Khatia Buniatishvili and friends : Schumann Piano Quartet Op 47

With many thanks to Piero, who uploaded this into the comments on a previous posting, here is a wonderful piece of chamber music making. 


The Schumann piano quartet has always languished in the shadow of the phenomenal piano quintet. The quintet just seems to play itself, and its pianistic difficulties (those horrifying rapid octaves, written to show off Clara's technique, for instance) are counterbalanced by the ease of the music itself. It never seems to outlast its welcome, or to lose its way.


The quartet, on the other hand, can easily seem repetitive, yammering in the piano part and curiously under-powered. Part of this has to do with the immense difference between the modern piano and the piano of Schumann's day. Many of the apparent doublings of the string parts by the piano are actually the reverse: the strings are doubling the piano to make sure that the piano line is audible! And the lighter, clearer sound of Schumann's piano (particularly in the bass) meant that those endless repeated chords bounced melodiously. On a modern piano, they have hardly time to establish the basic sound before they are cut off. 


All of this makes the work really hard to bring off. And so, when Piero uploaded this performance, my hair stood on end. Just listen to the music making! The breathtaking clarity of Buniatishvili's playing is a key ingredient to the success. She creates feather-light textures that have a bell-like clarity without the faintest sense of the tone being muzzled. And this allows the energy and drive of her fellow-musicians to shine through. And what musicians! I couldn't get a shot of them all together, so I put a photo of each musician in each of the movements, and I have used a well-known shot of Robert and Clara for the posting. 


This is chamber music of the highest order. If you ever had doubts about the Schumann quartet, abandon them here.


Incidentally, the Schumann's are pictured at a gate piano. The gate piano was so called because the whole action – keyboard, hammers, dampers, the lot – hinged outwards like a gate, allowing you to work on it very easily. When you close it, a long rod goes right down through it, holding it in place. I played on a piano like this one, beautifully restored, many years ago, at the home of Cathal Gannon, a wonderfully eccentric Irishman who built harpsichords and restored old pianos. 


Schumann: Piano Quartet Op 47
Boris Brovtsyn (violin), Julian Rachlin [viola] Boris Andrianov [cello] Khatia Buniatishvili [piano]. Recorded 2009-12-28 in Vredenburg, Utrecht. 256 kbs.


Download from Rapidshare

Alina Ibragimova in Bach, Biber and Vivalidi

I really am going to get my leg pulled about this one by BOOM, who already refers to this blog as my 'shrine to the lovely Alina'. But I couldn't resist it. Ill as I was last night, I got up to listen to this concert, and enjoyed it so much I listened to the whole thing again, with a glass or two of wine for company. 


It is causing me to have misgivings about the violin though. Is it possible that there's an ugly woman out there who plays the violin well? If so, why hasn't she got a recording contract?

In this concert, Ibragimova swaps her usual violin for a baroque Amati. The Biber pieces, in particular, are a revelation. The astonishing

Passacaglia starts from almost nothing and builds up in a hypnotic thread of utter concentration.  I've known the Battalia for years, thanks to an ancient Archiv recording, and it still delights me in its inventiveness. In the course of it, the strings imitate the sounds of battle, drunken soldiers singing in different keys, and lamentation. 

As a director, Ibragimova goes for dangerous speeds at times, but nothing the AAM can't handle. She's joined by Rodolfo Richter and Joseph Crouch in the Vivaldi Op 3 and by harpsichordist Alastair Ross in the sonata. 

Biber - Passacaglia in G minor from the Mystery/Rosary Sonatas
Bach - Sonata for violin and harpsichord in E major, BWV 1016
Bach - Violin Concerto in A minor, BWV 1041
Vivaldi - Violin Concerto in D major, RV 234 (L'inquietudine)
Vivaldi - Concerto for two violins and cello in D major, Op. 3 no. 11 (RV 565)
Biber - Battalia
Bach - Violin Concerto in E major, BWV 1042.


Alina Ibragimova (violin and direction), Academy of Ancient Music
Assembly Rooms in Ludlow, 3rd March 2012


Radio 3 HD Internet Stream, normalised, tracked and tagged

Download from Rapidshare

Yulianna Avdeeva : Recital from the 66th International Chopin Festival

Here she is again, in great sound and in great form! Not pretty, this playing, at least not in the conventional sense. The nocturnes take place in a sort of darkness that is low on moonbeams, and the opening sonorities of the hungarian rhapsody are arrestingly bleak. In fact, as a person who cannot stand the idiot antics of Liszt's piano writing, I have to confess to being fascinated by this selection of his darker works. 


Having heard Ingolf Wunder (joint second with Lukas Geniusas) and the noteworthy Hélène Tysman who didn't make the prizes, I still think Avdeeva comes out on top. Wunder has superb tone and musicianship, but Avdeeva manages to come up with a personal chemistry that is fascinating because it doesn't seem to impose itself on the music but to come up with things you don't normally hear. 


Enjoy. 


Yulianna Avdeeva : Recital from the 66th International Chopin Festival, Duszniki
Zdrój, 2011.


Chopin:
2 Nocturnes for piano (Op.62)
Scherzo for piano no. 1 (Op.20) in B minor
4 Mazurkas for piano (Op.33)
Yulianna Adeeva (piano)
Polonaise-fantasy for piano (Op.61) in A flat major

Liszt:
La Lugubre gondola for piano (S.200)
Nuages gris for piano (S.199)
Bagatelle without tonality for piano (S.216a)
No.17 from 19 Hungarian rhapsodies for piano (S.244)

Wagner (Transc. Liszt)
Tannhauser - Overture

Encores
Tchaikovsky:
Meditation (Op. 72 no. 5)

Chopin:
Waltz for piano (Op.42) in A flat major
Mazurka (Op.67 no.4) in A minor

Excellent sound, and a very good piano.

