setting of "Ah, Fuggi Rapido" from "Orlando Furioso," with its less-than-dignified refrain of "The vile flame within you is a flame of hell, and not of love" is appropriately violent and turbulent in Vivaldi's setting. Therefore, this is a really good starting point for a collection of Vivaldi arias, based on a thematic concept as opposed to one determined by the range of a given singer or an arrangement of historic significance.
Throughout Amor Profano, Simone Kermes acquits herself well -- this is some of the hardest music written for soprano. Just listen to where she has to start at the recap of the opening of "Ah, Fuggi Rapido" mentioned earlier -- way up high. She gets to come back down, go quickly back up again a couple of times, and then roll through a complicated series of trills and roulades that would easily trip up the tongues belonging to the best singers. Marcon and the Venice Baroque Orchestra demonstrate a bit more restraint here than is the usual wont, but the players mainly seem concerned with not upstaging Kermes. They do get a chance to shine in the thrilling Sinfonia to "Il Tamerlano (aka Bajazet)" included to break up the program.
Archiv's Amor Profano is a very good collection of Vivaldi arias and a nice showcase for Kermes' talents. It may not set one on fire as Fabio Biondi's Virgin set of the whole opera "Bajazet" does. However, for those devoted to Vivaldi's vocal music, this will make for a proud addition to your shelf and provide much enjoyment, not to mention five "new" Vivaldi arias. (Uncle Dave Lewis , Rovi All Music Guide)

Antonio Vivaldi (1678 - 1741)
L'Olimpiade, RV725
1. Siam navi all'onde [6:46]
La fede tradita e vendicata (RV 712)
2. Sin nel placido soggiorno [7:43]
Orlando furioso RV 728
3. Ah fuggi rapido [2:29]
Tito Manlio
4. Non m'afflige il tormento di morte [4:06]
Semiramide (RV 733)
5. Quegl' occhi luminosi [5:06]
Il Tigrane
6. Squarciami pure il seno [3:21]
Catone in Utica
7. Se in campo armato [6:28]
Il Bajazet (Il Tamerlano)
Sinfonia
8. 1. [without tempo indication] [2:22]
9. 2. Andante molto [2:39]
10. 3. Allegro [0:56]
Griselda - dramma per musica
11. Agitata da due venti [5:31]
Tito Manlio
12. Dopo sì rei disastri [1:40]
La verità in cimento
13. Amato ben tu sei la mia speranza [7:25]
Tito Manlio
14. Combatta un gentil cor [4:34]
15. La farfalletta [6:47]
Il Giustino
16. Or che cinto ho il crin d'alloro [3:36]

Simone Kermes

Venice Baroque Orchestra

Andrea Marcon

2008 Deutsche Grammophon GmbH, Hamburg

ARCHIV Produktion

1 CD DDD

477 6618 6 AH

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Natalie Dessay HANDEL Cleopatra Arias from Giulio Cesare

