Marc Minkowski and the BBC Symphony Orchestra at the Barbican reviewed by the Arts Desk

In line with the fantastic five star review of the BBC Symphony Orchestra’s concert at the Barbican in The Guardian this month, Marc Minkowski and his orchestra’s performance received another great review in the Arts Desk. Below are some highlights from the article.

“It always repays to push a world-class orchestra beyond their comfort zone. The BBC Symphony’s sound emerged from the refashioning hands of period specialist Marc Minkowski like a naked body from a cold shower: convulsively invigorated and invigorating all those that knocked into it. It was a joy to hear: the best, most intriguing period-playing I’ve heard for quite a while.”

“Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater isn’t quite so doctrinally clean of counterpoint; there is at least one very fine fugal unravelling at “Fac, ut ardeat”, though most of the countrapuntal or harmonic searching is developed for colouristic effect above all, something Minkowski relished bringing out. And when you have an orchestra as good as the BBCSO this isn’t as hard as it seems.”

Igor Toronyi-Lalic

If you wish to read the article fully, please visit the Arts Desk website.

Accentus’s recording of Strauss’s works for choir reviewed in the International Record Review last month

The latest recording of Accentus conducted by Laurence Equilbey in collaboration with the Latvian Radio Choir has received another great review in the International Record Review recently. Below are some highlights from the review.

“Choral music is a relatively little-recorded part of the output of Richard Strauss, so this disc of a cappella works from Naïve, with a Franco-Latvian alliance of choirs conducted by Laurence Equilbey, is especially welcome.”

“The soprano soloist Jane Archibald has some particularly exposed high notes which are well taken, supported by some superbly secure choral singing.”

“It’s a quite magical opening, with Phoebus descends from his chariot, and Equilbey ensures her forces are particularly responsive to Strauss’s dynamic markings.”

Mark Pullinger

If you wish to read the full article please refer to the February issue of the International Record Review.

Nice review of Emanuel Krivine’s recording of Beethoven’s Symphony No 9 in The Independent on Sunday

Recorded in Grenoble, Vichy and Paris, Emanuel Krivine’s Beethoven dazzles with closely mic-ed details. La Chambre Philharmonique’s bassoons are the unlikely stars, jostled out of the way by heaven-sent strings in the Adagio, and an almost comically hyperactive contrabassoon in the finale. Les Eléments deliver a lithe, moving account of Goethe’s Ode, with a suave introduction from bass soloist Konstantin Wolff. Too much technical trickery to be properly ”live”, perhaps. But what a refreshing, bold reading.
Anna Picard

Sandrine Piau’s voice praised in the International Record Review last month!

Marc Rochester wrote a fantastic review about Sandrine Piau’s recording of Handel Between Heaven and Earth in the February 2010 issue of the International Record Review.

Below are some highlights of the review:

”Sandrine Piau’s breathtaking vocal virtuosity”

”sumptuous music-making crowned by a voice which can be angelic but here seems to possess much more in the way of earthly substance and sheer lasciviousness. If this voice is about to be ‘embosomed in the grave’, there will be plenty who will be only too happy to follow.”

”Piau certainly possesses both a voice of the sublimest beauty and a powerful musical intelligence.”

”One thing is certain with this disc: it will keep you on your toes. While so much high-octane energy can rapidly prove tiring to the ear, an excess of virtuosity is successfully held in check by the intense musicality and sheer beauty of Piau’s matchless voice.”

By Marc Rochester

If you wish to read the full article please refer to the February 2010 issue of the International Record Review.

Eduardo López Banzo and Al Ayre Español’s second Handel opera reviewed in Opera magazine last month.

For their second Handel opera for Naïve, Eduardo López Banzo and Al Ayre Español have chosen Rodrigo and have received a great review from Opera magazine in their issue of February 2010.

Below are the highlights of the review:

“It has been a decade since Alan Curtis’s pioneering recording of Handel’s first opera for Italy, so time is ripe for another, especially one that competes as effectively as this.”

”Maria Riccarda Wesseling’s lyric mezzo-soprano sounds quite at home in the music of Rodrigo”

”From the start, Sharon Rostorf-Zamir responds to Florinda more heated personality with vivid delivery of both recitative and arias.”