BBC Radio 3 HD internet stream, tracked, tagged, normalised
Download from Rapidshare

The Belcea Quartet play Beethoven Op 18/2, 59/2 and 131

Here is is: the eagerly awaited next installment of the Belcea quartet's Beethoven series. This one includes the Mount Everest of the chamber music repertoire – the C sharp minor quartet Op 131. And this is live music making, so the quartet has already played the taxing second Rasumovsky quartet. Holding together a work like Op 131 calls on the ensemble to sustain an incredible musical concentration for what must seem like an eternity. And they do it. And you cannot replicate this in a studio. This is live, on air, no retakes possible, so the tension mustn't ever be lost, not even between movements. 


And it isn't. This is a quartet on the top of their game, playing what I think is destined to become one of the great Beethoven quartet cycles. 


Beethoven:
String Quartet in G Op. 18 No. 2
String Quartet in E minor Op. 59 No. 2 'Razumovsky'
String Quartet in C# minor Op. 131

Wigmore Hall, Broadcast Sunday 5th Feb 2012

Belcea Quartet
BBC3 HD Internet stream, tracked, normalised and tagged


Download from Rapidshare

Alina Ibragimova and Alexei Ogrinchuk – Bach double concerto

Thanks to Boom for this one. It's getting to the point where anyone who comes across a good recording of Ibragimova sends it to me. Boom refers to my 'growing audio shrine of lovely Alina's concert performances'. 


Well, I cannot deny it. It's always a pleasure to hear her play. And this recording is exactly the music for this, the first day of Irish Spring. (Spring starts on the first of February in Ireland. Everyone else has to wait.)


It's a fresh, sparkling performance of the reconstructed Bach double concerto for violin and oboe BWV 1060R. Equal honour to the two soloists, Ibragimova and Ogrinchuk. Indeed, it's wonderful to hear two musicians so well matched in their vision of the music. They are backed by alert, responsive music-making from the Konzerthaus-Hammerorchester Berlin. The whole thing, then, is a delight.

So say Thank you, Boom and download!

Alina Ibragimova, violin
Alexei Ogrinchuk, oboe
Konzerthaus-Kammerorchester Berlin
George Techichinadze
January 21, 2012
Muziekgebouw Frit Philips
Eindhoven,Holland

256 kbs mp3 (no re-encoding)

Download from Rapidshare

Herbert Murrill : Cello Concerto No 2

I'm not claiming this as a neglected masterpiece, but I am putting it forward as a fine piece of cello music. Murrill is remembered, if at all nowadays, as the composer of an evensong setting that is still commonly sung in Anglican worship. Indeed, I got to know him through my many years of cathedral singing. I had instinctively imagined him as a wrinkly old organist, and this photo of an earnest young man made me realise that old organists were once young too.


Not just that, but I would not have imagined him at work during the war (people my age call World War II "the war") in Bletchley Park, the top-secret intelligence centre that cracked the German and Japanese ciphers and greatly shortened the odds against the allies. In September 1944 ‘Sergeant’ Murrill conducted the Bletchley Park Musical Society in four performances of Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas. Having an eye (and ear) for authenticity, Murrill brought over especially a harpsichord from Cambridge. You can read more about him here. 

The second cello concerto is subtitled "El cant dels ocells" in homage to Pau Casals, to whom it is dedicated. It was premièred by Murrill's second wife, Vera Canning, at the London Prom concerts in August 1951. 


It's fair to say that it is a work that does not plumb the depths, but instead spreads a picnic tablecloth on the grass and enjoys the birdsong. Raphael Walllfisch does the work proud, with the BBC Symphony Orchestra under the idiomatic baton of Tod (Vernon) Handley. 


mp3, 192kbs


Download from Rapidshare

Jan Lisiecki at Verbier, 2011

That (very) young man is Jan Lisiecki, a Canadian pianist and an outstanding one, if I may say so. He first caught my eye when I bought his Chopin piano concertos. My enjoyment was only slightly marred to find that the final movement of one of the concertos was missing on iTunes. I wrote to him to alert him, and, to my surprise, received a link to a temporary 'replacement' track, recorded live, which, in turn lead to a brief exchange of emails on the subject of signing up with DG and retaining some sort of artistic control. He was pretty adamant that he would.


I was delighted, then, to come across this recital at the Verbier festival. The recording is at least fourth hand, having been at least as far East as Bulgaria, and having ended up being tagged in cyrillic! Aside from re-tagging it in European script, I've had no role. It's a very decent recording at about 150kbs VBR. 


And the playing? An antidote to the antics of many of the monkeys of the keyboard of the present day. He even makes Liszt sound bearable (it seems almost impossible to play Liszt without seeming utterly idiotic and vulgar – only Arrau managed it consistently). His Chopin studies are the music without the antics, and his thoughtful Beethoven Op 78 is an interesting approach to a sonata that baffles many pianists by its sheer simplicity. In fact, throughout the recital I found myself simply immersed in the music, almost forgetting to be grateful to Lisiecki for making it so. 


Bach: Prelude and Fugue in F sharp minor BWV 883
Beethoven : Sonata in F sharp number 24 in C major. Cit. 78 Liszt
Concert Studies .S 144 
Il Lamento 
La Leggierezza 
Un Sospiro 
Mendelson-Bartholdy : Variations Serieuses Op 54
Bach : Prelude and Fugue in F minor  BWV 857 Chopin : Etudes Op 25Valse Op 64/1
Nocturne Op Posth

Download from Rapidshare