Quartetto Raro KEMPFF Chamber Music

The pianist Wilhelm Kempff (1895-1991) belonged to that tradition of German musicians – notably including conductors such as Furtwangler, Klemperer and Walter – for whom composition hardly less essential a component of their musical personalities than performing, even if it was an activity they largely undertook privately. Working day to day with imperishable masterworks by Bach, Beethoven and Brahms, they did not expect to meet such standards, yet their own creative voices required an outlet through more than recreation of others. Left cold by the musical innovations and developments of their own time in the work of Schoenberg and Stravinsky, they wrote in a heightened Romantic idiom, and in genres – especially song and chamber music – which lay separately from their own professional activity as performers. 

Both chamber works presented here date from Kempff’s youth. The Piano Trio was composed in 1911, when Kempff was 16, and bears a clear Brahmsian influence in thematic conduct and emotional landscape, through the guidance of Kempff’s teacher Robert Kahn, who had himself been a student of Brahms. The Quartet is scored for the more unusual combination of flute, violin, cello and piano. It dates from 1920, and was composed on the island of Capri during a period of recuperation from a serious illness which had laid him low during a concert tour of Sweden. Thus the second movement is based on a Swedish folk theme and the finale ends with a whirlin Tarantella di Taormina, in the tradition exemplified by Mendelssohn’s ‘Italian’ Symphony of German musicians letting Italian sunshine into their work. 

The Quartet is led by the flautist Ginevra Petrucci, who also contributes a booklet essay on Kempff’s career as a composer to the album. Now based in the US, Petrucci has made several well-received recordings for Brilliant Classics, among them Romantic-era concertos by Briccialdi and a ‘winning’ album of chamber music by the Polish-US immigrant Robert Muczynski. 

Wilhelm Kempff (1895-1991) was without doubt one of the foremost and important pianists of the 20th century. However composing was, especially for the young Kempff, his main artistic vocation, and he continued composing seriously during his whole lifetime. He wrote a substantial body of works, for piano, organ, chamber music, songs, concertos, symphonies and even operas. His works met with considerable success and he was championed by the likes of Furtwängler.
The piano trio in G minor is from 1911, whens only 16, however it shows a rare maturity, clearly influenced by Brahms (Kempff’s composition teacher was Robert Kahn, a pupil of Brahms). The quartet for the unusual combination of flute, violin, cello and piano was inspired by Swedish and Italian folk music, while still firmly rooted in the Late-Romantic tradition.

Ensemble Dialoghi MOZART | BEETHOVEN Quintets for Piano and Winds

Authenticity: conforming to an original so as to reproduce essential features. Historically Informed Performance: an approach to the performance of classical music, which aims to be faithful to the approach, manner and style of the musical era in which a work was originally conceived. These two definitions, without reservations, certainly go hand in hand like whipped cream on pumpkin pie, with the Ensemble Dialoghi, a chamber music group made up of Spanish, Italian, and Canadian musicians. Except for the bassoon which itself dates from 1805, all the other instruments were crafted during the last ten years, but are built after period instruments from the late 18th century.

Attention - Do not adjust your system. On the contrary, it's your inner musical ear that requires adjusting and fine tuning on first listen. It took me a minute or two to "get" that the sound, and music, I was hearing were not only right, but accurately and expressively musical. I immediately pulled out, for comparison, my copy of the 1984 Sony recording featuring Murray Perahia on piano with members of the English Chamber Orchestra, a recording that up until now I considered to be exemplary. Lifeless, dull and uninvolved are my impressions of it now. What a sharp contrast between the two; not only sonically but also interpretatively. You can tell by the make-up and attire that the members of Ensemble Dialoghi are sporting on the CD cover and on their website, that they consider themselves to be more like buskers, minstrels or saltimbanques rather than just simply musicians. Their motto is "chamber music as a way of communicating", and they certainly go out of their way to project the composer's spirit, and inherent joy and beauty within the music, to the audience, as if they were staging a dramatic presentation.