”Kobie van Rensburg sings with vitality and bravura skill”

”The countertenor Max Emanuel Cencic brings an attractively mellow sound to Rodrigo’s general Fernando, who is an unusual development for opera seria is killed on stage.”

”Anne-Catherine Gillet sings Evanco’s dramatically charged music with conviction and panache.”

”López Banzo varies the make-up of the continuo group without overstepping stylistic boundaries, and his accompaniments of the lyrical numbers are colourful and incisive.”

By GEORGE LOOMIS

If you wish to read the full article please refer to the February 2010 issue of Opera magazine.

Minkowski and Les Musiciens du Louvre reviewed in Classic FM Magazine and the International Record Review last month.

Minkowski’s recording of songs from Purcell, Handel and Haydn dedicated to St Cecilia, the patron saint of music, has received favourable reviews from Classic FM Magazine and the International Record Review in their issues of February 2010.

Here are some highlights of the reviews:

Classic FM Magazine: ★★★★
“Of the three St Cecilia pieces here, Purcell’s 1692 Ode takes pride of place.”
“Soprano Lucy Crowe is thrilling”
“Anders Dahlin sings with ease but gives way to Nathalia Stutzmann’s fruity depths in the Haydn.”

The International Record Review:
“There are numerous fine recordings available of both the Purcell and the Handel, including those of the King’s Consort under Robert King and the Taverner Consort under Andrew Parrott. However, is has to be said that this newcomer knocks them all for six. By turns exhilarating and heart-achingly beautiful, these performances beguile both the heart and the head with their expressive intensity and razor-sharp precision.”
“The opening Symphony immediately shows Les Musiciens du Louvre to good advantage, the playing crisp and bright, the timbres attractively variegated the ensemble tight.”
“The real gem here is the Handel, which is worth the price of the set alone.”
“The Haydn could easily seem out of place here, were it not for Minkowski’s ability to generate drama within the context of near-perfect execution, so apparent in the previous two works.”
“This is a must-buy.”
By Robert Levett

If you wish to read the full articles please refer to the February 2010 issues of Classic FM Magazine and the International Record Review.

Fantastic five star review of Marc Minkowski and the BBC Symphony Orchestra in The Guardian!

The latest concert of Marc Minkowski and the BBC Symphony Orchestra at the Barbican received a five star review by Tim Ashley in the 12 March issue of The Guardian.

Below you can find the highlights of the article and for a full reading please refer to the relevant issue of The Guardian or visit http://www.guardian.co.uk/

“This was a great occasion. Minkowski is as much at home with 18th-century authenticity as with the abrasions and edges of early modernism. The BBCSO were keenly responsive, and the results attained an undemonstrative perfection.”

“In contrast to the thickish string tone favoured by many interpreters, Minkowski brought elements of period fastidiousness to bear on the proceedings without losing sight of the ironies of Stravinsky’s orchestrations.”

“Beautiful, at times intolerably moving, and rarely bettered.”

Tim Ashley

La Chambre Philharmonique and Emmanuel Krivine successfully reviewed in the French magazine Telerama: they receive 4 ffff.

Conducteur de l’Impériale

«La 9e rabâchée, la 9e détournée, mais la 9e libérée»: Emmanuel Krivine rééclaire le monument de Beethoven.





Certains chefs-d’oeuvre sont si rebattus qu’ils semblent ne plus réserver la moindre surprise. Avec son final exultant sur l’«Ode à la Joie» de Schiller, la 9e symphonie de Beethoven fait partie de ces monuments culturels régulièrement convoqués pour rehausser la pompe de moments solennels de l’histoire – célébration de l’Europe ou chute du mur de Berlin. Quel frisson d’inattendu éprouver encore à l’écoute d’une musique tellement rabâchée, et si souvent détournée, à des fins parasitaires, de sa stricte obédience symphonique?

Il ne faut pourtant jamais désespérer des ressources insoupçonnées d’une partition, ni de la sagacité imprévisible de certains interprètes, capables d’une approche spontanément singulière et inventive.