Soprano Natalie Dessay, conductor Emanuelle Haïm and composer George Frideric Handel make an established – and admired – team. Cleopatra in Giulio Cesare is a new role for Dessay at the Paris Opéra in early 2011, and it is in these arias that the Egyptian queen shows her proverbial “infinite variety”.
At the Paris Opéra in early 2011, Natalie Dessay takes on a new starring role: Cleopatra in Handel’s Giulio Cesare, now the most popular of all the composer’s stage works. The many facets of the Egyptian queen – captured by Shakespeare in the phrase “infinite variety” – are depicted in a sequence of contrasting arias, both lyrical and brilliant, making the character a superb showcase for the French soprano’s talents as a singing actress.
Conducting the impressive cast and the period-instrument orchestra Le Concert d'Astrée at the Opéra – and on this new recording of excerpts from Giulio Cesare – is Emmanuelle Haïm, who first collaborated with Dessay in the late 1990s; both artists were involved in a Paris production of Handel’s Alcina, Haïm as répétiteur (for William Christie) and Dessay in the sparkling role of Morgana. Since then, the two have developed a close working relationship which has produced a number of Virgin Classics recordings, including several works by Handel: cantatas (in a collection called Delirio), the Dixit Dominus and the oratorio Il trionfo del tempo e del desinganno, a recording which left the French magazine Diapason “looking forward to Emmanuelle Haïm’s next exciting Handelian adventure”.
Dessay describes Haïm as the metteur en scène – the stage director – for her voice, while Haïm describes Dessay’s voice as “an exceptional instrument which can take on a thousand forms ... Its virtuosity and flexibility make you forget all the difficulties presented by the music.” Haïm goes on to say that: “Handel is the composer for the voice. He demands special qualities that Natalie possesses: an ability to create colours, to embody words in song and to let the imagination speak.”
Reviewing Il trionfo del tempo e del desinganno, Le Monde de la Musique observed that “the virtuosity and rich palette of Le Concert d’Astrée enable Emanuelle Haïm to match the colours and tempo to the emotion expressed”, while the New York Times wrote that: “Ms. Haïm directs the superb Baroque orchestra Le Concert d'Astrée in a fleet, immaculate performance that dances among airy, profound and sensuous moods. The excellent quartet of singers is led by the radiant, bright voice of the soprano Natalie Dessay, whose rapturous Bellezza traverses innocence, defiance and penitence by way of some impressively agile coloratura. ’Tu del ciel ministro eletto', her spare, haunting final aria with plaintive violin accompaniment, is glorious.” In Britain, the The Sunday Times found that “Natalie Dessay dazzles in Beauty’s arias – she is gorgeous in the sublime penitential concluding number … With Haïm conducting with élan, this is the best available version of this glorious score.”

George Frideric Handel (1685 - 1759)
Cleopatra - Arias from Giulio Cesare in Egitto HWV 17
1) Ouverture [2:41]
2) Atto primo - Scene 7: Tutto può donna vezzosa [4:57]
3) Atto secondo - Scene 2: Dov'è, Niren, dov'è l'anima mia? [4:46]
4) Atto secondo - Scene 2: V'adoro, pupille [5:60]
5) Atto secondo - Scene 7: Esser qui deve in breve [0:34]
6) Atto secondo - Scene 7: Venere bella [5:20]
7) Atto secondo - Scene 8: Che sento? Oh dio! [0:49]
8) Atto secondo - Scene 8: Se pietà di me non senti [9:80]
9) Atto secondo - Scene 8: Per dar vita all'idol mio [3:57]
10) Sinfonia [1:11]
11) Atto terzo - Scene 3: E pur così in un giorno [0:37]
12) Atto terzo - Scene 3: Piangerò la sorte mia [6:29]
13) Atto terzo - Scene 3: Troppo crudeli siete [6:20]
14) Atto terzo - Scene 7: Voi che mie fide ancelle [1:41]
15) Atto terzo - Scene 7: Forzai l'ingresso a tua salvezza, o cara! [0:45]
16) Atto terzo - Scene 7: Da tempeste il legno infranto [5:54]
17) Sinfonia [2:45]
18) Atto terzo - Scene ultima: Bellissima Cleopatra [0:43]
19) Atto terzo - Scene ultima: Caro! Bella! [4:56]
Natalie Dessay
Emmanuelle Haïm
Le Concert d'Astrée

2011 Virgin Classics
1 CD DDD
5099990787225


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Pierre-Laurent Aimard RAVEL The Piano Concertos - Miroirs