If Wolfgang and Ludwig were still alive today they would most likely exclaim: "Wow, this sounds just like the good ol' days!" (Jean-Yves Duperron)

Jiyoon Lee / Henry Kramer MYTHES

As part of her prize for winning the Windsor Festival International Strings Competition in 2015, South Korean violinist Jiyoon Lee makes her debut recording on Champs Hill Records with duo partner Henry Kramer in a recital of Stravinsky, Wieniawski, Bartok, Szymanowski and Ravel. · Winning the David Oistrakh competition in 2013, Jiyoon Lee subsequently won prizes in the Indianapolis, Queen Elizabeth and Carl Nielsen competitions, in addition to Windsor, and is now performing around the world. Henry Kramer has similarly won prizes in the Queen Elizabeth and Montreal competitions and an award winner at the Julliard School.

Boulanger Trio TCHAIKOVSKY - JUON Piano Trios

“In Juon’s piano trio”, as the members of the Boulanger Trio find, “we plunge into the most profound recesses of the soul. Everything acquires existential significance. This work truly captivates us: so much occurs within such brief moments”. This is where our performers find a bridge that connects Juon’s kaleidoscopic tone poem with Peter Tchaikovsky’s colossal Piano Trio, op. 50, a musical epitaph for pianist and conductor Nikolai Rubinstein, who had been Tchaikovsky’s friend and mentor.

Rubinstein had ensured that the young Tchaikovsky was allowed to enter the newly founded Moscow Conservatory while taking him up as a resident in his own home. “He looked after my every need like a child’s nurse”, Tchaikovsky wrote to his family in Saint Petersburg. Rubinstein not only made sure

that Tchaikovsky wore appropriately elegant clothing, but he took him to the opera and to concerts while introducing him to his circle of colleagues and friends, playing out his connections to draw their attention to his protégé’s compositions.

His unexpected passing in 1881, when he was only 45, must have profoundly shattered the young Tchaikovsky, who dedicated the only piano trio he ever wrote to his late friend, adding the subtitle À la mémoire d’un grand artiste.

The work consists of only two monumental, thematically related movements. Beginning with a heartfelt cello cantilena, the first one is an extensive elegy or Pezzo elegiaco: an immense variety of musical ideas flow together in this sonata form with exposition, development, and reprise. The second movement consists in a seemingly endless set of variations. According to his friend Nikolai Kashkin, Tchaikovsky wanted to “paint a musical portrait of Rubinstein in different phases of his life”.

Whether that be true or not, this is indeed a musical broadsheet of illustrated character variations. Particular mention can be made of the third variation, a brilliant piano caprice, the fifth, where the piano imitates bell chimes, the sixth in form of a waltz, and the elaborate fugue in the eighth. The twelfth variation-cum-finale sets in powerfully and energetically, but harks back to the first movement by concluding with a poignant funeral march.

Chief Vienna music critic Eduard Hanslick found that Tchaikovsky’s trio, despite “a number of original traits and successful turns of phrase”, belonged to the kind of “quasi-suicidal compositions that destroy their own effect because of their merciless length”. Today, however, it is regarded as one of the milestones in the genre of chamber music with piano.

Vanessa Wagner LISZT, PÄRT

Liszt liked to introduce himself as « half Franciscan, half Gypsy», allowing sensual pleasures to mingle with a profound mystical feeling. With Poetic and Religious Harmonies, inspired by a volume of poetry by Lamartine, the title seems to encapsulate the composer’s passions: literature and spirituality.

In this work, Liszt, the greatest virtuoso of his time and the inventor of the recital, enhances all expressive and technical possibilities of the piano, elevating his favourite instrument to the rank of the ambassador of romanticism.