Le chef Emmanuel Krivine et ses musiciens de la Chambre philharmonique, sur leurs instruments d’époque, appartiennent à cette élite de slalomeurs en hors-piste, rompus à déjouer les écueils du convenu ou du conventionnel. Dès l’emballement de l’allegro maestoso initial, ils ouvrent un sillage de lumière – un motif de croches martelées avec une vigueur si inhabituelle, un relief si incisif, qu’il nous rappelle brusquement le thème péremptoire du destin dans la 5e, nous suggérant du même coup une réflexion insolite. Et si, dans cette 9e qu’il avait si longuement mûrie, au point de soupçonner qu’elle serait peut-être son testament, Beethoven avait récapitulé en filigrane ses symphonies précédentes – dans le scherzo, la frénésie dansante de la 7e, dans l’andante, le recueillement élégiaque de la «Pastorale» ? Une manière de faire le plein de puissance, en puisant dans des réserves d’énergie antérieures. Beethoven peut ensuite lancer les troupes instrumentales et vocales du finale comme une armée de libération. Clamées avec une jubilation vertigineuse, les dernières mesures semblent saluer le soleil se levant un 2 décembre sur la plaine d’Austerlitz, faisant de cette interprétation impériale et impérieuse un pur trophée.

GILLES MACASSAR

Bertrand Chamayou’s recording awarded by the French magazine Classica!

Bertrand Chamayou's recording of César Franck's works will get a CHOC award by the French magazine CLASSICA in their April issue, out in a couple of weeks. Fantastic news!

David Greilsammer receives fantastic reviews in the New York Times and the NY Daily News.

David Greilsammer received fantastic reviews in the New York Times and the NY Daily News last week after his recital at the Walter Reade Theater, NY, on 21 February 2010. Below you will find relevant extracts from the reviews as well as links to the press articles if you wish to read them fully. 

Two young pianists, forging connections, by Anthony Tommasini
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/26/arts/music/26greil.html?ref=music

(…)

The inquisitive, elegant Israeli pianist David Greilsammer, 32, presented a recital at the Walter Reade Theater, part of Lincoln Center’s Sunday Morning Coffee Concerts series, in which programs of roughly 60 minutes are followed by a coffee-and-muffin reception with the artists in the lobby. Mr. Greilsammer, also the music director of the Geneva Chamber Orchestra, is fascinated by musical connections. His program, “Gates,” offered works by composers from Rameau and Monteverdi to Ligeti and John Adams, with stops through Scarlatti, Janacek and more.

(…)

For Mr. Greilsammer, the potential risk from programs that leap around is that the experiment can seem gimmicky. In his recital here, the choices of pieces and the musical connections among them were striking and provocative. Most important, the playing was exquisite.

(…)

Afterward, the audience gathered in the lobby to have coffee and meet the artist, who signed copies of his Naïve label recordings. His latest offers him as pianist and conductor in sensitive, articulate accounts of Mozart’s Piano Concertos 22 and 24, with the Suedama Ensemble.

(…)

Mr. Greilsammer is a standout musician who has it in him to challenge, inform and delight audiences. During the reception I overheard one person saying that he thought Mr. Greilsammer’s experiment did not go far enough, that there was too much “sameness” in the pieces, especially the first few. When a listener asserts that Rameau, Ligeti, Mozart and Satie sound similar, I think Mr. Greilsammer can claim success at showing the connections among seemingly disparate music.

David Greilsammer, by Howard Kissel

http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/culture/2010/02/daniel-greilsammer.html

(…)

In the program notes Greilsammer said he began thinking about programming a recital this way when he attended a show in an art museum where the entry into each room evoked its own mood, its own sense of beauty. The works he programmed, with the exception of the Janacek, were brief. Greilsammer asked that applause be held until the very end of the recital, which lasted slightly over an hour. One had the sense the audience was absolutely rapt throughout. They applauded with intense warmth at the end. One felt we had truly made a great journey together.

Although the Walter Reade is among the most comfortable theaters in New York, its acoustics are apparently problematic -- to the point where Steinway recently withdrew its piano. Greilsammer, like myself a Steinway artist, performed on a Yamaha. Had the name not appeared on the side of the piano you would have assumed it was a Steinway. There was a time when Yamahas produced a sound that was solid, powerful but somewhat flat. That was not the case this morning, when the sound was ringing and brilliant.

That of course had to do with the wiry, darkly handsome young man at the keyboard. Most astonishing was the breathtaking delicacy of the pianissimo passages he played, far harder to bring off than thundering fortissimi. Beyond his formidable command of the dynamics of the keyboard there is a fierce intelligence at work. He sets himself great challenges, but the musical effects he achieves are ingratiating and emotionally involving rather than intimidating.