A kind of “religious week” is how Pierre-Laurent Aimard describes his work on Ravel’s two piano concertos with Pierre Boulez and The Cleveland Orchestra. The conductor and composer represents for him the “Everest” of modern music, so it was – in his own words – “a dream come true” to work on this Ravel recording with Boulez.
“As a creative artist,” says Aimard, “Ravel arguably gave of his best during the golden years before the First World War, after which he experimented in his own particular way with various new trends, but in terms of his craftsmanship and his innermost soul he remained true to himself as an artist.” For Aimard, Ravel’s principal characteristics are an underlying Gallic tone, an almost analytical refinement, a sensuous grasp of sonority, formal per­fection, understatement and elegance. “It’s interesting to note how economically Ravel composed. But his extreme way of writing is also combined with the desire to turn every work into a unique compositional project. He took various aesthetics and trends as the source of his inspiration.”
For Aimard, Ravel’s piano concertos form a genuine pair despite the fact that they are completely different from each other. They were both among the very last works he wrote before his death and as such are his final message to the world. They were written in parallel between 1929 and 1931, the genesis of the one being closely interwoven with that of the other. By look­ing both backwards and forwards, they are a symbol of Ravel’s whole nature and art, with its dialectic of calculation and chance, a dialectic that Paul Valéry felt defined a poet with whom Ravel had many affinities: Stéphane Mallarmé. Both of his piano concertos are the epitome of that moment when a children’s game becomes deadly serious, a moment common to both the poet and the composer.
For Aimard, the G major Concerto is “a light-hearted and carefree piece, with a helping of jazz, a spot of elegance, a little Basque folk music, a few mechanical things here and there and plenty of pianistic brilliance.” Boulez describes it as “an extraordinary combination of very different goals.” As such, the work could hardly be more different from its companion piece: “Here the dominant mood is one of drama, everything is coiled up tight like a spring,” Boulez explains, “and when Ravel uses jazz rhythms, for instance, the result is an astonishing radical language. If in the G major Concerto one can stress its character as a divertimento, it’s the element of drama that needs to be brought out in the Concerto for the Left Hand.” The work was written for Paul Wittgenstein, who had lost his right arm in combat, and in consequence it remains a monument to the tragedy of the First World War. According to Aimard, the left hand alone “has to sound like two hands – the great challenge of the piece is to create this illusion, a game with the limitations of a single hand.” His reading is clearly geared to the word “tragic”, but this is not tragedy in a backward-looking sense. Rather, it implies a vision of impending catastrophe, an expression of the “anticipatory fear of a darker future”.
Such an approach may be best explained not least by Aimard’s attitude to Ravel in general. He has never adopted a “historical” approach to the composer. He had some lessons with Yvonne Loriod, who had a subtly different “acoustic sensibility” coupled with an openness to the new. As a result, Aimard sees Ravel as “a composer who wrote in the wake of Impressionism and who arguably reacted against it. In ‘Une barque sur l’océan’ from Miroirs we find a very tempestuous, later kind of Impressionism. The kind of intangible textures that occur in ‘Noc­tuelles’ are very modern. ‘Oiseaux tristes’ is an extremely original piece with some highly associative harmonies and realistic imitation birdsong that has been acoustically transformed. ‘Alborada’ is like a dry-point etching, and ‘La vallée des cloches’ is a single endless melody that is ultimately dissipated in an acoustic bell effect. And so we have five clearly defined Miroirs.”
The exemplarily individual approach adopted by Pierre-Laurent Aimard and Pierre Boulez in their response to a composer who continues to exude a very real sense of mystery even allows us to revise our listening habits, at least if a point that Boulez describes as a difficulty is successfully resolved: “We need to bind together the large number of stylistic components and create a single style, not simply allowing them to appear alongside one another. For Pierre-Laurent, I believe, and for me, too, interpretation means revealing a sense of unity in something that’s totally diverse.” (Georg-Albrecht Eckle)

Maurice Ravel (1875 - 1937)
Piano Concerto for the left hand in D
1) Lento - Andante - Allegro - Tempo 1 [18:51]
Piano Concerto in G
2) 1. Allegramente [8:30]
3) 2. Adagio assai [9:28]
4) 3. Presto [4:24]
Pierre-Laurent Aimard
The Cleveland Orchestra
Pierre Boulez
Miroirs
5) 1. Noctuelles [4:53]
6) 2. Oiseaux tristes [4:09]
7) 3. Une barque sur l'océan [7:38]
8) 4. Alborada del gracioso [6:31]
9) 5. La vallée des cloches [6:08]
Pierre-Laurent Aimard

2010 Deutsche Grammophon GmbH, Hamburg
1 CD DDD
477 8770 9 GH

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Simone Dinnerstein BACH A Strange Beauty