Jirí Belohlávek / Czech Philharmonic JANÁCEK Glagolitic Mass

Leos Janácek's magnificent Glagolitic Mass (or Slavonic Mass) had its origins in 1907, when the composer began sketching out a Latin mass for chorus and organ. Janácek had nearly finished three sections of the work (the Kyrie, Credo, and Agnus Dei) when he set it aside. He did not return to it for almost 20 years. This period of inactivity on the mass involved an attempt on the composer's part to redefine, in his most personal terms, the meanings of the mass texts. Janácek sometimes would ponder the reformulation of a traditional idea, such as the mass proper, for great stretches of time.

When the composer returned to the mass, he began with a change of text. Janácek settled on a ninth century Slavonic mass, used in ancient times in his native Moravia. The ancient Slavonic style of script, known as glagolitic, was incorporated into the title of his mass to help date the text, to connect the composer with his Moravian roots, and to honor the Greek influence of the past. The Glagolitic Mass had little to do with organized religion in the composer's mind, however, and was not intended for liturgical use. Janácek's mass was conceived as a paean to Nature, and a tribute to humanity. In 1928, Janácek was quoted as saying, "I wanted to portray the faith in the certainty of a nation, not on a religious basis, but on a basis of moral strength which takes God for witness."

In August 1926, Janácek drafted an expanded version of the Glagolitic Mass in Luhacovice, a small Moravian town to which the composer retreated for summer vacations. There, he combined the old 1907 mass with the new (or rather, ancient) Slavonic text, and composed new material. Around the time the organ Intrada was being composed, Janácek's copyist was on hand putting together a legible copy of the score. The Glagolitic Mass was completed in December of 1926. But when Janácek learned that a premiere was forthcoming, he revised it yet again, watering down some of the more complicated sections. The work was finally given its world premiere on December 5, 1927, and achieved overnight success. (Franklin Stover)

Pavel Kolesnikov BEETHOVEN

London-based Pavel Kolesnikov was born into a Siberian family of scientists and studied both the piano and violin for ten years, before concentrating solely on the piano. He went on to study at the Moscow State Conservatory with Sergey Dorensky, London’s Royal College of Music with Norma Fisher, and at Brussels’ Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel with Maria João Pires thanks to generous support from Mr Christopher D Budden, the RCM Scholarship Foundation and the Hattori Foundation. During his studies he was awarded the Milstein Medal and the RCM Benjamin Britten Piano Fellowship supported by the Philip Loubser Foundation.

Since becoming Prize Laureate of the Honens Prize for Piano in 2012, Pavel has performed extensively across the globe including at such venues as Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall, Berlin’s Konzerthaus, London’s Wigmore Hall, the Melbourne Recital Centre, Saitama Theatre in Tokyo, and the Louvre Auditorium in Paris. Following his Wigmore Hall debut in January 2014, The Daily Telegraph gave his recital a rare five-star review declaring it ‘one of the most memorable of such occasions London has witnessed in a while’.

Pavel was a member of BBC Radio 3’s prestigious New Generation Artists scheme from 2014 to 2016. He made his BBC Proms debut in 2016 performing Tchaikovsky’s piano concerto No 2 conducted by Ilan Volkov, and was invited to return in 2017 to give an all-Chopin solo recital. He maintains a busy career as a recitalist, chamber musician and soloist with orchestras such as the Royal Philharmonic, BBC Philharmonic and Russian National orchestras, and the City of Birmingham, Toronto, BBC, Czech National and Flanders symphony orchestras.

His debut studio recording, of Tchaikovsky’s The seasons for Hyperion, was met with critical acclaim, and his second album, of Chopin Mazurkas, won a Diapason d’Or and a Gramophone Award nomination whilst earning Pavel a place in The Daily Telegraph’s ‘Cultural Best of 2016’.

Pavel believes that arts are best understood in their multitude rather then in separation and isolation. Painting and photography are areas of particular interest for him, as are fashion and perfumery. He is an avid collector of fine perfume and specimens in his collection date from the beginning of the twentieth century up to the present day.