It is rare to hear a recital with so much unfamiliar music that the performer makes so immediate and so moving. Few recitals I have ever attended have offered such a sense of intense beauty and discovery.

Great work!

We would like to thank our UK distributor for its great work on Los Impossibles and a special thank you to Heffer's in Cambridge for supporting the record.

Fantastic FIVE STAR review for Accentus’s recording of Strauss’s works for choir in BBC Music Magazine.

Miraculous Strauss

Stephen Johnson enjoys a new disc of Richard Strauss’s works for choir.

I had almost given up on the prospect of having Strauss’s Deutsche Motette performed really convincingly. Asking a large, multi-divided unaccompanied chorus plus four soloists to stay in tune for nearly 20 minute, at the same time coping with harmonic progressions as luxuriously complex as in Strauss’s late masterpiece for strings, Metamorphosen - for once it seemed the brilliantly practical Strauss had reached beyond the stars. This performance by the combined forces of the Latvian Radio Choir and Accentus isn’t absolutely perfect, but it comes so close that I’m sure most ears will barely notice the odd slight waver in pitch when the harmonic going gets really tough. Hearing exquisite Straussian tonal twists sung with such precison and evident love is a treat for both ear and heart.

But the real miracle is what stands revealed overall – something unique in the history of choral music. At times – and especially towards its radiant climax – the Deutsche Motette fells like a near-impossible fusion of the spirit of Tallis’s 40-part Spem in alium with the loveliest pages of Strauss’s own Daphne or Ariadne auf Naxos. And conductor Laurence Equilbey and her singers seem equally responsive to both extremes. Incredibly the piece’s huge span seems just right-not a moment overlong.

Then come more gems: the quietly gorgeous Traumlicht (‘Dreamlight’) for male voices, and the effectively contrasted diptych Zwei Gesänge (‘Two Hymns’), all in sumptuously atmospheric recordings. The opening couple of minutes of the first of the Zwei Gesänge, ‘Der Abend’ (Evening) constitute perhaps the most beautiful thing on the whole disc: try playing this to musical friends and asking them to guess the composer, and then enjoy watching them flounder. Yes, at 47:30 the total playing time is on the short side. There would have been room quite comfortably for the two other Op. 123 male-voice choruses that frame Traumlicht, but as Christian Goubault points out in his notes, Traumlicht is closest in spirit to the Deutsche Motette and Zwei Gesänge. In any case I’d be happy to pay full price just for what we have here.

PERFORMANCE ★★★★★
RECORDING ★★★★

David Greilsammer and the Suedama Ensemble reviewed in Gramophone Magazine

Intimate and Intelligent performances that benefit from a close recording

Last year's disc of early piano concertos from Israeli pianist David Greilsammer and his New York-based Suedama Ensemble received praise in these pages for performance and criticism for its close recorded sound (11/08). This release, featuring two of the mature concertos, shows that the sound is very much part of the concept for these musicians. Greilsammer is an excellent pianist who attains high levels of tonal delicacy and precision, and not only has he nothing to fear from the proximity of microphones, his artistry is highlighted by it. As a conductor, too, he shapes his orchestra with meticulous care, sculpting phrases firmly but kindly and allowing the wind-writing - a major glory of these works - to come through and hold the stage as it should. When the slow minuet starts up in the finale of K482 it is as if old and cherished friends are offering succour, an effect that would seem unlikely from within the dreamy wash of sound this music is sometimes subjected to.

Perhaps of all Mozart's concertos, it is K491 which is most often presented to us as if through a veil of tears, but Greilsammer here banishes sentimentality from the work while losing nothing in expressive intensity. Dynamic contrasts such as in the first movement's development, or the abruptly dispatched ending to the finale, are dramatic without being hysterical, while the Larghetto is swift-moving yet graceful and dance-like; only the surprising perkiness of its closing bars seems inappropriately unfeeling.

Any doubts that Greilsammer can touch the soul, however, disappear at his strongly moving account of the Andante of K482, with its ominous string phrases, pained piano yelps and warm consolations from the winds. With imaginative cadenzas by Greilsammer himself these intelligent and intimately detailed performances may not be to all tastes but they are refreshing and revealing reminders of these concertos' greatness none the less.

Lindsay Kemp