Bach’s two keyboard concerti, the F Minor BWV 1056 and the D Minor BWV 1052, are among the earliest concerti we know for solo keyboard instrument and orchestra. The autograph score for these works can be dated to around 1738, but they may well have been created earlier than this.
As did his contemporaries, Bach freely reused and re-worked his own music. The D Minor Concerto existed first as a violin concerto, now lost. Bach went on to use material from the violin concerto in two cantatas before arranging it for harpsichord and orchestra. The first movement of the D Minor Concerto appears as the opening sinfonia of the Cantata “Wir mussen durch viel Trübsal” BWV 146 from 1728, originally scored for organ and orchestra. The second movement forms the basis for the Cantata’s Chorus, “We must pass through great sadness that God’s Kingdom we may enter,” in which Bach adds a choral line to the organ and orchestral material. The concerto’s final movement also appears as the opening of the Cantata “Ich habe meine Zuversicht” BWV 188.
The F Minor concerto most likely found the origins of its outer movements in a violin concerto in G minor. The middle movement may also have begun as a concerto for oboe and serves also as the opening of Cantata “Ich steh mit einem Fuss im Grabe” BWV 156, in which the melodic line is taken by the oboe.
The English Suites are generally thought to be the earliest of Bach’s suites for the keyboard, probably composed between 1715 and 1720. The third English Suite begins with a prelude in which the concerto grosso technique is applied to the keyboard, effectively creating a concerto for one instrument. The term “English” is a later addition, and Bach’s first biographer Johann Nicolaus Forkel claimed that they became so designated because they were written for an English nobleman.
Just as Bach transcribed and re-worked his own material, so pianists have created their own transcriptions of a variety of his works. The three transcriptions presented here were created by Ferruccio Busoni, Myra Hess, and Wilhelm Kempff.Busoni transcribed the opening prelude of the Cantata “Ich rufe zu Dir, Herr Jesu Christ” BWV 639 between 1907 and 1909. Hess transcribed “Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring”, taken from the tenth movement of the Cantata “Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben” BWV 147, in 1926, around the same time that Kempff transcribed the Chorale, “Nun freut euch ihr lieben Christen”, BWV 734.

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685 - 1750)

1) “Ich ruf zu Dir, Herr Jesu Christ”, BWV 639 [3:40]
Keyboard Concerto No. 5 in F Minor, BWV 1056
2) I. (Allegro) [3:17]
3) II. Largo [2:56]
4) III. Presto [2:48]

5) “Nun freut euch, ihr lieben Christen“, BWV 734 [2:26]
English Suite No. 3 in G Minor, BWV 808
6) I. Prélude [2 :53]
7) II. Allemande [5:02]
8) III. Courante [1 :59]
9) IV. Sarabande [4:13]
10) V. Gavotte I/II [2:50]
11) VI. Gigue [2:20]
Keyboard Concerto No. 1 in D Minor, BWV 1052
12) I. Allegro [8:00]
13) II. Adagio [7:16]
14) III. Allegro [7:13]
15) “Jesu, joy of man’s desiring”, BWV 147 [3:53]

Simone Dinnerstein, piano
Kammerorchester Staatskapelle Berlin

2010 SONY Classical

1 CD DDD

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Simone Dinnerstein J S BACH Goldberg Variations

