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Informusic: A Music History Resource

By Ian Cochrane on 30 December 2016 CD and Book Reviews, Classical Music

Informusic is an app that includes biographies, sheet music, and audio examples of roughly 30 renowned composers. Laudably, female composers Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel and Clara Wieck Schumann are among the composers profiled in this resource. Users may refer to a timeline that runs from the 15th century through to the early 20th century. This delineates momentous events in the lives of eminent composers as well as significant events in European history. We are able to discern if masterworks were composed in a period of peace or war. Information is provided about the literary masterpieces that were published at the same time…

Lebrecht Weekly – Tchaikovsky: 6th symphony, Romeo & Juliet overture (Decca)

By Norman Lebrecht on 21 October 2016 CD and Book Reviews, Orchestral, Romantic

For a troubled London teenager in the 1960s there were three available sources of relief. One was illegal, one was immoral and the third was available every other week at the Royal Festival Hall. I took myself to hear the Tchaikovsky Pathétique more often than I remember, sitting in the backless choir seats, watching the wealthier part of the audience indulge in plush catharsis. Over time, the relief wore thin. Tchaikovsky gave way to Mahler and the Pathétique became a rare item, out of fashion, off the concert menu. Semyon Bychkov’s new Tchaikovsky series on Decca is well timed to…

Review – J.S. Bach: Six Sonatas for Violin and Keyboard (Marquis)

By Kiersten van Vliet on 1 October 2016 Baroque and Early, CD and Book Reviews

J.S. Bach: Six Sonatas for Violin and Keyboard Duo Concertante; Nancy Dahn, violin; Timothy Steeves, piano Marquis 2016. MAR 81521. 2 CDs. 92 min 42 s. Composed between 1714 and 1723, J.S. Bach’s six Sonatas for Violin and Keyboard are surprisingly sentimental and intimate, especially given the elaborate stretches of imitation expected from the master as well as the precedent for our understanding of Bach’s treatment of the violin from his Six Solo Violin Sonatas and Partitas. Partners in life as well as in music, violinist Nancy Dahn and pianist Timothy Steeves have upped the ante from their recording of…

Review – Vivaldi: Les Violons du Roy (ATMA)

By Kiersten van Vliet on 1 October 2016 Baroque and Early, CD and Book Reviews

Vivaldi: Les Violons du Roy Mathieu Lussier, conductor ATMA 2016. ACD2 2602. 59 min 49 s. In his second recording with Les Violons du Roy, associate conductor Mathieu Lussier shows maturity and restraint, without losing the vitality of Antonio Vivaldi’s concerti. Most associated with the Four Seasons and his pedagogical violin concerti L’estro Armonico, this release broadens the casual listener’s idea of the Red Priest’s output. With these selections, Lussier, a bassoonist himself, places an extra emphasis on concerti that feature winds, including the Concerto in G minor RV 577 for one violin, two recorders, two oboes, bassoon with its…

Review – Charles Richard-Hamelin: Beethoven, Enescu, Chopin (Analekta)

By Kiersten van Vliet on 1 October 2016 CD and Book Reviews, Classical, Piano, Romantic

Charles Richard-Hamelin: Beethoven, Enescu, Chopin Charles Richard-Hamelin, piano Analekta 2016. AN2 9129. 68 min 50 s. Since winning the Silver Medal and the Krystian Zimerman Sonata award at the 2015 Chopin Piano Competition, Montreal and Quebec at large have been gaga – for good reason – over Charles Richard-Hamelin. Recorded live in concert this past May at Salle Raoul-Jobin of the Palais Montcalm in Quebec City, this album may begin conservatively with Beethoven’s Two Rondos for Piano, Op. 51, but takes a turn with George Enescu’s Second Suite, Op. 10. With the Enescu, Richard-Hamelin digresses from clinical Classicism into the…

Review – Après un Rêve: Fauré, Debussy, Ravel (BIS)

By Kiersten van Vliet on 1 October 2016 CD and Book Reviews, Contemporary, Romantic, Violin

Après un Rêve: Fauré, Debussy, Ravel Christian Svarfvar, violin; Roland Pöntinen, piano BIS 2016. 2183. 61 min 8 s. French music has long held an essential position in a violinist’s repertoire, but with this new release by Swede Christian Svarfvar, the links between French melody and the French operatic tradition of the 19th century are brought into clear focus. The tool used is, of course, the violin, with its latent potential to mimic the expressiveness of the human voice. The disc runs in roughly chronological order, or rather, the way we like to think of the French compositional lineage: Fauré…

Review – György Kurtág: Complete String Quartets (ATMA)

By Kiersten van Vliet on 1 October 2016 CD and Book Reviews, Contemporary, Strings

György Kurtág: Complete String Quartets Quatuor Molinari: Olga Ranzenhofer, violin; Frédéric Bednarz, violin; Frédéric Lambert, viola; Pierre-Alain Bouvrette, cello ATMA 2016. ACD2 2705. 60 min 38 s. Quatuor Molinari has become Canada’s champion for 20th and 21st-century composition, including recordings of Canadian R. Murray Schafer’s String Quartets, and, more recently, the premiere of his Alzheimer’s Masterpiece (String Quartet No. 13), a moving tribute to the ailing composer. Following the fine recording of quartets by fellow Canadian Petros Shoujounian (Noravank, April 2016) to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Armenian genocide, with this release Quatuor Molinari has once again proven its…

Review – Overtures to Bach: Matt Haimovitz (Pentatone Oxingale)

By Kiersten van Vliet on 1 September 2016 Baroque and Early, CD and Book Reviews, Contemporary, Strings

Recently named Pentatone’s Artist of the Season, Matt Haimovitz has never shied from making waves in performance or recording. The Montreal-based cellist has already proven his Bach chops over and over throughout his career, most recently with the 2015 Pentatone release of the Suites based on a copy by Bach’s second wife Anna Magdalena played on period instruments. This new disc explores six new commissions by Haimovitz, each an Overture to the Prelude from each Suite. The structure of Overture followed by Prelude makes the Bach a comment on the future, a kind of sonic time machine. Opening with Phillip…

Review – Alfred Schnittke: Works for Violin and Piano (Quartz)

By Kiersten van Vliet on 1 September 2016 CD and Book Reviews, Chamber Music, Contemporary, Violin

Alfred Schnittke is a name we often shy away from on this side of the Atlantic. His style of unabashed dissonance is not solely reliant on serialism, but rather an understanding of the latent dramatic potential of atonality, an understanding that is made possible by his awareness and appreciation of the music that preceded him. Instead of breaking with the past, Schnittke aimed to show the connections between past and present in his so-called “polystylism”; this is no more evident than in his chamber output for the violin. The two-CD set opens with the late Third Sonata (1994), darkly opulent…

Shakespeare Reimagined

By Rebecca Anne Clark on 1 September 2016 CD and Book Reviews, Literature

Founded in 1917 and re-launched in 2012, Hogarth Press is celebrating the 400th anniversary of the Bard’s death with a literary series, Hogarth Shakespeare. Inaugurated in October 2015 with Jeanette Winterson’s The Gap of Time, Hogarth Shakespeare mines some today’s bestselling authors for new interpretations of Shakespeare’s timeless stories. Why would an author want to take on a task as daunting as rewriting the work of The Bard? Gillian Flynn sums up a sentiment expressed by many of the authors: “As beautiful and as interesting and as complicated as [his works are], I still think there’s more.” The collection contains…

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