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June 2022: The New Album of The Week
Some people may think – and perhaps not unjustly – that certain types of music are better suited to the rehearsal room than the concert hall. But, as Andreas Brantelid’s selection shows, this is not always ‘applied music’, but music that explores technical and sound-related boundaries, thereby attaining a quite exceptional emotional proximity – glimpses even of a breath-taking intensity.
“Piatti’s Dodici Capricci for solo cello is extremely well known among cellists, and largely unknown to the concert audience. The twelve short pieces are unusually virtuoso, as they each focus on a certain technical element,” Andreas Brantelid explains.
“Since I was a boy and practiced on the caprices, it’s always been a dream for me to record them in a way that they sound as good as they deserve and maybe help them get into the concert halls.”
With the album, Andreas Brantelid looks back on his musical education and dedicates the album to his teacher, Mats Rondin, who passed away in 2014.
May 2022: The New Album of The Week
“For me and for all of our mutual friends and acquaintances, Alois Mühlbacher’s voice is as natural as it is unmistakable. Even if it naturally developed both in terms of pitch and vocal perfection since his time as the St. Florian Boys’ Choir’s child prodigy, many parameters have remained the same: one could describe his voice as “perfect suppleness capable of rendering the music’s finest nuances”. For those of us who know Alois well and who have accompanied his vocal development, the image that we associate with this voice is self-evident. But how would a listener imagine the person to whom the voice belongs? How would a listener classify his singing? Does the voice sound like that of other counter-tenors, does it have something androgynous or of the former choirboy about it? I don’t know. For me, Alois’ voice is unique and identifiable solely as his own, inseparable from his wonderful personality — an ideal combination!
I am 44 years older than he is. As a child, it was natural that he had an older teacher (me as
his chorister). He has since completed his vocal studies, performed with famous ensembles
around the world and could have made this recording with any number of young and virtuosic piano partners. I am delighted and almost touched, that he remained loyal to me for this project. Every minute of our music making is a great pleasure for me.”
– Franz Farnberger, am 31. Jänner 2022
May 2022: The New Album of The Week
Gabriel Fauré composed more than a hundred art songs, spanning sixty years of his life, and he was the key figure in the evolution of the genre: he was instrumental in its blossoming, through the lyricism and extreme harmonic refinement of his settings, and he transcended it, stretching its limits, with the more ascetic and very bold cycles of his final creative period.
Basing their performance on the first complete critical edition (Edition Peters), Cyrille Dubois and Tristan Raës present here all of Fauré’s songs – a body of work that is to this day unbelievably modern – sung for the first time by a single artist.
The recording is presented under the patronage of the Palazzetto Bru Zane and the Fondation Cordes sensibles.
April 2022: The New Album of The Week
Bruno Philippe conceives Bach’s Suites for solo cello as a veritable existential journey, from life to death and resurrection. Forgoing metal strings for their historical gut equivalents, the young French artist offers us an inward, deeply moving reading of this monument of instrumental music.
February 2022: The New Album of The Week
Théotime Langlois de Swarte continues his exploration of the violin repertory of the early eighteenth century. In this programme, he highlights the links between three leading composers for the instrument, whose popularity was burgeoning at the time: Vivaldi, father of the violin concerto, and two of his most brilliant younger contemporaries, Locatelli and Leclair. A disc which, beyond the interplay of echoes and personal connections, showcases the extraordinary versatility of an instrument as virtuosic as it is poetic.
February 2022: The New Album of The Week
The French oboist Gabriel Pidoux, voted ‘Instrumental Soloist of the Year’ at the Victoires de la Musique Classique in 2020, has made a name for himself in both early and modern repertories. He now records his first solo album, accompanied by the pianist Jorge González Buajasan. It presents the works of two female and three male composers, beginning with Robert Schumann’s Three Romances, a masterpiece of chamber music with oboe, which Gabriel Pidoux has decided to juxtapose with the Three Pieces of Leopold Wallner (1847-1913), magnificent works which have never been recorded. Also on the programme is a transcription of Clara Schumann’s Three Romances. ‘These are pieces from the heart, which set the Romantic tone’, writes Gabriel Pidoux. ‘We follow them with the Poème of Marina Dranishnikova (1929-94), the only known piece by this Russian composer. It is a rather dark, very tormented piece, wholly Romantic although composed somewhat later, in the middle of the twentieth century.’ Finally, a transcription of Elgar’s famous Salut d’amour rounds off the programme.
January 2022: The New Album of The Week
The communion with a confidential soul, the discovery of indescribable colours, the admiration of a remarkable message whose ideas never cease to evolve and inspire… This is part of a distinctive journey that will leave an everlasting mark upon us.
The Modigliani Quartet
The Modigliani Quartet has been recording the complete quartets of Schubert all year long. This great project will be released for the Folle Journée 2022. Recorded in the most beautiful halls in Europe such as La Chaux de Fonds in Switzerland, the Reistadel in Munich, or the TAP in Poitiers by their sound engineer Hugues Deschaux, this complete work is a great first for a French quartet… 5 discs box set
January 2022: The New Album of The Week
This is Lucile Boulanger’s first solo recital. The French gambist, universally praised for her natural and moving playing – BBC Music Magazine even described her as ‘the Jacqueline du Pré of the viola da gamba’ – juxtaposes Bach with Carl Friedrich Abel, a great master of the bass viol and a close friend of the Bach family. Although Johann Sebastian never wrote for solo viola da gamba, we know that he transcribed many of his works for other instruments. So Lucile Boulanger has chosen, for example, to transcribe three dances from the Sixth Suite, “because it sounds particularly good on the viol, being written for five-stringed cello (a step towards the six or seven strings of the viol?). It is in D, the viol key par excellence, and its style, already somewhat galant, is reminiscent of Abel. . . . This album gives me the opportunity to showcase the viol as both a melodic instrument – with the grain of the bow, the fragility of tone – and a polyphonic one.”
January 2022: The New Album of The Week
Transmission by Edgar Moreau, recorded with the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra and conductor Michael Sanderling, unites music by Bloch, Korngold, Bruch, and Ravel. All five works on the album have a connection with Jewish culture and factored into the musical development of the young cellist. He first encountered Ernest Bloch’s Schelomo around the age of 12 and describes it as “a majestic meeting of concerto and symphony, rich and colorful in its orchestration and full of contrasts.”