The Goldberg Variations by J.S. Bach are like Aladdin’s Lamp. Rub them the right way, and magic happens.
Glenn Gould conjured the genie in 1955 when he recorded the Goldbergs for his first album. It transformed him from Canadian curiosity into international icon.
Fifty years later, New York City pianist Simone Dinnerstein had the same fantastic luck. Her 2005 recording of the Goldbergs (released in 2007) sold thousands of copies in its first week alone, and opened the doors of the world’s most prestigious concert halls.
During a long a thoughtful Skype interview, the 30-something pianist reveals that Gould’s recording of the Goldberg Variations from 1981, the year before he died, changed her life.
Dinnerstein was 13 when a friend put the disc on for her. “I remember where I was standing and thinking I’ve never heard anything like this in my life, and it’s the most incredible thing ever,” the pianist says. “I became completely entranced, obsessed with the piece, especially that recording.”
The teen dashed out to get the sheet music for the opening aria and its 30 variations.
“I just wanted to have it. I didn’t dare work on it. I just thought it would be nice to have this piece,” Dinnerstein confesses. “I don’t think I’ve ever bought a piece of music that I had no intention of learning, so this was a very unusual thing for me to have done.”
Although she’d been taking piano lessons since age 7, Dinnerstein couldn’t get comfortable with the music of Bach. “I never felt as though it was something that I owned. I felt as if this was a poor substitute for listening to Glenn Gould.”
Her breakthrough came in the mid-1990s at New York City’s prestigious Juilliard School, while studying with pianist Peter Serkin. “He really opened up my imagination and had me think about music in quite a different way, to be more creative and take some risks,” Dinnerstein remembers. “It was like putting together this great puzzle. And, in the process, I discovered my own voice not only in Bach, but as a musician,” the pianist explains. “It was this really huge journey that I took with this piece, and I think it really opened my playing for other composers as well.”
By 2002, Dinnerstein was a professional pianist, working for the Piatigorsky Foundation, which is dedicated to bringing top-quality concerts to smaller communities. Her son Adrian was a year old. She felt like she finally had a good grasp of the variations.
The pianist wanted to record them, but neither she nor her schoolteacher husband could afford that kind of project. So she canvassed friends and acquaintances until she had scraped together enough to record the piece at the Academy of Arts & Letters in Manhattan in 2005. Her producer assembled the Aria and the first five variations onto a demo disc.
“Suddenly, people who had never wanted to talk to me before wanted to meet up and talk to me and it became clear that they wanted to come and hear the piece live,” she recalls. “Then another small miracle happened. A man in Israel heard a bit on the Internet.”
He donated Dinnerstein’s rental feel for a recital at Carnegie Hall that fall. “It was crazy,” the pianist says. “It was packed and there were a lot of people from the music world there. The New York Times came.”
The full recording was released on the Telarc label in 2007, the album shot to the No. 1 spot on the Billboard classical chart in its first week, and Dinnerstein has been touring the world ever since.
Just as Gould’s interpretation of the Goldbergs changed over the years, Dinnerstein’s relationship with the music as also evolved. She tells of walking into her 9-year-old son’s room a couple months ago, and hearing the Goldberg Variations on his radio.
“He said, as he always does, ‘Mommy, this is you.’ I said, ‘No, that’s not me.’ I listened for a bit and thought, is that me? Then we got to one particular variation when I knew it was me . . . It was a strange, uncanny experience for me, because I guess I don’t really play it like I did — or I don’t think of it that way; maybe it comes out that way.”
Dinnerstein’s success has allowed her to buy her first adult piano. Until a couple of weeks ago, she was borrowing practice time on friends’ pianos.
While recording an all-Bach disc, due out next month from Sony Classical, Dinnerstein became smitten with the German-made Steinway concert grand she was playing on.
“I could do things with it, and sounds came out of it, that I didn’t think were possible. I didn’t think it was me, really,” she says. “At the end of the recording session, I found out that the instrument was for sale.”
The usual retail price for a piano like that — before shipping costs — is around $150,000 (U.S.).
Dinnerstein took the plunge by taking out an extra mortgage on the family home.
“I’ll be playing it for the next 30 years,” she laughs of what her son calls “the Steinosaurus.”
Much of what we’re going to hear will continue to be by J.S. Bach.
“Bach’s music contains every emotion and thought and sense of beauty that we have,” says Dinnerstein in her quietly assured way. “If I can compare it to an artist who I think is like this, I would compare is to van Eyck, the Renaissance painter, where you look at it and you think, nothing can be better than this. Everything that you need is right there.”

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685 - 1750)
Goldberg Variations
1) Aria
2) Variation 1
3) Variation 2
4) Variation 3 (Canone all'Unisono)
5) Variation 4
6) Variation 5
7) Variation 6 (Canone alla Seconda)
8) Variation 7
9) Variation 8
10) Variation 9 (Canone alla Terza)
11) Variation 10 (Fughetta)
12) Variation 11
13) Variation 12 (Canone alla Quarta)
14) Variation 13
15) Variation 14
16) Variation 15 (Canone alla Quinta)
17) Variation 16
18) Variation 17
19) Variation 18 (Canone alla Sesta)
20) Variation 19
21) Variation 20
22) Variation 21 (Canone alla Settima)
23) Variation 22
24) Variation 23
25) Variation 24 (Canone all'Ottava)
26) Variation 25
27) Variation 26
28) Variation 27 (Canone alla Nona)
29) Variation 28
30) Variation 29
31) Variation 30 (Quodlibet)
32) Aria

2007 TELARC
1 CD DDD

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Wendy Sutter PHILIP GLASS Songs and Poems for Solo Cello

Songs and Poems for Solo Cello represents the solo recording debut of cellist Wendy Sutter featuring two world premieres. Premiered in 2007, Songs and Poems for Solo Cello is a seven-movement work by American composer Philip Glass. Known for large-scale theater works, film scores, concertos and symphonies, Songs and Poems for Solo Cello shows the composer at his most intimate. Also featured on the disc, Tissues, composed for the film Naqoyqatsi, are works written for cello, percussion and piano.
Wendy Sutter is an internationally acclaimed soloist, most recently making for US premiere as soloist for the Philip Glass Cello Concerto. The cellist is also known as a long-time member of Bang on a Can All Stars. Songs and Poems for Solo Cello was recorded on the 1620 Ex-Vatican Stradivari.

Songs And Poems is Wendy Sutter's debut solo recording and features two very recent Philip Glass compositions: the seven movement Songs And Poems For Solo Cello and four pieces drawn from Glass' Tissues cycle, as written for the soundtrack to the film Naqoyqatsi. Sutter is perhaps best known for her work as part of the Bang On A Can ensemble, but these incredibly lyrical, articulate performances will undoubtedly enhance her reputation as a soloist no end. The Songs And Poems sequence is characterised by a rich baritone sadness and an incredibly resonant tone (perhaps thanks in part to the ex-Vatican Stradivarius' on which Sutter performs) something carried through to the Tissues recordings, although here Sutter shares the stage with the multi-faceted percussion of David Cossin and Glass' own contribution as pianist. One of the strongest releases on Orange Mountain Music yet, offering a more intimate angle on Philip Glass' oeuvre. Highly recommended.

Philip Glass (1937 - )
Songs and Poems for Solo Cello
1. Song I [3:30]
2. Song II [5:52]
3. Song III [2:01]
4. Song IV [3:01]
5. Song V [5:47]
6. Song VI [3:47]
7. Song VII [5:11]
Tissues (from Naqoyqatsi)
8. Tissue No. 1 [4:30]
9. Tissue No. 2 [3:07]
10. Tissue No. 6 [3:13]
11. Tissue No. 7 [3:12]

Wendy Sutter, cello
David Cossin, percussion
Philip Glass, piano

2007 Orange Mountain Music
1 CD DDD
0037

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Yuja Wang - Mahler Chamber Orchestra - Claudio Abbado RACHMANINOV

Recording these piano concertos by Rachmaninov came as a surprise and delight to Yuja Wang, and was a choice spurred on by Claudio Abbado: “I'd worked with him before, but not in these concertos. He plays with very few soloists these days, so it was a particular honour - I'd happily have played anything he wanted me to play."
“I like really to grasp the flow of the Russian soul through Russian literature and understand the emotional ideals, and to touch on that during a live concert is quite difficult. In the Second Piano Concerto the big challenge is projecting myself: the writing is fairly transparent but the melody is overpowering, and cutting through the texture in order to be heard isn't easy. It's a challenge to bring out the harmonies, and the legatos are very special. At many points in this concerto, the piano is almost an accompaniment to the orchestra. The Mahler Chamber Orchestra were wonderful to work with: they listen to each other so well, and they're all really young, about my age. I think the excitement of the live concert is truly present in the recording."
The genesis of Rachmaninov's Piano Concerto No. 2 is almost as legendary as the music itself. Severely depressed after his Symphony No. 1 had been panned at its premiere in 1897, the young Rachmaninov found himself unable to set pen to manuscript paper for two years. On the advice of his cousins, he consulted Dr. Nikolai Dahl, a specialist in neuropsychotherapy who used hypnosis to build up Rachmaninov's confidence towards beginning a new concerto that would be “excellent". The composer indeed emerged ready to set to work with renewed energy, sketching out the piece during visits to the Crimea and Italy in 1900; he gave the world premiere himself in Moscow on 9 November 1901. The piece's immediate acclaim duly established him as one of the most exciting composers of his day.
Yuja Wang has drawn considerable inspiration from Rachmaninov's own interpretation of the concerto, which is controlled and classical as others can be extrovert and passionate: “Instead of sounding very broad in what you might expect to be huge lyrical moments, his sound remains amazingly transparent," she says.
By the time Rachmaninov began his Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini his fame was universal, but his life had changed radically. In 1917 he and his wife fled the Russian Revolution, travelling first to Sweden and then to the USA. In Russia he had pursued a vocation primarily as a composer; in the West, though, the need for income propelled him into an international career as a concert pianist. His time for composition was consequently reduced, but the works he did produce showed increasing sophistication and originality and the Rhapsody is no exception.
It dates from 1934 when Rachmaninov was living in Switzerland, near Lake Lucerne. The theme is from No. 24 from Paganini's Caprices for violin, a set of virtuoso variations so difficult that it contributed to Paganini's being associated in the public imagination with the devil himself. Rachmaninov used the theme as the basis for a series of twenty-four variations plus introduction and coda, ingeniously combining the format with that of a three-movement concerto.
The first movement is the substantial, dizzyingly varied section from the start to Variation 15. First, only the barest outline is heard; Paganini's theme comes into focus with the entry of the piano, which soon carries matters away into the fantastical skitterings of the first few variations. The “second subject" appears with the sixth, more reflective variation, and in the seventh Rachmaninov introduces the plainchant “Dies irae" - a reference that appears in many of his works almost as a signature motif.
After a concluding climax in Variation 15, the “slow movement" ensues, building through the expectant No. 16 and nocturnal perambulations of No. 17 to the work's most celebrated transformation of the Paganini melody in No. 18, progressing to a soaring grandeur on full orchestra. No. 19 plunges into a scherzo finale replete with wit, jazziness and a bedazzlement of virtuosity, though the “Dies irae" is never far away. Finally the music evaporates as if in a puff of smoke.
Yuja Wang is full of enthusiasm for this lithe and athletic work. “It's my favourite of the Rachmaninov works for piano and orchestra," she declares. “It's a red-hot work - it suits young people my age because it's so emotional. It's very cleverly written and shows all the different sides of Rachmaninov. There's so much variety in it, so many colours: I think that's where his genius lies, in the invention of all these characteristics that explore everything the piano can do." (Jessica Duchen)

Sergey Vasil'yevich Rachmaninov (1873 - 1943)
Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, Op.43
1. Introduction [0:10]
2. Variation 1 [0:21]
3. Theme [0:20]
4. Variation 2 [0:20]
5. Variation 3 [0:26]
6. Variation 4 [0:29]
7. Variation 5 [0:29]
8. Variation 6 [1:03]
9. Variation 7 [1:04]
10. Variation 8 [0:35]
11. Variation 9 [0:33]
12. Variation 10 [0:54]
13. Variation 11 [1:16]
14. Variation 12 [1:18]
15. Variation 13 [0:30]
16. Variation 14 [0:45]
17. Variation 15 [1:09]
18. Variation 16 [1:35]
19. Variation 17 [1:36]
20. Variation 18 [2:45]
21. Variation 19 [0:28]
22. Variation 20 [0:37]
23. Variation 21 [0:26]
24. Variation 22 [1:48]
25. Variation 23 [0:53]
26. Variation 24 [1:13]
Piano Concerto No.2 in C minor, Op.18
27. 1. Moderato [10:26]
28. 2. Adagio sostenuto [11:16]
29. 3. Allegro scherzando [11:26]

Yuja Wang
Mahler Chamber Orchestra
Claudio Abbado

2011 Deutsche Grammophon GmbH, Hamburg
1 CD DDD
477 9308 3 GH

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